Chapter 20

 

“Here, drink this.” A cup was pressed against her lips. “Julia.” Joe’s voice was firm. “Sip the tea.” She did as she was told.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, cocooned against Joe, while he soothed her pain. Eventually she became aware of voices and Joe’s firm chest under her cheek. The images in her head had faded, as though a gauzy veil was hanging between her sanity and the horror she’d witnessed. Self-preservation. Her ever-efficient mind was protecting her.

She felt wrung out. Her throat ached and her eyes were gritty and swollen. Deep inside there was acceptance. And guilt. Joe was right, this was on Esteban, but she’d played a part too. And she wasn’t sure she’d ever get over it.

“You doin’ okay?”

She looked up to find Joe’s focus entirely on her. It was intense and comforting at the same time.

“Yes.”

“Good girl.” He kissed her forehead. “You’re too strong to be knocked out by this.”

She wasn’t sure about that. “Gran?”

His arms flexed, but his voice was soft. “We had to sedate her. She’s sleeping.”

A million thoughts flitted through Julia’s mind, ordering themselves, formulating a plan. “We can’t decode the rest of the textile without her.”

She glanced over at the mummy sitting on the coffee table in the corner of the room. Shouldn’t it smell? The only scent coming from it was one of dusty old books. She made a mental note to ask Gran about it. Later. On some level, she was aware that her brain was focusing on the bizarre details around her to stop from thinking about Alice. For once, she was grateful for her weird ways.

“She needed sleep.” Joe stroked her arm, making her melt into his strength. For once, she was completely uncaring that they had an audience for his affection. She needed it. His touch grounded her, reminding her that she wasn’t helpless. She had her mind, her team and Joe.

“It could take days for her to decode the textile. Longer even to find the treasure.” If the treasure was still there after all this time. “Gran seemed confident we would be able to get to it by tomorrow night. She said, from what she’s decoded already, it’s somewhere in the Sacred Valley. That isn’t far from here.”

She already knew what Joe was going to say, and prepared herself.

“Tomorrow might be too late,” he said gently.

“Julia?” Elle said, coming over to them. She looked as shocked as Julia still felt. “What about the plan we talked about on the plane?”

Julia shook her head. “No more plans. They backfire and people get hurt.”

“No.” Joe put his fingers on her jaw to turn her face to him. “You can’t think like that. In this business, we plan, we try, and sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t. But we always try, because our chances of succeeding when people need us are higher than the failure rate.”

“I can’t…” She closed her eyes and saw Alice.

“Right now,” Joe said, “our only option is to give him the mummy. You know if we do that, we may as well be signing Alice’s death certificate. And Esteban won’t stop until he has the only person on the planet who can read the map. If you have another idea, we need to hear it. You owe it to your gran, to Alice, to give us everything you have.”

Julia felt her vision blur as she looked up at Elle.

“I thought it was a good plan,” Elle said. There were tears in her eyes too.

“What if it gets everyone killed?” Julia whispered.

“What if it doesn’t?” Joe said. He leaned in until his lips brushed her ear. “You’re stronger than this, Jules. You had a shock, but you can do it. Tell us your idea. Let the team decide if it’s a good one. Trust us. Trust yourself. Trust me.”

He leaned back then pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. When she opened her eyes, she saw the strength that was Joe.

“I’ll get my iPad,” she said.

His smile was beautiful—just like the man.

“Then I’ll get Callum. He’s making calls in his room.” He lifted her and placed her on the sofa, the blanket still around her. “You need Elle’s magic cube?”

Against all odds, he made her smile. “Yes, I do.”

“Okay, you two sort out your notes. And don’t forget to drink your tea.”

“Yes, sir.” She gave him a mock salute.

His eyes sparkled. “I like the sound of that. Use it often.” And then he strode out of the room to fetch Callum.

 

 

“There’s a team in the area who can assist if you’re desperate,” Lake said in Callum’s ear.

Callum rubbed his thigh and looked out over the red roofs of Cusco. “We’re past desperate,” he told his business partner and friend. “They’re chopping bits off their hostage.”

