Operation Willow Quest (6 page)

Willow
suppressed an
impatient sigh as she extended her hand. “Willow
Sheldon.”

“Not the photographer?” he asked, his eyes
lighting up in recognition.

Willow
did a double take. She
was far from a household name and being stopped in the street was a rare occurrence.
“I’m a photographer,” she said slowly, “but I don’t know if I’m the
same
 
photographer you’re thinking of.”

“I can assure you, I’m a huge fan of your
work.”

‘That’s great,” she said, feeling somewhat
awkward.

“Are you staying here?” he asked, indicating
the lavish reception area they were standing in.

“Just for a few days,” she answered slowly.
Something about his focused attention was making her uncomfortable. He wasn’t
an attractive man with his wide jaw line and slightly crooked nose, despite his
neatly trimmed hair and expensive suit, but there was something compelling
about his presence.

“Please—you must allow me to show you around
the area. I’ve been here many times on business.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m here working at the moment.
I don’t think I’ll have time for sightseeing on this trip,” she said, edging
around him.

“At least allow me to share my private driver
with you. It will be much safer than risking the public system.”

Willow
almost considered the
offer—travel in this country was dangerous, but something warned her Alistair
Whitehall was not the knight in shining
armour
he
would have her believe.

“Thank you for the offer, but I’m running late.
It was nice to meet you,” she said, this time slipping away before he could
detain her further.

It was only a short walk into the business
district from her hotel and she made her way along the busy street. Travel
warnings were made for a reason.
Travellers
had been
mugged in broad daylight around here, kidnappings and ransom demands were an
everyday occurrence, but she was following as many safety precautions as she
could—trying to blend in as much as possible. Thankfully, her dark
colouring
was helpful in this regard. Blond haired,
blue-eyed tourists stood out like a sore thumb in this place and were
unfortunately, easy targets.

As she pushed open the heavy glass door, her
gaze roamed the stylish office and fell upon the dark head of a secretary bent
over a keyboard and the fair-haired man, who stood beside her pointing out a
few changes in some paperwork he read from.

Terry Sinclair.

He looked older, but had lost none of his
charisma since the last time she’d seen him, almost two years ago.

As the door swung shut behind her, Terry’s gaze
lifted from the paper in his hands, to settle on her face as a flash of
surprise followed by a smile lit up his face. “Will,” he said, immediately
moving around the reception desk to greet her.

“Hello, Terry,” she said, and laughed as he
scooped her into a giant hug and lifted her off her feet.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked,
taking a step away and holding her arms out to get a good look at her.

“Look at you, quite the businessman in your big
flash office,” she said and grinned.

Terry shook his sandy-blond head. He still wore
his hair in a short style, looking every bit the ex-Government man he was.
“They keep trying to make me look respectable but it doesn’t last too long.” He
spoke briefly in Spanish to his secretary, before turning back to Willow. “Come on in to my
private office,” he said, gesturing down the hallway.

Once there he moved across the office and
quickly cleared off his desk, storing the contents in a desk drawer, before
indicating a chair across from him.

Willow
took a seat in the big
windowed room and her smile grew wider. “Very nice.”

He shrugged off the approval and Willow saw the old Terry
she knew slip easily back in place. She eyed a bookcase with a display of
photos and her smile turned melancholy when she spotted the photo she’d sent
him. One she’d saved when she’d packed away Michael’s office. The two smiling
faces of Michael and Terry, arms slung casually over each other’s shoulders,
grins splitting their
sunburnt
faces as they held up
large fish caught on a deep sea fishing trip they’d made together a year before
Michael’s death.

“I miss the cocky bastard,” Terry said, his
arms folded across his chest as he followed her gaze.

Willow
blinked and swallowed past the familiar tightening of her throat. So did she.
The gaping hole where her best friend had been was still a wound, not yet
healed. “So, what’s this big news you couldn’t tell me about on the phone?” she
asked, “You don’t tell me you have something juicy and then leave me
hanging—it’s not polite,” she chided him with a calmness she was far from
feeling.

Terry straightened from where he leaned against
the desk, and moved around to sit in his expensive leather chair. “And here I
was thinking you’d come to visit me for my good looks and charm,” he told her
with a grin, his familiar Texan drawl momentarily sending her back to happier
times.

Willow
gave a chuckle and
rolled her eyes dramatically.

Terry’s
humour
drained away and his gaze turned serious. “I didn’t think you’d fly down here.
I told you I’d get back to you when I found out anything more. This isn’t the
safest place to be at the moment.”

“You know me, I can’t sit around and wait for a
story to fall from the sky—now spill.”

“Some things don’t change.” He sighed. “Okay,
well I’ve been doing some surveillance on a certain person of interest for a
client, and no,” he said with a smirk, “I’m not at liberty to tell you who it
is…” He grinned, at her deflated expression. “And I happened to stumble upon
some interesting references to your man,
Trèago
.”

“What kind of references?”

“For starters, his name pops up in quite a few
of the email correspondences we’ve intercepted, but more recently it’s been in
telephone conversations.”

“
Trèago’s
in
prison—what kind of conversations would he be able to have from there?”

Terry shrugged. “I don’t think
Trèago
being locked up is putting much of a dint in his
business affairs,” he said, leaning back in his chair, and lacing his fingers
behind his head.

“What do you mean?”

“It appears
Trèago
is
linked to a major drug syndicate here in Colombia.”

