Treasured by Thursday
Page 45“He cooked dinner.”
Meg once again linked arms with Gabi as they turned back toward the villa.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get the image of him with all that flour covering him out of my head,” Gabi said.
“It’s not the flour that’s bringing that blush to your face. It was his attempt to be your personal spandex that’s heating you up.”
Chapter Sixteen
Remington hoped the leads in Columbia would dry up quickly. Unfortunately, they didn’t. Now he was on day three in the hot, humid urban jungle, leaning against the crumbling side of a building that called itself a bank. It wasn’t the bank where Picano’s account was set up, but inside was a slightly shady teller whose tongue wagged with every fifty-dollar bill Remington flashed. It helped to have Blackwell’s never-ending wallet.
Juan emerged from the broken-down building and searched the busy street. Before his eyes found Remington, another man, this one skinny and skittish, intersected. Remington let the smoke from his cigarette drift to the sky and lifted the newspaper in his hands to observe for a little longer. Juan had said he had a friend at the Picano branch who would meet with the two of them. He had a few hundred-dollar bills on him, and a few more in the hotel room tucked behind the toilet. From the lack of cleanliness, they wouldn’t be discovered there until the next millennium.
The two men shook hands and held what appeared to be an amicable conversation. Within a couple of minutes, Juan was once again scanning the street. The answer to who might be behind the activity out of the Picano account was only a few questions away. Problem was, in Columbia, it was impossible to determine who to trust.
Remington trusted no one.
He tucked the paper under his arm, tossed the butt of his smoke to the ground, and wove through traffic, pedestrians, and a few stray dogs roaming the street. A child, no older than three, pushed against his leg, his grubby little fingers out for anything Remington might spare. He pushed past the kid without a sideways glance. If he so much as offered a quarter, the kid would multiply like a fucking gremlin in water. Attracting attention was not on Remington’s list.
“There you are,” Juan said, his lips pulled back in a grin. “Señor Remington . . . my friend, Raul, the one I told you about.”
Raul placed a sweaty hand in his, nodded as if a bobble doll had taken over his scrawny frame. “It’s the international language, isn’t it?”
Remington removed his hand as soon as possible. From the way Raul shifted on his feet, he was either seconds away from a heart attack driven from fear or was in need of a hit.
“Columbian bankers need to speak English.” Juan nudged his friend. “Right, amigo?”
“Sí, sí.”
Remington nodded toward an outside diner down the street. He’d already scoped out the area, knew of two escape routes if he needed to vacate his newfound friends’ company in a hurry.
The three of them stepped into the shade of the patio; Remington took a seat with the wall to his back, an out to his right, his amigos on his left. A waitress was on them the second they sat down. Not risking anything, he ordered a bottle of beer, waited for the three of them to be left alone.
Raul ran a hand under his nose before he spoke. “Juan tells me you’re looking for someone.”
“Could be someone, or several someones. You tell me.”
Juan rolled his fingers together; Raul kept his eyes moving around the restaurant.
“Who wants to know?”
Raul scooted forward, his eyes blinking. “Information isn’t free, señor.”
The waitress returned with three beers and disappeared.
“You have information for me?”
Raul rubbed his upper lip again. Yeah, the man was dipping into some of Columbia’s finest . . . or perhaps cheapest. Hard to tell watching from the outside.
“If you have money . . . I have information.”
Remington removed two fifty-dollar bills from his pocket, made sure the man saw the hundreds packed behind them. “I need a name.”
“If I told you Picano is using the account?”
Remington lifted his hand holding the money away. “Don’t fuck with me, Raul. Picano is dead.”
Raul kicked back in his chair. “What about Mrs. Picano?”
Remington stood. The man was looking for quick money. He didn’t know shit.
“You can get the fuck out of my way. I don’t deal with people who waste my time, cokehead.”
“But . . .”
Remington nudged the other man out of the way and left the two bankers behind.
Back at square one. He pushed through the kids that circled him, bumping into him with their hands out. He shoved his hand into his pocket, fisted the change there, and tossed it several feet away. Like a flock of birds to crumbs, the children scattered to pick up what they could as he jogged across the street and disappeared.
He hustled up the filthy steps of the hotel and into his room. He shoved everything into the duffel bag and retrieved the cash behind the john. He patted his right back pocket, in search of his phone.
He froze, checked his left pocket . . . front pockets.
“Son of a bitch.”
Hunter wasn’t sure who was avoiding who. Both he and Gabi all but jumped on the opportunity to spend time in the nightclub instead of retiring in their private villa.
He didn’t trust himself.
Even with his head in a hundred different places, the one place it wanted to be was buried in his wife.