But he wasn’t going to cower or show any weakness to the man who had once delighted in torturing him just for fun. The worst had been done to him and he had survived. He could do it again if he had to.
Apparently, however, one thing had changed from when he and Acosta had first met. And that was that Quinn was no longer a stranger in this country. He was a successful businessman with highly placed friends of his own, friends who could make trouble for Acosta if Quinn disappeared.
So Acosta had no choice but to back down. At least for now.
Quinn watched with no small satisfaction as the older man visibly swallowed his anger.
“There’s no need for this unpleasantness. Simply tell me where my workers are hiding and I will take them and be off.”
His “workers.” Quinn clamped his teeth together to stop himself from sneering. The twenty-plus men, women, and children hiding in his hotel were not workers, but prisoners stolen from their homes and families whenever Acosta had a need for cheap labor. There was no way Quinn would give them up.
“You know that I’d tell you if I could, but I have no idea where your slaves might have run off to.”
Acosta glared back at him with soulless gray eyes that reminded Quinn of a shark. “Fine, then. We’ll do it your way. My men arrive here this evening. We will all require rooms. While I’m waiting, I’ll search the premises myself.”
“I’d be delighted to give you the grand tour,” Quinn offered smoothly, stepping out from behind the desk. He had to pause for a moment to dislodge Olivia’s fist from the back of his shirt, where she was clutching him with desperation. He wished he could turn and tell her that everything was going to be all right, but he - couldn’t lie to her.
There was a very real possibility that Acosta would discover the fugitives . . . and punish anyone he believed was responsible for them being here.
“Where would you like to begin? The spa, perhaps? Many escaped slaves enjoy hot rock massages after traveling through the jungle for days.”
Poke. Poke.
The vein was back.
“I’m pleased that you can find some humor in the situation in which you find yourself,” Acosta said, once again reining in his annoyance. “I recall a time when you didn’t find your life so comedic. As a matter of fact, I seem to remember you as a broken man, begging for the pain to stop. I believe I even saw you crying a time or two.” He paused for a moment, and Quinn had to force himself not to reach out and grab Acosta by the throat and squeeze until no more words would ever come out of the bastard’s mouth.
“It’s nice that you have such a different outlook on things these days.” Acosta laughed lightly.
Quinn flexed his fingers and took a deep, calming breath. “Yes, well, I was a lot younger in those days. I’m not the boy I was back then.”
“I’m happy to hear it.”
Quinn doubted that very much. A decade ago, he had been nothing more to Acosta than a nuisance.
Now, he was a formidable opponent.
One who would not succumb quite so easily to Acosta’s machinations.
“I believe I’d like to start in the kitchen. To use your logic, I would imagine that my escaped workers”—Acosta raised his eyebrows at that—“would enjoy a hot meal after traveling through the jungle for days.”
Quinn ignored Olivia’s sharp hiss from behind him. Of course Acosta would want to be shown the kitchen first. Because that’s where the fugitives were.
Fuck.
All he could do was hope that Olivia would manage to get through to the kitchen and warn them before he and Acosta arrived. That is, if they picked up the phone during the busy lunch hour.
Mentally slapping his forehead with his palm, Quinn turned to Acosta and saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eyes. Probably a bird or a dragonfly or something.
“Follow me,” he said, shaking his head to clear it of everything but the ordeal ahead. “You’ll soon see that I have nothing to hide.”
CHAPTER THREE
Quinn Hayes was hiding something.
Tasha didn’t know what it was exactly, but she intended to find out. And the first place she planned to look was in the hotel’s kitchen.
She had seen the way the front desk clerk had tensed when the dark scary guy she’d called Mr. Acosta had mentioned starting his tour in the kitchen. She’d bet a million bucks that the missing - people Acosta was searching for were there.
And when he found them, then what?
Tasha had done enough research on Costa Playa before coming down here to know what a slime-ball Jorge Acosta was. While Quinn Hayes’s reputation wasn’t exactly sterling, Acosta’s was so covered with rust that it would be hard to tell if anything solid still remained. If the guy in the lobby was indeed the man she’d read about, he had his hands in everything from drug trafficking to prostitution and murder.
She hurried down the hall, the rubber soles of her hiking boots squeaking slightly on the worn tile floor. Quinn might be involved in the white slave trade, might have played a key role in the Martins’ disappearance five years back, but she’d take her chances with him over this Acosta jerk any day.
She shivered as she rounded the corner and ducked under a covered walkway. At the end of the walkway, she spied a chalkboard like the kind a restaurant might use to write in the daily specials. She hoped she was right. If not, if she’d headed in the wrong direction, then she’d never find the kitchen before Quinn and Acosta did.
Tasha dashed down the hall and flung open the double doors at the end. The sound of happy diners reached her ears: the clinking of silverware against plates, the soft tinkling of glasses, the din of relaxed conversation, and the slightly censorious tone of the maître d’ as he sniffed at her sudden appearance in the doorway and said, “Good afternoon, madam. Do you have a reservation?”
Ignoring him, Tasha scanned the room, looking for the entrance to the kitchen. She found it just as a waiter emerged, carrying a heavy-looking tray of steaming food.
