Window of Time--Mission: Oasis de Huacachina

Window of Time--Mission: Oasis de Huacachina Part 3

"Lucy..." Dan said from behind her. He'd stayed close. "My package is time sensitive."

She stopped at the entrance so suddenly, Dan bumped up against her. Or maybe he took that position intentionally. "I've never failed a mission," she whispered.

The men took the girl through the small lobby toward the narrow hallway. Lucy waited until they disappeared before moving in through the lobby after them. She made it to the hallway in time to see them turn a corner to another, longer hallway. She hoped Dan didn't speak again. The men's voices bounced off the cheerful yellow plaster walls and carried like an echo chamber. She didn't understand their language. She couldn't even take a guess.

Not wanting to give her position away, she stayed hidden and peered around the corner in time to see them go through the tenth door down. It closed with a loud click.

"The taller one said a boat would be waiting for them tomorrow after dusk," Dan said with his mouth next to her ear.

Startled, she glanced up at Dan. "You understood?" That was a stupid question, but it spilled from her lips anyway.

He nodded. "Thai. I'm passable in several Chinese dialects, as well as Spanish and even some Russian."

The door opened, and one of the men came out. He headed back their way. "Oh, cripes—" Lucy pushed Dan around and rushed back to the lobby. There was a convenient potted rubber tree setting at the hallway's entrance. It made for a useful hiding spot.

She mentally paced out the man walking toward them. What if he saw them huddled behind the plant watching him? Lucy wrapped her arms around Dan's neck and hugged him close—not caring what he thought. She used him as camouflage as she looked over his shoulder and in between the broad leaves of the rubber plant.

He played along, sort of. His warm breath on her neck sent shivers down her skin. For a fleeting instant, it wasn't Dan's strong arms around her, but Mac's loving embrace. She could almost smell his leather and spice aftershave lingering in her senses. Lucy melted against his body. At that moment, she missed her husband so terribly she thought her heart would shatter.

The man paused in the center of the lobby, looking around while taking out a phone from his pocket. After he fiddled with it for several moments, he strode out the hostel's front door.

"Now's my chance—" Lucy moved her arms from around Dan, but he didn't release her.

"Lucy—don't do this. It isn't our business. This isn't our purview."

"You can't understand." She pushed against his shoulders, not wanting to hurt him. "I need to save her. Let me go."

"You're tilting at windmills here."

Lucy balled her hands into fists, but she reined in her impulse to take him down. Her heart thudded with anger at his insinuation. Trying to free the girl wasn't a lost cause. "Are you telling me I'm insane?"

"You can't possibly believe saving this one girl from the human black market will somehow cure the evil disease that takes hundreds, if not thousands, of girls every year. One won't make any difference."

"Dan, I didn't go out searching for a quest, I have enough of that in my life. But I can't ignore someone in pain," Lucy said, softening her voice. "It's wrong to turn away from her."

"What can one woman do?" he asked, still with a solid grip around her waist.

"More than you may think." Lucy put one foot against the wall behind her and pushed—hard. Dan lost his balance and fell backward. When they hit the floor, his breath came out in a sudden whoosh of expelled air, and his arms slipped from around her.

Lucy rolled away. While he was still gasping, she jumped up, taking her pack, and rushed around the rubber plant—back to the girl's room.

Standing in front of the door, Lucy remembered the peephole. She had to be careful. She set her pack on the floor next to the door. Covering the hole up with her hand, she knocked loudly. "Servicio de mucama." She'd said she was maid service.

A muffled voice said something that she didn't understand, so she knocked again. "Servicio de mucama."

It took another few moments before the door swung open to the man who'd stayed behind. Lucy didn't give him any time to think before she slammed down her doubled-up fists to the base of his neck. He fell unconscious without being able to shout a warning.

The girl Lucy came to rescue appeared unharmed. She sat in a chair, her hands twisting nervously together. Not surprising, her face was soaked with tears.

What shocked Lucy into momentary silence was seeing another girl on the bed with her hands and feet bound with rope and duct tape over her mouth.

"Blast it ..." Dan said from behind her.

Lucy reached down to her ankle boot and took out the switchblade her dad had given her when she was a teenager; the ropes were cut within seconds. The girl stripped off the tape.

"Se duele?" Lucy asked the girl if she was hurt. A sharp shake of her head gave her the answer, but Lucy could tell she was angry from the serious way she scowled. That was understandable.

"Do you speak English?" Dan asked the other girl as he coaxed up from her chair.

"Si, senor ... yes," she said.

"What's your name?"

"Isabella."

"I say some of it," the girl on the bed told them while getting to her bare feet and rubbing her wrists. Her long, light brown hair hung in waves around her shoulders. If Lucy had to guess, the girl might've been closing in on sixteen years old.

Lucy grinned. "That much?"

"Lucy ..." Dan's voice was worried.

"Yes—let's get out of here."

Just then, the bathroom's doorknob clicked before the door slowly opened. Lucy twisted around, drawing the gun from the sway of her back in time to point it at—a girl—whose light green eyes went wide as she stared down the barrel. "Cripes—"

"Another one?" Dan said it so quietly, it made Lucy turn to look at him. His face had lost some color.