Drug Lord: A Bad Boy Baby Romance (4 page)

“
T
eleferiQo
, please,” I told him.

“No problem, niña.”

I then went on one of the most terrifying car rides of my life.

My taxi driver had no problem cutting off other cars. There were loud honks every time that he did it, but he ignored them as if they were pleasant flute music.

I was gripping the seat in front of me and afraid to scream, in case he got distracted.

The drive through the city was harrowing, but when we finally got to the base of the mountain, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was pretty sure that the ride had taken at least 5 years off of my life.

He actually drove sensibly on the nearly deserted mountain road. We went higher and higher as I could feel myself beginning to pant.

Quito had a little bit thinner air than DC, but the TeleferiQo was even higher. I had mild asthma, so I was struggling to breathe as we got to the top. I cursed myself for forgetting to bring an inhaler to Ecuador. I’d left so hastily that I hadn’t packed it.

Oh well.

When I got out, I paid the insane rate that was displayed on the taxi meter and walked into the TeleferiQo office.

There were two rates: one for locals and another for tourists. I paid the tourist rate and got a ticket to take the cable car up the mountain.

The line to go up wasn’t too crowded. There were only four people in front of me. I stepped quickly into one of the slowly but steadily moving cars when I got to the front of the line.

I was by myself inside of the car. I was mildly acrophobic, but somehow dangling from this large cable car, I didn’t feel scared. I liked looking down at the city, feeling as if I were in a sci-fi movie, floating above the Quito landscape. We were so far away that I might as well have been in the clouds.

It wasn’t easy to breathe now, but I did finally get to the top. I got out and was out of breath when I walked around.

It was difficult for me to see very far. I really was among the clouds, which blocked my view from the very top of the TeleferiQo.

I was not going to make it around the area surrounding the TeleferiQo. I was a little disappointed, because I’d just paid for a ticket and a taxi ride all the way up here, but I was going to go back down.

Then I noticed a sign that said that they offered donkey rides.

Beside the sign, there was a short man with dark grey hair and a wool cap on his head.

I realized that it was a little chilly up here, even though the sun had been up for several hours. I wished that I had brought a jacket with me when I came here.

I looked to the side. There was a little girl who was standing behind a table full of scarves and jackets.

When I came closer, I realized that they smelled strongly of llamas. I knew what llamas smelled like because my elementary school had had a llama farm next door. I lived in fear of windy days, when the stench blew towards us.

I had a clear choice here. Either I could freeze up here, or I could do as the Romans did.

I went to the little girl, who definitely should’ve been in elementary school, and I paid her a few dollars for a pretty, colorful scarf that had rainbow stripes and a green jacket that smelled so strongly of llama that I expected myself to begin to crave grass.

When I wasn’t incredibly cold anymore, I walked back to the guy who was standing next to the donkey ride sign.

“I’d like to take a ride.”

He looked at his watch.

“The next one leaves in 5 minutes. Let’s get you a saddle.”

He motioned to someone I hadn’t noticed before.

There was another kid with black hair and tan skin that matched the guy who was running the donkey ride business.

He gave me a once-over, as if he were measuring me. Then he went to the fence and pulled off a saddle. He pulled a donkey over and fastened it.

“Try this,” he said in heavily accented Spanish.

I looked at the donkey. It wasn’t very tall, but I wasn’t, either. How was I going to get on top of it?

I’d ridden horses in the United States a couple times, and there was always a mounting block. But there wasn’t one here.

I looked around, as if it were hidden somewhere, but I couldn’t see anything.

“Excuse me, how do I get on the horse?” I hoped that I didn’t sound like a complete idiot.

But he snorted and pointed to the fence.

I could feel my cheeks heating up. Of course you used the fence to get on top of the donkey. He acted as if it should be extremely obvious, but I’d never done that.

I brought my donkey over to the fence and clambered on top of it, hoping that I wasn’t hurting it.

When I was in the saddle, I yelped as my donkey began to amble towards the feeding trough.

The donkey leaned down and began to eat, making me slide forward. I held on desperately to both the reins and the donkey’s neck.

The boy was snickering as he gently pulled the donkey up and away from the food.

The donkey snorted at him, but he did as he was told.

He brought me towards a group of people who were obviously tourists. They had cameras in their hands and were pointing at the different landscape that you’d find up here in the páramo.

I tried to focus on speaking quietly to my donkey, trying to make friends, but all my donkey did was flick his ears at me.

I didn’t have to sit there for very long, though. Our guide was soon leading us out on a short ride around the páramo.

I was happy enough riding around on top of the donkey, and it was a little easier to breathe now, as my body got used to being at this altitude.

