Viper's Nest (7 page)

Ritchie stared from one to the other. ‘You two know each other?’ he asked. ‘Cate, you know Lucas Black, from Black Noir? Wow!’

‘Sure does,’ said Lucas, not taking his eyes off Cate’s face. ‘She’s kind of like my lucky mascot. So I hope you don’t mind me asking, Cate, but what the heck
are you doing here?’

Cate frowned for a second. Before she could say anything, a loud laugh and shrieking emanated from a cloud of frothy bubbles spilling over and out of the largest hot tub that Cate had ever
seen.

‘Hey, waiter,’ someone was calling in a broad Essex accent to one of the many young men racing around with trays of drinks and canapés. ‘Bring us some more champagne,
there’s a good boy. I can’t get out of here. It’s too damn cold. I’m going to have to stay here till the sun comes up.’

Cate and Lucas grinned at each other before Lucas led them over to the hot tub.

‘Look who I’ve just found outside, admiring the view,’ he said to the back of a very blond head.

Nancy Kyle looked up from the hot tub and let out a scream, which shocked even the jazz band playing in the shadows into temporary silence.

‘Cate – babe! I don’t believe it!’

Ignoring her earlier pronouncement, the supermodel stood up, showing off her long, lean body which was encased in a silver snakeskin bikini. She pulled Cate into a very wet and foamy hug.
‘What are you doing here? I got your text, babe, but I didn’t know you knew Johnny James. You
are
a dark horse!’

‘I don’t,’ Cate said quickly. ‘Not really. But this is Ritchie, his nephew. He’s a friend of a friend and invited me out here.’

She changed the subject quickly. If she had to go into details it might get tricky. ‘How’s the fashion show going, Nancy? I must say you’re looking pretty relaxed considering
there’s less than two weeks to go. I would have thought that you would have been up to your eyes in phone calls and emails and whatever it is you need to do to put together something like
that.’

Lucas smiled. ‘Cate, do you honestly think that Nancy is actually organising the show herself? Right now she’s got about fourteen assistants running their little legs off
twenty-four/seven to make sure that everything is ship-shape and perfect for the big night. Nancy just has to rock up a week on Saturday looking absolutely gorgeous and collect all the plaudits for
her hard work. Isn’t that right, darling?’

‘Delegation, Cate,’ said Nancy, nodding solemnly. ‘That’s the key to success.’

‘And she does delegate
everything
,’ Lucas said dryly. ‘Including writing her books, designing her children’s clothes range, and coming up with recipes for her
cookbook. Not to mention the childcare, the shopping, the school run, the cooking, the gardening . . .’ He grinned at Nancy affectionately, taking the sting out of his words.

‘Babe!’ Nancy pretended to be shocked. ‘Never the shopping!’ She kissed Lucas on the cheek as she grabbed Cate by the hand, leading her away to a quiet spot on the
balcony.

‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of Ritchie, but what’s happened to the gorgeous Michel? Ritchie looks pretty comfortable around you. I didn’t have you down as a
two-timer.’

Cate blushed furiously. ‘Nancy!’

‘OK, OK, just asking.’ Nancy grinned.

Cate shook her head, exasperated. Perhaps this was what it was like to have a big sister teasing you. ‘We’ve split up, if you must know.’ Cate tried not to sound too sad.
‘Michel dumped me. And no, Ritchie is definitely not his replacement. In fact, I only met him today.’

‘Oh babe!’ Nancy was clearly shocked. ‘You’ve been dumped? What’s it like?’

Cate laughed out loud then. ‘Thanks, Nancy. You’ve really cheered me up.’

‘I have?’ Nancy looked bewildered. ‘Well, whatever. Glad to help. What are you doing in LA, anyway?’

‘I’m here to visit Mum. I haven’t seen her for ages. I’m so looking forward to being with her.’

‘Sweet,’ said Nancy. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t you invite your mum out with us tomorrow night for dinner? Bring Ritchie too if you like.’

‘Nancy, that would be fantastic. But if you don’t mind I think I’ll leave Ritchie out of it. I don’t want you getting the wrong idea again. Or him for that matter. Can I
check with Mum and get back to you tomorrow? She’s got a new man and, knowing my mum, he might just take precedence over the daughter she hasn’t seen for over a year! Where were you
planning on going by the way?’