Willow
stared at Terry across
the table, the implications running riot through her mind. “How is he able to
have contact with
drug lords
 
while he’s in prison? Aren’t his visitors and
calls monitored?”

Terry gave a bitter laugh. “Corruption doesn’t
only limit itself to places like Colombia,
Willow. A man
like
Trèago
has the kind of connections that can get
him anything he wants…even in prison.”

Willow
’s face folded into a
frown. It was disturbing news after all these years; she’d thought
Trèago
had been safely locked behind bars and unable to hurt
anyone ever again. To learn he was still able to function to whatever degree,
from behind the walls of prison, shook her confidence. “What are you working
on, Terry?” she asked, almost fearfully.

“Will, I’d tell you if I could, but this isn’t
the
kinda
thing you need to be tangled up in right
now—these guys are dangerous. I told you on the phone I had something about
Trèago
, and as soon as I get the rest of the proof I need,
I’m handing it all over to the US Government. I can’t trust anyone over here
and if
Trèago
is as involved as I think he is, they
need to investigate this security leak—sooner rather than later.”

* * * *

Del
sat facing the others
in the room silently.

“Are you sure?” Tate asked him in a brisk tone.

“Positive. She’s been digging around pretty
carefully, but she’s asking questions about
Trèago
—it’s
bound to get back to him sooner or later.”

“Damn woman, why the hell couldn’t she leave
well enough alone? I knew I should have stopped her at the airport,” Tate
muttered.

“So what are we going to do?” Tupper asked.

“Things being what they are at the moment, I
can’t leave yet.”

“I’ll go and bring her back,” Del volunteered calmly.

Tate sent him a thoughtful frown. “She’s not
going to leave willingly,” he warned.

“I’m Force Recon trained—how hard can it be to
bring home one woman?”

Tate gave a shake of his head, and a small skeptical
grunt. “Good luck. You’re
gonna
’ need it.”

* * * *

Willow
joined Terry for
dinner and was pleasantly surprised at how easily they fell back into their old
friendship. They talked about Michael and old times and she found it wasn’t the
least bit painful. There were so few people Willow knew, who’d known the real Michael as
well as Terry had, and for the first time she felt the weight of grief lift
from her shoulders.

Their dessert had just arrived at the table
when Terry’s phone hummed unobtrusively from his pocket. “Sorry, Will, this
could be important. I won’t be long.” He smiled his apology and went outside to
take his call.

Willow
took the opportunity
Terry’s departure created to let her gaze wander around the room. The relaxed,
informal setting of the restaurant with its mouth-watering aromas of
chillies
and spices, limes and marinades, floating through
the air, was perfect. Not some
upmarket
bar in the
middle of the city so many of her colleagues liked to frequent, just a friendly
laid-back little place where she could unwind.

She caught sight of Terry as he paced back and
forth outside, a frown etched on his usually easygoing face. Ending the call,
he came back inside but seemed preoccupied. “Will, I’m really sorry, but I need
to be somewhere—it’s important, otherwise I’d never dump you for work,” he
said, his lopsided grin softening his announcement.

She shrugged. “No worries, I’m tired anyway.”
She had some research of her own to do tonight once she got back to her room.
If Terry wasn’t going to give her any solid leads to follow, then she’d have to
get out there and start digging around herself.

They walked to Terry’s car, yet another perk of
his new, high-paid job—a shiny blue Lexus—and she gave a low whistle as she
slid into soft leather seats. As they drove, soft music floated from the stereo
and Willow relaxed
some. As they made their way back into the heart of the city, she began to
notice the tension that seemed to roll from his tightly-wound body in waves.
She noticed the frequent glances in his rear view mirror and that his hands
were tight on the steering wheel. “What’s wrong?”

A small grimace crossed his
face. “You remember when I told you what I was working on was dangerous?” he
asked, looking from the road ahead to the mirror, then back to the road.

Willow
felt a surge of fear
gnawing at her belly. “Yes.”

“I wasn’t kidding. Look, I can’t talk about it
yet. That phone call back there was my associate calling to tell me something
big was about to go down. I need to be there so I can get it on tape, then I’ll
have the proof I need for the agency to take me seriously,” he said in a rush.

“Terry, maybe you should notify the authorities
now and stay out of it,” she said quietly.

He flashed her a disillusioned grin. “I’m in
too deep now to trust anyone down here. It has to go back to the states or
it’ll disappear—you have no idea how far the corruption goes around here,
Will.”

“I thought things were getting better,” Willow said, unclenching
her fists to calm her anxiety.

“To a certain degree, but it’s dangerous for
someone to stand up against the ingrained corruption that’s been a part of this
country for so long. You risk being killed for fighting the tide.”

“Then why are you still here? What could
possibly make you want to stay, if it’s so dangerous?” Her gaze touched her
friend’s face, and she saw the tight expression ease into a brief smile as he
caught her look.

“The people. Despite the corruption and the
violence, the thing that keeps me here is the courage these people have. Every
day men and women keep trying to stand up to it, despite the knowledge they
place themselves in danger—they keep trying and that’s what gets me right
here,” he said, thumping his chest with his fist. “I can’t turn my back on
that.”

Biting her lip, she turned to look out her
window. Yes, she could see the draw of that passion, the desire to fight for
the underdog and take on the monsters of greed and corruption and just plain
immorality of mankind, but it was a fight that didn’t seem to be making any headway.