His eyes were warm when he glanced at her. “Just do what you’re told. I’ll get you out of here in one piece. Trust me.”
Something passed between them, like an electric current riding on the air. “I do,” Julia told him.
He nodded and turned his attention to the basket.
There was shouting outside. The sound of running footsteps coming closer. Julia fought the panic bubbling up inside her. The sudden need to hide was almost too strong to resist. She looked at Joe and took strength from his calm, confident demeanour. He’d keep his word. She knew it. She did trust him—with her life. Her heart was another matter.
Joe swept everything off one of the tables. The table had been made from an old wooden door sitting on a couple of supports. Joe held up the thick wooden panel.
“It’ll have to do,” he said before spinning to Ed. “Everybody behind me. I’m going to light the basket and toss it out the door. Ed, you get the women up the ladder.” Joe pointed at Julia and her gran. “You two get your asses up there as fast as possible. We’ll bring up the rear.”
Julia felt a wave of dizziness at his command. He didn’t mean to leave them—did he?
“You’re coming too, right?”
“Absolutely.” It was a promise. She saw it in his eyes.
Without another word, he struck a match and held it against the string that trailed from the basket. Once it was sparking, Joe stood and kicked the basket into the alley. Fast as lightning, he grabbed the wooden door.
“Try to shield your eyes. This is going to give off powder. It will hurt like a bitch,” Joe said. “Julia, use your scarf.”
Julia yanked up the scarf as she grabbed his waist. Ed tugged Patricia in behind them. They cowered behind Joe, and the old wooden door, for the longest ten seconds of Julia’s life. And then the night exploded. A multitude of sharp, deafening blasts, made louder by the echoing effects of the narrow alley. Men shouted. Lights flashed. A thick yellow cloud filled the air.
“Run! Run!” Joe yelled.
As a group, they charged for the wall with the ladder attached, trusting blindly that Joe could see the way. He’d unholstered his weapon again and crouched behind the board, shielding them from the alley and the explosions.
“Boost them up,” he ordered.
“Already on it.” Ed grabbed Patricia around the waist and thrust her up towards the ladder. She grasped the rungs and started to climb.
As the dark mustard-yellow cloud became thicker, Julia lost sight of her grandmother.
“Your turn.” Ed pulled Julia to the ladder. Strong hands gripped her hips.
“Joe? You’re coming next, aren’t you?” Her voice trembled.
“Right behind you,” he said, but he didn’t look back.
“Up you go.” Ed didn’t give her time to prepare—he just lifted her high above his head.
Julia grabbed the third rung of the ladder and scrambled to get her foot on the bottom one. The cloud beneath her had grown too dense to see through. It looked like a war was raging in the alley. Lights flashed. Explosions burst and echoed through the narrow passageway. There was shouting and coughing. It was terrifying.
And Joe was in the midst of it.
Julia climbed, aware of the ladder shaking and creaking beneath her. She felt the sharp edges of the corroded metal bite into her palms. The scarf her grandmother had given her was pulled up over her mouth and nose, and still she felt her throat clog from the stinging powder Joe had released. It nipped at her eyes, making them water.
The ladder shook and shifted as someone climbed onto it beneath her. Joe? Please be Joe. Please be Joe…
“Hurry!” Her grandmother’s voice came from above, and Julia looked up to find her leaning over the flat roof, her hand extended ready to help Julia climb over.
Julia grasped the offered hand and scrambled over the cool brick onto the concrete roof. There was an eerie second or two of silence before a different kind of banging rent the air.
Gunfire.
“Joe!” Julia leaned over the edge. She couldn’t see anything. The alley was filled with dense yellow smoke.
“Get back!” Ed ordered as he scrambled onto the roof beside her.
He instantly leaned over the edge, a gun in his hand. “Joe. I’ve got your six. Move out now.”
The ladder shook and Julia held on to the top of it, comforted by the vibrations, knowing it meant Joe was on his way.
Ed aimed into the middle of the alley and fired.