As I felt the stocky little donkey slowly and steadily walking along with the group, my heart soared. I just loved being up here in the clouds, far away from the city. I was cold, yeah, but it was great.

I felt like my worries in the United States were a bad dream. My reality was a simple life here in the Andes, smelling like a llama and riding a donkey on a mountain.

When I was done, I’d go back down the mountain and just chill in my room after I got the smell of llama off of me.

I smiled when I thought of what my mother would say when she saw me like this. It was a good thing that I didn’t bring a camera like the tourists had, because she’d faint.

The ride was over too soon. I saw that a bunch of the tourists were heading towards a building that smelled like food.

But I’d read the reviews on TripAdvisor, and I knew that I didn’t want to eat anything up here.

So I went walking towards the main building to get a cable car down.

But as I went downward, I noticed that there was a little cabin with steam or smoke coming out of its chimney.

I
felt
shy going towards the cabin, but the smell that was coming out of it was freshly roasted Ecuadorian coffee, which I could definitely use since it was so cold here. I figured that I could pay them for a cup.

I knocked on the door. Nobody answered.

I thought about walking away and just taking the cable car down, but I was really cold.

I’d never do this in the United States, but I opened the door and stuck my head in to say, “Is there anybody in here?”

Silence.

I knew that I should’ve backed out then, but the coffeemaker was right next to the door, and there was a stack of disposable coffee cups next to it. Surely they wouldn’t be too angry if I took some.

I opened my purse and took out a $5 bill. If it was enough to pay for Starbucks in America, then it was enough to pay for coffee here.

I drank the hot coffee and closed my eyes while I drank nearly all of it. It was liquid bliss, the warmth spreading throughout my body.

“What are you doing here?”

My eyes flew open.

I turned around and saw Emilio standing there, with just a towel around his waist. His arms were crossed.

“Did you follow me here?”

I stammered, “No…what are you doing here?”

I dropped my coffee cup. Both of us looked down at it as it spilled just a little bit of coffee on the ground.

“Sorry,” I said, grabbing a napkin and wiping up the spill.

“Why are you here?” he asked me.

“I just wanted to go up the TeleferiQo…I had no idea that you were here.”

“Were you hoping for a repeat?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I had no idea that you were here. I should…I should go.”

I tossed my coffee cup into the trashcan by the door and walked towards it. I should know better than to walk into a stranger’s house. I didn’t know what had possessed me.

But before I got there, Emilio put himself between the door and me.

“Excuse me,” I said, walking around him.

But he stepped to the side.

“Why did you follow me here? This cabin is the most private place that I have. Nobody knows that I even own this.”

“I didn’t know that you owned this cabin,” I protested. “And all I want to do is go home.”

But he had walked towards me. His hands were holding my upper arms. He wasn’t hurting me, but his grip was pretty firm.

“Let go,” I breathed.

I saw a look in his eyes that terrified me. The lover who had made me come over and over again was gone. The man in front of me, even though he was only wearing a towel, was looking at me with an intensity that went beyond the crazy passion that we had experienced.

“Who sent you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I tried to step around him again, but his hands were still on my arms.

“Let go.”

“What’s your name?”

“You know my name. I’m Naelle.”

“Naelle who?”

“This is insane,” I told him. “Listen, I’m going to leave now, and both of us are going to forget that I ever met you.” What a psycho.

But his hands were closing on my arms with more force, and I was starting to get really scared.

I was trying to remember what I’d been taught in the self-defense class that my father insisted I take before starting college. I couldn’t really aim very well when he had a towel on, but a knee to the balls would be pretty effective, and he was within close range.

I shifted my weight, but suddenly he was lifting me a foot off the ground, my legs kicking but just flailing around in the air. I was completely at his mercy.

“I’m going to ask you again, and you’re going to give me a real answer. What’s your name?”

“Naelle Montero,” I told him. “And you’re going to let me go.”

“Tell me, Naelle Montero,” he said, with a slight emphasis on my last name. “What are you doing in Ecuador?”

I gulped. “Running away.”

“From whom?”

“My ex-fiancé.”

“Hm. Tell me about him.” His tone made it seem like he doubted that I had an ex-fiancé at all.

“His name is Brayden Wilcox,” I said. “We just graduated from college, and we got engaged. But I found him in a closet with my best friend at our engagement party.”

“Nobody would be stupid enough to do that.” He snorted. “Not to a girl as beautiful as you are. Pull the other one…it has bells on.”

“I’m not joking,” I said, twisting a little. “That’s why I’m in Ecuador.”

“Well, Naelle Montero, why don’t we test that out?”

