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Her eyes widened. “Toby? Tobe?”
He smiled for the very first time since they’d rescued him.
“He doesn’t have a vidcam in his office, no. But there’s one just outside his office that no one notices because it’s right beside an air vent and almost invisible. Several years ago, city regulations required a count of the number of people circulating on each floor to determine whether ventilation was sufficient. City Hall struck down the rule but the video cam stayed, no one took it down. There’s one on each floor and the one on the executive level just happens to be right outside Big Boss’s door.”
“Whoa. So, we’d have a record of people going into his office.” Emma smiled. “If only we could hack into it.”
“If only.” Toby was already bent over the keyboard. “Ok. I’m in.”
Colin had drifted back in from the kitchen and all four of them were huddled around the monitor. “Where should I start?” Toby asked Emma.
“Well, to be prudent, at least a week before you noticed unusual market movements.”
He pressed a few keys. “Okay. The good thing about the vidcam is that it is motion sensitive and only records movement, so if the corridor is empty, it doesn’t record. Saves time.”
“It won’t have been overwritten?”
He shook his head. “That would be against city regulations. If there’s too heavy traffic for the ventilation, it wouldn’t be effective if it could be overwritten. No, there’s just a data dump at the end of each quarter, but the files are never destroyed.”
Well, that was an enticing thought. All the drones on the lower floors speculated on what the guys – and they were all men – on the top floor did, day in day out. For a moment, she considered going back over the year and a half she’d worked for PIB but then thought – nah. They were all superbly boring men. Who cared if they stepped out of the office at 3 p.m. for a round of golf, or had the caterers bring in champagne and caviar at 10 a.m.?
“Right.” Toby sat back. “I’ve programmed it to start on the 21st. We’ll see who’s been to visit our Whitaker.”
Not that many people, it turned out. He was anti-social, or maybe not many people liked him. Fact was, his day was fairly routine. He’d waltz in, freshly pressed, around 9 a.m. in the morning, when the regular work day for everyone else began at 8. At 10, his secretary brought him an espresso with a little porcelain cap, God forbid it become cold in the trek from the executive club room ten feet down the hall. From the 21st to the28th, he received, in order, the head of a German investment bank, a functionary from the SEC, and on some kind of rota system, all the vice presidents from the floor below. On the third day of the recording, a very attractive woman Colin recognized as a highly successful lawyer came out of the office an hour later with a different blouse on. Emma met Toby’s eyes and shrugged. To her, Whitaker was the most sexless man on the face of the earth, but apparently Ms. Successful Lawyer didn’t think so. The next day, two Japanese businessmen toting huge briefcases, then an elegant gentleman in a three-thousand-dollar Brioni suit …
“Stop!” Raul shouted.
Everyone looked at him in surprise. He leaned down, face tight, tapped the monitor. “Toby, can you get me a close up of this guy?”
“Sure.” The screen filled with the man’s face. He was tall, handsome, middle-aged, with fine features and graying blond hair. Excellent haircut. Up close, it was easy to see that not only was the tie pure silk but the shirt was, too. Closely shaved, probably smelling of expensive cologne. He looked like that kind of guy. It had taken generations of careful breeding to produce him.
Raul was staring with fiery intensity at him.
“What?” It was the first time she’d seen him so tense. “Who is he?”
Raul’s fist opened and closed. His index finger shot out, touched the frozen image smack in the middle of his forehead, and his thumb dropped the imaginary hammer in an imaginary kill shot.
Raul’s heartgave a sudden thump in his chest, hard. Like it was trying to escape his chest. Jump right out and place itself next to Emma because a terrifying man had suddenly appeared next to a woman he cared a lot about.
He wasn’t afraid of much, but this guy terrified him. It was a family terror he was feeling, imprinted in his DNA. Men just like the guy on the screen had changed the course of his family’s history.
He stood, looked at his little audience. Toby and Colin were astonished at his outburst, as if a dog had suddenly sat up and started spouting Shakespeare. Emma just sat with her hands in her lap, waiting for him to talk. Sure that he’d make sense. Toby and Colin weren’t that sure.
“Lady and gentlemen,” he said, unable to keep the venom from his voice. “Meet Jorge Marin de Herrera. Otherwise known asEl Quìmico, the chemist, because he has a PhD in chemistry from the Institute of Chemistry from the Universidad Nacional Autònoma de Mexico. One of its star pupils. A legend. He owns a pharmaceutical company known for its cheap antibiotics. But he is also known as the head of the Cabo Cartel, one of Mexico’s richest drug cartels.”
Emma felt her eyes round. She stared at the fixed image on Toby’s screen, and felt things shifting beneath her feet. The man who looked like a distinguished businessman was a monster. It wasn’t her world but she’d read enough to know that Mexican drug cartels were tearing the country apart, responsible for mass murders and misery on an industrial level.
“Fuck,” Colin said. “Drug cartels? What do drugs have to do with it?”
“Nothing good,” Toby answered. “Massive amounts of money, massive borderline illegal short sells and now drug cartels.”
“What could go wrong?” Emma asked.
Raul’s voice deserted him. His mouth had gone bone dry, as dry as the Mojave. Up until now, he’d had a low-level buzz of worry, that rose with Toby’s kidnapping. But Toby hadn’t been killed, just kept away from whatever was happening. This whole thing was about money and it didn’t feel violent.
That was gone, and the low-level buzz of worry surged into panic. Emma was involved in something that also involved Mexican drug cartels.
He knew all about drug cartels. He was in security and though he’d spent his professional life as a SpecOps warrior combating terrorism, anyone involved in security was painfully aware of the monsters living just south of the country’s border. Not living in rat holes and caves like the terrorists halfway around the world. Nope. They lived in palatial homes and drove Mercedes-Benzes and lived like kings in the light of day because they had so much money it protected them.
