"The Wrong Hostage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lowell Elizabeth)

6

LA JOLLA

SATURDAY EVENING

“WHAT IS IT THAT can’t wait, Grace?” Stuart Sturgis asked. “We’re having a dinner party and-”

“Have you heard from Ted?” she cut in urgently.

“I told you I would call you when and if Ted contacted me.”

“I can’t wait that long.” Grace’s hand clenched the phone until her fingers ached. “I have to talk to Ted now.”

“I’m sorry. I’m his lawyer, not his keeper. I just can’t help you.”

“Stu, it’s an emergency.”

“Look, why don’t you have a glass of wine or two and relax? Ted will probably call in a few days. He’s just a footloose kind of guy.”

Grace wanted to scream that she didn’t have a few days for a footloose kind of guy to show up. Instead, she said, “Sure. Sure. Sorry to interrupt the cocktail hour.”

She hung up and looked at her Rolodex. She’d made thirty calls, talked to twelve answering machines, eight spouses, and ten of Ted’s friends/ business associates who hadn’t heard from him in a while but sure would pass along her message if good old Ted happened to call.

There was only one call left to make.

Two days.

She went to the safe, unlocked it, and pulled out a file it was illegal for her to have. But she had it anyway, and she updated it as often as her CIA source could.

Damn you, Ted. Why aren’t you ever here when Lane and I need you?

And damn me for choosing the wrong man.

Ignoring the official stamps across the papers that advised her to do everything but Drop Dead Before Reading, she flipped rapidly through the file, hardly seeing the names-Philippines, Belize, Venezuela, Brazil, Paraguay, Guatemala, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and most of all, northern Mexico. St. Kilda Consulting wasn’t a government agency, but it had employees in all the hot spots in the world. Outside the law.

Not outlaws.

Just not officially sanctioned.

Everything Grace had worked to be rebelled at the thought of being caught in a place where the law she loved was worse than helpless. The courtroom was like a hospital-awful things might happen in it, but the purpose was greater than the blood and pain, and at the end of the day everything was disinfected and ready to work again. Not like the gutters, where nothing rose above the blood and pain, and nothing was ever clean.

St. Kilda Consulting worked in the world’s gutters.

Grace memorized the number, locked up the file again, and went to find a minimart that sold phone cards. This was one call she didn’t want a record of on her monthly statement.