by Fiona Brand
Unfortunately, the overprotective approach, mixed with the weirdness and isolation of Alex’s upbringing, hadn’t made the Chavez heir a balanced human being. The casual way he had just gunned down his father confirmed it.
Pedro crept forward, then crossed himself when he saw the blood staining the front of Marco’s jacket and spattered on Alex’s hand.
Alex leveled the gun at Pedro. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not mine.”
All the hairs at the back of Dennison’s neck stood on end. Any normal person would have been consumed with guilt or terror at killing a parent. Alex had smoothly sidestepped those emotions and instead was calmly assuring his father’s servant that he was unharmed.
Alex stepped away from Pedro and the crumpled form of Marco. Glancing around the room, he began to speak.
The flatly spoken words echoed in the cavernous room.
He was the line; he had the blood.
He was their king.
Dennison watched the slow, deliberate way Alex ate and a shudder moved down his spine. All through this trip, he had been anticipating a downscaling of Alex’s role in the cartel and a gold-plated opportunity for his own escape. Marco’s murder had put a proverbial spanner in his plans. He had worked through his options and, unfortunately, come up with the same answer: he was back to square one. With Anne in the clinic, no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t disappear. His only hope was that Lopez would be forced to stay in Colombia and oversee the coca operation, leaving him free and clear to make arrangements to move Anne and disappear off Lopez’s scope.
Alex set his fork down and waited for a servant to take his plate and refill his glass of iced water. “I’ve made a decision.”
Dennison almost choked on the odd concoction of reconstituted salted fish mixed with rice that had been ladled onto his plate. He had a sudden, all-too-familiar, cornered-rat feeling.
Alex sipped at the water, his movements as mundane and unhurried as if they were sitting by the pool at his house in San Francisco, but Dennison wasn’t fooled. He had the unsettling conviction that, despite his preoccupation with the organizational chaos wrought by Marcos’s death, Lopez could see right through him.
“Now that Marco’s gone, I need you here. Someone has to run this end of the business,” he stated flatly. “You’re not going back to the States.”
Xavier le Clerc studied the steaming carafe of coffee that room service had just delivered to his suite, along with a plate of hot biscuits served with curls of butter and a dish of preserves. The waiter deposited a folded newspaper beside the coffeepot. Ignoring the coffee and the food, Xavier tipped the waiter, then unfolded the newspaper.
Marco Chavez was dead.
Finally the information that had been communicated to him twenty-four hours ago via a source within the Colombian government was now official news. Interestingly, there was no mention of the fact that Marco had been murdered by his own son. Instead the story speculated that, as Chavez had been over seventy years of age with a history of heart problems, it was likely that he had expired from natural causes.
Turning to the back of the paper, he found the death notice he had been expecting, and any hope that Esther had survived the “accident” evaporated. When her body hadn’t been recovered from the site, she had been presumed drowned. The river and parts of San Francisco Bay had been searched, without success. For a while Xavier had thought it was possible she was alive and in Lopez’s hands, but if Cesar had authorized a memorial service, that could only be because he knew she was dead.
His jaw tightened as he studied the formally worded notice. If Esther had entrusted him with her daughter, he believed he could have gotten them both to safety; they could have disappeared without a trace.
He turned to the business section. There was still no mention of the theft from RCS. Thirteen billion dollars had disappeared into thin air, and the crime hadn’t registered.
He no longer knew where the money was. Esther had made arrangements for almost the entire sum—minus the amount he needed to pay off his people—to be transferred into an account she had set up at a reputable Swiss bank. He could guess at the bank she had chosen, but unless she had kept a record of the account number, to all intents and purposes the money was now lost.
The money, useful as it had been as a tool to expose Lopez and, more important, the cabal who backed him, no longer concerned Xavier. Marco’s death had stirred up a hornet’s nest in South America and in the States. Lopez was not only fighting for control, he was fighting for survival. The opportunity inherent in the struggle could finally provide the break he needed.
Finally, after years of patient searching, he was on the verge of picking up a trail that had gone cold, a trail that had started in Lubeck, Germany, in 1944.
Ten
Cesar stared at Rina’s small, straight body as she lay in the private clinic Lopez had had her removed to. Her head was bandaged and her right arm was in plaster. Unconscious, her face smoothed out, she looked a lot like Esther and a little like him, but he didn’t feel the usual rush of warmth and pride when he looked at her. Fear had squeezed him to the bone, and the jab of cold metal in his ribs reminded him that if he did one thing Lopez didn’t like, he was dead.
Cesar was in shock. He knew it on an intellectual level, but that didn’t begin to describe the reality. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat and he couldn’t stop shaking.
He wouldn’t ever be able to wipe the stark image of Esther’s body or the sight of Rina lying pale and bloodied on a hospital gurney from his mind.
Or the fact that he had betrayed them both.
He stared at Rina through the glass panel of the door and felt panic rise.
Thirteen billion dollars.
There was no way back from that.
The raw fear of what Lopez would do, not to him but to Rina, made him break out in a clammy sweat. His own personal fear of death had been ground away by the past few days. He no longer cared if he lived or died, but Rina had to survive.