There was shouting. Julia didn’t understand the words, but she understood the meaning. They were out to kill them. To kill Joe.
In the distance, sirens shrieked. The police were coming. Too late. Far too late.
There was a thud beneath them. The ladder groaned and then it stilled.
Joe wasn’t on the ladder.
He was back in that alley. In the cloud. With their attackers.
No! No, no, no, no, no…
“Joe?” Julia leaned over, craning her neck to see something, anything. He had to be there. He had to be safe. He had to.
A strong hand yanked her back. “Keep down,” Ed ordered.
“Joe!” She turned to Ed. “He isn’t on the ladder. You have to do something. He needs help. Help him.”
“He can take care of himself.” Ed aimed into the alley and fired off two more rounds.
The sirens became louder. Julia strained her ears, desperate to hear something, anything that would tell her Joe was still alive.
Thudding. Gunfire. Shouting.
“Joe?” Ed’s voice snapped through the chaos.
“Go!” Joe shouted.
Relief almost brought Julia to her knees, and then the word penetrated. Her eyes shot to Ed, who was grim. “What does he mean? Go?” Her hands started to shake, and she could feel the blood drain from her face.
“Joe? You sure?” Ed called again.
“Get them to safety.” There was a pause. A thud. A grunt of pain. “Go!” Joe roared.
Julia stared at the edge of the roof in horror.
Ed cursed and fired several shots into the alley. The sirens were on top of them now. Flashing coloured lights penetrated the thick haze.
“You heard the man.” Ed grabbed her arm and spun her away from the edge of the roof. “We need to get out of here.”
“No!” Julia struggled against him. They couldn’t leave Joe. No. No. It wasn’t happening. “No!”
“Julia, we need to leave.” Her grandmother grasped her hand. “Joe wants us out of here. We need to do what he wants.” Her tone was sympathetic but firm.
Between Ed and Patricia, Julia was dragged across the roof—struggling all the way.
“We can’t leave him!” The sounds of fighting, cries of pain and intermittent gunfire were deafening.
There was a war going on down in that alley. And Joe was in the middle of it.
“We can’t leave him.” Julia fought to get back to the ladder.
“No!” Ed snatched her around the waist and lifted her, striding forward with Julia’s feet dangling above the ground. “You can’t do anything to help. You’d make things worse. Joe is doing this to protect you. Don’t let him down.”
Patricia jerked a door open. It led to a stairway. Julia barely registered it. Her eyes were still in the edge of the roof leading down to the alley.
Sirens. Whistles. Feet pounding the ground. Gunshots. Wails of pain. Shouting. The sounds swirled around Julia until they formed one overwhelming cacophony of violence.
Ed carried her into the stairwell, holding her tight as he ran down the stairs.
“Joe!” Julia shouted.
All she heard was her own call echoing back to her.
Chapter 12
There were twenty-seven power sockets in their suite. Thirty-two light switches. Seven lamps…
“Julia,” Patricia snapped. “Stop pacing.”
Julia dragged her eyes away from the lamp. Seven. There were seven. She’d stopped beside the desk. The notepad
didn’t line up with the corner. The pen wasn’t parallel to the pad. Julia fixed it. Still wrong. It was still wrong. No balance. That was it. She pulled open the drawer, took out a second pad and pen and placed them in the opposite corner to the ones that were already there. Better. She turned the pens so that the hotel logo faced upwards. Her fingers twitched to switch the lamp off and on. Three times. It needed to happen three times. She spun and paced to the window while she could still resist the urge.
She placed her palms flat on the glass and rested her forehead between them. Cool. Hard. Somehow soothing. With eyes closed, she rolled her forehead, feeling the pressure against the bone. It helped.
A hand rested on her back. Julia jerked out from under it and gave her gran a strained smile.
“I’m trying,” she said.
“I know.”
Patricia folded her arms, aware that Julia couldn’t bear touch. Not right then. She felt like her skin had been sensitised. The air in the room acted like tiny knives against it. Even her hair rasped against her skin. Julia dug around in her bag, which was still across her body, and pulled out a hair tie. She tied her hair up in a messy bun at the back of her neck.
