Chapter 26

 

It was a subdued group who met in Patricia, Ryan and Elle’s suite. The knowledge of Ed’s betrayal was written in the red-rimmed eyes and shocked expressions of everyone present. None of them understood it. Julia doubted they ever would.

She stared out of the living room window, which looked out onto a close-up section of pristine Incan wall, and wondered what they were going to do next. They’d run out of options. And that meant Alice had run out of time. For someone who normally had a head full of ideas, her brain was horribly quiet.

A knock at the door drew everyone’s attention, and Joe pulled the gun from his shoulder holster before looking through the peephole.

“It’s Callum.” He holstered the gun and opened the door.

Julia was surprised when Callum rolled into the room in a wheelchair, but she wasn’t shocked. Everyone knew Callum had prosthetic legs. The fact they hadn’t seen him in a chair before now was the part that was strange.

“We meeting, then?” he snapped as he rolled over to the window.

Julia automatically recoiled from his abrasive attitude. The fury emanating from him was almost tangible, and the room was suddenly thick with it. Her skin began to prickle, and without realising that she was even doing it, she took a step towards the bedroom and her escape.

“Everybody up to speed on what happened with Ed?” Callum said.

“Yeah.” Ryan grabbed one of the seats at the dining table. As usual, there was a tray of food in front of him, but he didn’t touch it. Instead, he kept a wary eye on Callum.

Julia scanned the people in the room and realised they were all acting the same way, watching Callum as though he were a bomb about to go off. She caught Joe’s eyes from across the room and felt as though he could see inside of her. She watched as he noted her hands wrapped in the strap of her bag, and the distance she’d covered towards the bedroom. Julia lowered her eyes. She couldn’t watch him and see the moment he realised that nothing had changed with her. She was still as much of a freak as she’d been when they first met.

“What’s done is done,” Callum barked. “We need to move on. If you can’t do that, tell me now.” His voice was a steel blade slicing through the air. There was silence. “Okay, in that case, what’s the situation at the last hotel?”

“I did some recon,” Ryan said. “Esteban’s got men watching the place.”

Julia studied her boss. He was coiled tight enough to snap. She glanced down at the beige alpaca wool blanket covering the space where his legs should have been, and it hit her—he was scared. Scared of what they would think of him. Scared they would think him incapable. A wave of empathy rocked her. She knew how that felt. She dealt with it every day. People thinking she was less than normal because she behaved in ways they couldn’t comprehend. Her heart ached for him, even as she readied to run at the first sign of an explosion.

“Julia,” Callum snapped, making her freeze in place.

A low growling noise came from Joe. Julia’s eyes shot to his, only to see him glaring at Callum. Her warrior was ready to take on the boss for scaring her. Her heart reached for him at the sight.

“Yes?” she whispered to Callum.

“I spoke to the concierge. He needs clothing and shoe sizes for everyone and he’ll kit us out for the rest of the trip. Toiletries too. Take care of it.”

“Yes, sir.” She flushed again at calling him sir, and before she could stop herself, she was looking at Joe for reassurance.

He was still glaring at Callum. “Tone,” Joe said. “Wind it back.”

The glare Callum gave him in answer was enough to make every hair on her body stand on end. Julia backed up against the wall and inched towards the bedroom. Emotion was pressing in on her. The lights in the room were too bright. The air was too prickly. It hurt to breathe in the tension. Everything within her screamed to run. To hide. To become invisible until the danger passed.

“Is Esteban in Cusco?” Callum asked Elle.

“Yes. He arrived about an hour ago. He’s staying in a villa he owns on the edge of town.”

“You’re sure?” There was a dark, rumbling fury in the question.

Elle didn’t flinch. “There are a lot of cameras in Cusco and I’ve managed to get him on several. I picked him up at the airport when he first arrived. He came in on a private plane with a mini army. I counted seven men travelling with him, with more waiting at the airport and at his house. About thirty in total.”

