The Doctor's Marriage For A Month. Annie O'Neil

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ gunfire sounded again.

      “Dad? Daddy! Are you all right?”

      Where was he?

      Her heart pounded against her chest. Isla hadn’t called her father “daddy” in years. Decades, even. At thirty-one years old she was a grown woman. A doctor. But fear had a way of reducing a girl to her essential self. A little girl who’d come halfway round the world to seek solace from her father when her heart had been smashed into a thousand little pieces.

      None of that mattered now.

      An anguished male scream broke through the roar of blood in her head as rapid-fire Spanish was lobbed from one end of the cove to the other.

      She didn’t have to be a doctor to know the sound of pain, but she was thanking heaven that she was. It narrowed her focus. Pushed away the fear. Gave her something to do: help.

      She spun round and saw a young man clutching his shoulder. Her heart lurched into her throat. She saw blood pouring between his fingers. Oh no. He’d been hit.

      Everything slowed down, as if she were in a frame-by-frame film sequence.

      The atmosphere at the oceanside cove had flipped from tranquil to chaotic in little more than the blink of an eye. One minute she’d been quietly sobbing her heart out about her wreck of a life and the next... Gunfire and shouting erupted from each of the two heavily armed groups facing off against each other.

      So these were the men her father had said “might bear a bit of a grudge” against the sanctuary.

      The man stumbling toward her must have been caught in the crossfire between The El Valderon Turtle Sanctuary’s security guards and the tattooed, slick-haired members of Noche Blanca—the ragtag but reportedly vicious, mafia-type group led by the island’s one notorious criminal: Axl Cruz.

      He had been enraged when the owners of a large coffee plantation had donated the land to the sanctuary. Her father had hinted that there had been a rise in tension over precious turtle eggs. Precious to Axl Cruz because they meant money on the black market. Precious to her father because the sea creatures were endangered.

      Instinct set her in motion.

      Flashes of gunfire lit up the inky black sky. An illustration, if she needed one, of why the so-called gang called themselves White Night.

      Her nostrils stung with the sour scent of spent gunpowder.

      A volley of Spanish came at her from all directions as yet another round of gunfire broke through the night. When the moon reappeared she saw her father.

      “Daddy!”

       Why were they dragging him away?

      “I’m all right, love.” Her father’s scratchy brogue carried across the cove. “Just stay calm. You’ll be fine. They only want the eggs. They won’t hurt you if you do what they say. All right, laddies. ¡Suéltame!”

      She strained to hear her father’s calm, ever-scientific voice rising and falling, explaining something in Spanish as calmly as if the gun-wielding pandilleros had come along for one of her father’s nocturnal sea turtle tours.

      Ever since her mum had died the man had lived on another planet. How else could one unbelievably intelligent human think he could talk down a criminal gang intent on illegal turtle egg sales?

      It was why her grandmother had raised her to be the sensible one. The reliable one.

       The boring one.

      She pushed aside her ex’s cruel words and tried to follow her father’s directions. As bonkers as he was, there wasn’t a chance on earth she was going to lose him too. Not after the week she’d had. So she did what she was good at: following protocol.

      There was a gunshot victim and he needed help. Now.

      She astonished herself by offering a polite smile to one of the burlier men closing in on her. His pitch-black hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. If he loosened his hair and put on a smile she could imagine him as a father or son.

      He grunted and looked away.

      Apparently smiles weren’t going to help tonight.

      Her father had told her that in a good year on the black market a family could live for a year on the proceeds of a single night’s haul of the precious eggs. Little wonder some of the men had turned to crime when the land had become protected.

       Not protected well enough.

      Her father’s project was meant to put an end to the need for violence. Create a viable means of making a living on the island. Bring an end to the destruction of the endangered animals. An end to the violence. A way to legitimately support a family. But it would take time. Time these men didn’t seem willing to give.

      A tall, lanky man stepped forward and grabbed her arm as yet another unhooked a skein of rope from his shoulder.

      Her vision blurred as reality dawned.

       She was going to be held hostage.

      She turned and caught a final glimpse of her father being manhandled toward the smattering of seaside bungalows where the sanctuary staff lived. Before he disappeared she heard him shouting something about calling for help.

      An ice-cold flash of fear prickled along her spine.

      Help? Which one of them was in any position to call for help? She’d only been on the island a few days, and those had largely been spent sobbing her eyes out over her broken engagement. The little girl in her wanted to scream with frustration. He was the one who was tapped into the local support network. He was the grown-up!

      The male who’d been shot uttered a low groan as he dropped to his knees in pain.

      And just like that she remembered she was an adult too. One with the power to help.

      It felt as if hours had passed since she’d heard the first gunshots, but Isla knew better than most that only a few precious seconds had passed. Life-changing seconds.

      The pony-tailed man shouldered an automatic weapon. She followed the trajectory of his gun as it swung to the far side of the cove.

      He raised it to the starlit sky and fired. The sharp rat-a-tat-tats sounded more like a signal than an attempt to get the turtle sanctuary’s ragtag protection detail to run for the hills.

      Her heart ached for the sanctuary security team. They were gentle men—cooks, farmers, bricklayers, fathers—whose sole desire was to see an end to the violence that threatened to taint their lives so cruelly.

      Ire burnt and stung in her chest, then reformed as a white-hot rod of indignation. They shouldn’t have to live like this. Fearing for their lives while trying to do the right thing by their families and their community.

      “Everybody stop!”

      Much to her astonishment, they did.

      The СКАЧАТЬ