Tasha’s stomach grumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t had anything to eat since finishing off a pack of salted peanuts this morning on the plane. But now was not the time to be thinking of her appetite.
There was trouble brewing here in paradise.
She sprinted toward the kitchen.
“Madam, where are you going?” the maître d’ called from behind her, but Tasha didn’t stop. She hit the swinging door at a full run. She’d expected it to be heavy and windmilled her arms in the air to keep from falling face-first onto the floor when it whooshed open with barely a tap.
As she skidded to a stop on the floor, all sounds of a bustling, busy kitchen during its noontime rush ceased. Tasha looked up to find that there were at least four dozen pairs of eyes locked on her in silence.
The kitchen was crowded with a mix of white-coated cooks, black-uniformed waiters, and an odd assortment of drably dressed people sitting on overturned buckets and boxes that were strewn haphazardly about the room.
These, Tasha guessed, were the missing “workers” Acosta was hunting.
“Do you know a man named Acosta?” she asked, stepping farther into the room.
One of the men sitting near the sizzling grill stood, his skin turning a sickly shade of white beneath his tan. “Acosta? Has he followed us here?”
“Yes. He’s on his way down here with Mr. Hayes right now,” Tasha answered.
“He can’t find us. He’ll kill us all.” Another man leaped up from an overturned bucket and looked frantically around the kitchen, as if searching for a place to hide.
Tasha did the same, but other than the obvious walk-in refrigerator, she didn’t see a place where all these people would fit.
“Is there a back entrance to the kitchen?” she asked one of the waiters, who nodded and pointed to a clearly marked exit.
“It’s there,” the man said, “but what if Acosta thinks of this also and comes in the back way?”
Good point.
Come
on, think, she urged herself, then froze when a red telephone hanging near the grill started to ring.
On the second ring, one of the chefs reached out and picked up the receiver.
“Hello, room service,” he answered.
Tasha’s eyes widened. Yes, room service! That was it!
“Where are your room service carts?” she asked, whirling around, trying to spot them.
“Right here.” A dark-haired woman jumped up off a box and grabbed the silver handle of a two-tiered cart.
Tasha sprang into action. “We need tablecloths to cover the carts. And give me any extra uniforms you have lying around,” she ordered.
One of the chefs whipped off his own white coat and handed it to a young girl with the largest, darkest eyes Tasha had ever seen.
“Good. Hurry now. Let’s try to fit two people on each cart. Give the uniforms to the ones who won’t fit. You can play the part of the wait staff. We’ll go out through the dining room. I passed a ballroom on the way here. We can say we’re setting the room up for lunch.” She grabbed a plastic bin full of silverware and grunted as she tried to lift it up onto one of the room service carts.
Damn, that was heavy.
The first man who had stood up when Tasha entered the kitchen nudged her out of the way and lifted the silverware onto the cart. He had pulled a white coat that was two sizes too small on over his dusty brown shirt and didn’t look anything like a cook, but it would have to do.
Tasha yanked a white jacket over her head and smoothed it down over her hips. It came to the bottom of her khaki shorts, making it look as if she were wearing the jacket and nothing else.
“Like room service at the Playboy mansion,” she muttered under her breath.
“Come. We must go,” the man—who she assumed must be the leader of the refugees—said, grabbing a cart and pushing it ahead of him toward the door leading out into the restaurant.
Tasha nodded. She gripped the chilly metal handle of a cart and pushed, but the cart barely moved. With a mighty shove, she finally got the wheels to turn and smiled grimly at the two faces peering out at her from a gap in the tablecloth that had been draped over the cart. From the looks of them, these two girls weren’t even in their teens. She could only imagine the life they had escaped . . . or what Quinn Hayes had planned for them now.
She had a hard time believing that the man who had put himself in harm’s way to save her less than an hour ago was trafficking in human misery. And, yet, here was the proof, right before her eyes.
Tasha determinedly put all her weight behind pushing the cart over the threshold between the kitchen and the restaurant. She didn’t have time to think about Quinn right now. Right now, she had to help save these poor people from Acosta.
Later, she’d ferret out the truth.
“Hurry,” she urged as the man in front of her slowed to a stop.
He straightened his shoulders and shot Tasha a telling look before focusing his gaze on the main entrance to the restaurant, where two men were standing.
Tasha peeked out from around the man’s back and saw Quinn and Acosta watching them from near the maître d’s station. Quinn’s eyes widened for a second when he saw her, but when he turned back to Acosta, his expression was blank.
“Follow me,” Tasha whispered as she pushed her cart toward the front door. Fear clutched her chest, making it difficult to breathe, but she forced herself to take slow, deep breaths so she - wouldn’t pass out.
Acosta watched her with flat gray eyes as she approached. When she had no choice but to either stop the cart or run over the man’s toes, she tugged on the handle to make the cart stop.
You can do this, she assured herself silently, then pasted a phony smile on her face. “Excuse me. We’ve got to get set up for a banquet,” she said.
Acosta’s eyes narrowed and, for a long, frightening moment, Tasha was afraid he was not going to let her pass. The seconds ticked by and she felt a bead of sweat slide down her spine, tickling her skin as it glided downward and dripped into her shorts.