Callum caught Joe’s eye. “If Esteban is in Cusco, and he brought some of his men with him, then we have an opportunity.”

“You want to go in tonight,” Joe said evenly.

Which meant Joe was going into danger again. Julia felt dizzy at the thought, and placed her palm on the cool wall behind her to steady herself. Joe was calm, controlled, capable. This was what he did. He would always be running into danger and leaving her to wonder if he’d make it out unharmed. If he’d come back at all.

If this thing between them, this wildfire of a connection, had a future, it would mean she was always going to say goodbye to Joe and would always be waiting to see if he came back in one piece. She wasn’t sure she could handle a life lived that way.

“Lake has a team on standby in Lima. If I contact them, we can meet up in the town where they’re holding Alice and get her out. But it has to be tonight. This is our best opportunity. They have less men guarding her.” Callum looked at each of them, daring them to disagree. No one did. The weight of the situation wasn’t lost on any of them.

“We can’t take Rachel’s plane,” Elle said. “It’s being watched. All the commercial flights are being monitored too. It’s too far to drive to Alice’s location. It would take days, not hours.”

“Helicopters.” Joe folded his arms across his wide chest. “There are a few tourist companies dotted around town. They do the sites from the air. They never go further than the Sacred Valley, but they could.”

“We can’t ask a tour operator to take us into a combat situation,” Callum said.

Julia inched closer to the bedroom. She could feel it. The tension building, like gas filling the room. One spark and it would blow.

“Do I look stupid?” Joe said. “I can fly a copter.”

Callum glared at Joe. Two cockerels getting ready to fight.

“We need weapons,” Ryan said, drawing their attention. “We’re almost out of ammo and we don’t have any contacts in Cusco—at least none that wouldn’t sell us out to Esteban.”

“I can get the Lima team to supply us,” Callum said. “But this is a solo op for Joe. We need you here to protect the women.”

Ryan didn’t like that one bit. He bristled in his seat. Julia felt behind her for the handle of the door. Slow. Easy. Don’t attract attention.

“I need to back up Joe.” Ryan stared Callum down.

Callum’s cheeks turned a dark shade of red.

Oh no! Abort! Run! Hide!

Elle raised her hand, like she was in class. Callum narrowed his eyes at her, and she took that as permission to speak. “Two things. I need to go with Joe too. I’m the only one who can hack any closed-circuit security they are sure to have on the compound. They’ll need me as their eyes and ears—unless the Lima team has a hacker. In which case, the scary hacker with the training and the gun should definitely go instead of me. As for the second thing, why does Ryan need to take bodyguard duty when you’ll be here?”

Callum jerked back as though he’d been slapped, and then his mouth formed a tight line. Julia pressed a hand to her stomach as nausea rolled over her.

“I can’t protect anybody. I’m in a wheelchair.” Callum smacked his palm hard on the armrest.

The noise made Julia jump. Joe’s eyes snapped to hers. She looked away. This was her. This was what she did. She ran. She twisted the handle behind her slowly, so as not to attract attention.

“Uh, yeah.” Elle looked at their boss as though he’d lost his mind. “What’s your point?”

“I don’t have any fucking legs!” he roared.

And Julia was running. She barrelled through the door, as though the devil himself was on her heels. She frantically jerked open a closet. Too small. She ran for the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. And then she climbed into the tub and pulled her knees up tight to her chest.

Even through the walls she heard Callum shouting.

“How the fuck am I supposed to protect anybody from a fucking wheelchair?”

Julia flinched and pressed her hands to her ears. She scrunched her eyes shut tight. It would be over soon…it would be over soon…it would be over soon…

She rocked back and forth, counting her breaths in batches of ten, trying to block the overwhelming emotions riding on the air from seeping into her.

It’s going to be okay…it’s going to be okay…

“Jules?” A hand touched her hair, making her jump.

She looked up to find Joe crouched beside the bath. Worried. He was worried.

“Baby,” he said gently, “what’s going on? Callum is just being Callum. You’ve seen him shout before.”

