Rachel rolled her eyes with the sort of drama only a woman dressed in a designer suit and bright red lipstick could pull off. The gesture dripped sarcasm. “Do I have to remind you that all of the problems the new London office are dealing with have come straight from the original Scottish office? The office you head up. If you hadn’t foisted these people on us in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Who made you a partner again?” Lake asked.
“I did.” Rachel studied her perfectly manicured nails. The woman was a trust fund darling with the personality of a bad-tempered cobra and the instincts of a shark hunting prey. When she’d decided that Benson Security needed a holistic personal protection section to care for the needs of women who wanted security, none of the three male partners had the guts to stop her buying into the company.
“Although this partnership dynamic is fascinating,” Elle said, risking life and limb in the process, “I need to show you this.”
She turned the laptop towards them. There was an image of a man, taken from a distance with a high-powered lens, on one side of the screen, and on the other was a long list of names.
“What are we looking at?” Callum racked his brain, trying to figure out if he recognised the face.
“You’re looking at a list of people who were murdered after dealing with Carlos Esteban,” Elle said, and Lake sucked in a breath, making the hair on the back of Callum’s neck stand on end.
“You know this guy, Lake?” Callum asked.
“I know of him.” Lake’s tone was deadly. “He heads up one of the more vicious South American cartels. It’s smaller than some of them, but it’s growing in power—mainly through violence.”
Callum stilled. “Joe sent me a message an hour ago saying he thought the cartel might be involved.”
“Oh, it’s involved, all right,” Elle said. “I remote-hacked the phone that was delivered to Julia’s hotel room, and the call came from the heart of a compound owned by the Esteban cartel. Carlos Esteban is definitely holding Alice hostage, and he’s serious about getting his hands on that mummy.”
“Why wasn’t I told about this?” Rachel fixed Callum with an icy stare. “As far as I was aware, Joe and Julia were on a personal trip to South America, in order to get a crazy family member out of jail.”
“They were,” Callum said. “The jail problem morphed into a hostage situation, which Elle here has been investigating.”
“And now that hostage situation has turned into a clusterfuck involving a cartel,” Lake said.
“Consider yourself informed,” Callum told Rachel.
Her eyes narrowed in a way that made it clear she was plotting his demise.
“So,” Elle said into the silence, “you want to know the rest?”
Callum broke his stare-off with Rachel to look at his hacker. The subject matter was at odds with her blue hair and bright pink Hello Kitty t-shirt.
“Spill,” he said.
“Carlos Esteban is known for never letting a hostage live. Not only that, but he’s known to wipe out anyone he does business with, after he gets what he wants from them. The last business deal he made ended in a hotel blowing up in Arequipa. All guests killed—including the three men Esteban had business with.” She stared at each of them in turn, her blue eyes wider than usual. “There hasn’t been one recorded instance of someone dealing with Esteban and walking away. They either become part of his operation for life, or they die. There is no middle ground.”
A heavy silence filled the room.
“You have any luck tracking down help for them in Peru?” Callum asked Lake.
“Everybody I trust is tied up in something else and can’t get away. I have one more option I can tap for emergency help, but that’s it.”
Callum and Rachel stared at each other for a moment. There were times when he could almost feel the witch read his mind. This was one of those times.
“I’ll call Father and see if I can borrow his jet again.” Rachel stood, pulling her phone from her designer bag as she did so. She started to talk as she strode from the room.
“I’ll dig up everything I can on Esteban.” Elle grabbed her computer and followed Rachel.
“You taking the whole team?” Lake said.
“Megan’s still healing from the bullet to her leg,” Callum said. An injury from their last unplanned op. “She can stay here with Dimitri and man the store.” He didn’t mention that Dimitri’s traumatised sister would be there too. Both men knew that Katrina wasn’t anywhere near ready to leave the security of the building. And neither of them would take her into another dangerous situation. Not after everything she’d gone through at the hands of her kidnapper. “Rachel can handle the interviews we have set up.”