He had failed Esther; he wouldn’t fail his daughter. He would do anything, say anything, to protect her. “I’ll do whatever it takes to recover the money—or replace it.”
The offer made his gut hollow out. If Lopez accepted, he had effectively sold himself into cartel bondage. Even trading in illicit drugs, it would take him a lifetime to amass thirteen billion dollars.
Lopez sent him a glance that was utterly lacking in humanity. “I’m afraid I’m going to require much more from you than that. The girl belongs to me.”
Part 2
Eleven
Present day, Winton, Oregon
Just seconds short of midnight on the eve of her second wedding anniversary, Rina Morell Lopez walked into a wall. Blind since the age of ten, she literally didn’t see it coming.
When she came to seconds later, her skull throbbing with a deep-seated ache, she had the sense to remain lying on the floor until her head stopped swimming.
The floor, she noted, was hard and very cold despite the West Coast town of Winton’s warm midsummer temperatures. The chill bit through the tank top and cotton pants she’d worn to bed. Sensitive fingertips that doubled as her eyes when she sculpted traced a network of fine crevices: a mosaic, apparently. Rina didn’t know for sure, and she could care less. The house her husband, Alex, had recently bought, and which he was in the process of renovating, was large and expensive, but she could be lying on bare concrete for all the difference it made to her. The visuals and how much they cost didn’t matter so much as the obstacles, and this one had been huge.
The wall hadn’t existed this morning, which meant it had only just been constructed. The problem was nobody, including her husband, had bothered to tell the blind person in the house.
Gingerly, Rina touched her forehead. There was a swelling dead center. When she’d fallen, the floor had given her a matching goose egg at the back of her head. Both lumps were painful enough to bring tears to her eyes, but at least there was
no blood.
Wincing, she eased into a sitting position, her stomach churning at the thought of blood. Ever since “the accident,” she’d been phobic about it. At first the tiniest cut had practically sent her catatonic, but as time had passed the phobia had toned down. Now she simply threw up and, if there was enough of the red stuff, she fainted.
Pushing onto her knees, Rina shuffled forward until she found the offending wall, braced her palms flat on the unplastered board and took a moment to reorient.
When she’d knocked herself out, she had been on her way to the kitchen to get a snack. She had left her bedroom, walked along the hall and down the stairs, then taken a left, past the dining room. By her calculations, the formal lounge should be off to the right and the corridor that led to the kitchen and laundry should be dead ahead.
In theory.
Walking into a wall seemed symptomatic of how her life had gone ever since she had gotten married, but in an odd way, the fall had cleared her mind. She had already gone out on a limb and way out of her comfort zone for Alex. She hadn’t wanted to leave San Francisco and she definitely hadn’t wanted to move to Oregon. The fact that Alex hadn’t bothered to tell her about such a major change to the house plan after she’d spent painstaking days learning the layout of the rooms confirmed her decision to leave.
Marriage statistics were something of a joke, but her situation wasn’t funny. The suspicion that Alex had been more interested in a business merger with her father than home, hearth and family with her, had just coalesced into certainty. The marriage had been a mistake.
Putting two fingers in her mouth, Rina whistled a high, piercing note that was almost silent. The effort sent pain stabbing through her skull, but it was a better option than calling out for Alex. When she had passed his suite she had paused to listen, even though she’d known the likelihood that he was actually in his own bed was remote.
Since they’d moved less than a month ago, Alex had spent even less time at home than usual. He traveled extensively, managing his property development company and the gambling franchises both he and her father operated, but that didn’t account for all of his absences at night.
They were the second reason their marriage was over. Her husband was a very clever, very busy man, but he had forgotten something fundamental: his wife might be blind, but she wasn’t deaf or dumb, and it didn’t take a genius to work out he was having an affair.
A scrabbling on the stairs heralded Baby’s arrival.
A wet nose nuzzled her cheek, sending another jolt of pain through her skull. Rina lifted a hand to keep the big golden retriever at bay. “Ease off, Baby.”
With a whine Baby sat, his tail thumping the floor, and Rina turned in his direction, her heart pounding.
Mouth dry, she wondered if she was hallucinating. After years of pitch-blackness, of being able to see absolutely nothing, she could “see” Baby. Or, more accurately, she could see light where Baby was, a pale glow tinged with a warm smudge of candy-pink.
Rina stared until her eyes ached, reluctant to relinquish the soft beauty, even if it was a hallucination. She had to be suffering from a mild concussion, although she couldn’t quite get her head around how she could see visual color effects when she was profoundly blind.
Unless she was regaining her sight.
Heart still pounding, she straightened, and found that when her focus was removed from Baby, the light disappeared. Panicked, she “looked” at Baby again. The sharp movement sent another throb through her skull, but she could still “see” the light.
Relief poured through her, along with a mounting excitement she knew she should squash. The phenomenon would probably go when her headache eased, but despite the logic, she clung to the spectacle, drinking in every detail. The glow was pale and diffused at the edges like mist, with a faint smudge of pink in the region of Baby’s chest. She didn’t know what was causing it, but she was going to hold on to the glow for as long as she could.