Lovely.
Finally, Acosta stepped aside.
And, of course, made no move to hold the door for her.
Quinn, however, did. He pulled open the door and stepped back, gesturing for her to proceed.
Tasha gritted her teeth and tried to make it seem as if she did this sort of thing every day, when the truth was, the heaviest thing she ever pushed was a pencil.
“Thanks,” she grunted as she wheeled the cart out past Quinn.
He nodded in response, but the look he shot her from beneath his thick, golden brown eyelashes was loaded with meaning.
Too bad Tasha had no idea how to interpret it.
She felt another bead of sweat drip into her shorts and had to resist the urge to squirm. She knew Quinn and Acosta were both watching her and no way was she going to scratch her butt with them staring at her. Instead, she quickened her pace, the cart now rolling easily over the stone walkway. Seven additional carts trailed out behind her, the sound of creaking and rattling silverware and dishes intruding on the quiet of the jungle surrounding them.
Tasha stopped halfway down the hall and turned right into a doorway with the word “Toucan” printed on a placard on the wall outside. She didn’t know why hotels didn’t just number their conference rooms instead of trying to get cutesy with the names, but that really didn’t matter now. What mattered was getting these - people to safety.
Not an easy task, Tasha realized, when she looked up to find that Acosta had followed them down the hall.
Damn. What now?
Tasha forced herself to remain calm as she pushed her cart over to a large circular table in the center of the room. Without waiting for it to come to a complete stop, she grabbed a tablecloth from the top of her cart and tossed it over the table. The tablecloth was nearly long enough to reach the floor, and Tasha tugged on it so that the front of the table was hidden from view. As least, it was hidden from where Acosta was standing, leaning against the door-jamb with his arms folded over his chest.
Tasha sent a wobbly smile to the leader of the fugitives. “Let’s get all these tables set up and the carts emptied,” she said brightly, hoping he’d get the message.
The man nodded curtly, then said something in rapid Spanish to the rest of the refugees.
Turning her attention back to her own cart, Tasha made a big show out of fishing for matching silverware with one hand while reaching underneath with the other to signal that her human cargo should take this opportunity to scoot under the table.
She held back a grimace when the heel of one girl’s hand landed on her foot as she tried to extricate herself from the cart, then dropped a handful of silverware back into the bin to cover a loud thunk as the other girl’s head banged against the top of the cart.
Tasha winced. That had to hurt.
She scattered the silverware on the surface of the table and then, after testing the weight of the cart with her foot and satisfying herself that the bottom was empty, she rolled the cart to another table to help cover the noise of yet another extraction.
She refused to look over at Quinn, who stood next to Acosta and silently watched the activity.
He had to know what they were doing.
Tasha swiped an arm across her face. She didn’t know if it was the humidity or her nerves that were making her sweat like a glass of iced tea left out in the sun, but she was fricking melting here. When this was all over, she wanted nothing more than a long, cool shower and an intimate moment with a big glass of wine.
“Enough!” Acosta shouted suddenly.
Startled, Tasha dropped a knife, which clattered to the floor.
Doing her best not to look as terrified as she felt, she warily watched as Acosta stalked toward her. Quinn uncoiled himself from where he’d been leaning against the wall, his jaw tightening in anticipation of what might happen next. Tasha saw his right hand move slowly to his side, as if reaching for a weapon and, for a moment, she closed her
eyes and prayed that her sister’s wedding planner was also a crack shot.
She opened her eyes and drew in a calming breath as Acosta stopped in front of her.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
Acosta’s nostrils flared as he inhaled and Tasha found herself thinking that this guy should take up yoga.
“Yes, you people are up to something. I can feel it,” he answered.
Tasha blinked several times. “I don’t know what you mean. We’re just setting up for a banquet this evening. That’s all.”
“You’re lying to me. I can tell,” Acosta hissed, grabbing her upper arm and squeezing until Tasha winced.
“Hey, that hurts.”
“Tell me what’s going on here or I’ll show you what real pain is.”
Tasha batted his hand, but he still didn’t let go. She looked up to find that Quinn had drawn a gun and was aiming it at Acosta’s head. After meeting Quinn’s gaze, she shivered. She may not be an expert at reading people’s expressions, but the dead calm in Quinn’s eyes was impossible to miss.
Funny. She’d never met a dangerous wedding planner before.
Tasha winced as Acosta strengthened his grip, then shook her head almost imperceptibly as she felt rather than saw Quinn’s finger tighten on the trigger. Acosta ran in some dangerous circles, and if Quinn killed him, she was certain that retribution would be vicious and swift.
She didn’t quite know why that bothered her, but it did. She - wasn’t going to let this man get himself killed over her.
So she shook her head again and stopped struggling to get herself out of Acosta’s grasp.
“Okay, okay. Let go and I’ll tell you what’s going on,” she said, ignoring the gasps from the people behind her.
Acosta loosened his grip but didn’t let her go. Tasha figured that was as good as she was going to get.
Quinn’s eyes narrowed as he slowly lowered his gun.
Catch of the Day Page 19