“She knows who’s holding her?”

“Aye.”

There was silence for a fraction of a beat. “Then they’re going to kill her.”

“Aye. My guess, knowing Esteban’s history, is that he’ll tire of playing and get rid of her sooner rather than later. Then he’ll wage an outright war to get Patricia and the mummy. It’s Patricia he really wants. He isn’t going to wait much longer.”

“You said Alice is in a new location?”

“They moved her out of the compound. She’s in a village up in the mountains. A village Esteban rules. It bothers me that he moved her. I can’t see his reasoning. She was secure in his main complex.”

“Unless…” Lake said, and Callum could almost hear his brain work. “Unless Elle triggered an alarm when she tracked the last IP address.”

“I’ll talk to her. Get her to backtrack, see if she missed something.” Callum rubbed his chin, feeling the weight of the situation bear down on him. “She’ll be devastated if she did.”

“We all make mistakes. It’s how we learn.”

“Thank you, Master Yoda. I’ll make sure to pass that on.” He took a heavy breath. “Who’s this team that can help?”

“You don’t want to know.”

The way Lake said it set off alarm bells in Callum’s mind. This team, if they helped, would come in covert and leave the same way.

“Ghosts.” CIA or MI6 spies—it was the only option Callum could think of. “How the hell do you know these people?”

“I have a chequered past.”

“And a truckload of secrets.”

“Some things are best kept secret, for everyone’s sake.”

“Tell me again why I went into business with you, you cagey bugger?”

The Englishman chuckled. “You’d be bored to death by now without me.”

“Aye, right.” There was a knock at the door, and Callum walked over to open it. It was Joe. Callum signalled him to come in and shut the door behind him. “How soon can this team get here?” he asked Lake.

Joe’s eyes were laser sharp as he tuned in to the conversation.

“Six, seven hours.”

“How many?”

“Four, but trust me, with the team you already have, it’s enough.”

“They got experience doing hostage extractions?”

“They have experience doing everything,” Lake said. “It’s your decision. Do I make the call?”

Callum stared at Joe as he thought it through. The chances of getting to the treasure—if there even was a bloody treasure—before Alice lost her life, were slim to none. They had no option but to go in and get her. Seven guns against a small army—and four of those guns were unknown entities to Callum. If he didn’t trust Lake with his life, he wouldn’t even consider it.

“Make the call,” he said, and watched Joe tense. “Have them on standby. Whatever we do, we need to do it fast. I need intel on the new location, and I don’t mean Google Earth. Can you pull some strings?”

“Consider it done.” Lake’s confidence flowed down the line.

“After this is done,” Callum said, “you and I are going to have a wee talk about your mysterious contacts.”

“That’s fine, but bear in mind, if I tell you anything, I have to kill you.”

“Arsehole.” Callum ended the call and looked at Joe.

“That what I think it was?” the American said.

“Lake’s found a covert team that can give us a few hours of their time, on the condition we ask no questions and forget them when they’re gone.”

“CIA?” Joe let out a low whistle.

“Hell, knowing Lake, it could even be Mossad. Who knows what contacts that cagey bastard has up his sleeve.”

“So you’re planning an extraction.” Joe was no fool. It was one of the reasons Callum was pleased to have him on his team.

“You see another option?”

Joe shook his head grimly. Most likely, he had images of Alice losing her finger playing in his head too.

“Julia has another plan.”

“It any good?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t heard it yet, but it’s Julia.”

“Aye.” Callum gave a wry smile. “That woman ever cottons on to just how smart she is, we’ll all be in trouble.”

“Yeah.” Joe smiled. “We’re working on it.”

Callum felt a stab in the vicinity of his heart and dismissed it as quickly as it happened. Jealously. Loneliness. He had no room in his life for either.

“You’re gone on her,” he said, somewhat in awe that the man could give himself over like that.

Joe cocked an eyebrow, his smile wide. “What happened to not gossiping like silly wee lassies?”

Callum hung his head in shame. “Bloody Lake and his touchy-feely company. It’s sneaking up on me.” He looked up. “I apologise. I don’t give a crap about your personal life.”

