But I'd turned to it because my support system wasn't there. I wasn't anything resembling "close" with my sisters, my nieces and nephews were a source of stress I avoided. Children and their screaming didn't interest me. I wasn't motherhood material. I loved my parents but I'd never have gone to my father with my fentanyl problem even if he'd been healthy. The fact that he'd been so sick had driven me to it.
I didn't buy the "perfect storm" scenario, though. It wasn't just that everything had gone wrong. I wouldn't have fallen if there hadn't been things in my past and things in my present that weren't working. Things that added one too many stressors and one too few supports.
That was what I wasn't working on. I couldn't see doing it with Cole. I couldn't see him bringing in a therapist to work with me. Somehow the idea of a legitimate psychotherapist who was good enough to help me work through my issues coming to work with a captive slave in a remote desert compound stretched my imagination until it broke.
"You're thinking very serious thoughts," Cole said in my ear as the limo purred to the far end of the airport.
My eyes had to be wide as saucers. We were about to tour Rio. His comment brought me back to myself. This wasn't a time or place to be thinking about the bad things that got me here.
I could enjoy where I was.
"Thank you for this chance, sir," I said.
Cole looked surprised, then he winked. "What do you want to see first?"
"Um, everything? Seriously, what I know is about the buildings where your meetings are, and the people you're meeting with, to the extent I could find them. The only thing I know about the local food is there's too much fish."
It was weird to make Cole laugh. He was rarely serious, often concerned with small strange cruelties or his own pleasure, but outright displays of humor were rare.
But that made him laugh.
Billionaires have a certain rock star status but the nice thing is they're not really rock stars. Place a lousy tourist hat on Cole's head and some baggy tourist shorts on him and once I managed to control my urge to laugh to the point where he wouldn't kill me for it, we were good to go. Yes, he had an entourage and yes, the security dudes were obviously just that, but it could be toned down so only those people who know such things – that's private security, that's a bulletproof car – would notice.
Leonard Clark was one of the two men we'd brought along. Cole's head of security, Matt Branch, was a short red-headed dude who was more deadly with the French martial art Savate than anyone I'd ever met. He remained in a room near the airport, only ever out of contact by minutes. Cole had told him to carry his phone and go enjoy himself, but I thought Matt would spend his time working out, reading through the news of the day to make sure nothing untoward was heading for Rio (or given it was Rio, more untoward than usual) and keeping in contact with me and the new guys.
Matt didn't look likely to relax at the hotel pool with a drink in hand.
And he was hella pissed with me.
I wasn't completely sure why. I hadn't tried to take his job away. He was in Rio. He really could have seen some sights. He'd have to make his way from the airport to wherever we were as it was, though I did understand that the airport hotel was a fixed location. He had each day's itinerary. He could more easily move from the airport to us than from another location. But we weren't always going to be in the gleaming offices Cole had rented for the meetings.
I got it. Branch was dedicated. And he was angry at being on the outside. But he got it. I was eye candy. I could hang on Cole's arm and look like a rich guy's piece. The fact that my own piece was a Glock and my backup a Smith & Wesson M&P just made me useful eye candy.
It felt good to be working.
It felt wonderful to only be doing surveillance as we took in the iconic sights. By the time you finally get to somewhere like Rio, a million images are already in memory. The iconic Christ the Redeemer statue, so much more startling in real life than in the photos. I'd seen how many bird's eye views of the thing? All vertigo inducing images but looking up at it was just as impressive. There were beaches I never wanted to leave and national parks full of birds and jungle vegetation. The air was soft, warm and wet and there was more food than fish and Cole didn't monitor what I ate.
For two days, I was on vacation with a strange pack of people I didn't know. Kind of like choosing to go on a tour with luxury accommodations but a bunch of strangers for company.
Sometimes life is officially strange.
And then it was time to go to work.
12
Cole
"Right this way, Mr. St. Martin." The girl was beautiful, dark complexion, big dark eyes, perfectly groomed. Her waterfall of black hair fell to her shapely ass, which moved under a tight white dress. Endless legs and very high black stilettos. I tried to imagine Annie in that outfit and bit my lip so as not to laugh. Annie was sexy in her natural unawareness of her charms. This woman, Alyssa Montpellier, was beautiful and exquisitely turned out, but every perfectly managed component that put together the whole of her was intentional.
Not that it wouldn't be a pleasure to peel the dress off her and leave stripes on that round ass. But there were times my attention was elsewhere.
The tour of Rio was breathtaking as always. Matt was back at the airport, seething, put in his place by Annie's outlined security measures. I went along with them because I liked the idea of none of my staff knowing exactly what I was doing here.
The building was a skyscraper, all gleaming metal and glass looking out from the penthouse conference room at vast blue seas. I'd need more beach time before we headed back to the States.
My own safety is paramount to me. I can't function if I'm constantly on the lookout and afraid. I can't do anything if I'm dead.
But hiring the best freed me up to meet with people who would give me an in with those people I needed to secure land from.
The Amazon Rainforest covers 60 percent of the landmass of Brazil. Mindboggling expanses of that are burned every day by shortsighted people who want to cattle farm or clear cut and do something else with the land. Wildfires had devastated huge swaths as well. The whole of the naturally beautiful and vitally important forest was in danger.
I was securing what I could in Brazil before I branched out into nearby countries.
The fact that Rio runs from the ultra rich to the ultra poor is no secret. That there's rampant corruption there is no secret either. There's corruption everywhere – other places just hide it better.
The meetings I had set up were with government officials who might or might not have sway in local politics, with politicians who might or might not have ties to organized crime, private citizens who could be part of god knows how many dangerous organizations, both legal and illegal. I would talk with anyone I needed to in order to secure tracts of land I could at least begin to protect and manage. I needed feet on the ground in Rio, and there were offices full of people in the U.S. finding me the people to meet with to arrange that. Background checks were being run as I toured the beaches and local hires would be doing interviews with candidates for me to meet with during this sojourn.
Annie was, for now, a pleasant distraction. For me, and for anyone I needed to distract with a beautiful girl on a well turned out man's arm. Together like that, we would fade into the background, another beautiful couple set among all the beautiful couples in this country.