“It’s me, Dad. I need to know if you’ve been contacted by Michael’s kidnappers.”
“Harper. Where are you? Whose number is this?”
“It’s a satellite phone, Dad. I’m in Colombia. We think Colombian rebels are holding Michael and the girl who was with him, Pia Santana. We think they’re planning to demand some kind of ransom. Are you saying they haven’t called?”
Silence fell on the other end of the phone.
“Dad? Have you been contacted by the men who have Michael? Have they demanded money for his release?”
“I’m sorry, Harper. I haven’t heard from anyone.”
Fresh worry filtered through her, and Harper’s throat tightened. “They’re going to call, I know it. Sooner or later. Please, Dad, when they contact you, tell them you’ll pay whatever they ask.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, girl. Of course I’ll pay. Michael’s my son. If they call, I’ll pay whatever they want.”
She felt a rush of relief. He was going to pay. Michael and Pia would be released. “This number will show up on your phone. Call me the minute you hear from them. Promise me, Dad.”
“You need to come home, Harper. Colombia can be a very dangerous place. Anything could happen. Whatever trouble Michael has gotten himself into, it’s his problem not yours. Now, get yourself on the next plane out of there and back to the States, where you belong.”
Harper swallowed. “I have to go, Dad. Please call me if you hear anything.” She disconnected the call, blinked back tears as she returned the phone to Chase.
“No call yet?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“We’ll go in tomorrow,” he said. “Find out where they’re holding your brother and the girl, try to negotiate their release.”
Hope rose inside her. “You think we can?”
It was Kil who answered. “If the rebels won’t release them, we’ll find another way to get them out.”
She looked into Killian Dawson’s hard, handsome features and felt the first softening toward him. “Thank you” was all she said.
Knox Winston tossed his cell phone onto the massive mahogany desk in his wood-paneled study and swore a foul oath.
“I take it that was your daughter.” Simon Graves, ten years younger than Knox’s sixty years, an inch taller and twenty pounds lighter, lounged in a chair across from him. He was the closest thing Knox had to a friend.
A very loose term, since Simon wouldn’t be there if Knox weren’t paying him an obscene amount of money for the job he did.
But Knox trusted Simon. And he needed him.
“I couldn’t very well tell her the goddamned rebels are being paid to keep him. That has to be what’s going on. Montoya wants revenge for the move we made against him.”
Simon swirled the expensive single malt in his glass. “We took a risk. Bringing in another player to take over one of the man’s most productive coca fields was a ballsy move to say the least.”
Knox just grunted. He despised failure.
“We took a risk,” Simon continued, “but it was a calculated one. If Hernandez had succeeded in taking those fields, we would have controlled a large percentage of production. In the long run, the dividends would have been huge.”
“Unfortunately, we failed. Hernandez is dead, and now Montoya’s men have my son. How the hell did they know he was down there?”
“Had to be monitoring his phone.”
“Must have heard him talking about his trip. Harper said he planned to call her every day or two, keep her updated on where he was. Those calls would have given them exactly what they wanted.”
Simon shifted in his chair. “Like you said—revenge. The question is, what do you want to do about it?”
Knox took a drink of his scotch. “I’ll call Montoya, try to smooth things over. He still needs us for US distribution. I’ll tell him Hernandez was the one behind the move. We just went along with it.”
