Chapter 27

 

They were holed up in yet another hotel. This time in Lima. Julia was getting fed up with hotels, but even more tired of having people around her continuously. She needed to think, and she couldn’t do it with the tension pouring off Callum. While she’d been hiding in the bathroom, the team had decided it was safer for Julia, her gran and Callum to wait out the operation in Lima. So when Joe had hired a helicopter to take them to the village where Alice was being held, another copter had flown the rest of the team to Lima.

Julia had arranged for an easy-access cab so that Callum’s wheelchair wasn’t an issue. The usually grumpy man was even more volatile than usual during the trip, which had all of Julia’s senses working on high alert. She thought his temper was because he couldn’t keep his disability hidden. He’d pinned the legs of his trousers up to stop them flapping about under his stumps, and it was clear his limbs were missing. What Callum didn’t get was that no one was looking at his lack of limbs, because the rest of him was overwhelming. He radiated authority and danger, whether he was in a wheelchair or out.

Julia checked the time again. Four minutes since she’d last checked. The extraction team were maintaining radio silence. All Julia knew was that they’d arrived in the mountains where Esteban had a residence. Elle had reported that the town was tiny and empty. Everyone was either in bed, or in Cusco with Esteban. They’d acquired a vehicle once they were in town and had gone straight to the estate, where Elle hacked the security system. There had been no information on the team Lake sent to help them, which could only mean that the people who made up the team didn’t want anyone to know they were helping out. Julia wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but she trusted Lake Benson’s judgment.

Six minutes.

She walked over to the window and looked out over the bustling capital city of Peru. Even in the dead of night, the roads were filled with cars fighting for space. This time their hotel was right in the centre of the sprawling city. It was a modern tower block of glass and concrete, surrounded by the classic Spanish architecture of a bygone age. Normally Julia felt reassured in hotels that were the same the world over, but this time she wished she was in one of the brightly coloured adobe buildings with their ornately carved balconies. She could imagine spending a lazy day with Joe in one of those hotels. They’d lie on a bed made with white linen and laugh at nothing.

Joe.

Eight minutes. And still no contact.

She rested her forehead against the cool glass and tried not to think about what he might be doing. If he got hurt…

No.

She couldn’t think about that.

She’d told him it was over between them. It was the sensible thing to do. Experience had taught her that the novelty of her personality wore off pretty quickly for people who got close to her. Julia didn’t think she could live through another round of dealing with someone else’s disappointment.

You’re too needy. You’re too weird. You overwhelm me. I can’t be a crutch for you, Julia. You need help. This is your fault. You don’t have a social life. I feel trapped with you…

Voices from her past crowded out her thoughts, but through it all there was still this huge, solid presence in her mind. Joe. He could even protect her from her memories.

Eleven minutes.

She felt her gran come up beside her.

“They’re going to be fine,” Patricia said.

Julia didn’t say anything. Her gran didn’t look like she wanted honesty, and anything she deemed acceptable would be a lie.

“I was trying to think of some family story I could tell you,” Patricia said. “One to help you deal with your past and your feelings for Joe—before you sabotage your future, that is. Although breaking up with him while you were sitting in the bath has probably already done the job.”

Julia squeezed her eyes shut. She was already aware that Ryan had blabbed about her conversation with Joe to everyone else in their suite. There was no end to Julia’s humiliation. It was the gift that kept on giving.

“In the end, I couldn’t think of one,” her gran said. “I’m too busy worrying about Alice. Instead, I thought I’d give you the meaning behind the story I would have told. Saves time, anyway.”

There was silence. Julia knew she was supposed to ask what it was. There was no way that was happening. She could out-stubborn her gran in a battle of wills, so she kept silent.

“Fine.” Patricia rolled her eyes. “Here’s the motto of the story I would have told if I could have thought of one—get over yourself.”

“Gran!”

“Don’t you Gran me. I’ve been watching you blow hot and cold with that man for the past few days. It’s obvious you’re crazy about him, yet you keep talking yourself out of it. It’s pathetic, and I’m fed up watching it. I never thought my granddaughter was a coward, but now I’m beginning to wonder.”

Julia felt the words like a punch to her stomach, but she fought past it. She knew her gran meant well. She was also family, and it was really hard to get rid of family when they upset you. She knew—she’d tried in the past.

