Taking Chances Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Susan Lewis
honking, angry traffic from nearby streets resounded through the tightly packed maze of the ghetto, where the walls were smeared with graffiti, windows and doors were constantly barred and violence stalked every sidewalk.
Being here could easily turn out to be the dumbest thing he had ever done. Except that accolade had already been awarded to the decision he had made three years ago – the decision that was going to punish him for the rest of his life.
It had brought him to where he was now – a city that had to be one of the most exquisite he had seen, on a mission that was infinitely more suicidal than any he had taken. But despite all his discussions with Michael, when Michael had tried to talk him out of coming, he’d had no choice in the matter, for his conscience was burning with enough guilt and remorse to launch him into a karmic cycle of everlasting chaos. Were he a Catholic he would probably go to confession. A few hundred years of Hail Marys, a hair-shirt and a couple of lifetimes of abstinence on all counts might do the trick. But he wasn’t a Catholic, nor did he have much faith in any religion giving him any kind of peace for what he had done. That was mainly because he believed it had to come from within him, which was why he was here, in a country that instilled fear in most right-thinking citizens of the world, in a town where Rachel, the woman he’d loved, had lost her life as a direct result of his stupidity and arrogance.
Her kidnap, three years ago, had been a warning from the Tolima Drug Cartel for him to back off his investigation
now
. Of course the warning had told him just how nervous they were, and they’d had good reason to be, for by then he’d connected up with a whole bunch of their enemies who were to be found not only in rival cartels and regular law enforcement, but within many of the left-wing terrorist groups that virtually controlled the country’s interior.
Exactly who the Galeanos – the family who ran the Tolima Cartel – had paid to kill Rachel he still didn’t know. Hernán Galeano, the head of the cartel, was now in prison, but it wasn’t the kind of work a man like Galeano carried out personally, so what Chambers wanted to know was, who had been responsible.
Looking beyond the rooftops opposite, he allowed his eyes to move out to the distant grey walls of the Castillo de San Felipe. The fort was only for tourists now – and the troubled ghosts of a bygone era. It was from atop the sloping walls of that fort that the Spanish had finally beaten back the English; more recently it was from one of the
casas mata
inside that a security guard had come running to announce the discovery of a woman’s dead body.
Rachel’s dead body.
A horrible heat burned in his chest as he dragged his mind through the memory of the day they had found her. He knew already what they had done to her, they’d sent pictures that had spared no detail, nor shame. All that had been missing were the faces of her abductors. Not
her
face though, and the terrible degradation, the helplessness and pain, had buried itself so deep inside him that it had become his now to endure in a way she, mercifully, no longer did. But God, how he missed her. How he still longed for her, and how bitterly he wished he could turn back the clock.
When they’d met she’d been the editor of a human rights publication based in New Orleans. Weeks later she had unshackled herself from the frustrations of a desk and brought herself and her journalistic skills into the field.
Was he to blame for that? Had he talked her into giving up the security of her position for the madness of passion and front-line assault? Or was it more arrogance on his part to assume that he could wield such influence over a woman who was as headstrong and wayward as she was sensuous and caring? From the moment they’d met, at a Washington party, it had been clear to them both that all roads in their lives had led to this point, and that all
Being here could easily turn out to be the dumbest thing he had ever done. Except that accolade had already been awarded to the decision he had made three years ago – the decision that was going to punish him for the rest of his life.
It had brought him to where he was now – a city that had to be one of the most exquisite he had seen, on a mission that was infinitely more suicidal than any he had taken. But despite all his discussions with Michael, when Michael had tried to talk him out of coming, he’d had no choice in the matter, for his conscience was burning with enough guilt and remorse to launch him into a karmic cycle of everlasting chaos. Were he a Catholic he would probably go to confession. A few hundred years of Hail Marys, a hair-shirt and a couple of lifetimes of abstinence on all counts might do the trick. But he wasn’t a Catholic, nor did he have much faith in any religion giving him any kind of peace for what he had done. That was mainly because he believed it had to come from within him, which was why he was here, in a country that instilled fear in most right-thinking citizens of the world, in a town where Rachel, the woman he’d loved, had lost her life as a direct result of his stupidity and arrogance.
Her kidnap, three years ago, had been a warning from the Tolima Drug Cartel for him to back off his investigation
now
. Of course the warning had told him just how nervous they were, and they’d had good reason to be, for by then he’d connected up with a whole bunch of their enemies who were to be found not only in rival cartels and regular law enforcement, but within many of the left-wing terrorist groups that virtually controlled the country’s interior.
Exactly who the Galeanos – the family who ran the Tolima Cartel – had paid to kill Rachel he still didn’t know. Hernán Galeano, the head of the cartel, was now in prison, but it wasn’t the kind of work a man like Galeano carried out personally, so what Chambers wanted to know was, who had been responsible.
Looking beyond the rooftops opposite, he allowed his eyes to move out to the distant grey walls of the Castillo de San Felipe. The fort was only for tourists now – and the troubled ghosts of a bygone era. It was from atop the sloping walls of that fort that the Spanish had finally beaten back the English; more recently it was from one of the
casas mata
inside that a security guard had come running to announce the discovery of a woman’s dead body.
Rachel’s dead body.
A horrible heat burned in his chest as he dragged his mind through the memory of the day they had found her. He knew already what they had done to her, they’d sent pictures that had spared no detail, nor shame. All that had been missing were the faces of her abductors. Not
her
face though, and the terrible degradation, the helplessness and pain, had buried itself so deep inside him that it had become his now to endure in a way she, mercifully, no longer did. But God, how he missed her. How he still longed for her, and how bitterly he wished he could turn back the clock.
When they’d met she’d been the editor of a human rights publication based in New Orleans. Weeks later she had unshackled herself from the frustrations of a desk and brought herself and her journalistic skills into the field.
Was he to blame for that? Had he talked her into giving up the security of her position for the madness of passion and front-line assault? Or was it more arrogance on his part to assume that he could wield such influence over a woman who was as headstrong and wayward as she was sensuous and caring? From the moment they’d met, at a Washington party, it had been clear to them both that all roads in their lives had led to this point, and that all