Her eyes drifted to the window. The canyon bowl La Paz sat in was lit up in the darkness. All around them were walls of blinking lights, stretching up into the night sky. Joe was out there. Somewhere. Pain speared through her stomach at the thought. They should never have left him. Never.
It was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong…
“Julia.” Her grandmother’s voice was firm, pushing through the tight band of panic squeezing Julia’s chest. “I have medicine for the altitude sickness.” She held up a pill and a glass of water.
Julia didn’t know where the water had come from. She wanted to tell her gran, remind her that she needed the water in a bottle. A sealed bottle. Joe would have remembered. Her eyes drifted towards the lights again. Where was he? Was he still alive?
No. No. She couldn’t think like that. No.
“Pill, Julia. You can’t afford to get sick again.”
Her eyes snapped to her gran. She was right. She had to stay well. To help Joe.
“Thank you.” Julia took the pill and the water. But she walked over to the bar fridge and took out a bottle, leaving the glass on the bench.
The pill stuck in her throat.
“Still no answer.” Ed’s voice was grim.
They’d been trying to call Joe since arriving at their suite.
“I have to think,” Julia announced, drawing confused looks from both of them.
What she wanted to do was sit in the closet while she did it. But that was one step shy of being completely insane, and she wasn’t there yet. Instead, she pulled an armchair over to the corner where the window met the wall. She put the chair at an angle, so her back was facing the corner. Then she sat in the chair, her feet on the seat. She reached into her bag to get her iPad, and her fingers hit the laptop she’d taken from Juan Pablo. In her fear for Joe, the items she’d taken from the dealer’s shop had slipped her mind.
“Ed?” She called over to the man who was busy whispering to her grandmother. Neither of them did a good job at hiding their worry.
“What can I do for you, querida?”
“Can you go through this computer? I need you to look for the sale of the mummy. If you start with transactions on the date Marcus sold it to Juan Pablo, that would be good. We’re looking for a name, or a way to track down the person who has the mummy.”
“Of course.” Ed took the laptop from her and headed for the desk.
“After you’ve had a look, I’ll see if we can set up a remote connection for Elle. If there’s hidden information on that laptop, she’ll find it.”
He nodded and pulled out the chair. A moment later he was hunched over the machine, with Patricia looking over his shoulder.
Julia took out her iPad and started to go through the copious amount of notes she’d made since her grandmother called her for help. Patterns. She was good at patterns. Good at planning. Good at making things fit a schedule. Good at seeing details nobody else could see.
A thought. “Ed?” He instantly looked over at her. “Did you call the police? There were sirens. Maybe Joe is in custody.”
“Of course.” Ed reached for his phone. Then paused. “I’ll try the hospitals too.”
Julia focused on breathing. Slow in and out. She tapped out a rhythm against her leg. Three times through the rhythm. That was enough. Back to the notes.
Focus. She had to focus.
“It’s gorgeous here.” Elle was bubbling with so much enthusiasm that it hurt Callum’s head.
He glanced over at the blue-haired tech as she rubbernecked out the car window on their drive from the airport into central La Paz.
“Why doesn’t she have altitude sickness?” Ryan complained, clutching his stomach.
“Look at all the lights. They go right up the mountains. Oh, I can’t wait to see the mountains in daylight. Can you believe how many skyscrapers there are here? Does Bolivia get earthquakes? If they do, those buildings wouldn’t be good in an earthquake. Oh, look at the women in their traditional dress. I want a skirt like that.”
“Make it stop,” Ryan wailed, and Callum had to agree with him.
He turned the wheel and swung their car out into an even busier road. Half the cars on the road should have been sold for scrap years earlier. His phone buzzed, and Callum reached onto the dash for it, hitting the speaker option.
“I need help. Who do you know in La Paz that you can call now? Right now.”
Joe.
