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“I can hit Hamilton almost as soon as we touch the ground.” Matthew paused. “But I want you guys to turn right around and fly home. Having you with me now is great, but—”
“But,” Alex said to Cam, “he doesn’t want to let us in on the good stuff.”
“Yeah,” Cam said, “well, what can you expect? He always was a selfish little snot. Never would share things that were fun.”
“Like his tricycle.”
“Or his train set.”
“And his blocks. Man, he never let me play with those.”
Alex and Cam glared at Matthew. He glared back, and then his eyes turned suspiciously bright.
“You guys,” he said, his voice rough and low, “you guys are—you’re the—”
“The best,” Cam said archly.
The brothers grinned. The grins faded, turned to the determined looks of hard, experienced men. Matthew sketched out a drawing of the colonel’s house, then got busy on the phone.
Cam and Alex got busy on a plan.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HIS
BROTHERS said if he continued pacing, Matthew would end up walking to Colombia.
He knew they were trying to lighten the tension, but the only thing that would do that was getting Mia back. He remembered the look on her face the last time he saw her, and it killed him to know he’d turned away from her when she’d needed him the most.
How could he have believed Hamilton? He should have known the truth, that Mia would never have done the things the colonel accused her of.
If she were dead…
No. He wasn’t going there. She was alive. She had to be. He’d know if she weren’t. He’d know.
An envelope had been left for Matthew at the service desk at the airport.
Inside was a parking receipt and the keys for an SUV. Another envelope that held a slip of paper with an address scrawled on it lay waiting in the truck’s glove compartment.
Matthew drove; he knew the streets of Cartagena better than his brothers.
Moments later, he pulled up outside a ramshackle house in one of the city’s most dangerous slums. A man let them in, someone Matthew had known years ago. They had no names for each other but friend.
“You gave me short notice,” the man said in English. “I got what I could.”
Uzis. Walthers. Berettas. Tiny communications devices. A pair of wire cutters. Half a dozen other tools, and a small vial of sleeping tablets and a half kilo of chopped steak. Black jeans, black turtlenecks, black ski masks and black running shoes for all three Knights.
The stuff would do.
Matthew and his brothers emptied their wallets of cash but, of course, it wasn’t enough.
The man scooped up the pile of bills, smiled and pocketed it.
“Su credito es bueno, amigo,” he said, and grinned.
It was an old joke between them, based on signs that hung in downscale shop windows in Cartagena as well as in some stores in Dallas, but the best Matthew could manage was a nod.
“Gracias, amigo.”
