by Leon, Judith
The first guy turned on Joe, pulled back his arm to deliver what he probably assumed would be an easy, terrifying punch to this civilian in the Western jeans and nice, clean shirt. He didn’t even see the fist that caught him in the jaw and knocked him to the floor.
Joe’s sudden violence surprised Nova almost as much as it surprised everyone else in the bar. Except, of course, she knew him. With her, with women especially, and with men he liked, Joe was a charming daredevil with a wicked sense of humor. But rile him and another side, a dark side with a fierce sense of fairness and justice, took over, and he had all the necessary skills to enforce his feelings.
Mr. Slapper picked his buddy off the floor, and the man who’d been hit drew a gun.
In a nanosecond, he got his arm twisted up behind his back so hard he howled as Joe took the gun and shoved him toward the door. The bullies made a quick retreat.
Joe’s gaze caught hers. They both knew the disadvantage of an elevated profile for anyone undercover. Joe had acted out of instinct—but now everyone stared at him. To the bartender he said, “Sorry about that.” He laid the gun on the bar and made for the door. There would be no questions about or discussion of what had happened.
She gave him time to disappear into a doorway or shop, then rose and left. Dodging traffic, she zigzagged across the street to the plaza, walked to the southwest corner and sat on the bench. A man already occupied the other end. Middle-aged, khaki slacks, simple blue cotton shirt, silver-rimmed glasses with modest but noticeable correction and reading a paperback novel—something by Isabella Allende.
Nova sat, opened the paper and once more skimmed the front page headlines.
“I’m Oscar,” her contact said.
Chapter 13
“Delighted,” Nova said.
“You look just like your picture,” Oscar Chavez said in lightly accented English. “No. Far more attractive in person.”
She let the compliment pass. Besides, she felt wilted from the heat and knew that her underarms were already showing signs of perspiration, not at all attractive. From the corner of her eye she spotted Joe across the street outside a business. He appeared to be shopping for sunglasses.
Chavez got right to business. “Things are absolutely frantic here. Besides putting virtually all of Manaus’s police resources into a hunt for bodies or any trace of where the Americans have been taken, at least thirty Brazilian federal agents are swarming.”
“I met four FBI on the plane.”
“Two Americans also arrived yesterday. I understand that the victims are all very important or wealthy people. No resources are being held back.”
“Not all are high profile. Two women from San Diego are just ordinary folk who love birds and could afford a rather expensive trip. And two teenage boys aren’t famous or wealthy, although it’s true they have relatives who are. The father of Ronnie Obst, Redmond Obst, is a famous birder. The man is a surgeon who can afford an expensive hobby.”
“Expensive?”
“Birding all over the world in many inaccessible and exotic places takes a lot of money.”
“Ah.”
“The grandmother of the other boy, Alex Hill, is Suleema Johnson, one of our Supreme Court justices. Certainly famous, but she doesn’t have all that much money and neither does the boy’s family. The severed hand was sent to the vice president, and that family could cough up a lot of ransom and so could the Bennings.”
“I suggest we start by going to the police.”
“It’s also my thought that going to the police is what a distraught relative would do. But I’ll go alone.”
“That’s dangerous. You need someone to back you up. We can claim that you have paid me to assist you and translate because you don’t speak good Spanish or Portuguese.”
“No, it’s better if I go alone as just Linda Stokes’s sister. People—men—will tend to underestimate a woman, and I can better gain trust where I need to.”
“Really, I insist that I should come with you.”
The look on his face showed genuine concern that seemed to be not only for the sake of the operation. She appreciated his care, but she also knew what would work best.
“No. And I’m in charge of this op. You must trust me. I want you to be available when I need information about local people, places, whatever. But in the background. I have your cell and landline numbers.”
“I don’t know—”
“If it makes you feel better, I have a backup man. We’ve worked together before. If I can help it, I will never be out of contact with him. He also has your numbers.”
Oscar pursed his lips but nodded. “Okay. I stay deep in the background.” He grinned. “But let me assure you that my phone will be with me even in the shower.” He grinned.
“Appreciated,” she said, and returned the smile.
He gave her directions to the police station and told her the local price the taxi driver should ask. “Don’t let him overcharge you,” he said, still smiling.
She walked slowly to the street, holding her hand across her breast and on her left shoulder long enough to be certain Joe had seen the signal that she now intended to take a cab. She gave him two minutes to reach his car by studying a display of CDs and DVDs in a bin outside a store, and then she hailed a cab and directed the driver to the police station.
Her watch indicated fifteen minutes to high noon when she stepped from the cab. The police station, although not air conditioned, had thick walls that offered relief from the heat. Doors and windows let in welcome cross ventilation, but there was no palliative for the debilitating humidity. Even the small of her back felt sticky. All sane people who could possibly do so were now heading for home and siesta.
She explained in halting Portuguese that she was Nora Smith, sister of one of the kidnap victims. With pleasing speed she was directed into a room vibrating with fifty or sixty men busily generating even more heat with activity and talk.