“That’s more like it.” Joe slapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “Let’s go hear what Julia’s come up with.”

They left the room together.

 

 

“Elle and I had a chat on the plane ride from La Paz,” Julia said as she looked at her teammates. Her friends.

They were scattered around the furniture in the living area of the suite her grandmother was using. It was a small space, but they made it work. The mood was sombre. So much so that Ryan wasn’t eating his way through the meeting and everyone was conscious of Patricia, sedated and sleeping upstairs.

“Ah, this is why you two had your heads together for most of the flight,” Ryan said. “I wondered.”

“Don’t let him distract you, babe,” Joe said.

Ryan wasn’t the one who was distracting her. Joe was sprawled in an armchair, his legs stretched out in front of him and his arms folded over his impossibly muscled chest. A flash of how those muscles felt under her fingers, her lips, her tongue, made her blush. She frowned at him, making him grin. There were times when she was sure he could read her mind.

“Anyway,” she said to the rest of the room, “Elle and I thought we needed a backup plan in case there wasn’t any treasure. Or in case we couldn’t find it.”

“You thought you needed a plan. I only did as I was told,” Elle teased, and Julia realised she was standing at the front of the room, the focus of everyone’s attention, and she hadn’t even noticed until that point.

“Get on with it,” Callum snapped.

Strangely, his usual grumpy attitude reassured Julia, breaking the momentary freeze her realisation had caused and forcing her attention back to the iPad in her hands.

“The theory is that we can cut out Esteban’s need for my gran by handing him the treasure instead of the mummy. And that we would hopefully retrieve Alice in the trade.” Her voice cracked at the memory of what Alice was suffering. Her eyes sought Joe’s, and he smiled with encouragement. “Elle and I decided that, even if there wasn’t any real treasure, it would be best if we still had some to trade.”

“You’ve lost me,” Ryan said.

“No surprise there,” Elle told him, and he tossed a cushion at her head.

“Elle has a friend who works in CGI—that’s computer-generated imagery,” Julia said. “They do special effects for movies.”

Ryan sat up straight and a sudden awareness rippled around the room. She had everyone’s attention now.

“We thought that if we could make a video showing Gran with the treasure, we could convince Esteban we had the real thing.”

The silence was heavy, as the idea sank in.

“You have this video?” Callum said.

Julia nodded at Elle, and images appeared on the white sheet they’d hung as a screen from the mezzanine.

“This is amazing,” Patricia exclaimed as she lifted a golden chalice. “I can’t believe we’re part of history like this. It’s the greatest discovery to happen in a century.” The camera panned to show a segment of an Incan cave in the low light of the portable storm lamps. It was thick with dust and dirt, but filled with ceramics, stone carvings and gold sculptures. “This is unbelievable. I wish Alice were here to see this.”

The screen went suddenly blank, and Elle opened the curtains, letting light into the room.

“How?” Callum said, looking astonished.

“My friend had some footage he’d already designed,” Elle said. “He tweaked it to look more Incan, and then I filmed Patricia while she was gushing over the mummy. I sent the footage to my friend and he inserted her in the stuff he already had. It’s rough—it wouldn’t stand up to examination of any kind. But if you sent it from one phone to another, it would look genuine.”

“Just to be safe,” Julia said, making the shocked faces shift back to her, “we thought it would be best if Gran could also produce a piece of gold as evidence.” She took a deep breath. “So I went through her contact list and hit upon a local dealer. He has a small, genuine Incan gold statue we can use. He’s holding it for me here in town.”

“When did you arrange that?” Joe asked.

She blushed, thinking about how she’d spent most of her time since arriving in Cusco. “I called from my room, before I went to the chapel last night.” She tapped her iPad and an image of a small golden llama appeared on the wall. “I can get Gran to dirty it up and tarnish it a little. Right now it looks too polished to have been living in a cave for centuries. Gran’s an art expert; she’ll know what to do to make it believable.”

“The dealer sent photos and we inserted it in the video we made,” Elle said. “That way we can point to it in the footage, to prove it’s real.”

