Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (14 page)

“
No one has said that, Mr. Renshaw, but if you know anything about it, now is the time to tell me.”

So it all came out, the whole sorry mess. In an effort to exonerate Darcy of murder, I told about our pre-dawn attacker, assuring Lt. Manko that Urqu could verify my story.

“
Ah,” the lieutenant sighed, “a thief would make things so simple. I would certainly believe such a tale, if it were not for the bullet we found in your taxi’s tire.”

No doubt about it. The lieutenant was a fucking Columbo. But I wasn’t the Fantascapes’ troubleshooter for nothing.

“
Lieutenant, look at us,” I said, allowing my shoulders to wilt into a dejected slump. I nodded to Darcy. “He suffered a blow to the head, as you can plainly see, and remembers nothing about any fight beyond being found half-conscious at the ruins. It’s possible someone’s after him, but there’s little defense against the unknown. He’s not safe here. I need to get him back to the British Embassy. It’s not as if we’re going to get lost. It’s straight back to Cuzco, then on to Lima first thing in the morning. I’m a known quantity. I book tours here all the time.” I handed him my card. “May we
please
take the VistaDome out of here?”

Lieutenant Manko retreated somewhere inside that sharp brain of his, contemplating my plea. “It is true you are known to us, Miss Halliday,” he said at last, “but your friend”—his intonation on
friend
was skeptical, edging toward insult—“is an unknown. To you as well as to me,” he added with a certain emphasis.

A gentle reproof? Or was he questioning my veracity?

“
Therefore Sergeant Sayani will accompany you to Cuzco. Where you will be met.” He looked at Darcy. “Perhaps you wish to call your Embassy?”

“
I would be grateful,” Darcy responded gravely. I had to give him credit. The possibility of being a suspect in a murder didn’t seem to affect him at all. He had nerves as steel as his eyes.

“
Lieutenant?” I asked. “The dead body at Phuyupatamarca—you think it was the man who attacked us?”

Manko eyed me with some interest before admitting, “The dead man is Quechua, and not of the best reputation. But a second incident of violence in the same place?” He shrugged. “Only a fool would consider the two events unconnected. I suspect he was associated with the
gringo
who attacked Mr. Renshaw.”

Darcy stood, held out his hand. “I appreciate your understanding,” he told the lieutenant. A man-to-man flash of understanding passed between them, and my intuition finally kicked in. I saw two cops recognizing each other in spite of the chasm of race, country, and unlikely scenarios.

“
I will send a car at two-thirty,” Manko said. “Until then, Sergeant Sayani will remain outside your door.”

We thanked him again, sincerely. The two men left.

“
Just how much do you remember?” I breathed as Darcy dropped back onto the bed.

“
Too damn much.”

“
Did you kill that guy?”

“
That I really don’t remember . . . haven’t the foggiest.”

“
So it’s possible you fought two men. The Quechua was acting as the Russian’s guide, “I speculated. “You got him, maybe the Russian too, but took a header yourself, cracking your head and giving the Russian a chance to empty your pockets . . .” I shook my head. “But why didn’t he kill you when he had the chance?”

“
Maybe he thought I was already dead?” Or . . . other hikers came along, scared him off?”

I shrugged. It was possible we’d never know. “So what
do
you remember?” I asked.

“
I believe I said
tonight in Cuzco
.”

“
Tonight in Cuzco we may be in separate jail cells.”

Darcy took a deep breath. He splayed his right hand out in front of him, studying it as if he’d never seen it before. “You want a name?” he said, without looking up. “It’s Rhys. Rhys Tarrant. My ancestry tends to be a British version of your American melting part. English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, and a dash or two of French.”

Rhys
. Well . . . if he wasn’t a Darcy, Rhys was exotic enough to suit him. “And?” I urged.

“
And I’ll tell you the rest in Cuzco.”

“
Now
. I have a bad feeling about Cuzco.”

