“But I didn’t let the drugs go through. I told you that.”
“No. But you didn’t make her face the consequences, either.”
Hamilton’s nostrils flared. For a minute, Matthew thought he was going to argue. Instead his shoulders slumped.
“I’m not proud of my weakness over Mia,” he said quietly, “but I love her. And I want her back.”
The cook confirmed that Mia had almost seemed to disappear into thin air. There’d been no sounds of a struggle, no overturned lounge chairs, nothing.
Anything else?
“Si,” she said, after a couple of seconds. The señorita had left her lunch untouched. The only thing missing from the tray was a bottle of water.
Matthew found that interesting. Could a woman who’d been abducted without evidence of a struggle have the chance to take a bottle of water with her?
“Was anyone else working at the villa that day?”
“No, señor,” the cook said emphatically. Then she paused and said well, the pool boy had been there but when the señorita disappeared, he’d already gone to the house next door.
Matthew tracked the kid down. It took a few minutes but finally he recalled seeing a taxi drive past, maybe heading for the Hamilton place.
He drove into the city, stopped at a hotel, got a list of cab companies and lucked out on his third try.
For ten bucks, the dispatcher remembered he’d sent a taxi to the Hamilton address the day Mia disappeared. Fifty bought the entire package: a meeting with the driver, who looked at Mia’s photo and said si, yes, he remembered the lady.
He had taken her to a rent-a-car office.
The clerk at the rent-a-car counter remembered the lady, too. She’d asked for directions to Bogotá. The clerk had tried to talk her out of the trip. It was a long drive—fifteen, sixteen hours. And dangerous, especially for a gringa. But Mia had been insistent and the clerk had finally drawn the route on a map. The shortest route, she emphasized; at least the señorita had been smart enough to agree to that.
Half an hour later, Matthew was heading out of the city, but not on the road Mia had supposedly taken.
By now, he was sure she’d run away. The question was, why?
There were only two logical reasons. The first was that she was running from the cartel because the drugs she was supposed to smuggle hadn’t reached their destination. That wouldn’t have made them happy.
The second was that she was on the run with a cache of cocaine. That wouldn’t have made the cartel happy, either. Cutting out the middleman wasn’t their style.
It was the only logical explanation. A woman on the run, either from her boyfriend or from a pack of killers, would have taken the first plane out.
A woman on the run with a stash of stolen coke might very well try to lose any possible tail by driving into the mountains.
As for which route she’d take… The times he’d been on the run, he’d deliberately set up red herrings.
Maybe saying she’d take the short route was Mia’s bit of misdirection. It was what he’d have done in her place.
He decided to go with his gut intuition and take the long way to Bogotá.
The road was rough but traffic was nonexistent so he made good time. He’d picked up a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches in Cartagena. When it grew dark, he pulled over and ate his makeshift supper. He was tired, couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept or had a real meal, but Mia had a significant head start and he had to make up the time.
He stopped at each town, checked gas stations and inns, described her car and showed her photo. Nobody had seen her. A couple of hours before dawn, he took the Escalade down a rutted trail into a grove of trees, made sure his windows were locked, turned up the air conditioner and went to sleep with the nine millimeter automatic he always carried in his lap.
By the time the sun rose, he was on the road again, driving slowly along the early-morning streets of another town…
And spotted Mia’s rental car outside a hotel that had seen better days.
Matthew pulled onto the patch of dirt that passed for a parking lot and went inside. He slapped the bell on the reception counter. After a minute, a door opened and a guy shuffled toward him, hair flapping in his eyes, shirt half-unbuttoned, his face contorted by a giant yawn.
Did the señor want a room?