out. He ruthlessly dragged her in his wake as he left the wide driveway in front of the house and melted into the scrub around the manicured yard.
And melted was the only word for it, Olivia thought. If she hadn’t been attached to him, she’d never have believed he could move so quietly and efficiently. Wouldn’t have believed anyone could.
“Where are you going?” she whispered. It did not occur to her to scream out their whereabouts to potential rescuers.
“Where are we going, princesa,” he corrected breathlessly.
“I said, don’t call me that,” she snapped furiously.
“Be quiet. You make as much noise as five regular women, I swear,” he muttered. He could hear thrashing behind him, knew Cervantes’s men were just hitting the brush. At least, with Olivia tagging along, they wouldn’t shoot at him. Or let dogs loose on him. He’d been chased more than once by dogs in the barrio, usually after he’d performed some moderately illegal act. He hated being chased by dogs. It made the hair on his neck stand on end.
“How many ‘regular’ women have you kidnapped?” she demanded. Personally, she thought she was holding up pretty well.
He didn’t bother to answer, just dodged hard left, dragging Olivia along pitilessly. Both of them hunched over to make themselves invisible in the low, thick brush. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans and wrapped his free arm around his chest. It didn’t help much, but at least he didn’t feel as though he was going to pass out.
They made their way in that odd, shuffling, walk-jog for what seemed to Olivia like an hour, though when she looked back at the lights of the house she knew they hadn’t gone nearly far enough for Ernesto’s men to have given up the chase. She wondered, as she caught her sandal on another prickly clump of sagebrush, if any place on earth would be far enough.
They reached a road, or what passed for a road in this part of Baja California. Rafe paused, still keeping his death grip on Olivia, and studied the terrain. He cursed quietly.
“Yes,” Olivia said encouragingly. “This looks very bad. We’ll never make it at this pace. You must go on without me.”
“Shut up, will you?”
“I’m slowing you down. Leave me here. You’ll make better progress without me.”
“If you don’t stop yanking your arm around, Doctor, I’m going to pull it out of the socket and drag you through this brush on your butt,” Rafe said sharply.
Olivia peered through the darkness at his face. He looked ghostly pale despite the run, and she realized he’d been holding his chest as though to keep his internal organs from spilling onto the desert floor.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Be quiet,” he growled.
She glared at him. “Very nice,” she said, her breath coming out in gusts after their flight. She waved wildly in the direction of the hacienda. “I just saved your ass back there, if you weren’t paying attention.”
His head whipped around, and Olivia was instantly sorry she’d poked at the wounded beast.
“I was paying attention to everything you were doing back there,” he said through his teeth. “I was certainly paying attention when you let that son of a bitch put his tongue down your throat and his hand on your—”
“He’s practically my fiancé,” Olivia said rashly.
“The hell he is,” Rafe muttered, and started walking again. He pulled her roughly along when she slowed. They crossed the road and dove back into the low, sand-swept cover. This time, they headed west, toward the foothills.
Olivia stumbled along as best she could, every few minutes or so experimentally tugging at her hand, which was still clamped firmly in Rafael’s. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked again after a while.
“No.”
“Ow,” she said loudly as her sandal snagged on a rock, peeling a strip of skin from the side of her big toe.
Rafe didn’t so much as glance back at her exclamation or slow his pace. “Quiet.”
“I think you just ripped off my toe.”
“You wear stupid shoes,” he muttered, though the first glimpse of her small, slim feet in those strappy sandals back in that dim hallway had made his mouth water. “I’m surprised you have any toes left.”
“I didn’t know I was going to be kidnapped tonight or I would have worn something more sensible.”
He stopped, turned very deliberately to her. “I didn’t kidnap you, princesa,” he said, and watched the light of fire come into her eyes. Good, it would help propel her the rest of the way up this mountain tonight. When Bobby discovered Rafe had never made it back to the beach camp, he’d meet them there. Rafe and Bobby had worked out a contingency plan weeks ago, before Dr. Galpas had ever come along to ruin his mission and his destiny and possibly his life. “You tossed yourself into this whole mess headfirst.”
“What was I supposed to do—let Ernesto kill you?”
He snorted. “You think he could have killed me?”
Olivia gaped at him. “He had a gun, you moron.”
“So did I.”
Olivia threw her free hand in the air. “Are you stupid? What makes you think he wouldn’t have shot you first?”
Rafe shrugged. “I’m faster.”
Olivia hoped a derisive snort would let him know her opinion of that bit of lunacy. When he appeared unfazed by it, she decided to make her point more forcefully. “You’re not the sharpest tack in the box, are you.”
Rafe glanced over her shoulder. He could see men fanning out into the scrub around the hacienda. “Keep your voice down.”
“You may have been faster, but you were in his house,” she continued in a furious whisper. “Without me, you never would have gotten out alive.”
He looked down at her. Her mouth was swollen—from the bastard’s kisses, he thought sourly. Still, he could think of nothing he wanted more than to pull her into his arms. She had saved him. She was far braver than he ever would have given her credit for. Far braver than any woman he’d ever known. Not that he’d tell her that.
“Now is not the time to congratulate yourself, princesa,” he said into her ear. He bit down on her lobe, making her gasp. “If you don’t start moving your butt up this mountain, your efforts will have been for nothing.”
“Why are you holding onto your chest like that?”
“I think your boyfriend broke me,” he said shortly. “Let’s get moving.”
“He broke you? He broke your ribs?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God. How many?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “My X-ray vision is on the blink.”
“Let go of my hand. Let me feel.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “I don’t think so.”
She hissed at him like a snake.
“You’re not that kind of doctor, anyway,” he said. The truth was, he didn’t want to let go of her hand. He couldn’t have explained it, but he felt that if he did, she’d disappear into the desert and he’d never see her again.
“No, I’m not that kind of doctor, but I can help you if you let me, you dufus.”
The American slang sounded incongruous, preceded as it was by a long stream of furious Spanish, and Rafe had to bite back a smile. Dufus? He couldn’t think of a Spanish equivalent. Now, psycho—
He