Page 30 of His Sweet Torment
Dale eyed Frederick Ingles. “From now, Ingles, you stay away from Padme, got it? I hear you’re harassing her…we got a problem, understand?”
“You’re pretty full of yourself for a rookie agent,” Frederick said, his tone light but undercut with annoyance.
Dale didn’t rise to the bait. “Get out of here before I go against Pad’s wishes and haul your ass to jail.”
Fredrick smirked but picked up his coffee and drained it. “I’ll see you soon, officer.”
And he was gone.
Dale holstered his weapon, checking around the coffee house, seeing wide-eyed, frightened customers. “Relax, folks, he’s gone.”
The barista pushed a coffee towards Dale. “On the house, fella, and thanks.”
Dale grinned. “Thank you. Mind if I hang out, wait for my friend?”
“No problem. Hope she’s okay.”
Dale grinned. “Pad’s suffered worse than that and survived. She’ll be fine.”
Ten minutes later, Dale checked his watch. He got up and spoke to one of the female baristas. “Hey, would you mind going into the ladies’ bathroom and checking on my friend?”
“Sure thing.” The young woman pushed her way into the bathroom and in a flash, was out again. “There’s no-one in there.”
Dale pushed past her and checked the place. Empty. At the far end, a fire door swung open and shut in the breeze.
“Fuck!” Dale yanked his phone out of his pocket. “Yeah, Fortuna here. I need to report an abduction. Frederick Ingles has Padme Kaur.”
Lisa listened to what Padme was telling her as they traveled to the airport. Lisa nodded. “Believe or not, that might help us. They might think Ingles took you, which would mean he might be arrested. That gives us more time to get you out of the country and to Enver.”
The first leg of the journey was down to Rio. “We’re trying to avoid Europe as much as possible,” Lisa explained, “as most of Ingles’s reach is there. South America and Asia, and a rather annoying New Zealand-Japan-Australia leg is a possibility. Until we’re sure you’re not being followed, we keep moving.”
Padme nodded, already feeling wiped out. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Enver safe.”
“And you, too, Pad.” Lisa reminded her gently, and Padme squeezed her hand.
“I can never repay what you have done for me, Lisa. You are a true friend.”
“Still think I’m a friend?” Lisa asked with a grin, fifty-six hours later after they’d flown from Rio to Jakarta to Nairobi. They were waiting in Nairobi for the next flight to Hong Kong.
Hollowed and high from sheer exhaustion, Padme laughed and cried at the same time. “The insides of my eyelids are sparkling,” she said, blinking a few times. Lisa looked sympathetic and annoyingly refreshed.
“I don’t usually condone this sort of thing, but I have an Ambien you can take. The next leg, we booked you on Business Class – with a bed. I’m not a monster, you need to sleep even if we’re dragging you all over the globe.”
Padme shook her head in wonder. “How do you look so good?”
“I have a back-up. I sleep when they take over.”
Padme bugged at her. “When the hell did that happen?”
Lisa chuckled. “They’ve been with us the whole time. At least thirty on each flight.”
“And we’ve flownat leastfirst class all the way. Jesus, how does Enver afford it? I have most of his money at the moment.”
Lisa shook her head. “No, Pad…you hardly have any of it.”
Padme was quiet after that. She knew Enver was rich, of course, a billionaire, but to say that she had not even a fraction of worth when there was nearly a billion sitting in her checking account, blew her mind.
“I need to find a way of transferring that back to him,” she said to Lisa, who shook her head.
