~~~~~~
Brand opened the door to Akira’s room at the Excelsiora exactly one hundred and nineteen minutes after he’d locked her in for his night time sojourn. To his intense relief, she was still sleeping.
He was tired now. Really tired. Too tired to appreciate the fact that sometime after he’d left, she’d shed all her clothes and was now quite naked under the covers.
He walked to the door connecting his room to hers. Opened it and stepped in.
The next five minutes were spent in checking if anybody had snuck in. Nobody had.
His next order of business was stripping off, taking a quick shower and addressing the knife wound he had. It wasn’t anything more than a gash, on his right side above his pelvic bone, but it still stung when he doused it with antiseptic before dressing it up, by pouring Neosporin and then bandaging it.
Then with no compunction at all, he opened up Akira’s laptop, logged onto his email. It wasn’t like he couldn’t use his own computer and, later on, he would. But, right now, what he wanted to say shouldn’t be easily intercepted and one of the ways to ensure that was to use a different IP address.
Then, Brand started writing out pure gibberish.
When he’d filled the whole page with an exact description of Lake Kristabel and the Santa Boronia mountain range, he hit send.
By tomorrow, Lucas and Murad would have gotten their hands on whatever needed to be known about Alfredo Moya and his entire genealogical tree. Their focus, it seemed, had been in the wrong direction, after all.
He switched off her laptop and deposited it back in its titanium case.
Then he stumbled into bed and switched the lights off.
Within three seconds, he was dead to the world.
Twenty-One
Akira always woke up by degrees.
For a foreign correspondent, sometimes, this was a big problem. But now, for today, her subconscious knew that there was no danger, whatsoever.
After she’d brushed her teeth and showered, Akira admitted to herself that part of her reason for feeling so safe was lying in the room next door, sleeping like a log.
She’d resisted the impulse to check on him, from the second she woke up. And five minutes after ten, when she’d woken up, couldn’t help it anymore. She went into his room through the adjoining door, took a quick peek and ordered her heart to settle down.
He was so nice to look at, sleeping.
He slept on his stomach, half under the covers, one hand loosely held in a fist, as if ready to ward off any attack. His hair curled appealingly around his nape and fell on his forehead, and he snored a little.
She took in the long, diagonal scar on his back, and a tiny puckered scar at the kidneys. A bullet wound. The scars did nothing to detract from a truly sexy back that was lightly dusted with black hair. Her eyes followed the trail of white cotton sheets and ended at his feet. Which were sticking out.
She had to have her head examined if she found his toes sexy.
He’d led a dangerous life, this Brandon Rice.
And yet, he’d come to her aid time and time again. Every time she’d needed it.
And Akira could admit it now, when no one was around and Brand wasn’t directly looking at her that having him here with her made her braver and bolder…because she knew he had her back.
Reluctantly, but he did.
It was one of the most attractive things about him.
Although that athletic, warrior-hard body ran a close second.
With a quick shake of her head, she closed the door with minimal noise. He turned his head the other way, his fist clenching. But he settled almost immediately. Continued sleeping.
She got dressed and went downstairs for breakfast.
He’d written her a note and kept it under the glass at her night table.
Will be awake by noon. We should have lunch. Don’t do anything too stupid till then.
Brand
She carried that note in her jeans pocket now. And intended to follow his so-called orders, because it fit with her plans perfectly.
Akira had never explored San Magellan; her last trip had been confined to her aborted stay on The Sea Princess.
As she breakfasted on truly excellent coffee, thick and dripping black, with fajitas, she wandered the city. Her Go-Pro camera slung around her neck and she was content to play tourist.
She’d made one phone call to the Hall of Records main switchboard to confirm her individual interview times with the cabinet ministers, and a half-hour window with Premier Romero himself - all spaced out in the next three days.
Somewhere, in the heads of these men, was a clue that would unravel this whole mystery.
Akira had never been particularly emotional, preferring to handle her grief by throwing herself into work.
But, for reasons she couldn’t figure, she’d really felt Sebastian’s death. They had hardly spent any time together, a walk around a yacht, talking about inconsequential things. The formal interview where they’d each been professional and maintained the distance necessary between interviewer and subject.
But, most impactful of all were the last five minutes they’d been together.
She’d rarely seen men walk so calmly towards their death. With no regret at all in their eyes. And it saddened her, enraged her that this good man, this intelligent, decent leader of a country, had died truly alone. No one to love. No one who’d grieve him, remember him for the little things, the quirks he had.
