Fields' Guide to Abduction - - (best sales books of all time txt) 📗

The sounds from the restaurant faded and were replaced by the lap of waves on the beach.

The lights faded too.

We walked in the near dark with the scent of jasmine hanging over us like a heavenly cloud. So different from last night when I’d feared someone was following me.

André stumbled. “You’d think they’d—”

“Eeek!”

“What—” André turned toward me. Horror registered on his face and he brought his hands to his cheeks. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

The man who held the knife at my throat tightened his grip on my arm.

“What do you want?” I rasped. Leaning away from the knife pressed beneath my jaw meant leaning into the man holding me.

“She gave it to you.”

“Who?” I swallowed, hyper-aware of the knife’s blade on my neck. “What?”

“Dónde está?”

“Where is what?”

“You want money? I’ve got money.” André reached inside his linen jacket.

The man’s hold on me became painful. “No se mueva!”

“André, don’t! He thinks you’re going for a gun.”

André dropped his hands and the man’s hold on me eased slightly.

“Where is it?” My captor’s voice was harsh but calm. Calm as if he regularly held women at knife-point. Calm as if violence was a way of life. Whatever he was looking for, when he found it, he’d kill me. Kill André. I’d never been more certain of anything.

André was frozen. Solid. Saving us was up to me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Yo no se.” I put a tremor in my voice. Let my captor think I was terrified. I caught André’s horrified gaze and tried to communicate with my eyes.

Frozen. Solid. Like a giant ice cube.

I shifted all my weight to my left leg.

“You have it.” The knife pricked my skin and I felt the tickle of blood running down my neck to the collar of my new tee.

I took a quick breath, found my center, and slammed the right heel of my very sharp stiletto into the man’s insole.

He gasped and loosened his grip on me.

I spun and kneed him in the groin.

He doubled over.

I clasped my hands and brought my forearms down on the back of his neck hard enough for the impact to reverberate through me.

The man fell to the ground.

I pointed to the hotel. “Run!”

André ran. Toward the villa.

Dammit. The hotel was a much better choice.

I ran after him. Slowly. Louboutins might look good and those spiky heels might make great spears for unsuspecting insoles but they made lousy running shoes.

André reached the villa long seconds long before I did. He had the door open, waiting for me.

I ran inside and slammed the door.

“Call for help!” I slipped the chain in place.

André grabbed the landline and pressed the receiver to his ear. That same frozen expression returned to his face. “There’s no dial tone.”

“Use your cell.”

I dashed past him, pulled open a kitchen drawer, and searched for a knife. The paring knife I found wouldn’t do me much good against the man who’d held what felt like a machete against my throat but it was better than nothing. I put the little knife in my pocket and grabbed a heavy lamp off the end table next to the couch.

André had managed to get someone on the phone. “Send someone right away! I’m serious, Mia! We were attacked!”

He’d called Mia? Not resort security. Not the police. Mia?

I tightened my grip on the lamp and took a position next to the door, ready to swing at anyone who crossed the threshold.

The door opened—someone had a key.

The chain held.

THUNK!

Whoever was on the other side threw his weight against the door. The whole villa rattled.

A few more hits like that and the chain would break or the frame would splinter.

“He’s here!” André screeched into the phone. “He’s here!”

I gripped the heavy lamp like a baseball bat. The moment the door gave, I’d swing.

THUNK!

Again the villa and everything in it rattled.

“We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die. Mia, tell my father I—”

Bang!

“EEEEEEEEK!” André’s eek was much higher and much longer than mine had been—of the shatter glass variety.

Thump! The sound of a body hitting the ground slipped through the crack in the door.

Then nothing.

And more nothing.

“Was that a gunshot?” André’s voice shook.

I nodded.

“What do we do?” Shook like Aspen leaves.

“Wait for help.” Neither the lamp nor the paring knife would do us any good against a gun.

“Poppy says it was a gunshot,” André whispered into the phone. “I told you we needed help.”

I flipped off the light switch next to the door and cast the villa in darkness.

“Why did you do that?” André demanded.

“Do you want someone looking through the window at us?”

“Oh. Right. Good idea.”

I edged toward the glass and looked outside.

Legs splayed across the front stoop to the villa. Legs didn’t worry me. Whoever shot the owner of the legs worried me. My eyes strained to see into the dark.

Nothing.

And then a crowd. Silva and Valdez, three men in hotel security uniforms, Mia, Mike, and Lord knew who else. All rushing down the path toward the villa.

The next few minutes were chaos.

Someone moved the body.

I pushed the front door closed, released the chain, and opened the door.

A tear-stained Mia brushed past the crowd of men and hugged André and me. Tightly. As if she’d never get another chance.

I hugged her back. The adrenalin that had given me strength and speed drained away.

Before the last bit of chemical energy drained away, I stepped outside. The man on the ground could have been with Javier at the pool—or not. It was impossible to tell. Whoever he was, death hadn’t improved his looks. Especially not the black powder at his temple.

Someone had shot him at close range.

I searched my heart for feeling—horror, sadness, regret—and found emptiness. The man at my feet would have killed André and me.

“What happened?” Señor Silva was shaking—his shoulders, his hands, his head.

“He attacked us on the path but we got away. He chased us to the villa. And then…” I looked down at the body. Numb. I was still numb. “Someone shot him.”

“Who? Who shot him?”

“Good question.” And it was. “Here’s another good question. How did he get a key card to my villa?”

“He had the key to your villa?”

“Or a master key.”

Señor Silva’s eyes drooped, his lips parted, and he bent at the waist.

I stepped back, sure the man was about to vomit.

Instead, he inhaled a deep breath and exhaled a string of Spanish invectives I was glad I didn’t fully understand.

No one did anything. No one touched anything. Not until the police arrived.

Unfortunately, the arrival of someone in authority meant the arrival of Detective Gonzales. He scowled at me. He led me into the living room, pointed at the couch, and waited for me to sit. “What happened?”

“He attacked us.”

“So you say. You shot him?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t know who shot him.”

“But he’s on the doorstep of your villa.”

“And I was locked inside with André when he was shot.”

André waved weakly from across the room.

“If you were inside and he was outside, how did he attack you?”

“He attacked us on the path. We got away and ran here.”

The corners of Detective Gonzales’s mouth tightened. “Miss Fields, this situation is serious.”

“You don’t have to tell me. Someone tried to kill me.”

“Why?”

I looked toward the door where the man had died. “He wanted something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” I glanced down at my hands in my lap. “He kept saying he knew she gave it to me.”

“Who?”

“I assume Marta, but she didn’t give me anything, and you took all her belongings with you this morning.”

“Miss Fields, you must tell me the truth. This is a murder investigation. She didn’t give you anything?”