“So everybody else, then,” Lake said. “Keep me posted. Let me know if I need to call in emergency help.”
“Thanks.” Callum stood, ready to shut the call off.
“Be careful,” Lake said. “Elle only scraped the surface when she described Esteban. The guy is smart, ruthless and evil. Don’t underestimate him. He is completely relentless when it comes to getting what he wants.”
Callum felt a cold dread settle in his chest. “I’ll call you on the other side.”
With a click, he ended the call and went to pack—texting Joe as he did, to let him know help was on its way.
Chapter 9
There was no oxygen in Bolivia’s capital city. None. The air was so thin that they may as well have been on the moon. After a sleepless night worrying about Alice and listening to her gran snore, the last thing Julia wanted to do was catch an early morning flight to La Paz.
And now, she was going to die on the runway, in Bolivia. Somehow, it seemed a fitting end to her rather pathetic life. By the time Julia had made it down the stairs from the plane to the tarmac, her head was spinning and she was fighting the urge to vomit. Just as her legs gave way beneath her, she felt Joe’s arm around her waist.
“Altitude sickness.” He kissed her temple before calling to someone in Spanish.
A minute later, Julia was riding in a golf cart with a flashing light, with a mask over her face and a bottle of oxygen at her side. If she hadn’t felt so bad, she would have been humiliated. The whole thing was made even worse by the fact her grandmother was unaffected.
“Don’t feel bad.” Patricia reached over from the seat behind her to pat Julia’s shoulder. “I’ve been in South America for a while. I spent weeks in high altitude before going to Lima. You’ll get used to it. The key is to move really slowly until your lungs adjust to having less oxygen. Coca leaf tea helps too. We’ll get you some. It’s going to be fine.”
Julia groaned. She thought it had been quiet, but Joe must have heard. His arm wrapped around her and he pulled her tight to his side. She was feeling too ill to object. Joe was strong and warm and solid. And Julia was in no state to worry about the dangers of getting close to him, not when there were so many other worries vying for attention. The one uppermost in her mind was the fear of dying. She was pretty sure that if someone took the oxygen tank from her, she’d collapse and expire on the runway of the highest international airport in the world.
“It’s going to be okay.” Joe rubbed her arm.
Julia whined. It was pathetic, but she wished someone would knock her unconscious and wake her when they turned the oxygen back on.
Getting through the airport was a blur. All she remembered was handing Joe her passport and fighting nausea. The next thing she knew, she was in the back of a minibus, minus her oxygen tank which had to stay at the airport, racing through crowded streets into downtown La Paz.
“La Paz is the highest capital city in the world,” she told Joe, aware that she sounded a little drunk and a lot disorientated, but unable to do anything about either. “Twelve thousand feet above sea level.”
“Is that right?” There was a smile in his voice as he held her against his side.
Part of her thought she should probably fight his pr
oprietary hold on her. The rest of her was too comfortable to care.
Julia rested her cheek on his chest, mainly because she had no strength to hold her head up, but she found she liked it there. “Over a million people live in and around the city.” Yep, every fact she’d read on the plane was spilling out of her mouth—whether she wanted it to or not. She lifted a weak hand in an attempt to point at the snow-covered peaks surrounding the city. “That’s the Cordillera Real range. That peak there is twenty-one thousand feet. This city is more than halfway up that mountain. Can you believe it?”
“No, baby, I can’t believe it.” Joe’s chest shook beneath her, and if she’d had the energy she would have glanced up to see if he was laughing at her.
She continued her rambling, unstoppable guided tour. “We’re only forty-two miles from the highest navigable lake in the world. Lake Titicaca. That’s Lake Titty-Kaka.” She mustered enough energy to look up at him. “That name is all kinds of wrong, Joe. It brings to mind images that shouldn’t be in my head.”
“Baby.” He shook his head. His grin was wide and he was definitely trying not to laugh.