Like his fondness for smoking.
Or the fact that he liked William Butler Yeats’ poetry.
Akira finished her breakfast by now, and wandered into one of the rectories that were so abundant in South America.
San Magellan, like most of South and Central America, suffered from an excess of religious patronage. There may or may not be schools or fresh water in towns and villages, but every tiny corner of the country had a church. There were saints abounding here and God, it seemed, had not yet exited this place.
A bunch of children followed her around, yelling in Spanish for her to buy the statue of Jesus Christ, their Savior. On impulse, Akira turned around and bought the statue for twenty pesos. She could have haggled, but the kids were out on the street instead of in school and she was a sucker for such causes.
She even gave them a peso each, all four of them and asked them to get her a cold drink in fifteen minutes.
Then she went inside the church.
She lit a peace candle for Sebastian Delgado who had no one to question his untimely death.
Tears slid down her cheek, surprising her with the intensity of grief and she murmured, “I will get them for you, Sebastian. I swear. For those last five minutes of your life, I will get the men who killed you.”
She laid the statue of Baby Jesus next to the candle and hurried out before she truly broke down and started bawling her head off.
The kids were waiting with her cold drink and she thankfully accepted it from them. She looked at the time on the large clock tower at the Hall of Records. It was nearing noon now.
Akira flagged a cab and decided to hustle back to the hotel instead of wasting time walking.
Suddenly the idea of playing tourist alone held little appeal for her.
As she paid up the driver and glanced at their room’s balcony which opened into the hotel courtyard, she wondered who would mourn Brand’s passing, if he never went back home. She wondered where his home even was.
Brandon had a remarkable number of secrets.
And she’d done absolutely nothing to grill them out of him. That was going to change, she vowed.
Especially as she glimpsed him waiting at the hotel foyer for her. Dressed in his customary black jeans and blue shirt. The outfit brought out the tan in him, made him look almost local. But he wasn’t.
He wasn’t from around here. It seemed sometimes, that he wasn’t from anywhere at all. Just a wandering nomad.
Who are you, Brandon Rice?
~~~~~
“So, I take it you played tourist while I lay dead to the world?” he asked her thirty minutes later.
They were in a trendy little restaurant at Main Square. The décor was muted early Spanish era, the time of pirates and treasures, and the lighting was appropriately dim. The seats were suede and the walls had pictures of bullfighters from all over Spain.
Muted music, Santana, if she didn’t miss her guess, piped in and the staff was well-dressed. It was an upscale part of Baja Madeira, one that was fast becoming a tourist hub. There was even a fountain with a statue of Isis spouting water in the middle of the square. Very picturesque.
They had a corner window seat and could see pedestrian traffic moving along the shops that dotted the streets. Vehicular traffic was slightly less in this part of town, because business was now mainly restricted to tourists here.
And traffic laws were upheld pretty strictly in San Magellan. One of the first reforms that Sebastian had spawned in his country, while he was Attorney of State.
Akira watched a couple stroll by, a rose-seller following them. She smiled at the picture. A quiet afternoon, a romantic restaurant and, best of all, no one was shooting or attacking them in any way.
“Yes, I did,” she said proudly.
“You do not waste time, Ms. Naik.” He toasted her with the water glass.
They’d already given their orders. Traditional paella followed by roast duck for both of them. And the house red Brand assured her was right up there with the best of them.
“Thank you, Brand.” She bowed her head, and the afternoon sun caught red lights in her hair.
She had a halo around her, he thought dimly, while he smiled mechanically at her. It wasn’t that she was wearing seductive clothes right now. Just plain jeans and a white shirt with a black vest tied at the back. She looked smart and competent.
Yet, all he could think about was kissing her, till they both ran out of all breath.
What was wrong with him?
The pleasure in her eyes dimmed. “What will you do when I am inside the Hall of Records…interviewing the cabinet, Brandon?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Sleep. I’m exhausted,” he confessed, not entirely lying. The toll of constantly watching Sebastian and then his own feelings combined with last night’s midnight meeting meant he was operating on no sleep.
And while he wasn’t untrained to go without sleep for days on end, he did need some rest.
~~~~~~
“But you already slept in today, didn’t you?” she asked, as the waitress materialized before them finally.
“Beg pardon?” He almost choked on his water.
“We both went to sleep at the same time, and if we both suffered from jetlag then I am assuming your body clock is also used to being in different time zones and doesn’t require massive amounts of sleep to recover. Unless you’re injured or sick, which I know you aren’t. So, why were you sleeping for so long?” Akira demanded, while her always overactive mind jumped to unappealing conclusions.
