She blinked. He meant it, she realized. For a moment, she didn’t know what to say. “Really?” She looked away from him. “And take nothing in return, I suppose.”
He chuckled. “I never claimed that.” His cell phone rang, and he reached for it. “Dario,” he said as he answered, “do we have a destination?”
“The plane landed in Port of Spain, Trinidad, ten minutes ago,” Dario said. “I tried to scramble to have someone follow them, but they whisked Montez away with the speed of light. You’ll have to have your people do a search, Cameron.”
“Or Catherine’s people,” Cameron murmured. “She has one or two excellent operatives with whom she’s just been in contact.”
“Excellent? I can always use good people. Can I hire them away from her?”
“I doubt it. She’s very protective of her sources.”
“Then she should tell them not to focus only on Montez. Dorgal wasn’t on the plane when it landed in Trinidad.”
“What?” Catherine said. “Where is he?”
“He hired a private jet two hours after that flight left for Trinidad. The flight plan said New Orleans, but I doubt if that’s where he’ll end up.”
“So do I.” Catherine moistened her lips. “More likely Louisville. Or Atlanta.”
“I’ll use a little bribery and intimidation with the rental company and find out which one is the target and get back to you. I thought I’d warn you. Let me know if you have anything else for me to do.”
“Just the continued surveillance and protection of the Montez family,” Cameron said. “Now that Santos has Montez, at least he won’t have that threat to hold over his head.”
“No, just death and torture,” Dario said dryly. “No threat at all. But I’ll eliminate the only one I can right now. No one will touch his family.” He hung up.
“Santos won’t kill him. He believes he may need him,” Catherine said. “And he may threaten him, but Montez will be able to fend off torture. He’s smart, and he knows it’s only a matter of time until we find Santos.”
“You don’t think he’ll cave as he did before, when Dorgal sent for him to work on Delores?”
“You didn’t hear his voice when he was looking at that burning monastery. He was sick and horrified at the destruction. Dorgal went too far. It boomeranged. He’s in our camp now.”
“If we can find a way to use him.”
“And to find out where the hell he is.”
“Oh, I have complete confidence we’ll find him,” Cameron said. “Have a little faith.”
She gazed at him in annoyance. His tone had been as confident as his words. “Why are you this certain?”
“Kelly and Luke. Didn’t I tell Dario that you had wonderful people?”
“And that’s the only reason?”
“What else could there be?”
She shook her head. “With you, there’s no telling.” She dropped the subject. “But right now, I’m more worried about Dorgal’s heading back toward the U.S.”
“And rightly so.” His lips twisted. “But we always knew that Montez was only a temporary distraction. Now that he’s scooped him up, it appears distraction time is over, and he’s focusing on the main event.”
“Evidently.” Panic was pounding through her. “I have to talk to Hu Chang and Eve and warn them.”
“It’s not as if they’re not expecting it to happen. They’re prepared for it.” He held up his hand. “I know that you still have to call, but suppose you phone Luke first. I’ll set up Skype so that he can show us the general directions he and Kelly figured out from the gas usage.”
She nodded. Of course, that was the smart thing to do. If they could take Santos out, then any plans Dorgal had would fall apart. But it still didn’t stop her from wanting to turn the plane around and rush back home. “Do it.”
*
Ten minutes later, she was looking at Luke’s face on the computer screen. He was wearing a dark red shirt that made his hair appear darker than ever. He was not smiling. “Hello, Catherine. Kelly said that you need me.”
I always need you, she wanted to tell him.
Get it over with. Try to clear the air. “And she told me that you were annoyed. You have a right to be.”
A flicker of expression. “Yes, I do. You cheated, Catherine. You didn’t want to have trouble with me, so you—”
“You’re absolutely right.” She tried to smile. “You intimidated me, and so I just paid lip service to what you wanted from me.”
He frowned. “Intimidated? No one intimidates you, Catherine.”
“You do. Why else did I chicken out? I apologize. Will you forgive me?”
He was still frowning. “I guess I will. But you should have—”
“Take me to task later. I need you to tell me about connecting those dots. Kelly said you’ve been working on a few scenarios to give me a general direction where I might find Santos.”
He nodded. “More than a few. I went through dozens of gas receipts from every city in the Caribbean where Dorgal rented a motorboat. I checked out weather, wind current, tide for every trip, and gave the figures to Kelly to calculate how far the gas used would take Dorgal on that particular day.” He held up an oceanic map chart with arching lines and scrawled numbers issuing from several cities. “And then I charted them all and their approximate distances from the origin point.” He pointed to the sizable circle he’d drawn in the ocean. “There are dozens of tiny islands in this area, and I can’t tell which one was his exact destination, but Kelly and I both think Santos’s island is somewhere in that group.”
“Dozens,” she repeated. “But that’s more info than we had before. We’ll just have to be careful not to be seen when we’re scouting around that area.”
“And it may not be all that difficult to find,” Cameron said. “What’s the approximate mileage of your circle, Luke?”
“Maybe forty miles.”
“Weaving in and out of those islands,” Catherine said. “And I’m sure Santos is equipped with manpower and high-tech missiles on that island.”
“We’ll work it out.”