“La Paz sits in a canyon that gives it some protection from the elements,” Julia continued. “Although it’s expanded quickly over the past few years and now reaches the high plains area of the Altiplano. That’s where we just came from. That’s where the airport is.” She looked back up to Joe. “Does it mess with your head that we flew up twelve thousand feet to land? I mean, shouldn’t you go up then come back down? Isn’t it against nature to go up and then stay up?”
Laughter came from the front seats in the van, and Julia forced her head to turn to see who it was. Her gran and Ed were smiling back at her. Huh. Julia hadn’t even noticed they were there. Her head felt too heavy, so she rested her cheek back against Joe, her focus on the view zooming past their window.
“There aren’t that many Spanish-style buildings here,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.
“There are in the older areas,” Joe said. “Some of the government buildings and museums have great Spanish architecture.”
“Not as many as Lima.” Julia nuzzled against the warm cotton of his t-shirt. She could have sworn it helped with her nausea. “I wanted to go to San Francisco Monastery in Lima. It has an ancient library and a mosaicked courtyard. The ceiling is carved Moorish design, and there are catacombs underneath it.” She felt wistful. All she’d seen of Lima was a prison, a bar and lots of bad roads. “Did you know that someone rearranged all of the bones in the catacombs in pretty patterns? There’s a circular pit full of skulls arranged in matching concentric circles.”
“Bones in circles, huh? You’ll get to see it, baby. Once this is over, I’ll take you sightseeing.” Joe’s voice rumbled through her cheek, making her melt inside. “We’ll take the train from Cuzco to Machu Picchu village, then the bus up the winding mountain road to the old ruins. You’ll feel like you’re sitting on top of the world.”
“Joe.” Julia gave him what she hoped was a stern look. “I feel like I’m at the top of the world right now. Hello? Altitude sickness, remember?”
He laughed again, making her body shake along with his.
Julia’s attention turned to the strange city around her. It seemed to be made up almost entirely of tall buildings crammed into small spaces, each one vying for the title of highest residence in the highest capital in the world. It made her dizzy looking up at them.
“I didn’t realise,” she said.
“What, baby?”
“I mean, I knew academically that we would be at a high elevation. But we’re on the same level as the mountaintops, and if that wasn’t high enough, I booked the presidential suite at the top of the hotel.” She looked up at Joe. “I can’t go any higher. I can’t. You need to change the room. Get me something on the ground floor. Or a basement room. I can do a basement room.”
“You’re going to be fine.” He kissed her forehead, making her shiver.
“I’m going to be sick, that’s what I’m going to be.” She’d been given medication at the airport by a sympathetic man with a medical bag and a big red cross on his vest. Seemed she wasn’t the only idiot tourist who turned up in La Paz and instantly fell ill. The medication had helped, but she still felt like she was travelling inside a tumble dryer.
“It will get better. Some rest, taking things easy, some tea, and you’ll be good as new.”
“You think you can tell someone anything in that sexy drawl of yours and they’ll believe it, don’t you?”
His grin was smug. “You think I’m sexy?”
“I didn’t say that.” She felt her cheeks burn and concentrated on the view, instead of on the man she was draped over like a limp noodle.
“You booked the presidential suite?” Joe asked,.
“It was the only one with three bedrooms.” She groaned. “I forgot to tell them we needed four beds. I’ll get them to reconfigure the queen-sized one when we arrive. Gran and I will share a room.” She gave him a hopeful look. The thought of another night listening to her gran snore was really too much. “Unless you want to share with Ed.”
“We aren’t that close.”
There was more laugher from the front of the van. Julia ignored it. The van was pulling up in front of another massively tall building. She felt nauseated looking up at it.
“I can’t go up there,” she said.
“Sure you can.” Joe climbed out of the car and reached in for her.
Julia had no option but to let him help her. Her limbs had turned to jelly. She felt like she was weighted down, and each step was taken through ankle-deep mud. By the time they’d made it the short distance into the marble and brass lobby, she was completely weak and gasping for air.
