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bloodthirsty at present. I think I’d better feed you.” He rose to his feet. “You haven’t had anything to eat for nearly twenty-fourhours. I’ll go to the kitchen and see what I can whip up. You’ll find all your clothes in the closet and in the drawers of the bureau.” He gestured to a door to the right of the bed. “The bathroom’s right there. I’ll tell Clancy you’re feeling much better … well, better enough to create a little mayhem.” He was strolling toward the door across the room. “I’ll be right back with your dinner.”
    Dinner? Her gaze flew to the French doors across the room. The sky was flushed with the scarlet and pink of sunset. She must have been unconscious almost an entire day. No wonder Clancy Donahue had been concerned, she thought grimly. He’d probably thought he was going to have to face a murder charge as well as the one for kidnapping. He
would
face those charges as soon as she found a way out of here. There was no way he was going to get away with this!
    The French doors. Lisa acted without thinking, tossing the covers aside, slipping out of bed, and running toward the doors. They were unlocked! The tiles still held the afternoon heat and were hot beneath her bare feet as shedashed across the courtyard. There was a brass-bracketed mahogany door in the stone wall surrounding the yard, but she ignored it. Donahue had said there would be guards at all the entrances, but they wouldn’t expect her to go over that seven-foot wall. The wall was covered with a thick blanket of fragrant honeysuckle that just might give her enough purchase to climb to the top. She scrambled recklessly up the vines, ignoring the fact that her slight weight was tearing them off the wall. Let Donahue get a gardener to repair the damage. She hoped it cost him a bundle.
    When she had reached the top of the wall, she paused a moment to catch her breath—and then lost it again. There were two men below, only a scant ten feet from where she crouched! Their backs were turned to her, thank goodness. If she was lucky … The wall bordered a stretch of private beach, and the surf was a hushed roar only a few yards from where the guards were standing. She’d be leaping down onto a soft cushion of sand and they might not hear her. Lisa murmured a fervent prayer,jumped to the ground, and set off running without looking around to see if she’d been heard by the guards.
    The familiar skyscraper of the hotel casino towered on the horizon. If she could make it there, surely she could appeal to one of the guests for help, even if most of the staff were under Donahue’s control. She felt a sharp pain in the arch of her right foot as a shell cut into it, but she didn’t have time to stop and worry about it.
    “Lisa, stop, dammit!”
    Donahue! Her heart jerked and then started pounding wildly. Her pace increased, her bare feet flying over the sand.
    “Blast it, Lisa, stop! I don’t want to hurt you.”
    Oh, Lord, he sounded as if he were right on top of her. She couldn’t go any faster. Her lungs were aching now, and there was an agonizing stitch in her side. The hotel seemed closer. If she could just block out the pain and keep runn—
    She pitched forward into the sand, felled by a neat tackle behind her knees. The little breathshe had remaining was knocked out of her, and for a moment she struggled wildly to regain it. She was vaguely aware of being flipped over and of powerful thighs straddling her own. Instinctively she started struggling and was immediately punished by having her wrists pinned above her head.
    “Give it up!” Donahue’s voice was rough. “Don’t you know when you’re beaten? I realized the second John told me you were awake that I’d better get back to you. I came just in time to see you perched on the wall like a seagull.”
    “I’m
not
beaten.” She’d gained enough breath back to gasp that out, at least. She tried to lift her leg to knee him, but his weight was too great to