“You borrowed a solid gold antique?” Callum was clearly sceptical.

Julia shuffled as she stared at her iPad. “I, um, bought it.”

“What?” Elle snapped. “I thought this was some shady loan thing. I didn’t realise you’d bought the thing.”

“You have that kind of money?” Ed said.

Julia cleared her throat. “I called Rachel and asked her for a loan.”

There was a stunned silence.

“Let me get this straight,” Ryan said. “You called the Queen of Darkness and asked her to buy you a gold statue? One you intend to hand over to a cartel boss. And she said yes?”

“I told her Gran would reimburse her. I would have asked Gran, but I didn’t want her in on the plan.”

Ryan held up a hand. “Stop. I’m still stuck on the part where you dared to call the Queen of Darkness.”

“Stop calling Rachel that,” Callum said. “She’s one of the partners, and that makes her your boss. Have some respect.”

“Plus,” Elle said, “she’ll buy a voodoo doll with your name on it if she catches you saying it.”

“Enough,” Callum growled. “Let’s get back to business.”

“So,” Julia said, “the plan is to use the film, and the statue, to lure Esteban into a trap. A trap where we take Alice and leave him with nothing. We figured he couldn’t bring his whole army to a meet, and we would have a better chance of dealing with him outside his fortified compound. Basically, we were trying to even the odds and give you a chance to snatch Alice.” She stopped talking and shuffled self-consciously as she waited for their verdict.

Callum looked at each of them. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think we should do this. I think we should keep searching for the treasure,” Ed said. “I know Esteban. This is too much of a risk. Too many things could go wrong if he finds out we’re trying to con him. With the gold in our possession we have a much stronger bargaining position.”

“But what if we never find the gold?” Elle said. “Alice doesn’t have forever.”

“Even as things stand, we’re still in a position of power,” Ed said. “Esteban wants the mummy, and Patricia, very badly. He’s already put word out on the street of a reward for their whereabouts. We can use his desperation to buy more time.”

Joe rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know, Ed. You saw what they did to Alice and the fact she knows who her captor is, doesn’t bode well for her. I think Julia and Elle’s plan could work. It could take the pressure off Alice and divert interest away from Patricia.” He looked at Elle. “What did Patricia tell Esteban when he called this morning?”

“I have the recording,” Elle said.

Callum nodded for her to play it, and a male voice with a heavy Spanish accent filled the room.

“Do you have the mummy?” It sent chills up Julia’s spine.

“No, but I’m close. I know where it is. We only need to get it.” Patricia sounded every bit as anxious and afraid as she must have felt.

“Not good enough, Ms. Matthews. We agreed on three days.” The voice was ice.

“I did the best I could. I can’t go faster. I need more time.”

“You do?” There was a calculated amusement in his voice. “I can agree to more time, but with each extra day you take to get me what I want comes a penalty. I’m sending you a link.”

The line went dead as everyone in the room remembered the penalty. Julia put a hand on her stomach, feeling nauseated at the memory. Joe got up out of his chair and came to her. He wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her into his side. She waited for embarrassment to hit her, but only felt relief. When she glanced around the room, she saw no one was interested in them and gave him a little more of her weight.

“It would be suspicious if we suddenly called now and told him we have the treasure,” Callum said.

“Another reason why we should forget this plan and continue our search for the gold,” Ed said.

Joe shook his head. “That isn’t an option anymore. Our only option is to con the guy into thinking we already have the treasure and then we snatch Alice from him.”

Callum pinched the bridge of his nose. “We need a location for this fictitious treasure. Somewhere isolated, but believable. Somewhere we can defend.”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Ed said. “It’s insane to hand over wealth like that to a man such as Esteban.” He let out a sigh. “But this is your mission and I’ll help with whatever you decide.”

Joe gave him a chin lift in thanks.

“Do we really need an actual physical location?” Julia asked. “Couldn’t we just trade the fictitious location for Alice?”

Joe answered, “A man like Esteban won’t let his hostage go until he sees the actual location of the treasure.”

“What happens if he goes inside the cave we pick and finds it empty?” Julia said.