“Please, Gran, next time you want to give me a pep talk, don’t.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake. That boy loves you. We didn’t need Ryan’s gossip to figure that out. You can see it in everything he does. He just wants a chance to show you.”

“And what happens when he starts to get irritated by the fact I’m shy and introverted and have many, many issues? What then?” She glared at her gran. “I’ll tell you what. He leaves me in the dust. You’ve seen it happen. It happens all the time. I trust someone. I let him close, thinking he’s the one who’s going to accept me for who I am. Meanwhile, he’s thinking he’ll be the one who’s going to fix me. Then when he realises he can’t. That I’m unfixable. He runs.”

Patricia folded her arms and glared. “See, that’s where you’ve got it all wrong. The only person who thinks there’s anything wrong with you is you.”

The words echoed the ones Joe had thrown at her, making her heart clench.

“Rubbish. I can give you a list of the people who’ve sat me down over the years and told me I’m too much to handle. Or that I was disappointing. Or, my favourite, that I don’t try hard enough to change.”

Her gran waved a dismissive hand. “Well, they’re all idiots.”

“Thanks for clearing that up.”

“I’m telling you right now, young lady, if you don’t accept who you are and give that boy a chance to love you, you are going to lose him.”

Julia seriously didn’t want to hear it. “Gran, this isn’t a long-term thing between me and Joe. It’s casual.”

Patricia threw up her hands. “And I thought you were the smart one!”

“Ladies,” Callum interrupted.

Julia turned to him as her heart tried to escape through her ribcage. “Is there news?”

“No.” He held up a phone, a look of utter disgust on his face. “But your mother is on the line. Who’s talking to her?”

“Not me.” Gran backed away from the phone as though it was a rattler.

Julia frowned at her. Who’s the coward now? She took the phone from Callum and spoke before her mum had a chance to.

“Mum, guess what? I’m with Gran. Let me put her on the line.” She stalked over to her gran and thrust the phone at her.

“Traitor.” Patricia glared.

Julia turned away. So now she was a traitor on top of everything else. Family. There was a reason she limited her time with them.

“Libby, darling,” her gran crooned into the phone. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”

“She’s lying,” Julia called.

Her gran flushed and blurted, “Julia’s got a boyfriend.”

Callum groaned loudly. “I spent years in the special forces only to come out and use those skills dealing with women who think they’re still in high school.”

“You’re one to talk,” Patricia snapped at him. “You won’t even deal with your own issues. Talk about us when you’re proud of who you are, legs or no legs.”

Julia looked at the time on her phone. Only nineteen minutes had passed since she’d heard from Joe.

Nineteen long minutes. She looked back out the window and prayed he was safe. A world without Joe wouldn’t be worth living in.

 

Lake had sent a four-man team to back them up. The men came prepared with weapons and comm equipment. They were dressed in black tactical gear, from bulletproof vests to side-arms strapped to their thighs. The men only gave their first names, and their accents were too generic to place—even as far as picking a country.

“David,” the leader of the group said as he held out a hand.

Joe put him in his early thirties. He had the kind of standard good looks that made him blend into a crowd. His skin was a light brown, his hair a darker brown and his eyes almost black. It was hard to tell which nationality he belonged to. It could have been any.

Joe shook his hand and introduced his team.

Elle gave the ghost team a wide smile. “CIA? MI6? Mossad? Am I close?”

David’s lips twitched. “All you need to know is that we’re here to help.”

“Would it be rude if I asked for some fingerprints?” Elle eyed his black gloves. “You know, just so I can do some investigating in my free time.” She batted her eyelashes at him.

“Not rude,” he said. “But not possible.”

“DNA?” Elle asked hopefully.

David gave her a tiny smile before folding his arms and turning back to Joe. “We scouted the perimeter. There are fourteen active guards, more on rest. There’s a blind spot in the southwest corner. We can go up and over the wall there, but we’ll need to talk to someone first, find out where the woman is being held.”

“She’s in the basement,” Elle said.

Joe smiled when sharp eyes zeroed in on the bubbly, blue-haired woman.

“Southeast corner of it.” Elle beamed at David. “She’s currently lying on a bare mattress. I don’t know if she’s asleep or unconscious. Thinking about any other options gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“You’ve got eyes in there?” David was fast reassessing his first impression of Elle.