‘Not sure,’ said Nancy, carelessly. ‘Probably won’t decide until about five o’clock. Text me, babe. You know what I’m like, I might forget. Busy delegating,
you see,’

Four people were sitting around the table in Johnny’s office in the basement of the house. It was windowless and, with its spartan office furniture and beige walls, it
seemed a world away from the luxury just above them.

‘Sorry about the dungeon,’ Johnny said apologetically to Cate as he poured them all coffee. ‘I can’t work anywhere with a view, otherwise I spend all my time staring out
of the window.’

He was seated next to Ritchie. On his other side, his lawyer, Ned – a solid-built man with piercing blue eyes under heavy lids – was shuffling quietly through bits of paper.

There was a knock and a neat-looking young man in a suit and holding a small grey folder came into the room. He nodded at the table and sat down without speaking.

‘Dave Osbourne.’ The lawyer waved a hand in his direction. ‘The Los Angeles Police Department sent him. Apparently he’s some sort of overseas crime liaison officer,
brought in when an American citizen is a victim of serious crime in Mexico and Central America. His expertise is providing the link between the families and the Mexican authorities, usually in
cases of kidnap or murder, and he has the thankless task of trying to persuade the Mexican police to keep the families informed and up to date with developments.’

Dave cleared his throat and nodded. ‘The US Embassy in Mexico City send their apologies,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t get anyone up here at such short notice. But they asked
to be kept informed.’

There was a pause. Cate could hear the air conditioning humming and felt cold in her summer dress.

‘Amber and Jade were staying at El Tajin, in the Veracruz region on the Gulf of Mexico, along with two other archaeology students,’ Ritchie began. ‘They were just coming to the
end of working on a dig and were having a great time. Earlier this week Amber texted me to say she had found something really special, but said she couldn’t talk about it yet. To be honest I
didn’t take that much notice – she always gets excited about every little scrap of metal or pottery she digs up and usually it turns out to be nothing.’ He gave a quick smile.
‘That’s part of Amber’s charm – her enthusiasm for everything she does.’ There was a pause. ‘That’s all I knew really,’ he continued, ‘until I
saw the newsflash on TV. I spoke to their mum who asked if Uncle Jack could step in and do what he could to help find them.’

‘Thanks, Ritchie,’ said his uncle, turning to the policeman. ‘Dave?’

The man from the LAPD shuffled his papers. ‘The head of the dig, a Norwegian called Stefan Vilander, had contacted the professor of archaeology from Mexico City University asking her to
fly down and check something out. It was odd though: even though they had worked together for several years – the professor was even grading his PhD – Stefan refused to tell her exactly
what it was they had found. He said he didn’t want to risk emails and photographs being forwarded or intercepted and likewise he wouldn’t talk to her further on the phone. He wanted her
to see the findings first, without prejudice or warning, and go from there. She had enough respect for him to trust that he wouldn’t call her down on a wild goose chase, but she was on a dig
in a remote part of Ethiopia and it took her nearly a week to get back to Mexico. She was due to arrive at the site on Wednesday.’ He stopped and took a sip of water. ‘Apparently by the
time the professor turned up, both the security guards and the students were missing,’ continued Osbourne.

He glanced down at his notes again. ‘The police initially carried out an extensive search of the site, widening it to a ten-kilometre radius into the rainforest around it, sending up army
helicopters with thermal imaging devices, and sniffer dogs too.

He looked around the table. ‘They’ve picked up nothing. There’s been no word from them nor any sighting since. The police don’t even know if the guards were part of the
kidnap gang or if they were victims too. What’s more, whatever it was that the students found, well, there was no sign of that, either.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe the students got
excited about nothing, as Ritchie suggested. Whatever the case, that’s about all we know – or have been allowed to know – so far.’

Johnny turned to his lawyer. Cate wasn’t sure if it was the bright light in the office or worry, but Johnny suddenly looked much older. ‘What’ve you got, Ned?’

The big man looked grim. ‘The Mexican government have now imposed a total news blackout which means that all media are being kept away from both the site and the search. They say
it’s to prevent the search from being impeded by the media spotlight. More likely it’s because they don’t want to damage their tourist industry. The site is already open again to
the public.

