Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8)(72)

George reached into his hip pocket, extracted his credit card, and swiped it through the slot on the satellite phone attached to the seat in front of him. After agreeing to the charges, he punched in the number and skimmed a glance over the blue-haired granny sitting on his left. The massive hearing aids in the woman’s ears and the shouted conversation they’d had during the boarding process when she was confused as to which seat was hers assured him the dotty old pensioner couldn’t hear a bloody thing. Good. I don’t want eavesdroppers.

And that had his gaze sliding over to the keen-eyed Colombian woman across the aisle. She was another story. She’d been giving him the evil eye since he boarded. Which was why he kept his voice down when Benton picked up the phone after the third ring. “Whoever this is,” Benton said without preamble, “you’ve got the wrong number.”

“It’s me,” George hissed.

“What the bloody hell are you doing ringing me up on an…” After a pause Benton said, “On this line.” George knew Benton had been about say unsecured line.

“I didn’t really have a choice, now did I?” he demanded, smiling and shaking his head at the granny who offered him a slice of the apple she’d pulled from her purse. The core was brown and mushy, the smell of its overripe meat sickeningly sweet. George bet it’d been at the bottom of her bag for at least a week.

“Well, you know I’ll have to chuck this phone as soon as we’re finished,” Benton said, irritation heavy in his tone. George wanted to reach through the connection and strangle the sod where he sat. Benton having to trash one of his myriad burner phones was the least of George’s worries, but he couldn’t let on how he felt. He would need Benton’s help if he had any hope of salvaging his mission. Which meant he needed to keep the arrogant wanker happy.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “But look, I need to know what’s ahead of me.”

After tailing Winterfield and his captors through the air for hours, George had been forced to fly around a spot of bad weather before landing in Bogotá. It had only been a minor delay, but it had been enough. He’d barely finished taxiing the Pilatus PC-12 off the runway when he saw the private jet take off. And he’d known, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, with a heart as heavy as a block of lead, that his plan hadn’t worked.

For many long minutes he’d sat inside the plane, cold fear making him shake, remorse and regret making tears stand in his eyes. It’s done, he’d thought. I’m finished. But after a bit, he’d managed to shake it off. He couldn’t quit. He couldn’t give up. Not with beautiful Bella depending on him to do whatever was necessary, whatever it took to make sure he finished the task Spider had set before him.

Running a hand under his running nose, he’d quickly called Benton, demanding the lad find him a way to trail the group flying north. Benton had been skeptical, of course. And he’d tried to talk George out of following Winterfield and his captors. In fact, Benton’s exact words were: You’re completely crackers. You’ll get yourself killed keeping on like this. It’s over.

Benton didn’t know what was at stake for George though. He didn’t know what was on the line. He must have sensed it, or else he heard the desperation in George’s tone when George insisted again that Benton find him a way. Because after a bit of online wizardry with the international aviation sites, the computer whiz kid had been able to determine the private jet’s flight plan terminated in Chicago.

Following that, Benton had booked George on the first civilian flight out of Bogotá. A private plane would have been better, but Benton hadn’t been able to find one, and the Pilatus was out of the question because it was too slow and didn’t have the fuel capacity to make the trip in one go. Luckily a civilian flight had been scheduled to leave for Chicago’s O’Hare airport at 6 a.m., so the wait had been minimal and it had given George time to clean himself up before boarding.

But in the hours since, as George sat on the plane with nothing to do but think over all the things he’d done wrong, over all the things that could still go wrong, he’d started to go a bit crackers. Just as Benton had said. He needed something to occupy his mind. Something to keep him from envisioning all the ways Spider could make him suffer, make Bella suffer. He needed to start working on his strategy.

“You need to know what’s ahead of you?” Benton asked incredulously. “You mean if you make it out of the airport without the…” Again, he came to an abrupt halt. “If you make it out without being picked up,” Benton finally finished.

“Picked up?” George demanded, lowering his voice when the black-haired cow across the way shot him a sharp look. He’d very much like to use the plastic fork the steward had left with the cold eggs and sausages to stab the woman in her beady left eye. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that mess you left in C—” Benton was becoming more and more agitated. He wasn’t used to speaking on an unsecured line and therefore wasn’t accustomed to choosing his words carefully. “That mess you left behind you,” the kid finally said. “From what I’m seeing online, they’re throwing over every rock.”

And by “they,” George knew Benton meant the Americans. And by “throwing over every rock,” George knew he meant they were looking for him. A hard, sinking feeling took hold of his stomach. “Why?” he wheezed, absently squeezing the brim of his cap. It was his habit to pull the thing lower over his face when he was feeling vulnerable. A tell he’d tried to quell, but just couldn’t seem to manage. “How? I mean, they can’t possibly know—”