“We don’t let it get that far.” Joe’s words were steel, and Julia didn’t ask how he planned to do that.

“Okay, does the location of the fake treasure need to be near Cusco?” Julia said. “It’s really busy around here. The place is flooded with tourists.” And the last thing she wanted was more people getting hurt.

“No,” Callum said, “but it has to be somewhere Incan.”

“And ideally somewhere that isn’t too close to Alice’s location. We need the time it will take for Esteban to get to us, to set up the trap,” Julia said.

“Aye,” Callum said with a strange look on his face. Almost as though he was seeing her for the first time.

“Where is Alice now?” Julia asked Elle.

“She’s in a small town about eight hours east of Lima, up in the hilly part of the country where the jungle starts. The town they’re in has an airstrip, but you’re still talking hours for them to get to Cusco.”

Julia looked at Callum. “What type of location is easier for you to set up an ambush? Should we pick the jungle, the desert, what? I take it reinforcements are coming, and you need to scout a location fast so that you and the team can set up.”

Callum shook his head and looked at Joe. “You ready for a life where you can’t get anything over on your woman?”

Joe laughed, but Julia was stuck on the word life. He didn’t actually think they’d be together forever. Did he? She looked up at Joe, who was staring down at her. “Don’t let him get to you. He’s mad because you’re smarter than he is.”

“No kidding,” Callum said. “Ideally, we need somewhere with plenty of cover and a decent escape route.”

“If you’re really going through with this plan, then I know a place,” Ed said, drawing everyone’s attention. “It’s on the outskirts of Cusco, in the hills. My mother used to take us there when we were children. She said it was significant to the family. All I ever saw were a bunch of old rocks, tunnels and caves.”

“This place well known?” Joe asked.

“It’s not on any tourist map, if that’s what you’re asking. Some locals will know of it, but it’s pretty much barren landscape and holes. I’ll make some calls to ensure it’s still the place I remember it being.” He held up his phone. “One of my cousins will know a good spot for a fake treasure site.”

“Make sure you can trust this cousin of yours,” Callum said.

Ed smiled widely, “Don’t worry, Amigo, I won’t give away your secrets.” He headed out of the room with his phone to his ear.

“We need to scope the place out.” Callum stood and folded his arms over his grey Henley. “Ed and Ryan are with me. Joe, somebody needs to stay and guard the women.”

“That is seriously sexist,” Elle said. “The women can take care of themselves. And why couldn’t we come with you anyway?”

Callum glared at the blue-haired woman who was half his size. “Do you know how to plan an attack? Can you fire a gun? Do you have any combat experience?”

“That’s not the point. It’s a sexist divide.”

“It’s a skill divide.”

“I have skills.”

“Not the right kind. Talk to me after you muster out of the army. Then I’ll let you have a say.”

“Nobody says muster anymore,” Elle snapped.

“Nobody knows we’re in Cusco,” Ed said as he came back into the room, grinning at Elle’s face off with Callum. “This hotel is very secure, and we’ll only be a couple of hours. I think the women would be fine alone. Plus, we need all our military experience to plan and pull this off. I think Joe needs to come with us.”

Julia stepped away from Joe. “I agree. We honestly don’t need a babysitter. No one knows we’re here; everyone still thinks we’re in La Paz or Lima. Joe doesn’t need to stay.”

Joe clearly was still unconvinced.

“I promise we won’t leave the suite,” Julia said. “We won’t even order room service. We’ll hide, quiet as mice, until you get back.”

Joe’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. He put a hand on each of Julia’s shoulders. “If there is even a hint of trouble, you run for the manager and call the cops. Got me?”

“Yes, sir.” She saluted again, making his lip twitch.

“You have the gun I gave you and I’ll have my cell phone. Don’t take any risks.”

“All we’re going to do is research and plan. What can go wrong?”

Joe covered her mouth with his hand. “Never, ever say those words. They jinx everything. Let’s hope the powers that be weren’t listening.”

When he lifted his hand, she smiled at him. “You worry me, Joe.”

His answer was a toe-curling kiss.