And every single time she’d felt the same way—as though wire bristles were scraping across her skin. He reached for her again, but she moved away.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t bear touch right now.”

“Okay, that’s okay,” he said, but she could hear the worry.

“It’s not okay.” She barked out a mirthless laugh. “I know it’s not okay. But this is me. This is what I am. A freak.” She nodded. “This is good. It’s good that you see this now. It’s good you know what I’m really like before things get too serious between us.”

“You’re not a freak and things are already serious between us.”

She ignored him because she knew better. “I went to a clinic, years ago. Saw a psychiatrist and tried to get him to fix me.” She looked at Joe. “He said he wouldn’t. He said there was nothing wrong with me. That I was just built this way and no amount of therapy would fix it. Do you hear what I’m saying, Joe? I’m unfixable. This is it. Forever.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t hear that. I heard you tell me that a professional said there’s nothing wrong with you. And he was right.”

“Yes, I’m so normal that I’m hiding in a bath,” she scoffed, fighting back tears. “I’m so normal that I can’t bear it when people get upset. Anger is worse. I feel it in the air. It presses in on me, making me insane from the tension. Raw emotion makes my skin crawl. I feel it inside of me. It’s loud and painful and I just want to run to get it to stop. My skin hurts. Touch is painful. Lights are too bright. Noise is too loud. Whatever you hear or see, I experience magnified a million times over.”

“I didn’t realise.”

“Hypersensitivity, they call it. There’s actually a name for it. No cure, but a name. Add to that my OCD problems and the fact I get paralysed with shyness and I’m just delightful to be around.” She felt a tear run down her cheek as she cocked her head. “You still want me, Joe? You still think I’m normal?”

“Baby.” His voice was agonisingly soft.

She shook her head. She’d been so foolish to hope for a future. To think she had a chance at normal. Normal was for other people. The best she could hope for was uneventful.

“I don’t want to see you anymore,” Julia said, her voice trembling. “I want this thing between us to be over.”

He shook his head. “I don’t accept that.”

“Why? Do you think if we just try hard enough I won’t be like this anymore? You think you can fix me, Joe?”

He reached for her again but stopped himself. “You don’t need to be fixed.”

“Right.” She gave a brittle laugh.

“You don’t need to be fixed.”

Unfortunately, his decreeing it didn’t make it so. Things didn’t work that way.

“Leave me be,” Julia said wearily. “I can’t be what you want. All that would happen would be that you’d realise the same thing, sometime down the track. And then you’d look at me with such disappointment. I couldn’t bear it. Not you,” she whispered. “Not from you.”

“Joe,” Ryan called from the bedroom. “We need to head out.”

A muscle in Joe’s jaw throbbed. His fists clenched and unclenched on the edge of the bath.

“Give me a minute,” he called to Ryan.

“Just go,” Julia said as she closed her eyes.

“I have to, I don’t have a choice, but hear this first.” He gripped her chin. “I love you.”

She jerked, but didn’t shake off his touch. “You can’t.”

“I do.” His voice was pure conviction. “Do you hear me, Julia Collins? I love you. The you who’s brilliant and organised and caring. I love you. The woman who feels too much and can’t process it. I love you. The woman who needs a man like me. A man who sees her. A man who can protect her. A man who believes, one hundred percent, that she’s perfect just as she is. A man who loves her.”

“Joe,” Ryan called.

Joe gritted his teeth. “Think about this while I’m gone. Think about the fact that I see you, I think you’re perfect as you are and I love you.” His eyes were molten pools. “Give me a chance,” he whispered. “Let me show you it’s the truth. Let me love you.”

“We need to go.” Ryan sounded tense.

“You don’t get to give up on us. You don’t get to tell me what I think and feel, now or in the future. You don’t get to do that.” He stood. “I won’t let you.”

And with that, Joe strode from the room, leaving Julia stunned and alone, wondering what had just happened. And if she had it in her to believe he meant what he said.