Taking Chances (4 page)

‘You think I don’t know that,’ he countered. ‘You’re a pushover. I just think we should get married. Soon.’

She smiled and watched him as he began to look her slowly up and down, his eyes travelling her body with all the power of an intimate caress.

‘Sooner still I think you should fix me another drink,’ he said, resting his gaze on her mouth in a way that caused a delicious bite of lust to clench between her legs.

‘I’ll go get some ice,’ she said, and sliding down off the bar stool she sauntered into the kitchen.

Minutes later she was back, carrying a small silver bucket of ice and wearing nothing but a pair of white hipster jeans and a single pearl drop necklace. She fixed him another drink, pushed it across the bar, then wandered round to stand next to him, her back to the bar, her elbows resting on it in order to better show him her gloriously full breasts.

As they spoke their dialogue made them sound like strangers – he the travelling salesman, she the obliging bar girl. She touched herself regularly and provocatively,
smoothing
her breasts, and flicking her hair. Then she invited him to touch her too, and almost lost her breath as his hands took the heaviness of her breasts and began to squeeze and rotate. Then he was kissing them, sucking on her nipples and unzipping his fly.

Finally he pulled her mouth to his and pushed his tongue deep inside. As they kissed he opened her jeans and eased them down over her hips, moaning softly as her hand tightened on his penis. Then sliding off the stool he stood in front of her and pushed himself into the join of her legs. Her knees were held together by her panties, and the way he was rubbing himself against her made her ache for the feel of him inside her. He pushed himself back and forth, faster and faster, until her breath was ragged and she could feel the encroaching power of orgasm pressing against every place he was touching. Then suddenly he lifted her up on a stool, pulled off her panties and opened her legs wide.

Even as he entered her he could feel the pulsing pressure of her climax claiming him, pulling him in deeper and deeper. He jerked himself into her brutally hard and fast, giving her the full length of him, catching her cries in his mouth as her orgasm pounded. Then he was coming too, the seed tearing from his body in a long, sweeping rush of exquisite release. He held her to him, buried in her as deep as he could go. She clung to him, her arms around his neck, her legs gripping his waist. He searched for her mouth again and kissed her harshly, then tenderly, sucking her lips between his, covering her mouth with his own.

‘This just gets better and better,’ he said when finally his breathing was steady.

‘I know,’ she whispered.

She looked into his eyes and they both started to smile. Then from the study came the sound of a telephone ringing.

As she pulled on her jeans Ellen could hear him
shouting
in an effort to make himself heard. Obviously the elusive Tom Chambers had finally made contact.

Returning to the kitchen for the bra and T-shirt she had discarded, she was about to start making plans for dinner, when she became aware of a strange uneasiness descending over her spirits. Stopping in front of the refrigerator she stood staring at Robbie’s magnetized works of art, trying to figure out where the feeling was coming from. This wasn’t the first time she’d had it, but though it had been happening for a while now, she still couldn’t quite work out why.

‘He’s arrived in Cartagena,’ Michael said, strolling into the kitchen and looking around for something to eat. ‘Apparently someone there saw the kidnapping. Someone who was driving by.’

‘But still no word on the names of the kidnappers?’ Ellen said, taking the salad tray from the fridge.

He shook his head. ‘Though there’s not much doubt the drug lord, Hernán Galeano, was behind it,’ he said, biting into an apple.

‘Did he say why he hasn’t been in touch for the past few days?’ she asked.

Michael shook his head. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking,’ he said, after he’d finished chewing. ‘If Virago Knox do come up with the two million we’re after for development, we could put this house up as collateral for the remaining two and go right ahead and get ourselves a star. I mean, as I see it, it’s the only way we’re going to raise the rest of the money this side of the millennium, and if we’re really serious about this, we’re going to have to accept that we need to take a few risks.’

‘But the house?’ Ellen protested.

There was the sudden crash of a door, followed by running footsteps and ‘Daddy! Ellen! Daddy!’

Michael’s eyes started to twinkle. ‘Sounds like the hell-raiser’s back early,’ he said, as the kitchen door flew open and Robbie burst in. ‘Five minutes earlier …’ he
grinned
, as Robbie came breathlessly towards them, his loyal puppy, Spot, bouncing eagerly at his heels.