Experimentally, she turned her head and frowned. As before, the light remained only where Baby was, which didn’t make sense. She opened and closed her eyes, and found that made no difference. She could still see the color with her eyes closed, which meant her optic nerves couldn’t be involved.
The disappointment was acute. She was hallucinating, after all.
Twenty-two years ago, after the car accident that had killed her mother and left her with a broken wrist and head injuries, she had been CAT-scanned and exhaustively examined by neurological and eye specialists. Her head injury hadn’t been severe and her eyes and the complicated system of optic pathways and nerves hadn’t been injured. According to the experts, she should have regained her sight.
As time had passed, according to the neurological specialist who had continued to treat her, her chances of regaining any portion of her sight were as uncertain as the cause of the injury itself. Physically Rina was able to see—her retinas received light and transmitted it via nerve impulses to the brain. It was there that the process was interrupted; her mind simply refused to register the images.
At thirty-two, Rina had given up on any hope of a medical cure and she wasn’t looking for a miracle. She preferred to deal head-on with the life she’d ended up with. Whatever the explanation, physical or psychosomatic, she was blind, period. She would take a couple of pills and get some sleep. In the morning, the light show, whatever it was, would be over.
“Sad but true, Baby. But at least being blind means I got you.”
Baby snorted and cocked his head. Holding her breath, Rina cupped Baby’s head and stroked one silky ear, and all the fine hairs at her nape stood on end. She couldn’t see Baby, but the light where his head was had moved in such a way that she had instantly understood he was cocking his head. She had been right.
Adrenaline surged. She was still blind, but she could see something. Exactly what that something was, she wasn’t sure.
Pushing to her feet, Rina leaned into the wall until she felt steady, then hooked the fingers of one hand through Baby’s collar. “Okay, boy, let’s go back to bed.”
Her appetite was long gone, killed by the headache and the stunning discovery that she could see light. What that light was she had no idea. The only hard fact she had was that there was nothing normal about the phenomenon: she could see with her eyes closed.
All she wanted now was a glass of water and some painkillers, and both of those she could get in the familiar, safe surroundings of her own suite.
Rina repeated the order to walk on, but Baby refused to budge and Rina recognized the signs. Baby was a Seeing Eye dog; he was trained for “intelligent disobedience,” to ignore her commands if he recognized danger or an obstacle. Right now Baby was blocking her.
Cautiously, Rina went down on her hands and knees and felt the floor ahead and around them with her hands. Her fingers hit the hallway wall to her left. To the right, just beyond where Baby was sitting, the polished mosaic ended in a raw edge. Cold gripped her as she traced the extent of the hole that she could reach. Now that she knew the hole was there, she could feel a draught flowing upward and sensed that the hole was large, possibly dug down into a cellar beneath, which was logical, since the kitchen and laundry were close.
With a shiver she pulled back from the edge. She had been lying just inches away, which meant she had come close to both walking into the hole and, after she had knocked herself out, falling into it.
Still on her hands and knees, she backed away farther, pulling Baby with her until her shoulder brushed up against the hallway wall. She had been out most of the day, coincidentally having a routine checkup, which had involved a return flight to San Francisco. She and Baby had both eaten before the evening flight home. When they’d returned, Rina had had no reason to go near the kitchen. She’d gone straight upstairs, showered and gone to bed.
Apparently, while she was away, Alex had either forgotten to inform the workmen who had been carrying out the renovations that she was blind, or else they had simply
neglected to put a safety barrier around the excavation. Either way the error was inexcusable: she could have been badly injured.
Baby nudged her arm and stood; his message clear: he wanted to move away from the hole.
Using the wall as a guide, Rina rose to her feet and began the slow, careful process of negotiating the hole. She wasn’t a wimp. She’d had her share of knocks and bruises, but for now, she was officially shaken. For a blind person, just walking to the shops in a strange town could be a near-death experience, but she hadn’t expected to have one in the supposed comfort and safety of her own home.
Alex Lopez stood on the patio of a darkened penthouse apartment that overlooked Winton’s deep-sea port, observing the unloading of the container vessel Capricorn through a high-resolution nightscope that had been developed for Special Forces.
His interest sharpened as a four-wheel-drive truck came to a halt in the parking area adjacent to the dock. A dark-haired man, above average height with a lean, muscular build, emerged from the vehicle. After a brief discussion with port officials and the ship’s captain, he began checking the manifest as the cargo was unloaded.
The process was slow and methodical, but Lopez had no problem with the way the business was being done. James Thompson had come to his attention just months ago. He was a businessman with an import license for farm equipment from Australia that, interestingly enough, was shipped by a container vessel that made stops along the South American coast. Thompson also had business connections south of the border. Those two pieces of information, when combined, had interested him greatly.
The firm Thompson owned had been trading for several years with a clean bill of health from port and coast guard officials. Thompson himself was clean, except for one small incident Lopez had managed to unearth. He had covered his past well enough and didn’t have a criminal record, but Lopez had had the patience to dig.