“
La-aine . . .” He drew my name out until it almost sounded like a caress. “I’ve grown rather fond of you in the last two days, and I really don’t want you angry with me. Believe me when I say you’re not going to like the truth. I’m hoping it will go down better after a couple of drinks and a good meal.”

Rhys stood, paced to the window, returned to stand, looking down at me, one hand gripping the back of a chair. He looked grave. “You could be right,” he admitted. “There’s a phone call I have to make—I’ve been out of touch too long—and anything could happen after that. There may be no tonight in Cuzco.”

I missed Darcy. Rhys was solemn, stiff. A chillingly analytical asshole, even when offering judicious praise.

“
Did the Arendsens encounter difficulties with their trip?” my two-faced Brit inquired softly. “Enough to bring you to Peru to straighten things out?”

And where had
that
come from? I nodded, yes.

“
And how do you think that happened?”

“
I thought . . . well, after seeing Arlan Trevellyan in Cuzco, I thought he was playing tricks again.” Rhys looked blank. “I told you about him, remember? The unethical tour director from Toronto.”

Rhys nodded. “Well, it wasn’t,” he said. “It was me.”

“
No way.” Flat-out impossible.

“
The wrong plane for the Nazca lines may have been your Canadian, but no permit for the trail? Canceled tour? All courtesy of the diabolical Rhys Tarrant.”

“
But
why
?” I wailed. Darcy would never have done such a thing, I knew he wouldn’t.

But Darcy was gone, and a stranger named Rhys had taken his place. “Damn you! Did you throw the
bolas
too?”

Rhys’s fingers tightened on the back of the chair. He scowled. “
Bolas
? What’s a
bolas
?”

Okay, so I believed him. But even if I could acquit Rhys of throwing things at me, I longed to pummel his Brit brains back into the mists of forgetfulness. “And you did this because . . . ?” I ground out between jaws clenched so tight they hurt.

He threw up his hands, backing away. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you until later. The timing’s all wrong. You’re going hostile when that’s the last thing I want. I—
we
want your help, Laine.
Need
your help. This was all supposed to be an innocuous game to get you some place far from home where I could talk to you without your family breathing down your neck. Some place where Jordan Halliday’s superprotective umbrella didn’t loom so large. You had clients in Peru, I’d always wanted to see Machu Picchu—”

“
Get to the point!”

“
That
is
the point, Laine. It was all a set-up so I could talk to you. But”—he held up a hand, palm out—“that was it. Just talk. None of the rest of it was supposed to happen. You weren’t supposed to go charging off on the Inca Trail—I’d planned a casual meet at the Monasterio—but I ended up chasing after you via the VistaDome. But after that?” Rhys shook his head. “After that comes the mystery. I’ve got some enemies, yes, but Peru isn’t my territory. Why should they follow me here? It makes no sense. Unless somebody really, really doesn’t want me to add you to our team. And that’s ridiculous, because no one but my boss knew I was coming here.”

“
Boss?”

“
I work for Interpol, Laine, and that’s the God’s truth.”

It took a while for it to sink in. My Brit was a cop on an international scale, but not MI-6, as I’d thought.
Interpol
. Everyone knew the word. Almost nobody knew what they really did. There’d been a few discussions around the Halliday family table. But not much. I tried to drag the info from the recesses of my mind.

Interpol was the ultimate cop network, designed to track and arrest perps who commit crimes in one country and flee to another. Its files were such a superior source of info nearly every country in the world was a member. Which was also its Achilles Heel, as its membership numbered a lot of Bad Guys among the Good Guys, with your country’s point of view the only criterion of which was which. Interpol, therefore, was prestigious . . . and controversial. Keeping its head above water in a time of international terrorism was perhaps the biggest challenge it had ever faced.

And that’s about as far as my knowledge of Interpol ran. Interpol had survived more than eighty years because it served a useful purpose. But, like the UN, it took a lot of flak.

“
Even if I believed you,” I told him slowly, letting reality sink into a brain still in denial, “I couldn’t. My family needs me.”

