Shock Therapy, page 17
I tore the last of his control right off when I taunted, “Promises.
THIRTEEN
“THIS PROMISES TO BE a hell of a mess, people.”
And no, this wasn’t a fate-placating statement. It was the truth. And it was as good an opening as any to get everyone’s attention over the drone of the plane’s engines. With our alternating sleeping hours during the crisis, it was the first time since we’d taken off that I had them all awake.
Ayesha, Lucia, Matt and Suz had met us in Buenos Aires Airport. We’d switched to a smaller jet, which had the benefits of being capable of landing on and taking off from the tiny made-for-amateur-aviation-sports runway of our destination, as well as doubling as an aeromedical transport in case we needed its facilities. I’d inspected those when we’d come on board. They topped the best I’d ever seen. But what else was new?
“I know we agreed on the basics a couple of days back, but while Damian was getting us specifics he regretfully came up with updates. Ex vice-president Federico Almeyda has left his seaside estate in Mar del Plata two days ago and has gone to one of his retreats at the very south tip of Argentina.”
“And you expect the change in location to impact our plans?” That was Ayesha, yawning and stretching. “What about our roles? Did those change, too?”
“Actually, Damian’s intel changed everything. Contrary to Almeyda’s resort retreat, this retreat is miles away from any sign of life, so the chance of creating a diversion like during Worthington’s hit to get inside is nil.”
Lucia looked sideways at Rafael who was sitting next to her. “Since this is your homeland Rafael, any special homegrown insights you can provide here?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t lived here in almost two decades, so I’m no longer sure I can call Argentina home, or if I can offer any relevant insights. But I did propose a plan and made some arrangements and background checks. It’s up to Cali now to work it through.”
I met Damian’s eyes. He thought Rafael was taking every opportunity to ingratiate himself to me. His eyes told me something else. That his thoughts now ran towards helping Rafael out the nearest emergency exit, without a parachute.
My lips twisted. “Actually Rafael did secure an abandoned ski station near El Chaltén—a small town at the foothills of Monte FitzRoy about twenty miles from our target—where we’ll set up a command post from which to scout the area, try to figure out routes of approach and methods of infiltration. He also proposed striking a deal with the local hired help provider, so we’d enter the estate unnoticed among the dozens needed in the upkeep of such a huge place.”
Lucia gave him an approving shove. “Great idea, amigo.”
I had to point out the not so great part of it. “Problem is, the provider has a strict rule of employing only people he has a total hold over. This way he ensures perfect security and the best in domestic slavery for his big-scum clientele.”
“There’s only one way to deal with people like him. We give him a taste of his medicine.”
That was Matt. Speaking for the first time since he’d boarded the plane. It was a relief to find out he was still capable of anything besides brooding and smoldering. Being in his vicinity right now was giving me psychic bruises. Even worse was being caught in the turbulence between him and Suz. Man. Those two’s stormy vibes could crash the jet.
I had a chat with Suz coming up, with a simple advise attached. Charge him. I could tell he was self-consuming with wanting her, but the idiot man was that much of a faithful martyr he was never making a first move in this lifetime. But I bet one good punch followed by jumping his bones would set him free from his self-enforced emotional exile.
I saw Damian’s eyes following my thoughts from Matt to Suz. His lips twisted on wry acknowledgement. Yeah. Another should-have-been-avoided-at-all-costs passion.
“Down to the bone with the only logical solution as usual, Matt.” Damian exchanged a glance with him, rife with subliminal male understanding. “And I’ve got just the type of dirt on that man that will make him our willing slave for the rest of his life. We’re in, easy.”
And he’d left me feeding my stomach to itself in worry when he had this info all the time?
Was he still trying to show me I didn’t need Rafael around? Or that his powers were undiminished? Or was he just maintaining his element of surprise at all costs, at every turn? Or was it something else I would never fathom?
Not important now. Get on with the matter at hand.
