into their truck.”
“Does he have any identification?” the officer asked.
Juanita handed him a wallet she’d taken out of the victim’s pocket. “It says his name is Del Young.”
Sarah thought the officer’s mouth tightened at the name, but perhaps it was her imagination. Her nerves were still firing too erratically to trust her judgment. “Do you know him?”
“No. He is a stranger to me.” He looked at Jett. “And the men beating him? They showed up here?”
Jett confirmed with a nod.
“What do you know of them?”
“Three guys, short, stocky, plenty strong. One was missing part of his pinky finger.”
Now there was no mistaking the nervous look that stole over Rodriguez’s face. “I will look into this matter. Best to let this man go.”
“Go?” Sarah gaped. “He’s unconscious. He needs to be flown to a hospital before those thugs return to kill him.”
Rodriguez cocked his head, weighing his reply. “These men, the ones you fought,” he said to Jett, “they work for Antonio Beretta.”
Sarah felt her stomach flip over.
“Yeah? Who’s that?” Jett said.
Sarah gaped. “How could you have lived here for a month and run a dive business and not know Antonio Beretta?”
Jett pulled the bloody cotton from his forehead and tossed it in the trash can. “I’m not the neighborhood busybody. I try to mind my own business.” He gave her a sly smile. “But it’s nice to know you’ve been keeping track of my life. I didn’t know you’d paid attention to when I’d arrived.”
She rolled her eyes. “Beretta’s a very wealthy, very powerful man,” she said. “We treated one of his victims just before you arrived.”
“Victims?”
“Someone who crossed him.” And would never cross him again, she thought with a shiver. “Beretta runs drugs.”
“Rumors,” Rodriguez said.
“More than rumors.” Sarah looked at her patient. “You think we should leave this man because Beretta is after him for some reason?”
“This is a local concern. You should not be involved.”
“I’m a medical missionary, and he’s injured. I’m already involved.”
Rodriguez stared at her. “You have done good things for the people in my town, so I am telling you this out of gratitude. If you are in Beretta’s way, he will kill you and everyone with you, and no one, not even God Himself, will be able to save you.”
Her chin went up. “God brought me here for a reason, and I’m not going to leave my patient to die,” she snapped.
Rodriguez shrugged. “If Beretta is involved, he is already a dead man. Take him back where you found him and leave him there.”
Sarah stared him right in the face. “I’m not going to do that.”
“As you wish. It is no matter to me.”
“Well, aren’t you going to investigate?” Her cheeks flushed hot. “We need some protection, at least.”
“I have other matters to attend to.”
“You’re not even going to do your job?” she demanded.
He pointed a finger at her. “Please do not tell me about my job. You have no right to direct affairs here.”
“I am a part of this community.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t it true that you are due to leave next week, Senorita Gallagher?”
She didn’t answer.
“It is fact, is it not? Your mission in Playa del Oro—” his tone dripped with derision “—is nearly complete, and then you will fly away to your comfortable life in America and our lives here will continue on.”
“That doesn’t mean—” she started.
“You are an outsider, in case you have forgotten,” Rodriguez said, “and now you are on your own.” He whirled on his heel and exited the clinic.
Sarah walked to the door and watched him drive away. “He’s not going to do a thing,” she said. “Unbelievable.”
“But understandable,” Jett said, “if Beretta is such a bad dude.”
She stared outside, wondering when the men would return. “No, it isn’t, not to me.”
“Ah, Sarah, always the idealist,” Jett said, and she thought there was a tinge of longing in the words under the sarcasm. It confused her, and she turned back toward her patient.
The man on the other cot lay completely still. He was probably in his mid-thirties, thin, with blond hair that hung in sweat-soaked clumps almost down to his chin. Her heart went out to him. A stranger to Playa del Oro finds himself the victim of a violent attack. Not so unusual anymore in a town that struggled with a flourishing drug trade, poverty, gang violence and corruption. She’d grown to love the town and the people here in her last two medical missions. But Rodriguez was right, she was scheduled to leave, and this time she would not return, since she was starting down a new path, retiring from nursing to join the family private investigation business.
Young’s cheeks were swollen and bruised. She wondered who he was, if his family was worrying about him, if he had a wife somewhere standing by, waiting for the phone to ring. Was he a father? Her heart squeezed. She knew how huge a hole a father’s death could leave in a family.
Juanita’s face was grave. “He’s got a serious head injury. There’s a laceration on his arm and cheek that need stitches.”
And they had no CAT scan machine, not here in the Playa del Oro mission clinic. “We’re going to need to move him to Puerto Rosado as soon as we can stabilize him. The hospital there can handle this.”
Jett was sitting up now. “I can take him up the coast in my boat. We have to get him and you out of here before the Three Stooges return.”
She bit her lip. “We’ll find someone to fly us. It will be faster.”
“No, it won’t. The airport is an hour away, and you’re going to have to pay a king’s ransom for a pilot, not to mention they’ll soak you for fuel.”
He was right, of course, but she wasn’t ready to admit that to him. “For now we’ll monitor his vitals, stitch him up and wait for the doctor to check him out. We’ll keep the doors and windows locked.”
“That is a ridiculous plan,” he snapped.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“I’m
