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“Shit,” Ryan muttered.
“Yeah,” De la Cruz said.
Lake cleared his throat. “You know where this camp is?”
“With the map and the photos, I can find it.”
Lake nodded. “Then we leave now. Everybody get ready. Gather your gear.”
“Wait.” Rachel Ford-Talbot held up a hand. Ryan noted that Harvard was hovering close to her again. The guy had it bad. “The local chief of police wants to ride along—with a couple of his men. He pointed out that the last time Benson Security was in Peru, there was a bloodbath. He insists his presence will stop that from happening again.”
“That isn’t good,” De la Cruz said. “The local police force is full of guys who’re on the take with the cartels. There’s no way to tell who you can trust.”
Rachel gave him a cool look. She hadn’t bothered changing out of her sparkly red gown, but her clothes didn’t soften her demeanour any. “The police chief says that he will arrest us, shut this retrieval operation down and take over himself, if we don’t comply.” She turned to Lake. “I suggest we comply.”
“He wants the glory,” Callum spat. “He wants to be the one who can say he rescued Belinda Collins.”
“That was my assessment too,” Rachel said. “He’s an unctuous little man. But, as they say in America, he’s the law in these parts. If we want to do our job, we have to play nice.”
“We don’t say that in America,” Harvard said. “Not since the time of the wild west.”
She didn’t even look at him. Instead, she shared a look with her business partners, Callum and Lake. “We don’t have a choice. Not unless you want this to be another international incident. And Benson Security can’t afford another one of those. It took a lot of money and playing nice to get rid of the last one.”
The last one being when they’d accidentally blown up a plane in Peru and massacred a cartel who was trying to kill them. Yeah, the authorities had not been pleased about that.
“The police chief comes along for the ride,” Lake said, but he clearly wasn’t happy about it.
“That’s a mistake,” De la Cruz said.
“This whole thing is a mistake,” Callum said. “We should have ended this wedding celebration in Scotland. Why we had to come here, I don’t have a bloody clue. Rich people are nuts.”
Ryan couldn’t agree more. He watched as the team dispersed. They were wired. Eager for action. Eager to succeed. Determined to bring their people home.
Beside him, De la Cruz dug into his jeans pocket. He brought out a piece of paper and handed it to Elle. “From David,” he said with a smile.
She fell on it like a starved dog before she realised how much she was giving away, and calmed her actions down. She opened the paper, and Ryan made no effort to hide that he was reading over her shoulder.
Ellie, what did I tell you about hunting me? Stop. You’re putting us both at risk. D. P.S. I like the lavender hair better.
Her head jerked up and she looked around the room, as though he was hiding in the shadows somewhere, watching her. When she realised he wasn’t, her shoulders slumped slightly and she grinned at the note.
“Did he wear gloves when he handled this?”
De la Cruz had a smile on his face. “He said you’d ask that. The answer is no.” With a shake of his head, he walked away.
“Hot damn!” Elle shrieked. “I have his prints. I am so going to track his backside down.”
“Uh, Elle?” Ryan felt someone should be the voice of reason. “That’s exactly what the note said not to do.”
She snorted. “Like he meant it.” Then she was tapping away, her focus firmly on her laptop and the rescue effort.
Ryan stood and followed the rest of his team out the door. The sun was rising over the rainforest, and the sound of birds calling to one another had reached cacophonous levels. The heat hit him as soon as he stepped outside the air-conditioned interior of the hotel, and he started to sweat instantly. Even this early in the morning, the humidity was killer.
He glanced in the direction of his cabin and wondered again if there was a beautiful woman waiting for his return. His feet took a step in that direction without him even realising he’d done it. He was that desperate to get back to her. The need driving him was unusual and disconcerting. He never reacted like this with women. Usually, he had a great time and then walked away. He rarely, if ever, wanted to go back. In his experience, repeat performances made women think there was more going on than a few hours of shared pleasure.
Yet here he was, hungry to get back to Esperanza. What was it about her that made her different? He honestly didn’t know. All he was sure of was that he wanted to get back and investigate the power she had over him.
“You coming?” Dimitri called.