“
Not so fast. I didn’t say anything about giving up your job.” Rhys walked over to the bed opposite mine and sat down, his fine gray eyes, shining out of still swollen flesh, demanding my attention. “If we’d been able to do this right, Laine, the way I planned, I could have worked up to telling you a bloody sight better than I’m doing now. But this is the best I can manage after making a balls-up of it.”

He took a shuddering breath. “The facts are simple. I mainly work trafficking cases, women and children. You work in the heart of the female world—weddings on an international scale, as well as exotic vacations. You travel, you see things, hear things. You’ve got a good analytical brain. We know your father and brothers have used you on occasion. We want you to do the same for us. Your rep is strong enough that you can go anywhere, no questions asked—”

“
The frou-frou girl.”

Rhys sighed softly. “I suppose you could say that. It’s a good cover, Laine. It works.”

I sat there, like a dummy, a thousand words stuck in my throat. Relief. Huge.
Darcy/Rhys really was one of the good guys.

Excitement. Interpol, the mystery crimefighters.
Golly, gee whiz, wow!

Intrigue. Action. Serve and Protect.
And ha-ha-ha to you, dear brothers
.

Mom and Dad would kill me
.

Wasn’t there something in the Bible about no man can serve two masters? Yet people did it all the time, I knew they did.

Would I be working with Rhys? Or was he just the bait put out to entice gullible females?

My lips curled in a wry smile. As bait went, he was pretty battered, and yet his beating had activated my Protect and Serve gene, setting the hook more firmly than he’d ever dreamed.

I took a deep breath, contemplating the reality of the moment. The Peruvian police might think they’d taken over, but it was still my ballgame. I’d found a stray on the mountain. I’d promised to get him to the Embassy in Lima. And I would. The rest of it—Interpol or not to Interpol—could wait.

I contemplated my next call to the office, my confession that I might end up in jail as an accessory to murder. Wouldn’t Mom and Dad be thrilled? Instead, I made a routine call to the office, speaking only to Jessie, reporting that all was well.
Liar, liar, pants on fire . . .

Rhys direct-dialed a call as well. I couldn’t hear what he said.

We made small-talk at the table while a Quechua maid, who looked about thirteen, tidied up the room, replacing shampoo, bodywash, and multiple towels, stacking the remains of breakfast onto her cart without a single word. But, as she left, I caught the shy smile she offered Sergeant Sayani, who was standing just outside the door. And wasn’t that the way of the world? There was bloody murder lurking all around, but life went on. People lived and loved, reproduced . . . and somehow the world, if not all the individuals in it, survived.

That’s what I was, I vowed. A survivor. And so was Rhys.

To pass the time, I told him about the brothers, about Mom and Dad, Gramma Blaine, Aunt Candy and Grady. About the shock of moving from a sophisticated college-dominated New England community to sleepy, senior-oriented Golden Beach, whose only claim to fame was thirty years as the winter home of the country’s greatest circus. Rhys reciprocated with a bit about his family, a brother and a sister, both older. Parents, still living, though not a hint about who they were or where they lived. His superior education came as no surprise, although it was Harrow and Cambridge, instead of Eton and Oxford.

We avoided all talk of Interpol. We made nice, inching our way through the labyrinth of each other’s minds. Our goal—get safely out of the mountains, get our feet on the solid ground of Peru’s coastal plain. Then we could consider options. Right now, survival was all-important.

We ordered lunch, invited Sergeant Sayani to join us. He refused, but we reminded him how far it was to Cuzco and assured him Lieutenant Manko wouldn’t expect him to stand outside and starve. So he ate with us, perched on the end of my bed. We conversed in Spanish, leaving Rhys to struggle to follow what we were saying. Tupaq Sayani was one of a family of eight, and our maid turned out to be the younger sister of his girlfriend. By the time the police car arrived to take us to the station, we felt less like suspects and more like witnesses in protective custody. Perhaps that’s what we’d been all along. The lieutenant had left us in limbo. Deliberately, I was quite sure.