I looked anywhere but at him as I said, “OK, since entrance has been miraculously solved, up to step two. We’ll need all the Spanish speakers on the inside, so Lucia, Damian, José and Rafael are drafted. Naturally, I will go in, too. Matt, Suz, Ayesha, Shad and Pierro are the outside team, the cavalry if we need it. As soon as we land, Damian gets on the provider’s case, we set up base, work up disguises, supplies and props.”
Everyone nodded, started murmuring among each other, then Damian’s team rose, started distributing our meal. I walked by Damian. I wasn’t sitting next to him. My blood aggravation level was too high at the moment.
Ayesha gave me a pointed look as I threw myself next to her. “Just like that? No asking if it was OK to sit down, or if I’d rather have someone else next to me?”
What the hell was this about now? I squinted at her, gauging her mood, her meaning. Suddenly a recollection expanded in my mind, like a train hurtling towards me in the dark.
Before Colombia she’d told me she was interested in a younger man. I’d been too aggravated then to even allow myself to wonder who. Yeah, aggravation was popular theme with me. But with this comment… Did this mean that man was among our current company? Who could it be?
Curiosity spurted first, buzzed in my blood. Then dread rose, that he might not reciprocate her interest. Or was it worse if he did? I had no idea…
I couldn’t bear it. “Ayesha, spill!”
“Is this an order, boss?”
Images of shaking the answer out of her mushroomed in my head. I growled at the force of the compulsion. “I’m in bad shape Ayesh. You’re an inch from getting your smart ass kicked.”
She shrugged. There was no intimidating that woman.
Just when I thought she’d let me develop a frustration-induced coronary, she put me out of my misery. “It’s Shad.”
Wha…? Huh? Bu…! Shad? I never…! Not even a clue…
So what’s new? According to Damian I was vibe-handicapped. I only sensed Matt’s and Suz’s because their all-out angst and torment was enough to rouse the dead. But—Shad? When? How?
“The man is fourteen years my junior but he’s so fine, ain’t he?” She poured unbridled lust over him from head to ass as he bent to place a tray in front of his leader.
I couldn’t argue with that. He might not be Damian-level— and who in history was—but he was, as she put it, fine. Just those bodies on Damian’s team would be enough. Shad was also subtle, in looks, in humor, in effect. Yeah, I could see now how he’d appeal to the demanding depth and darkness in her.
“I took one look at those green-meadow eyes, that burnt- ginger hair, and God—those freckles—and I wanted to rip him outta his clothes. But after his injury in Russia, when we almost lost him, when he was almost paralyzed from the neck down and I was his main caretaker, it took a deeper turn. Then he started talking about Fatima as if she existed… God, Cali—no one’s ever done this for me. Not even you.”
Spikes grew in my throat, pushed outward. God. Fatima. The daughter she’d lost to an organ-harvesting mafia. The one she still talked about as if she was alive and safe and growing under her loving and proud eyes. We all freaked when she did that, even after she’d made it clear she wasn’t delusional, was just exercising something that defused her eternal anguish. But Shad had understood, hadn’t judged or feared. Had given her what she needed. He’d indulged her, shared with her. No wonder she was looking at him as if she’d gobble him up.
“I could just gobble him up, body and soul.”
Hey, I’d just thought that! Fe-reaky. Or maybe not. She always read my mind anyway. But since the mental channel seemed to be one-way, I had to ask. “What’s stopping you?”
“Uh—you have been around the last eight months, haven’t you? First he was out of action, then I was, then he was AWOL then we reunited with his team to divert another catastrophe. It’s almost enough to make me regret joining up with you, all this detrimental influence on my love-life.”
“What love-life? The one you’ve been avoiding having for the past two decades? If I can have one, you have no excuse!”
“You’re talking about the love-life you have only because you somehow landed the planet’s most tolerant man? The same love-life you’re still trying your damnedest to sabotage?” She looked over at Damian, exchanged an I-know-what-you’re-putting-up-with look with him. The two creeps were ganging up on me!
I erupted to my feet. “Say—why don’t I leave you to your manhunting and Calista-bashing efforts?”
