The Freedom Broker (Thea Paris #1)(38)

Swarthy blanched, and his Adam’s apple rose and fell in quick succession. “Mierda! I swear, we do not know about the oil man. We are FARC.”

Bingo. She recognized his voice, the man on the phone. But FARC? The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group that specialized in kidnappings, including the infamous Hargrove case. But how did they get involved in this mess?

“Where did you get the watch?” she asked.

“I did not see the watch. They told us to say we sent it for proof of life.”

“Who hired you?”

“Our leader Jorge sent us. We take over the ship, get the money. That is all.”

“I don’t believe you.” She pushed him toward the door. His head and shoulders hung outside the copter.

“I swear, I swear.”

Swarthy had no resistance left. And he didn’t know anything. Chances were these idiots had never laid eyes on Papa. This whole ransom drop might have been a setup to distract them from the real kidnappers.

She gave Rif the okay signal, and he set the Bell back down on the helipad.

She ripped off the men’s blindfolds. Their faces were chalky, but when they saw Skinny on the deck, pants soiled, maybe suffering a broken bone or two but very much alive, hatred filled their eyes. The copter had hovered twenty feet above the tanker, high enough for effect without much threat of death. Thea had wanted to keep them alive. Hakan would arrange for a full and possibly more effective debriefing they didn’t have time for here. And her boss would pick up the ten million ransom and keep it handy in case they had sudden need of a large sum of cash.

She grabbed her radio and pressed the talk button.

“Brown, can you bring the crew up to the bridge?”

“Roger, right away.”

“Get anything out of them?”

“Nothing substantive.”

They’d take the crew in for further questioning as well. They’d probably get no more information, but she had to make sure.

The ship was a dead end.





Chapter Twenty-Seven



Frustration weighed down Thea’s thoughts. Rif drove in silence back to the Grande Bretagne. They’d just wasted precious time and resources tracking down what looked like a feint by the kidnappers or a copycat who had inside knowledge and wanted to make a quick ten million euros.

Hakan had set up a hotline that had been flooded with reports of sightings, mostly from nuts looking for their fifteen minutes of fame. These were the shenanigans she’d hoped to avoid by keeping her father’s abduction under wraps. Every year, more than forty thousand people were kidnapped across the globe, and the media rarely helped bring any of them home.

“I’d like to know who leaked Papa’s kidnapping.” She rubbed her eyes, trying to refocus.

“What about Helena? She might’ve thought the press could help.”

“Possibly, but she told me she’d check in before making any moves. Hakan said a Greek radio show has some hack on saying Christos should have implanted a radio-frequency ID device in his body. Ridiculous. Papa would never surrender his privacy. Let’s face it, he tracks everything and everyone, but no one is allowed to track him.” She glanced over at Rif, his face impassive as he drove. “Sorry, I’m ranting.”

“I understand. The press doesn’t care about a man’s safety or the truth—they just want dirty laundry.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

She could feel his anguish. “Why are you so loyal to my father?”

“He’s my godfather.”

“It’s more than that.”

He hesitated for a moment, perhaps deciding if he should share. “Christos has never tried to change who I am.”

“Unlike Hakan?”

“Father and son—rarely an easy relationship. Our worldviews are different.”

“You should hear Hakan talk about you when you’re not around—trust me, he’s proud. So is your mom.”

“Record it for me sometime.” His lips quirked into a halfhearted smile.

“How’s it going with the loving couple these days?” Rif’s parents had divorced fifteen years earlier because Hakan traveled so much, but after two years apart, they’d started dating each other again. A heartwarming story.

“There’s talk of them getting remarried, if you can believe it. Baba asked me to be his best man if they do.”

“Lovely. You’re lucky to be close to both our fathers. I feel for Nikos. Papa tears him down every chance he gets.”

“Your brother is not the angel you’d like to think he is.”

“What’s your problem with Nikos—he’s never done anything to you, has he?” She’d asked Rif more than once why he disliked her brother, but she’d never gotten the truth out of him.

Rif shifted into third gear on the final stretch to the hotel. “When it comes to Nikos, you lose all perspective. People talk about rose-colored glasses, but you have guilt-colored ones. It’s not your fault he was kidnapped.”

Everyone always said that, but the reality was much more complicated. “I often wonder how things would have turned out if I’d been the one kidnapped.” For instance, it horrified her that she’d grown up with an overwhelming relief that she hadn’t been the one taken.