‘It’s a blow for us, no doubt about it. The journalists are usually the ones with the great local contacts, but most of them will be pulled back now. If the newspapers can’t
cover the story, they’re not going to waste the manpower investigating it. I’ve spoken to some colleagues who practise law over the border. Kidnapping is a growth industry in Mexico
right now. Most of it is drug-related – gang on gang – or revenge, but we can probably rule that out in this case. It’s my guess that this one is for money. In Mexico, even the
poorest Yank is rich.’ He sighed. ‘I guess those kids were a prime target.’

‘Has there been a ransom request?’ Johnny asked eventually. ‘Whatever you need, I’ll do my best to raise it. Or should we offer a reward for information?’

The man from the LAPD looked horrified. ‘With all due respect,’ he said, ‘that’s the last thing we should be talking about. If the kidnappers get a whiff that their
captives have rich friends, the ransom demand will go through the roof. Anyway,’ he continued in his quiet drawl, ‘in these cases we normally get word from the kidnappers within
forty-eight hours or so. I’m going to have to disagree with you, sir.’ He looked over at the lawyer. ‘My belief is that the longer time goes on without contact, the less likely it
is that money is the motive. Which is, I’m afraid, bad news.’

Cate listened to what he said. She couldn’t help thinking Dave Osbourne looked familiar. She looked at him more closely, noting his thick dark hair, his thin lips, the nondescript grey
eyes that constantly moved from person to person watching, observing, assessing. For a few seconds their eyes met but there was no hint of recognition.

‘What about sending in American special forces to look for them, Uncle Jack? Or even a private company – the ones that specialise in kidnaps?’ Ritchie said.

Dave shook his head. ‘Maybe, but not yet. To be honest, things are pretty touchy between the US government and the Mexicans right now. Our government has been leaning heavily on them to
get their house in order over their drug trade, and in return the Mexicans are getting pretty defensive about outside interference. We can’t go charging in like a bunch of cowboys to the
rescue. Then there’s the logistics. The region where the students went missing is covered with dense jungle, hills and a network of caves. You could send in an entire US army division, have
them search for weeks, and still not find a soul.’

A discreet buzz from a phone somewhere near Johnny broke the rather despondent silence that followed.

‘Excuse me.’ He hit the call button and listened intensely. He spoke rapidly in Spanish – so rapidly that Cate struggled to make sense of what Johnny was saying. She heard
something about theft, treasures, Americans, before he finally hung up and turned to the table.

‘That was my journalist friend in Mexico City with some interesting news,’ he explained. ‘Before the news blackout was introduced, they had prepared a story on El Tajin. He
says that there have been rumours for months of heists on other sites all over Mexico – objects stolen from museums and site exhibitions, and taken by truck to the coast where they’re
then smuggled out of the country by sea. The government were denying this and every time he tried to contact the sites himself, he was stonewalled. He put all his correspondents on alert, briefing
them to listen out for anything that might point towards whether the rumours were true. He’d got a call from his man in Veracruz, the closest big city to El Tajin. It appears that over the
few days between Stefan calling the professor and the students going missing, the locals claim a group of strangers arrived at the local town in a convoy of black pick-ups. They kept themselves to
themselves, didn’t eat in any of the bars, and spent their time holed up in a small hotel. The evening before the twins were reported missing, they checked out and paid their hotel bills in
cash. I think we can assume the names they gave at the hotel were fake. All the hotel can tell us is that at least one of them had a US accent and another was almost certainly European.’

He paused and looked at Ritchie. ‘I’m sorry to say this about your friends, but the locals are convinced that the students haven’t been kidnapped. The word is that they had
found treasure and were stealing it from the site and selling these artefacts to their American friends, and then something went wrong. They reckon the students and their accomplices had to make a
quick getaway back over the US border. In short, the locals don’t think the twins are innocent kidnap victims – they think they’re partners in a terrible crime.’

‘No way!’ It was too much for Ritchie. ‘The twins would never be mixed up in something like that. Uncle Jack, you know Amber and Jade.’

His uncle held up his hand. ‘Sure, it’s almost certainly just a local rumour, but the trouble with these rumours is that they sometimes have a way of catching on. Before you know it,
people believe that they’re the truth. I should know, I’ve been at the receiving end of enough of them. But even so, Ritchie, you must stay away from this. I don’t want you
getting involved in anything criminal.