She just raised both finely arched eyebrows at me, slid another ‘yeah—that’ look towards Damian. Argh!
I plodded towards the last unoccupied row of seats. If they both thought me so aggravating, I’d spare them my company.
I thought I slept. And ate. And slept again. And I dreamt, dreams warped and choking on Damian receding until he vanished and people dying beneath my fumbling hands. Then heat erupted throughout my system, radiating from a point on my neck. The epicenter of burning was lips. His. And not in the dream.
“I had to wake you up to see this.” His purr opened my eyes, adjusted my focus on the scene right in front of them. My heart fired a hole through my ribs.
We were on a collision course with a mountain!
I recoiled, found myself driven back into him. “You had to wake me up to witness our crash rather than sleep through it?”
He just sowed a chuckle on my neck.
It did look like José and Pierro were squabbling again and relinquishing the controls. The dramatic, ice-capped summits were heart-snatchingly close—but if Damian wasn’t alarmed…
“That’s Cerro Torre mountain.” His finger brushed my cheek on its way to pointing it out. “Its neighbor over there is Monte FitzRoy, where we’ll land. Did you know they’re part of the Fueguinos Andes that extend like a huge wall forming a natural border with Chile?”
I braced against his effect. I could stand my ground for two minutes, couldn’t I? “I’m a doctor, I flunked geography.” I gritted my teeth as his chuckle resonated dark richness in my bones. “And how can you tell which mountains we’re above? They all look the same.”
“You mean you didn’t see the god-sprayed graffiti all over them? Still struggling with your Spanish, amada?”
“There are parachutes on this plane, right?”
“Who’ll name mountains for you if you push me out?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll enjoy the scenery without labels.”
“You probably would.” His nod was all complacency. “Patagonia is how Earth used to be millions of years ago, rolling from the awe-inspiring Andes to the plateau Steppe lands to the Atlantic at its most daunting in the east, and in between the lakes, the glaciers, the rivers, the valleys are no less humbling. Besides Colombia, where I’d love to take you back exploring its real riches and beauty, Patagonia would be my second choice for an adventure worthy of you.”
Had I said before, the man could talk?
I gave up, relaxed against him, let him encompass me, let the sight of some of the world’s most spectacular mountains permeate me with wonder and insignificance.
Just being near them adjusted my perspective, put all the important things front and center, made all the stuff that didn’t matter but kept consuming my mood and focus fade away.
In hours we might die. What was I doing wasting time nursing grievances and aggravations?
I turned in his arms, my hands bunching in thick silk and steel flesh, dragging his still-unfamiliar bearded face down to mine for a fierce nuzzle. I sank in his heat and eagerness, took his lips in mine. “You make a good guide. You may live.”
FOURTEEN
“WHERE DO YOU LIVE?”
I stared at the angry woman with the bullfrog eyes.
She was the one cracking the whip over the heads of the domestic help in the estate and I thought she was asking where I lived. My Spanish was quaky, and her accent sounded nothing like Damian’s flowing drawl or Lucia’s precise one.
“I said, where do you live? As in where do you come from? Are you deaf? Just where in hell do they find such scum! And they expect me to get anything done with such ‘help’?”
And that was loosely translated. I recognized some terminally obscene words among her tirade. Even if I hadn’t, the spattering saliva and the popping veins would have said it all
This was going all wrong. I wasn’t supposed to talk. Lucia was supposed to do the talking. But on entering the endless kitchen we’d been forced to separate. We couldn’t have insisted on being together without raising suspicions. And this woman had just picked me out of the dozen new day workers to question.
It had to be my complexion. Even through full-body make-up and a black wig, I was still a couple of shades lighter than anyone else. I’d strived for a Hispanic look, hoped I’d be insignificant enough not to be examined closely. Guess I’d hoped too much. This woman was still waiting for an answer.
But the moment I opened my mouth, she’d know I wasn’t Argentinean. And how would I explain being a foreigner? What would one be doing here at the end of the world, doing menial work for just-above-slavery level wages?