‘Daddy, Ellen, Jeremy says I can go watch the Raiders with him and his dad. They’re outside in the car. Can I go? Thanks, you’re cool. See you later.’

‘Not so fast,’ Ellen cried, grabbing his arm and swinging him back. ‘Did you eat yet?’

‘Not hungry.’

‘Have you got any money?’

‘Jeremy’s dad’ll pay. He’s loaded.’

‘Is this my son?’ Michael demanded.

Robbie looked up at his father, his thick, untidy dark hair badly in need of a wash, his bright blue eyes glowing with impatience. ‘I’ve got to go, Dad, this is a real important game.’

‘Really,’ Michael corrected.

‘Yeah, really,’ Robbie responded.

Michael rolled his eyes. ‘Then I guess I’d better go and talk to Jeremy’s dad.’

‘Michael,’ Ellen called after them as they headed off, Spot tacking on behind them, clearly thinking he was going too. ‘Why don’t you go with them?’

‘Oh yeah!’ Robbie cried, punching his fist in the air. ‘Please Dad, please, please, please.’

Michael looked at Robbie, then at Ellen. Tonight would be the first they’d had free for over a month, and the plan had been to spend it together, at home.

‘Go on,’ Ellen prompted.

‘Sure you don’t mind?’ he said.

‘Why would I?’ she laughed.

He came back, deposited Spot in her arms, then kissed her lingeringly on the mouth while Robbie made like he was throwing up in the background.

They’d only been gone a matter of minutes when Michael’s private line started to ring again. As Ellen was trying to catch Spot, who was attempting to head off down the road after his master, the answerphone had
already
picked up by the time she got to the study.

‘Michael, I forgot to ask just now,’ Chambers was saying, ‘did you speak to Michelle? I really think we could be on for this, that is, if I manage to hang on to my mortal coil. Say hi to Robbie. Be in touch in a couple of days. Over and out.’

The line went dead and Ellen stood staring at the machine, trying not to feel offended, and failing. OK, she and Chambers had never met, while he and Michelle, Robbie’s mother, were practically old friends, but she didn’t much like the way he had just made her feel as though she wasn’t a part of Michael’s life. After all, he must know that she was every bit as involved in the movie as Michael was, so at the very least he could have had the good manners to remember she was there.

Rewinding the tape she listened to the message again and wondered what Chambers, Michael and Michelle might be on for. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to include her, and though she disliked herself for such pettiness, she was sorely tempted to erase the message altogether. She didn’t, but she knew she’d regret it bitterly if Michael had some crazy notion of going down there to join Chambers in Colombia, because it was precisely the kind of thing Michelle, the highly acclaimed British actress turned devoted humanitarian, could be relied upon to suggest. But no, Michael wouldn’t, couldn’t, leave LA right now. There was too much going down with World Wide and besides, he just didn’t have the kind of training Chambers did in handling such hostile and dangerous conditions as those offered by Colombia and its infamous cartels.

Chapter 2

GETTING UP FROM
the spare, rough-hewn table he was working at, Tom Chambers took a beer from an icebox in the corner of the shady room and went to look out the window. The narrow street was quiet, just a couple of kids kicking around a punctured ball, scuffing the gutters and scattering clumps of filth-sodden trash. The cacophony of boombox music and honking, angry traffic from nearby streets resounded through the tightly packed maze of the ghetto, where the walls were smeared with graffiti, windows and doors were constantly barred and violence stalked every sidewalk.

Being here could easily turn out to be the dumbest thing he had ever done. Except that accolade had already been awarded to the decision he had made three years ago – the decision that was going to punish him for the rest of his life.

It had brought him to where he was now – a city that had to be one of the most exquisite he had seen, on a mission that was infinitely more suicidal than any he had taken. But despite all his discussions with Michael, when Michael had tried to talk him out of coming, he’d had no choice in the matter, for his conscience was burning with enough guilt and remorse to launch him into a karmic cycle of everlasting chaos. Were he a Catholic he would probably go to confession. A few hundred years of Hail Marys, a hair-shirt and a couple of
lifetimes
of abstinence on all counts might do the trick. But he wasn’t a Catholic, nor did he have much faith in any religion giving him any kind of peace for what he had done. That was mainly because he believed it had to come from within him, which was why he was here, in a country that instilled fear in most right-thinking citizens of the world, in a town where Rachel, the woman he’d loved, had lost her life as a direct result of his stupidity and arrogance.