The man who approached her, lean and short with intense black eyes, spoke only Portuguese. His family name was Sanchero. They had such a hard time that he quickly called over another cop, Cruz, who spoke a little English. Between the three of them, she made some progress.
“I intend to talk to anyone and everyone who might help me find my sister,” she said. “I have money. I will pay well for information.” She hoped—trusted—that knowledge of her willingness to pay for information would spread quickly.
“I want to know the name of the man who found the tour boat,” she said.
“That would be Angelo Santiago,” Cruz answered.
“And I want to talk to the boat captain.”
“His name is Diego Santiago.” Cruz then explained and she understood, at least as best she could understand given all the fractured English and hand waving, that police and feds grilled Diego Santiago for two days and he continued to claim he knew nothing. The kidnappers had knocked him out, tied him up and he never saw or heard anything.
She insisted on the address where he lived or where she could contact him.
Cruz complied, but when he handed her the piece of paper, he said, “You understand. You waste time here?” Both men made quite clear that they thought her being in Manaus was pointless. Of course, she was supposedly the sister of a victim and didn’t speak Spanish or Portuguese, so she agreed, hard as it was to keep a straight face and persist with the cover. She left feeling that she had been satisfactorily convincing as the distressed sister.
She took a cab to the docks where the detectives said the captain might be found. There, after a few polite questions and dropping the word that she was willing to pay for useful information, she found the boat, the Fiesta, and its captain, Diego Santiago.
Having hosted English-speaking passengers for years, Santiago spoke excellent English. “I am so sorry about your sister. Terribly sorry. You must be in great distress. I wish I could help you, but I can’t. They knocked me out and tied me up. I really know nothing. It’s obvious they only wanted the
Americans.”
She watched his eyes, his lips, his shoulders, his breathing. She’d had a lot of training in reading people, and according to Star, she also had a natural talent. She didn’t believe him. He was hiding something, but what?
It was nearly 1:00. Sweating like nothing she’d ever experienced anywhere else in the world, she stepped out of another cab in front of her hotel and called Oscar. “Get to your police contacts. Tell them they should haul the captain in again and grill him. He’s lying. He knows a lot more than he’s telling.”
She rang off, went inside and trudged up to her room. She went straight to the bathroom and ran cold water, cooled a cloth and used it on the back of her neck, throat, her forehead.
A quick knock on the door, and Joe stepped in.
Chapter 14
“Hey, Joe.”
“Hey, Nova.”
Over six months had passed since she’d seen or talked to him, but the electricity that arced between them zapped her as strongly as ever. She couldn’t move, wouldn’t have been able to drag her gaze from his face if she’d wanted to. “Place is bloody hot as hell, isn’t it?” she managed to get out.
“I was just home in Texas. Texas doesn’t hold a candle to this jungle paradise for heat.” He paused. She waited. “It’s the humidity that does it, right?” He broke eye contact first and looked around the room. “Looks really good.”
Did he mean the room, or did he mean her? The room was spectacularly less than special. She said what she thought. “You look good.”
His gaze locked onto hers again, and to her surprise he barged across the room and pulled her into his arms. With one hand he cradled her head as he kissed her. The familiar, sweet touch of his lips cancelled any resistance. She held back a little—she was the one who had sent him away—but only a little. She savored that special something she’d craved for months without fully knowing it.
Her pulse raced, her heart seemed to expand in her chest and she felt her skin flushing even hotter. He let her go, stepped away and looked around again. “Don’t attach anything to that,” he said. “I just needed to get it out of my system.”
“Sure. Don’t worry. I won’t.”
He strode to the French doors that opened onto the balcony and scanned the plaza across the street: lawn, gazebo, cafés, stores, traffic.
She said, “I didn’t know what to say when Smith said they were teaming us again. I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“I go where they send me.”
Well now, that wasn’t strictly true. Joe hadn’t been working for the Company all that long. Maybe two years. He had no habitual pattern of doing anything they asked, but he could have found a way out if he’d wanted to badly enough. But he’d come. In spite of her rejection, he’d come.
She said, “I’m glad it’s you and not someone else. We work well together.”
He shrugged and turned back to face her. “Yep. That we do. We fit super well together.”
She saw them in bed, remembered his passion, felt again the taste of his kisses, his skilled touching of her every pleasure point. Just being in the same room with Joe made her feel like she was glowing, but she intended to keep herself from falling into the silken clutches of love—somehow. She simply wasn’t going to go through the hell of saying no to him again.
“Look,” he said as he took the room’s only comfortable chair. “We keep everything business. We do what we can to find and save ten people who deserve saving. I have no problem with that.”
“Okay.” She sat on the edge of the bed, surprised by disappointment. Maybe she was reading him wrong. Maybe Joe was cured of Nova Blair. I guess I’d deserve that.
He leaned forward, both arms on his knees. “So tell me, what do you have so far?”
