Chapter Fourteen
Sam McCall stood outside the doors of the Intensive Care Unit of the sprawling medical center in the middle of Medellin, Colombia, watching the firestorm he was married to charm her way into Lucia Mendez’s personal physician’s heart. The man had been steadfast in his refusal to tell Sam anything about Mendez’s condition, so Sam brought in the team’s secret weapon, Jen.
Jen worked for the State Department before joining the Prairie Winds team, and after being posted in South America, she easily assimilated into the varying cultures. Of course, the fact the prick she was conning was focused on her tits instead of her words wasn’t helping the doctor maintain his resistance either. Sam and his younger brother Sage were both married to Jen, and at this moment, Mendez’s personal physician owed his life to the fact it was Sam and not Sage standing back, watching him drool over what belonged to them.
When Sam saw Jen pat the other man’s forearm, he knew she’d gotten the information she’d wanted and probably an invitation to dinner if she was true to form. Damn, the woman was fucking amazing even if she was sometimes a hazard to herself and others. There was a good reason the team had nicknamed her Miley—she was a wrecking ball in a gorgeous package.
She was grinning ear to ear when she stepped out of the double doors, and he pulled her to the side and sealed his lips over hers before she had a chance to speak. By the time he let her go, she was shaking in his arms, and the other men in the waiting room were taunting them to get a room. When he finally let her go, he chuckled at the dazed look in her eyes.
“You kissed everything right out of my brain, husband mine. How’s a girl supposed to act like a cool operator when you steal her mind?”
“I’m more interested in the hot woman hidden under the façade of a cool operator. And that doc was risking his life looking at you that way.” When her cheeks turned pink, he chuckled. The woman had two husbands, and they enjoyed a very active ménage sex life, but she still blushed at his compliments. Damn, she was fucking perfect.
“Mendez was definitely poisoned, but it doesn’t appear the attack was intended to kill him. Which makes me wonder if he wasn’t being used as bait to lure his granddaughter home.” Sam agreed and was already dialing his phone when she added, “The doctor mentioned Mr. Mendez woke up once, and the only word they could understand was Cam. They believe he was talking about a camera of some kind, but I’m guessing he was referring to Cameron Barnes.” Sam raised a brow at her while he waited for the call to connect, and she rolled her eyes. “No, I didn’t tell him. Geez, I’m not a dimwit, you know.” He gave her a feral grin and held up one finger. He was keeping track, and that eye roll just cost her a trip over his knee.
Damn it’s great to be me.
*
Joseph Moreno hung up the phone and cursed. According to the surveillance video, his boss had been taken to the hospital not long after Joseph had left the mansion, but that wasn’t the problem. The fucking problem was the half hour of erased video from every camera around the sprawling estate. Their system was state-of-the-art, so it had taken someone with considerable skill and damned good equipment to hack into the feeds, erase only the portion that would have helped identify them, then back out without a trace. There weren’t many people locally who could have accomplished it, and those who could have, wouldn’t have bothered. And to top it all off, Lucia’s personal physician was refusing to return his calls. Joseph wasn’t being given any information about the man’s status, and he was getting damned tired of getting the runaround.
Looking around Lucia’s office, he noticed the old man’s cell phone was missing, but could probably attribute that to one of the emergency medical personnel who’d responded to the anonymous call placed from a burner phone. If someone outside was helping the old man, the question was who? And why?
Suddenly remembering the drink he’d slipped the drug into, Joseph searched the room for the glass but didn’t find it. Calling to the housekeeper, he inquired if she’d taken anything out of the office since arriving this morning, and she explained she hadn’t cleaned the room yet. The calls he’d made to the ambulance service had ended in the same stonewalling he was getting from the hospital staff. He’d sent men to both locations with cash and for the first time in years, money had failed to yield answers.
Whoever was calling the shots was obviously throwing a lot of money into keeping Lucia’s condition quiet. If it was the cartel, it was likely they had the same plan he had—to flush out Mia. But every feeler he’d put out was coming up empty—it defied logic. Something told him the man who’d delayed setting sail until Mia and her knights-in-fucking-shining-armor could board was involved in this, but the only thing Joseph knew about him was the name he’d used to charter the boat was an alias. Walking out of Lucia’s office, Joseph felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and he’d been a soldier long enough to heed the warning. It was time to find out who the players were, and the only way to do that was to get his hands on Mia Mendez.