Her kidnap, three years ago, had been a warning from the Tolima Drug Cartel for him to back off his investigation
now
. Of course the warning had told him just how nervous they were, and they’d had good reason to be, for by then he’d connected up with a whole bunch of their enemies who were to be found not only in rival cartels and regular law enforcement, but within many of the left-wing terrorist groups that virtually controlled the country’s interior.

Exactly who the Galeanos – the family who ran the Tolima Cartel – had paid to kill Rachel he still didn’t know. Hernán Galeano, the head of the cartel, was now in prison, but it wasn’t the kind of work a man like Galeano carried out personally, so what Chambers wanted to know was, who had been responsible.

Looking beyond the rooftops opposite, he allowed his eyes to move out to the distant grey walls of the Castillo de San Felipe. The fort was only for tourists now – and the troubled ghosts of a bygone era. It was from atop the sloping walls of that fort that the Spanish had finally beaten back the English; more recently it was from one of the
casas mata
inside that a security guard had come running to announce the discovery of a woman’s dead body.

Rachel’s dead body.

A horrible heat burned in his chest as he dragged his mind through the memory of the day they had found her. He knew already what they had done to her, they’d
sent
pictures that had spared no detail, nor shame. All that had been missing were the faces of her abductors. Not
her
face though, and the terrible degradation, the helplessness and pain, had buried itself so deep inside him that it had become his now to endure in a way she, mercifully, no longer did. But God, how he missed her. How he still longed for her, and how bitterly he wished he could turn back the clock.

When they’d met she’d been the editor of a human rights publication based in New Orleans. Weeks later she had unshackled herself from the frustrations of a desk and brought herself and her journalistic skills into the field.

Was he to blame for that? Had he talked her into giving up the security of her position for the madness of passion and front-line assault? Or was it more arrogance on his part to assume that he could wield such influence over a woman who was as headstrong and wayward as she was sensuous and caring? From the moment they’d met, at a Washington party, it had been clear to them both that all roads in their lives had led to this point, and that all roads from there would be travelled together. He’d made love to her that night and had known such hunger, sensation, tenderness and bewilderment that she had laughed at his surprise and confusion, as though understanding something he didn’t. She was a mystery, a force so vibrant, wild and untamable – such a contradiction to the dignified and sober image of a do-gooder that even now it could make him smile.

Despite the shadows of the room, the humidity crept silently, intrepidly in, coating his body in sweat as the memories swathed his soul in pain. He put the beer to his lips and drank deeply. Coming back here, raking up the past and searing open his wounds was crazy, but he’d always known that one day he would.

Cartagena, the city they’d never got to meet up in, nor ever would. He’d spoken to her, less than an hour before
they’d
taken her. He’d been in Cali then, she had been here, almost a stone’s throw away, in the splendid Santa Clara hotel. She might have been safe if she’d stayed there, not ventured out, and waited for him to come. But after six gruelling weeks in Bogotá, who could blame her for wanting to get out into the country for a while, to breathe a less polluted air and feast her eyes on the soothing infinity of nature. And she wasn’t so far from town when they’d taken her, close enough for there to have been a hundred witnesses or more, but only one had come forward, and now he was nowhere to be found.

He walked back to the makeshift desk where a laptop computer, 9mm automatic, and stacks of papers cluttered the pitted surface. He was attempting to put together her story, trying as best he could to encapsulate the essence of her, while indulging in a self-absorbed purging of grief, and punishing himself with the imagining of her final terrible hours. While his own mission in Colombia had been to expose the Galeanos and the government officials they controlled, Rachel’s had been to bring world attention to what was happening to the children, those who were referred to as
desechables
– disposable people – or as human waste, or filth. Though she’d gotten some good coverage, her kidnap and death had received so much more, for it had made headlines all over the world. But so too had the story she had syndicated a week before her death, the story that Chambers was staring down at now.