There was no hiding the mess Ryan had made. All he could do now was lay it all out for them and take the consequences. “The night Belinda and Beast were taken, I spent the evening in my room with one of the waitresses. I left her there when we went to search the rainforest. While I was gone, she cleaned me out. Took everything in my safe, including my backup weapon and passport.”
Callum exploded. “Weren’t you listening when I gave you the talk on the importance of never thinking with your dick?”
There was nothing Ryan could say to that, so he stayed silent.
“There’s more,” Rachel said. “Isn’t there, Ryan? I think it’s best if we hear it all.”
Like he was planning to keep anything back. He wasn’t that dumb. At least, he’d thought he wasn’t. This situation might be the one that proved him wrong. “I asked around. No one knew who I was talking about. She wasn’t hotel staff.”
The air in the room became thick.
“You telling me someone got past our security?” Callum’s face had gone heart-attack red, which wasn’t a good sign.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “She waitressed all night. Collected tips, too. Chatted with the other staff. They all thought she was one of them, but management has no record of her.” He ran a hand over his hair. “I think she was here to earn money. I don’t think she was targeting us, or working for the Martinez cartel, but I can’t know for sure. When I went over what was missing from my room, along with Dimitri, he noticed she took the sort of things someone would want if they were on the run. She left a note.” He dug into his jeans pocket and tossed the note onto the table in front of Callum, who swiped it up. “She said she didn’t have any choice but to rob me and that she would pay me back.”
Callum glared at him. “We don’t have time to deal with how much you’ve screwed up here, son. That will come when we get back to London. It’s time you stopped thinking about your stomach and your dick and grew the hell up. You’ve risked your team and this whole operation. This affects your future with the company. You have to know that.”
Ryan hung his head for a second before looking Callum in the eye. His boss wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.
“Elle,” Callum said, “you know what to do.”
Elle nodded as she flashed Ryan a sympathetic smile. “I’ll dig up everything I can on her. The hotel must have security footage with her in it. I’ll get our facial-recognition software working on her. I doubt we’ll find anything, but I can tap into local law enforcement to see if her details bring anything up on their databases.”
“Don’t get caught,” Lake said.
“I never get caught,” Elle said with an offended sniff.
Lake nodded. “In the meantime, if Dimitri is right and Belinda and Beast are heading straight for the gathering force at the gold mine, then we’ll need to head them off before they walk into an ambush.”
“Which means back into the jungle at the crack of dawn,” Megan said.
Lake smiled at her. “Rodrigo, Callum, and I will go over the map together and formulate a plan. We meet here at oh five hundred. Get some sleep.”
He turned from the team to talk to Callum, and Ryan’s shoulders slumped.
“It’s going to be okay,” Elle said as she squeezed his hand.
“Sure it is,” Ryan said. “Let me know if you find anything on Esperanza.” Then he turned and walked away, making sure he didn’t catch anyone’s eye as he did it.
Chapter 21
A couple of hours before dawn, the relentless rain stopped, just as abruptly as it started. John had passed out sometime during the night, which Belinda considered a blessed relief for both of them. Watching him suffer and being unable to do anything to ease his pain, meant she’d added a stream of tears to the deluge swamping the forest. Now, in the early morning light, he lay slumped against the tree trunk, breathing evenly.
Belinda wrung the excess water out of John’s shirt and used it to wipe his face. He was pale, almost grey, with dark, vivid circles under his eyes. She stroked his forehead with her fingertips, tracing over his cheekbone to his jaw. He had a decent growth of hair now, which did nothing to soften the harsh angles of his face. Even the ravages of a night enduring agony couldn’t detract from the strength he exuded.
Belinda pressed a kiss to his forehead. He would hate knowing she’d seen him this helpless. With a grunt, John writhed against his bonds, but he didn’t wake. The waves of pain seemed to have lessened, and exhaustion meant he slept through the latest assault on his system. Above them, the troop of monkeys that seemed to have adopted him watched on as he slept. Belinda hoped the little devils wouldn’t start throwing fruit at his head again.
The canopy had come alive as the first hints of sun touched the trees, and now it was a raucous maelstrom of noise and activity. Large red and blue macaws swooped overhead, going from tree to tree in search of breakfast. A gecko ran along the branch beside them and scurried up the tree, only to disappear in amongst the multitude of colourful orchids attached to the trunk. Behind her, in the lake, the giant otter family were back. They frolicked and played, calling out to each other as they did so.
If it hadn’t been for their desperate circumstances, Belinda could have been in paradise. The plethora of colour and activity was enough to make her drunk on the experience for months to come. Unfortunately, she was fairly certain her most vivid memories of her time in the Amazon would be of fear, hunger and exhaustion. Her empty stomach gnawed at her ability to think. They needed food. They needed strength to carry on and make it to the river—if they were even heading in the right direction to find it.
She studied the lake and wondered if it was safe to try fishing again, with the otters in the water. A meal would go a long way towards helping John recover. She scanned the shoreline, looking for the best place to set up her makeshift net, and that was when she noticed that the forest floor was more colourful than usual. The weight of the torrential rain had brought plants, branches, and fruit crashing down to the ground, and the area was littered with the bounty. And it was a bounty, because in the middle of it all, Belinda could have sworn she spotted green bananas.
With a little whoop of excitement, she wrapped the damp sheet tight around her and grabbed the other half of the sheet to use as a bag.
“I’ll be right back,” she told John, even though he didn’t even stir at her words. “I’m bringing breakfast.”
With a grin, she carefully climbed down the tree and ran barefoot to the edge of the lake—keeping plenty of distance between her and the otters. She was working on the principle that if she ignored them, they’d do her the same courtesy in return. She picked up the bundle of fruit and burst into relieved laughter. They were bananas. She was fairly sure they weren’t the kind you could eat raw, but she could cook them first. Surely it would be easier than their attempt at cooking fish? She surveyed the treeline. There were more than enough bananas there to keep them going for the rest of the day at least.