The first of which was, girlfriend, mistress, or even, paid companion.
Not that she had any kind of rights over him, but still, he had kissed her like there was no tomorrow just yesterday. Of course, she had rights over him, she thought mutinously.
“I couldn’t sleep. So I went for a walk. Then I came back in a couple of hours and slept off. Is that a crime? Wandering the streets after midnight, mommy?” he teased her.
She didn’t buy it, any moron with half a brain would know that Brandon Rice was not a man who just ‘wandered the streets after midnight’.
“Alright, Brandon. You keep your secrets. I’ll keep mine. And the twain shall never meet.”
For once, he was provoked into asking her, “Now what secrets are you accusing me of keeping? Jesus, Akira. I do everything you ask me to, including bringing you to a dangerous place and you still don’t trust me, do you?”
She shrugged. “You practically begged me not to trust you.”
He could neither deny his statement nor take back his words.
“What sort of education did you have, Brand?” she asked on impulse. She was fully prepared for him to rebuff her.
But he answered, almost absently. “Two years at Oxford, after I finished high school in Melbourne. I studied pre-law for a couple years before giving it up.”
“Do you have any family, Brand?”
For a second he was stunned into silence.
“Yes,” he answered curtly.
“Where are they?”
“Melbourne.”
“So you’re from Melbourne then…” She gritted her teeth at his monosyllabic answers.
“I am but I don’t see my family anymore. Anything else?”
She shook her head. What was the point in knowing things about him? He’d still be Brand, the man who kept secrets from her. And she’d still be the thorn on his side he was just aching to remove.
She would have been appalled if she knew that removing her from his side was the last thought on Brand’s mind.
Twenty-Two
Akira had a routine she followed when she was on the heels of a story.
Get in, ask the right questions, and get out before getting killed. But she had to forego her routine for this story, especially since the story was split into so many parts.
She was having a difficult time keeping track of everything despite extensive notes.
For the most part, she was supposed to do background research on each of the four cabinet ministers she was interviewing, coalesce them into a five-part series of straight Q & A’s and write a general piece on the political situation of the country right now, as well as human interest features – vox pop reactions to current events, areas of political and tourist interest, that kind of thing.
Delgado’s immediate family had died in one of the early Communist uprisings of the seventies. And what other members were left, aunts, uncles and a couple cousins, were not in the least interested in talking about the man who’d only rained destruction on his entire family. No comment was their line and they were sticking to it.
Akira knew she wouldn’t get anything out of them anyway, so after a couple of cursory requests she’d given up trying to talk to them.
But there was one person she really needed to talk to - Rosella Martinez. Secretary and assistant extraordinaire to the Premier of the country, first Sebastian Delgado and now Tony Romero. She’d been absent on The Sea Princess, a fact which Akira didn’t find odd then but now added to her conspiracy theory.
She’d first spoken to the woman three months ago, when she’d started pestering her about interviewing her boss. And Rosella had been kind but intractable about her refusal. Until Rumi had asked Sebastian to meet with Akira and then things had fallen so smoothly into place.
Rosella had called her personally to set up the times, the date, and even talked about the upcoming documentary premiere.
Akira had found out then that Rosella was partial to Godivas. She’d slipped some in through diplomatic channels once before, for telling her about Sebastian’s Yeats’ obsession. And she’d done so again, when Rosella had coordinated with the other executive assistants to give her slots to interview the other ministers.
After long and hard brainstorming with Matt, Akira had come to the conclusion that there was only one way to gain the information she needed. And it was inside the Hall of Records.
The documents pertaining to the original oil strike and the first actions taken to go through with building oil wells and the property deeds were not public knowledge.
Not because of the lawsuit that was threatening to follow the country’s chaotic spiral, but because Sebastian or someone in his ministry had had the foresight to seal these first records.
She would only gain access to the records and documents by physically being in the building, since they were of such a sensitive nature that hacking them would involve international crimes she was not willing to commit. Yet.
Plus, she wan
ted to speak to the families of some of the people displaced by this supposed Miracle. The people in the towns and villages that surrounded the mountainous arid regions where oil was found.
~~~~~~
Akira armed herself with a notebook, the mini-recorder and her thick binder which contained all the articles, her notes and the leads she and Matthew had patiently discovered during the six weeks they’d spent in the Locker.
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