“It’s amazing what you can buy online these days,” Elle said. “They even sell drones. Teeny-tiny ones that fit in the palm of your hand.”

“A drone won’t get you that information. Especially a commercial one.” The guy wasn’t fooled, though—he’d learned fast that all was not as it seemed with their resident hacker.

“No.” She twirled one of her blue bunches. “But it did manage to locate the connector box for the internal security feed, and then Ryan there”—she gave Ryan a finger wave, and he saluted her—“climbed a tree, scaled a wall, did a bungee jump—who knows what he did—but he got the hardware I gave him inside the box. From there on in, it was child’s play to hack their system.” She smiled again. “And while I was doing that, I had my drone scope around. Did you know that there is a state-of-the-art warehouse about a mile from here that’s loaded with weapons? Maybe, after we get out of here, you could call up your boss and get someone to drop a little bomb on the building, because I think these guys might be planning to sell those arms to other bad guys. Just sayin’.”

David took a step towards Elle, as though fascinated by her. “You hacked a state-of-the-art closed system?”

“Like it’s hard.” She gave a snort. “Now, about that DNA…”

With a shake of his head, David looked at Joe. “Lake didn’t tell us you had this kind of skill on your team.”

“Lake Benson tends to keep a lot of secrets,” Joe said drolly.

Elle jumped up to sit on the bonnet of the vehicle they’d liberated from outside someone’s house. It was old, but Ryan had checked the engine and it was in good condition. It would get them back to the chopper. They’d been forced to land several miles outside of town, so as not to alert the compound to their arrival.

“Elle, bring up the compound diagram,” Joe said.

Sitting tailor style, Elle put her laptop in the cradle of her legs, and her fingers flew over the keyboard. She turned the screen when she had what she wanted.

“I can give you a ten-minute window on security, but that’s it,” she said.

“How you going to do that?” David asked.

“I’m going to force their system to reboot, which will buy you the time you need to get Alice. During the reboot, the surveillance cameras will freeze on their last image before the system shuts down. You’ll be invisible to the system for the duration, and all alarms will be disabled.”

“You sure you aren’t CIA?” David said with admiration.

“I eat CIA hackers for breakfast. Oh! That reminds me. Snack time.” She reached into her pocket and came out with a Snickers bar. “Never thought you’d be able to get these in Peru.” She held it out to them. “Want some?”

They shook their heads, but Ryan leaned in for a bite, because Ryan never turned down an opportunity to eat.

“We go in here,” David said. “You and Ryan can take point. You get the woman out. We’ll cover you.”

They spend a few more minutes going over the plan before David’s team opened a bag filled with weapons for Joe and Ryan to choose from.

“Can I get that gun?” Elle pointed to the biggest one.

“Do you know how to use it?” Joe asked.

“No.”

He shook his head, reached into the bag and came out with a Taser. “Anybody gets close, zap them.”

She looked at the weapon with disgust. “Why do I get the lame gun?”

“Because you know how to use it. With the other ones, you’re more likely to shoot your foot.”

“This is crap. I’m making Callum train me for combat when we get back to London. If I keep getting dragged into the field, I should know how to shoot things.”

“You weren’t dragged. You volunteered,” Ryan reminded her.

Once they were kitted out, they looked at Elle.

“Wait for my signal before you reboot the security,” Joe said, as Elle climbed off the car. They were stationed at an outcrop of rocks, a couple of miles from their destination. “You should be safe here, but if there’s a problem, radio us and hide until we get back.”

“Or electrocute the baddy,” she said, making Ryan laugh.

“Okay, we’re out of here.” Joe tapped the comm unit strapped to her ear. “Don’t forget to switch it on.”

She looked so offended by his order that the men were smiling when they climbed into their vehicles.

Ten minutes later, they’d reached the spot where they had to leave their vehicles and continue on foot. When they reached the compound wall, David pointed to the blind spot.

Joe flicked his comm to speak. “We are go,” was all he said.

A few seconds later, the reply came. “Clear.”

Working as a seamless unit, the men were over the wall in seconds. David nodded at Joe and Ryan once, before he and his team blended with the darkness. The ghost team didn’t make a sound.

Keeping their weapons at the ready, Joe and Ryan ran to the side door on the old adobe house. Actual physical security was lax now that Esteban was in Cusco. It was clear from the sounds of TVs and radios playing throughout the compound that the men didn’t even consider the possibility of someone attacking.