My eyes grew wide.

“What are you saying?”

“I can have some investigators look into it.”

“Okay…” I didn’t know what he was getting at.

“While you stay in the cabin with me.”

“What?” I gasped. “I want to go home.”

“Don’t worry. If you check out, you can go home. I’ll send my jet.”

“What are you talking about? How long is it going to take?”

“Just a few days.”

“Are you serious?” I struggled in earnest this time, trying to twist out of his grip.

“Or I can take you home right now.”

I stopped struggling. “You’d do that?”

“Why ask someone to do something that I could easily do myself?”

“So you’d let me pick up my stuff from the hostel and take me back to America…just like that?”

He shrugged and grinned at me.

“Let’s have an adventure.”

I had no clue what was going on, but if he was going to let me go back to the hostel, I’d have a chance to run.

“Okay,” I said.

He put me back on my feet.

“Let’s go.”

I couldn’t wait to get out of this cabin. Emilio during trivia night and in his bed was wildly different from Emilio when I had interrupted him in his secret cabin.

I went to the lift. I saw that it was pretty much empty.

“Hello,” he said to the operator, who obviously knew him well. I shouldn’t ask for help here. I needed to wait until we got back to Quito.

We got into one of the cable cars, and I wrapped my arms around myself as I went to sit in the furthest corner of the car. I stared out the window.

It was a lot scarier to do it while I was descending. The ride up had been fun, but it felt like we were in a plane that was slow-motion crashing into Quito.

I covered my eyes with my hands.

“Are you okay?”

I looked at him, trying to focus on his face and not the scenery moving around our little cable car.

“I’m acrophobic.”

“You felt comfortable walking into my cabin unannounced, but looking out the window terrifies you?”

“It does when we’re so high up,” I squeaked.

“You can look, you know. We’re not going to crash. If you have trouble handling this, what are you like on airplanes?”

“Airplanes are different. If we fall, we’ll pretty much die instantly. If we fall from here, we might survive or die in terrible pain.”

He shook his head. “You’re something else.” He chuckled softly.

I kept my hands over my eyes during the entire ride down to Quito.

W
e grabbed
a taxi that was idling near the exit of the TeleferiQo.

“Did you enjoy yourselves?” the driver asked idly.

“Yes,” Naelle said. She had her arms crossed as she stared out the window again. Apparently, now that we were on solid ground, she obviously felt a lot better. She was incredibly brazen sometimes, so it was a little shocking that she was so afraid of heights — or that someone who was acrophobic would decide to go on a ride up to the highest part of Quito.

“Where are we heading?” I asked Naelle.

“The Backpackers Inn,” she told the driver.

Then we were flying down the mountain, and she was covering her eyes again.

I closed my eyes, too, but not in fear. My mind was ticking things off a list. As soon as we took her things from the hostel, we’d get on my jet and head straight for America. I kept a packed suitcase at the hangar. The crew knew to put it in the jet when I used it.

Then we’d go to the United States, and I would check her out discreetly — as her boyfriend.

Nobody would need to know. I was sure that I could talk her into a simple arrangement: she would be free in America, I could check her out. If she was being truthful, I’d let her go, no harm done.

If she wasn’t, then it would be a different story.

It didn’t take long for the taxi driver to get us to The Backpackers Inn. I paid the amount that showed up on the meter and got out with her.

As I took her arm like a solicitous boyfriend, she had a look in her eyes like she wanted to bolt, but she’d agreed to come back to America with me.

It would be dangerous for me to let her go now. If she was sent by someone — the CIA, DEA, or one of my competitors — then she might have gotten what she came for when she’d slept in my bed.

I had no idea what was missing from my room, but if she’d taken anything, I would notice eventually. I might as well take control of the situation now.

We walked up the stairs. The hostel was nearly deserted — I supposed that most of the backpackers were out and about during the day. I didn’t know if this hostel was a particularly safe place for her to sleep, but she wouldn’t be here long.

She quickly packed her bags while I admired how efficient she was. She had enough clothing to last three months, but she had everything packed properly in less than an hour.

I walked her downstairs, holding her large suitcase in one hand and keeping the other one on her waist.

I could feel the tension in her back, but she didn’t say anything or ask me to stop.

I was going to keep her close until I found out if she was sent to take me out.

Although if she were an assassin, she should’ve already killed me in my sleep. She was probably after some kind of information, but I wasn’t a fool.

I didn’t keep that at home.

As far as my household staff knew, I was a petrolero, one of the wealthy elite of Ecuador who had tons of oil money.

I flagged down a taxi and asked him to take us to UIO, the new airport.