Silent Enemy. Lois Richer
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Do not worry.”
How did you argue with that? As the muddy water slid past, Samantha gave up pretending she was in control. Here on the river she was exposed, vulnerable. Using her GPS, she quickly sent the coordinates to Finders’ satellite—just in case. Maybe it was those fingers of dusk creeping down the banks like a stalker, or maybe it was the cackling sound emanating from the forest that freaked her, but her internal radar now switched to high.
The motor coughed, wheezed and then stopped again. Ramon paddled toward the bank.
“Señorita, I must work on this motor. It is not much farther. Perhaps you wish to walk on shore while I work?” Clearly he didn’t want her bugging him while he fiddled with the motor.
Since Sam desperately needed some privacy and a bush, she left her backpack on the bench of the boat, climbed over the hull and jumped onto the beach. Ramon watched her for a moment, and then began to quietly hum as he unveiled the inner workings of his machine. Sam chose a secluded area. Five minutes later she emerged from the grove of trees and froze.
The boat was gone. Poor Ramon floated facedown in the water, a knife sticking out of his back.
Sam swallowed her cry, aware that the killer could be very close, waiting for her. Where was Ramon’s God now? She’d never believed all that stuff about God loving everyone anyway. She didn’t need Him now, either. She’d manage on her own. She was used to that.
Varga, or one of his cohorts must have done this. Ramon had told her the jungle natives of this area were friendly, especially to el Padre Dulce’s friends. Ramon had even waved to a tribal group who stood solemnly on shore, watching as they moved past.
Sam listened for several moments. No motor sounds, no laughing voices, nothing but the soft lap of water against the shore. She inventoried her surroundings and made a decision. Without a boat, climbing uphill was the only way to scout out the land. Trampling through the thick ferny undergrowth proved how quickly the light was fading. She reached the uppermost ridge and looked around. Varga’s boat lay in a little cove several hundred yards downstream. Ramon’s boat was there, too, but the crates and boxes he’d so carefully loaded were missing. She turned around.
A flash of light flickered through the trees. Perhaps the padre’s camp was nearer than she thought. Perhaps Varga was already there, exchanging the statue.
Going forward could be dangerous, but going back was impossible. She walked toward the light. Progress through the damp, slippery forest was difficult in loose sandals, but her sneakers were in her backpack, on the boat. She moved carefully, deliberately choosing each step. Five hundred feet along the ridge Samantha suddenly lost her footing and tumbled down the embankment. The world spun round like a crazy kaleidoscope, punctuated by stabs of bright light and darkness. Her head smacked against a rock at the same time that her ribs met resistance against the forest’s bulging roots.
Samantha fought to stop herself, but the vines were too slippery. She tumbled farther into the impenetrable darkness until at last she came to rest against something big and hard and damp. Pain rolled in waves over her body. She opened her mouth to cry out, then shut it, remembering Ramon’s spread-eagled body floating facedown. A black cloud hovered just above her. She tried to remain awake but her brain wouldn’t obey.
With a little sigh, Sam closed her eyes as the truth hit.
Daniel was right. She wasn’t ready for promotion.
Something was wrong.
Daniel McCullough had built his career around his intuition, had escaped death more than once because he followed his instinct. At the moment it was screaming a warning, but this warning had nothing to do with him.
Samantha.
He jumped as the phone squawked its summons, told himself to get a grip. “Yes?”
“It’s Miss Henderson, Daniel. They’ve tracked her cell. She’s called us a number of times. Communications has found messages and some GPS coordinates.”
“Let me hear the messages, Evelyn.”
“Yes, sir.”
A moment later Sam’s voice filled the room, quiet, steady, determined. If he closed his eyes, Daniel could see her standing there, her shawl of raven black hair cascading down to her waist, emerald eyes bright, focused and unafraid.
“Sir?”
Daniel blinked, realized his assistant had been waiting for several minutes. “Tape it and bring me a copy. I want someone in communications working on her reports full-time. Investigations should check out this el Zopilote. I want to know who he is, what his interest in the statue is. Make a copy of the tape for them. Ask the lab to distinguish some of the background sounds. And have her GPS signal mapped, will you? If anyone hears anything from Samantha Henderson they are to report immediately to me.”
“Yes, sir.” Not long after that his assistant returned, placed the tape on his desk, then left.
Daniel picked up the tape, the same old nerve rat-tatting its warning. Over and over he listened to her voice, each time telling himself he was a fool to have let her go, each time wondering if he’d ever get a chance to apologize. He waited impatiently for the first report to arrive and then pored over the map. “You’re sure this is right?”
“As far as we can tell she was in the Andes, traveling down the Amazon when she sent it. The signal was weak, but identifiable.”
The lab verified that the background sounds were consistent with canopy birds in the Amazon. But still no one was able to reach Sam on her cell phone. Daniel offered himself the comforts he usually dispensed to others in situations like this. She was fine. She’d call in shortly. It was just a communications glitch. He didn’t believe himself.
Investigations were the last to report in. “I’m sorry, sir. We have no one who fits the name el Zopilote. There’s nothing in our intelligence files to lead us in any particular direction.”
“Keep looking.” Daniel chewed his bottom lip while suspicions kept nagging at him—that Samantha Henderson had stepped into a school of piranha.
As CEO of Finders, Inc., Daniel was used to sending agents all over the world to track lost or missing items for its clients. Just because he’d ordered Samantha Henderson to Brazil to recover a statue did not mean she wasn’t going to experience problems. In their line of work nothing was ever a sure thing, but that held especially true in Samantha’s cases. Wait a minute—he’d sent her to Brazil, not Peru.
“You remind me of Grant, all hunched over in your chair, glaring at the desk.” Shelby Kincaid-Austen stood in the doorway, watching him.
“Hey, Shel. C’mon in.”
Grant Kincaid had been Daniel’s commanding officer in Special Ops training. The two had become fast friends when both were assigned to covert work in Malaysia. It was Grant who’d appreciated Daniel’s ability at disguise—an ability Daniel had gained from years of practice avoiding news hounds whose stories unfailingly painted Daniel as the heir apparent to McCullough International. Thanks to Grant, Daniel had completed many successful missions pretending to be someone else, someone without a past.
“You’re wishing he was here, aren’t you?” Shelby asked.
He nodded. Special Ops was ugly, a place Grant had grown tired of after he met Shelby. By then Daniel also wanted a more stable lifestyle, so the three had decided to form their own recovery agency. Finders, Inc. was born. That choice had freed Daniel from the expectations his father’s empire had always engendered and allowed him to do his job disguised as anyone he wanted to be.
“Do you wish you could walk away from here, Daniel?” Shelby touched his shoulder. “I’m very grateful you’ve been running the business since Grant’s death, but you don’t have to stay at Finders, Inc. You don’t owe me or the company a thing. You loved fieldwork. Would you prefer to go back to it?”
“Not at the moment. Staying in one place for more than a