Joe kept guard as Ryan popped the lock. They snuck into the building, checking doors for the entrance to the basement, sticking to the shadows and moving like ghosts. They found the right door on the third try and hurried down the stairs. A radio was playing. Men were muttering. Joe held up a fist, a signal to stop. Ryan guarded Joe’s back, weapon up, as Joe peeked around the corner.

He tapped Ryan’s shoulder and held up two fingers. Two men. With a few more gestures, they organised their attack. It went without a hitch. The men were too busy drinking cheap tequila and talking trash about women to notice Joe and Ryan. They were knocked out and tied up in less than a minute.

Joe signalled for Ryan to keep watch as he grabbed the key for the one remaining door. When it swung open, it revealed a large, dark cell, with a cot in one corner and a bucket in the other. There was one bare bulb, swinging overhead. And lying on the cot was Alice.

Joe placed a hand on her shoulder as he covered her mouth with his other hand. Her body went rigid. “Patricia sent us,” he whispered. “We’re here to get you out, but you can’t make a sound. Can you do that?”

She nodded, and Joe dropped his hand from her mouth. Struggling, she turned to look at him. Her hair was matted and dirty, her face was ashen, with dark circles under her eyes, and there was a bruise on her jaw. She cradled her damaged hand to her chest. It was wrapped in some equally dirty cloth, and there was blood on her clothes. Her eyes were wide with fear and hope.

“Do as you’re told and we’ll be out of here in a couple of minutes,” he whispered. “Julia and Patricia are waiting at the hotel for you.”

Her eyes became glassy and a tear ran down her cheek, but she didn’t make a sound.

“Let’s go.” Joe took her arm and led her to the door.

She was tiny, shorter than Julia, and very slight. She stumbled on the uneven floor, but Joe thought she might have stumbled even if it was perfectly flat. She was weak from lack of food and broken down by the trauma she’d experienced. He wrapped an arm around her to give her support. Once they were out of the compound, he’d carry her.

They made their way up the stairs quickly, listening intently for the slightest sound. Ryan checked the exterior.

“Status?” Joe whispered into his comm.

“Clear left.”

“Clear right.”

“You’re good to go.”

He signalled Ryan and they ran for the perimeter wall. Joe supported Alice and Ryan watched their backs. With the help of the ghost team, they lifted Alice over the wall. Once they were on the other side, Joe picked her up and broke into a sprint towards their vehicles. All the while, the men around him protected them, and the woman in his arms sobbed silent tears.

Once they made it back to Elle, who hadn’t had a chance to electrocute anyone and was annoyed about it, the medic on the Lima team saw to Alice. He gave her a shot of antibiotics and pain medication before cleaning and bandaging her hand. The whole process was done efficiently and was over in a matter of minutes.

“That feels better,” Alice said as she looked at her hand. “Thank you.” She looked at each of the team. “Thank you for coming to get me.”

“No problem,” Joe said. “Let’s get you back to Patricia and Julia.”

“Just one thing before we go,” Alice said. “If I make a documentary about my ordeal, would any of you boys be willing to take part?”

Elle covered the grin that broke out as the men stared at the abused woman in silence.

“I’m an artist,” Alice explained. “We suffer for our art.” She looked at her hand. “And I bloody well suffered for this, so I’m damn well going to make some art out of it.”

“Get in the car,” Joe said with a shake of his head.

He could see how Alice and Patricia had managed to stay best friends for over sixty years—they were both completely mad.

“Are you sure you weren’t hit on the head?” Ryan asked Alice with a gentle voice.

She gave him an incredulous look. “Were you expecting me to lie down and whimper? Was this traumatic? Yes. Will it ruin my life? No. Was it painful? Yes. But it still wasn’t anywhere near childbirth. Don’t even get me started on that agony. I’m a woman, son. We’re strong. And now I’m bloody furious.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to make a tell-all exposé about Carlos Esteban and that pretentious American moron, Marcus Delaney. They think they’re untouchable? Well, wait until the best documentary producer on the planet gets through with them.”

Joe put the car in gear and headed for the chopper.

“Wait!” Alice shouted as she craned her neck to see the team from Lima. “Go back. We need more of the medication he gave me. That stuff is great.”