Operation Willow Quest (25 page)

“Okay, that’s enough
sun and surf for one day; let’s head back to the shopping malls.” He sighed
wearily. She realized he’d had some kind of order through his ear piece, and
she smiled. Regardless of nationality, it seemed the sport of shopping wasn’t a
shared passion of any male.

They wandered through
shop after shop, and Willow
had to stifle a groan of her own. “Is this really necessary? Can’t we just go
back to the motel room now?”

He sniggered. “Now
you’re talking, Sheldon. I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off me
for long.”

Willow
rolled her eyes in
exasperation. “My feet are killing me; how do people do this all day?” she
muttered.

“No idea, give me a
stinking desert and a band of hostiles chasing me with rifles any day.”

They headed back to the
car. As she stood waiting for Del
to unlock her door, a dark figure
materialised
from
behind him. As she opened her mouth to yell a warning, Del seemed to catch something in the side
mirror, and turned to wrestle with the figure she could now make out as a man
in dark clothing.

Before she could move,
she was pushed against the car by a second figure, and her arms pulled behind
her back. She kicked at her attacker, but he was too strong and easily
overpowered her attempt to fight, holding her forcefully where she was unable
to turn her head or see what was happening.

She could hear the
scuffle going on behind her and from the corner of her eye caught the man
holding her moving his hand to retrieve a gun from inside his jacket. Renewing
her efforts to escape, she squirmed and twisted, making it difficult for him to
hold her with one hand while he held a gun in the other. By the time he’d
subdued her once more, Del
was on his feet and running toward them.

A rough push and she
slid sideways to fall heavily, landing beside the front tire with a painful
cry.

Chapter 15

She tried to avoid the
feet of the two men fighting almost on top of her, crawling out of the way
while keeping a wary eye on the man Del
had knocked out first. His head lolled and he remained motionless, but Willow feared at any
moment he may come to.

She searched for some
way to help Del,
then remembered her bag, digging through it to bring out her can of pepper
spray. With one final glance toward the still lifeless-looking body on the
ground, she edged back toward the fray.

The
man hitting Del was bigger and
stronger-looking, but Del
was quicker and obviously tougher though he went down again. The monstrous man
drove a knee into his back while he was on the ground. Willow
gritted her teeth and sprang at the man, leaning over Del’s body, and shooting pepper spray into
the attacker’s eyes. She jumped back out of his reach as he screamed in
agony—the chemicals reacted with his eyes, burning and temporarily blinding
him.

Willow
’s gaze fixed on Del as he pushed himself
back to his feet slowly. He held one arm protectively across his chest,
indicating it was, at best, dislocated, but Willow
feared it was probably broken judging by Del’s
shallow breathing and tight features. “Get in the car—you’ll have to drive,” he
grunted, dropping the keys in her hand with a grimace of pain. She didn’t need
to be told twice. The man she sprayed was still staggering in circles and
yelling; she had no intention of being here when he regained his sight.

Del
heaved his
battle-weary body into the passenger side of the car. “Drive, Willow,” he managed to force through stiff
lips, his face pale.

As she reversed out of
the space, her breath caught when she saw the man swing his head in the
direction of the vehicle and stagger toward them once more. Biting her lip
anxiously, she touched the brake, but Del
reached over and spun the steering wheel. “Move it, Sheldon, he’ll get out of
the way,” he shouted, and she floored the accelerator, closing her eyes briefly
as the irate attacker slammed his fists against the bonnet and side of the car,
swearing obscenities in their wake.

“Are you all right?”
she called, when his breathing sounded raspy.

“Fine,” he answered,
“just get us
outta
’ here.”

Shooting a quick look
in the rear view mirror, she half expected to see someone following them.

“They won’t be
following us any time soon,” he said, leaning his head against the side window
wearily.

“You did a good job
back there,” he said after they’d been driving for a few miles in silence.

His quiet voice sent a
warm flow of pleasure through her veins. She kept her eyes on the road, but
allowed a small smile to touch her lips. “Pepper spray—a girl’s best friend.” She
was pleased by the small compliment.

“I had a plan, you
know,” he said, dropping his head back against the headrest, but watching her
through drowsy eyes.

“Sure you did,” she
agreed with a lopsided smile.

“I did,” he argued.

“Yeah, yeah. I saved
your butt, Marine, and you know it,” she scoffed lightly.

He gave her a slight
chuckle but it ended with a groan of pain and he carefully resettled his arm
over his chest.

“We’re taking you to a
hospital,” she murmured under her breath and winced in sympathy.

“No hospital, that’s
the first place they’ll check. Just drive, I’ll think of something.”

“What do you mean? Why
aren’t we going back to our room? The FBI will be following us, they’ll pick up
those guys, it’s almost over…right?” she asked, uncertainly.

“Something’s gone
wrong—the radio communications dropped out just as they came after us. We’re on
our own.”

Willow
swung her horrified
glance from the road to his pain- ravaged face in alarm. “
What
?”

“It’s the only thing that
makes sense—
comms
drop out and then an attack. The
two goons who jumped us proved it. The FBI have a leak—someone tipped off the
Colombians.”

Scrunching her eyes
shut tightly, she opened them quickly to focus on the road, but her mind was
racing with a jumble of confused questions. “I know you speak American, but
could you please switch to English for a minute,” she growled. “What are you
talking about?”

“Somehow the FBI people
have been compromised. My guess is the guys who tried to grab you the other day
were also Colombians and were having a second go at grabbing you today.”

“So those guys weren’t
the hired assassins?” Willow
asked fearfully.