“Your action in the bar, it was risky. You shouldn’t have—” She wasn’t going to criticize more than that.
He nodded. “I know. Dumb. Pure reflex. No thought.”
“You can be very convincing.”
“But sometimes not convincing enough.”
There it was again. She was certain he wasn’t talking about convincing the creeps in the bar to lay off and get out; he was talking about not being able to convince her to say yes to marriage. How could she keep this operation on track if he kept veering off into their private life?
He grinned. “But not to worry. I remember what you said. You can’t imagine being Mrs. Anyone. You’re comfortable with your life just like it is. You don’t want to mess it up with lots of compromises.” With a long pause, he made a show of scanning the room. “And I have to agree. This is about as comfortable as it gets.”
She laughed as he continued to grin, amusement dancing in his eyes. She didn’t deny herself and him another confession. “I’ve missed your desert-dry sense of humor.”
“Good,” he said. “So I repeat my question. What do you have so far?”
“The boat captain is lying. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in on it. No. I take that back. That’s too strong; his responses when I talked to him didn’t suggest guilt. He wasn’t part of the planning, but he does know more than he’s telling. Fear. Money. Something has his mouth glued shut.”
“I’ve been here a little over twenty-four hours.” Joe leaned back in the chair, propped one ankle on his knee, and folded his hands behind his head. Her eyes went to his crotch. Aware of the blunder, and knowing for certain he would have watched the trajectory of her gaze, she felt herself warming and snapped her eyes to his chest.
No help there. Instead of diverting her thoughts from throwing herself into his lap, she was thinking how very much she would like to unbutton the light blue linen shirt and run her hands over his tan skin and sculpted chest muscles. She’d let her fingers wander down his abdomen…and as far as they might want to go. As far as he’d let her go.
He grinned and, quite evidently savoring her embarrassment, did not change his body’s position so much as a millimeter. “Even though it sprawls for miles in all directions along the river, Manaus is a tight world. It’s like a small town—the authorities pretty much know everything going on. There just aren’t a lot of ways kidnappers could hide ten Anglo hostages for long. I think they must have taken them out of here pronto. I’d say out by air.”
“That means the airport. I suggest we go there next.”
“Fine.” He pulled his cell phone from a breast pocket. “Give me your secure numbers.”
They exchanged numbers so that they could reach other directly or by text messaging on secure lines. She stood. He uncrossed his legs and also rose.
Her stomach growled. Joe chuckled. “Want to eat around here or at the airport?”
“There are a couple of small cafés on the plaza. Why not here? I’ll take the one on the south side. You get something at the one directly across from the hotel.”
She found that the Café Hidalgo had a diverse menu posted outside its front door. A man smelling of a spicy cologne stopped beside her, apparently to study the menu. “You look for information about the kidnapped Americans, no?” he said in English. “Please keep looking at the menu.”
“Yes.”
“I am brother of the boat captain. I have information but I don’t want anyone see me give it to you. You will pay?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“That depends on what you have to say.”
“You pay in American dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Meet me at third fish stand inside fish market. Fifteen minutes. You just look like you think to buy some fish.”
He turned and sauntered off toward the market.
Nova immediately text-messaged Joe. “Plan change. Have contact. Fish market. Inside entrance. Walking.”
Joe would most likely follow her in his rented Toyota.
Chapter 15
The central market of Manaus stretched along the Rio Negro’s north shore and could rightly boast about the beauty of the French imported wrought-iron grillwork
and stained glass window that arched over its entrance. Even in the heyday of shipping rubber, the docks to the right and left of the market had probably never been busier than now: tour boats, fishing vessels, tankers bringing in supplies and carrying out the exports that kept the town thriving even in this middle of nowhere. Luxury seagoing cruise ships berthed here carried thousands of passengers from Manaus a thousand miles down the Amazon to the Atlantic; from the street, Nova looked up at the white and blue colors of the Amsterdam Queen towering over the single-story shops lining the bustling waterfront.
She had not noticed Joe following her although she checked once. She stepped inside, and found herself in the hurly-burly of the fish gallery. The smell of the sea pounced on her, but fresh and clean; no reek of death in spite of all the fishy corpses. Counters bearing a dazzling variety of colorful or silvery forms laid neatly out on ice stretched down both sides of the broad, rectangular building. Behind each counter stood a man or two cutting up and laying out the morning’s catch.
Her contact, presumably Angelo Santiago, had said third counter on the left. He wasn’t there. She sauntered toward the opposite end of the long hall, wanting to check for a rear exit. Halfway down, a wide entry to the left opened into another, even larger gallery, this one offering vegetables. Reassured of a second way out should one be needed, she strolled back. The single man behind the counter indicated by Santiago smiled at her. Before he could say anything, her contact materialized from the crowd. He said, “Come,” and moved far enough away that the owner couldn’t listen in. She stood beside him. He spoke quickly and softly. “I have information about the men who took the Americans. You said you pay.”
“Who are you?”