“I need to lie down.” She hated saying the words, but it was true. And she didn’t mean in a bed. She meant right there, on the lobby floor.
She heard Joe and her gran talking, and the next thing she knew, Joe had put one arm under her knees and the other around her waist, and then he was cradling her to his chest like a child. She was too disorientated to protest. She lay in his arms, shutting her eyes tight, and let him take her to their suite. The long ride up in the elevator didn’t help her nausea.
“I feel silly that you’re carrying me,” Julia said as they entered the suite. She noticed nothing about it—she was completely captivated by the man who held her tight against his chest.
“And I feel honoured.”
His words melted something inside Julia, and the wall she’d built between herself and Joe crumbled a little.
“I don’t understand you,” Julia mumbled as her eyes closed.
“You will, baby. You will.”
Joe gently placed her on the bed. With her face against the cool cotton sheets, Julia felt the world stop spinning and sleep overtake her.
Two hours and several cups of coca leaf tea later, Julia felt much better. Not right, exactly, just less likely to vomit on the people around her. She still felt weak and exhausted, but she didn’t feel dizzy. She wasn’t sure if that was due to the tea, which tasted better than she thought it would—and according to Google, wasn’t at all addictive—or the medication Joe shovelled into her. Either way, she was ready to go find Juan Pablo de Santos and, hopefully, the mummy.
The taxi dropped them off in one of the city’s meeting areas, Plaza San Francisco, a concrete intersection with a grassy area above a busy underpass. The area was nothing special—lots of traffic and people waiting to catch buses, generic office buildings and large billboards. In the distance, behind the many high-rise buildings, were the suburbs that went up into the hills. They looked like sheer walls made up of houses built on top of one another. And above it all were the snowy peaks of the mountain range, so close you could almost touch them.
And in the middle of this industrial area was San Francisco Church.
The massive sandstone building, with its dominating bell tower and ornately carved stonework, was complete
ly out of place.
“Eighteenth century,” Joe told her leaning in. “I know how much you like facts and figures.”
Julia cringed at the reminder of her earlier insanity, which made Joe laugh. Julia ignored him, looking around like the tourist she wished she was instead of a woman on a mission. A small market was set up facing the church, selling flowers and candles for worshippers who sat on the steps leading up to the colossal wooden doors.
“This isn’t how I imagined South America would be,” Julia said to no one in particular.
“South America is a mix of everything,” Joe said, showing just how closely he paid attention to her. “It’s as modern as anywhere on the planet, but at the same time it’s steeped in the past like nowhere else.” He pointed at a traditionally dressed Quechua woman, with her mass of coloured skirts nipped tight at her waist, a multi-coloured woven shawl around her shoulders and a black bowler hat on top of her head. Plaited black hair ran down her back, and her face was weathered by the sun. “See? You get the traditional with the new.” He pointed at a woman in a business suit, complete with briefcase, designer heels and a phone at her ear.
“It feels more diverse than Lima.” Not that she’d been in Lima for long enough to judge.
“More concentrated, maybe.”
They rounded the corner of the church into a narrow street with smaller, older buildings. These ones looked more traditionally Spanish, their exteriors a combination of fading stucco and wood. Julia tried to avoid the mass of people and tripped on the cobblestone road. Before she’d managed to steady herself, Joe snatched her hand and held it tight.
When she tried to pry it free, he gave her a look of reprimand. “I don’t want to lose you in here. It gets crowded.” He looked back at Patricia and Ed. “Keep a hold of her,” he ordered.
“My pleasure,” Ed said before taking Patricia’s hand.
Julia watched as her gran blushed and tried to act like it wasn’t a big deal to be walking around a strange city holding a strange man’s hand. It was hard, for a second, to remember that they weren’t two couples sightseeing in Bolivia. They were there for a reason. Alice’s life was on the line.
Relentless (Benson's Boys Book 2) Page 7