“Those two were no
assassin team,” he said, with a painful snort of contempt.

“Oh my God, I have two
different
sources after me?” she gaped
in disbelief.

“I’ll say one thing for
you, Sheldon—you certainly know how to piss a lot of people off.”

Her disbelief took a
backseat for a moment though, as she saw the sweat breaking out along his
forehead. “Del,
you need to go to a hospital.”

“I’m okay—we can’t risk
them tracking us right now—we need to put as much distance between us and them
as fast as possible. We’ve lost contact with them. Take this next exit, and
keep going. I’ve got a plan,” he told her, his gaze focused on the exit sign
ahead.

“Would you like to fill
me in on it?” she asked after a few moments of silence.

“I’m going to call in a
favour
; we’re getting off Oahu.”

There was so much
information to process, she couldn’t be bothered to argue, and the rest of the
trip passed in a blur of freeway traffic and stilted directions from Del.

* * * *

Del
felt like he’d been
hit by a train—in truth the guy who’d worked him over, hadn’t been all that
much smaller than a train. His body was one massive ache—even his eyeballs
hurt. There hadn’t been time to worry about it before. He’d been more concerned
about Willow
and trying to keep his head attached to his shoulders with each swipe of the
giant’s fist. God, he felt so damn tired. He moved his arm deliberately in order
to jar himself back into consciousness.

They pulled up beside a
phone box at the front of a service station, and Del climbed slowly from the car and made his
way toward the phone before making his way back to the car once more. They
continued to drive, getting off the freeway and going deeper into the island
away from the tourist spots where the roads narrowed and the street lights
disappeared. Pulling up alongside a deserted paddock, Willow
frowned over at Del
as she saw him scanning the sky. The only sound other than the gentle whisper
of the breeze in the trees was the ticking of the hot engine—loud in the harsh
silence of the open field.

“What are we doing, Del?” she finally asked,
as the day’s events began to flash before her eyes in rapid succession.

“We’re getting off Oahu. The island isn’t big enough to hide on for too
long.”

A low hum somewhere in
the distance caught Del’s
attention, and after a few moments, a small aircraft circled overhead.

They parked the car in
the cover of a small cluster of bushes and she watched as the plane drew
closer, swooping low until it came in to land on what she now
realised
was an overgrown runway. As the aircraft taxied to
a halt, she helped Del
cross the slightly uneven ground toward it. The door opened to reveal a wide,
toothless grin from the man in the front of the plane. He closely resembled a
hillbilly-cross-fisherman, and Willow
instantly
recognised
the unlikely pilot.

“Hey,
Sparkie
, man! Are we glad to see you,” Del
called out, as Willow
helped him climb up into the tiny cabin.

“You can fill me in
while we fly, Del.
I
kinda
didn’t get a chance to lodge a flight plan,
and I don’t need those aviation boys breathing down my neck…again,” he informed
them in his familiar gruff tone, lending a hand to heave Del inside.

Willow
slammed the door shut
behind her and sent the pilot a grin. “Haven’t changed your mind about that
interview have you,
Sparkie
?” she asked, and heard
him mutter beneath his breath, something about reporters and a pack of hyenas.

She bit back a grin as
she thought back to her previous encounter with
Sparkie
.
It had been when he’d flown her off his private island in this very aircraft,
after her rescue from Cambodia.
She’d passed the time on that trip by trying to coax an interview from him,
finding his story of being an eccentric millionaire completely fascinating.

She watched Del carefully as he
filled in the old pilot about the predicament that had landed them here. She
worried he seemed to be getting worse, and hoped they wouldn’t be in the air too
long. As it was, it took a further two hours before they landed and when they
did, Del was
in a bad way.

She’d never been to
this place before, and had no idea where they were, but there was a cluster of
houses and it appeared to be a small fishing village, judging by the number of
boats alongside a small wharf down by the beach.

“Sit down, Sheldon, I’m
all right,” he said when she helped lay him on a small bed inside a one-room
hut.

“You’re not all right, Del,” she said,
horrified to hear her voice quivering. “Let me see,” she said, regaining her
hold on the fleeting emotions running haywire inside her.

She helped him remove
his shirt and bit her lip to hold back a gasp as she saw the red, swollen skin
across his ribs and chest. “I’m no nurse, but I think you’ve got some broken
ribs under all that bruising,” she told him.

“I’m no nurse either,
but I think you might be right,” he got out between uneven breaths.

“You’ve had broken ribs
before?”

He gave a small smile
which could also have passed for a grimace. “Once or twice,” he agreed.

“Look, I’ve only had
basic first aid training. I have no idea how to fix broken ribs,” she told him
with a concerned frown.

“It’s okay. I don’t
think they’re badly broken, so relax, I’ll walk you through it. All we can do
is strap them.”

Sparkie
ducked through the
doorway a few minutes later with an armful of equipment which he dumped on the
end of the bed, and Willow
had a crash course on taping ribs. Del’s
shoulder was a whole other matter. He called over
Sparkie
and told Willow
she might want to go outside for a bit. Uncertain what he was about to do, she
didn’t bother arguing, scurrying from the room and taking the opportunity to
get a lungful of fresh air.

The low, guttural cry
of pain that shocked her a few minutes later brought a surge of nausea to her
stomach, and she rushed through the doorway to find Del in a lather of sweat, leaning against
the wall, braced by
Sparkie
. He looked pale, but sent
her a grin, as she stood frozen in the doorway. “Let that be a warning to you,
Sheldon, don’t ever tell him his chili tastes like crap.”