“What’s going on?” Callum snapped.
There was silence in their car. All attention on the call.
“Got jumped. Julia, Patricia and Ed got away. I hope. We got separated. The cops came. We scattered but I was chased. I’m holed up in a basement. I can’t see a way out.”
“Why the hell didn’t you call Ed?”
“I lost my phone and stole this one. I can’t remember Ed’s number and I don’t want to freak Julia out. Basically it was call you or Grunt. Consider yourself honoured. I called you first.”
“Guess this means you two are going steady,” Ryan said, earning a glare from Callum.
“What do you need?” Callum said as he navigated the traffic.
“I need somebody, anybody, to take out the assholes who’ve got me pinned. Tell me you’ve got somebody you can call. Hell, pick a name out of the yellow pages, I don’t care, but I need someone now.”
“Where are you?”
Joe rattled off an address and Elle typed it into the GPS on the dash. She gave Callum a nod once it was loaded.
“That’s an approximate location,” Joe said. “But these guys shouldn’t be that hard to miss.”
“Description?” Callum took the turns indicated by the GPS.
“Short. South American. Armed,” Joe answered.
“Helpful,” Elle muttered.
Callum turned a corner fast, making Ryan moan as he reached for the panic handle. They drove into a cobblestone road that seemed to head straight up the mountain. It was crowded, with everything from women selling chewing gum, to guys loitering for no reason at all.
“You made that call yet?” Joe sounded strained.
“No need,” Callum said. “You already have somebody coming your way.”
“Who?”
“Me,” Callum said.
“And me,” Ryan and Elle chimed in.
“How?” For once, the American sounded stunned.
“We just flew in on Rachel’s jet—”
“Her dad’s jet,” Elle interrupted.
“—heading here to save your sorry backside,” Callum continued.
“We just didn’t know it’d need saving this soon,” Ryan added.
Callum blasted his horn to get people off the middle of the street.
“Damn it, they’ve lost patience,” Joe whispered. “Somebody’s trying to sneak in.”
“Don�
�t hang up,” Callum ordered. “I’m hitting mute; we’ll hear you but you won’t hear us. Tell me when it’s safe to talk again.”
“Copy.”
Callum’s attention was split between the narrow road, crowded with people, and the noises coming from his phone.
“I hacked the local CCTV,” Elle said from the passenger seat, her fingers flying over her ever-present laptop. “There are literally no public cameras in the area Joe’s holed up in.” She snapped her computer shut in disgust.
“So we’re going in blind,” Ryan said.
“The end of the street he mentioned is up here on the left.” Elle pointed to the darker end of the street where houses were smaller and the crowd had thinned.
Callum pulled the car over and climbed out. “You drive,” he told Elle, who scooted across to take the wheel. He hesitated. “Do you know how to drive this?”
The car had been modified for disabled users, with the accelerator and brake as levers instead of pedals.
Elle gave him a look of disgust and revved the engine.
Callum left her to it and strode to the back of the car. He popped the boot and took out their weapons bag. He handed Ryan a Beretta with an extra clip and took one for himself. He was just about to close the trunk when he realised that once Ryan and he had gone in to rescue Joe, Elle would be left vulnerable. He gritted his teeth. This was why he should have stayed with the military—no civilians to worry about during an op. But then the SAS hadn’t wanted him when he’d lost his legs, so his choice of teammates had been greatly reduced.
“At the first sign of trouble,” Callum told Elle when he climbed back into the car, “leave and head for the hotel where the others are staying.”
Elle eyed the gun in his hand. “Why don’t I get a gun?”
“Because you’d probably shoot yourself,” Ryan said. “Or worse, one of us.”
“What makes you think I don’t know how to use a gun? I work for a security company.”
Callum turned to stare at her. “Well?”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how to fire a real gun, but I’m freaking awesome with one in Grand Theft Auto.”
Callum turned to look back out the windscreen while Elle took the corner into Joe’s street.
Relentless (Benson's Boys Book 2) Page 9