A way out of this flashed in my mind. Before I thought any further, I did it. I opened my mouth—and let out a long wail.
Next moment, I almost burst out laughing. God, the look on the woman’s face—like a frog that had jumped into boiling water.
Before I succumbed to giggles, I diverted the hypercharge to another emotional center, started bawling for good measure.
I projected the outcomes of my gamble. The at-bests ended in me being thrown out, when I’d hope Lucia could manage our part of the plan on her own. The at-worsts ended in exposure.
Then to prove that I couldn’t project worth spit, two things I hadn’t factored in at all happened.
The woman tried to shut me up any way she could to the point of starting to soothe me and Lucia came running, flooding the woman in apologetic Spanish. I made out the random words of doesn’t talk, retarded, works like a donkey.
In two seconds flat, I was shoved at Lucia to handle. They were having a banquet in three days’ time. Yeah, Alemyda did have a legitimate reason for turning down Desideria’s invitation. Anyway, they couldn’t afford to let any of the hired hands go in what promised to be a few days of pandemonium.
After two hours of working in the kitchen like the aforementioned donkey, our wrath-of-the-gods forewoman hurried out in answer to summons from her masters.
“Think she’ll be gone long?” Lucia hissed.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”
We slipped out of the kitchen without any of the few dozen other occupants paying us the least notice.
The moment we were out, I tore off my soiled coveralls, the floorplans of this section of the house flashing in my mind.
After Damian’s brutal extortion, the provider hadn’t only agreed to let us into the house, he’d had another hired hand slip us our equipment in a bale of hay. Another one was to transport them from the stables into the house and hide them in a pre-designated spot. It was supposed to be behind the curtains that should be… Here! Yes.
I grabbed my bag, let out the breath I’d been squashing. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything without my stuff. At least I would have had to improvise. I’d rather follow my plan.
My plan was built on Almeyda’s severe asthma. And on the fact that he had his physicians in residence.
It was three pm and time for their lunch. They wouldn’t be in their quarters. Time for me to be there.
To get there I needed a distraction.
Damian, José and Rafael had been hired as muscle rearranging the furniture for the banquet. It gave them context to move within the house. I buzzed Damian. “I’m at the spot. Need a clear route to the doctors’ rooms. Do your stuff.”
In seconds I heard raised voices and running feet. The moment the guards who strolled the doctors’ annex emerged from the corridor and headed towards the commotion I tugged Lucia behind me and we ran up the stairs to the doctors’ quarters.
Almeyda’s quarters were in a connected tower that only one servant and the doctors were allowed into. He had guards guarding his guards. But I wasn’t interested in reaching him like I had Worthington. It was enough to get to his doctors. Or rather, to his doctors’ supplies.
The guy actually kept two doctors, like he kept dogs. And not any doctors, specialists. It boggled the mind.
Four times a day, they went to him, checked him up, took whatever samples for new tests and followed up their measures. They were going to him for the third time today in an hour. His asthma was so severe it wasn’t held in check with the usual metered-dose inhalers, so they attacked it on all fronts with oral medications and nebulizer sessions where the breathing machine changed asthma medications from liquid to mist, so it could be more easily inhaled into his lungs.
If all worked OK, they’d go to him today with a deserved gift, from me.
Both rooms were locked. Of course. They wouldn’t just leave their stuff unattended with the swarm of hired hands in the house today. Or any other day for that matter. Guards were never foolproof. As we kept proving. Thankfully.
Lucia worked the lock of the first room. We ran in, locked it behind us. I knew Damian would figure out a way to keep the guards involved for a long as possible. But I had to assume we didn’t have long. It had better be enough.
I scanned the place. A bedroom with an en suite bathroom, a sitting room and another smaller room lines with locked glass cabinets that looked like a full pharmacy. Figured. Almeyda would be ready for any contingency where his health was concerned with nothing but the best in drugs, the most tested and safest, while he flooded the world with poisons. What had Matt said? Time to give him a taste of his own medicine.
