Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) by Blair Bancroft Read Free Book Online Page A

guides and porters in order to save Fantascapes’ bacon, and headed back to the hotel where I was scheduled to meet the Arendsens for a late lunch. (I’d learned to switch to Spanish time when operating in Peru. Otherwise a girl could embarrass herself looking for food three hours before the kitchens were ready to serve.)
    Since Cuzco’s most unique hotel, the Monasterio—where we’d booked theArendsens, and where I’d dropped my suitcase on my way to Inca Explorations—was only a few blocks away, I decided to walk back. The Monasterio, as the name implies, was once a monastery. Built in 1592, it is now a distinguished hotel, with rounded arched ceilings, refectory tables, and galleried walkways around a flower-filled central courtyard. It even has a chapel, ornamented with enough gold to make a thief bawl in frustration. All part of the Fantascapes package and, lucky me, I got to stay there too.
    I was almost out of the narrow street and into the central Plaza de Armas—where the great cathedral allegedly holds the body of Francisco Pizarro, whose conquistadores put paid to the Inca empire—when it hit me. The dreaded soroche . Mountain sickness. I couldn’t breathe. My knees threatened to buckle, my stomach roiled. People who live at sea level are not supposed to dash off an airplane at an altitude ten thousand feet higher than they’d been an hour earlier in Lima, taxi into town, and take care of business without a pause for adjustment—usually coca tea and a couple of hours in bed, but today I hadn’t had time. I leaned against one of the Inca stone walls while my lungs gasped for air. Laine Halliday, clever, sophisticated troubleshooter, reduced to a puling infant. Thank God no one was looking.
    There was a singing sound, a whirring—I thought it was my head until something whizzed by my hip. Thunk. Splat . By the time the odd contraption settled onto the cobbled sidewalk, I was four feet away, with my back flat against the solid Inca stonework. I stared. Uncomprehending.
    Sorry, wrong word. I knew what I was seeing. I simply didn’t believe it.
    A ragged coil of rope lay on the cobbled sidewalk. Three ropes, actually, bound together with a ball at the end of each. A bolas . Someone had thrown a bola s at me. And missed. Miraculously, for I’d been a fixed target. I scanned the narrow side street. Nothing moved. Nothing visible but me and the bolas .
    Splat? Not the sound I’d expect from wood or stone balls. I stepped forward, picked up the bolas . The balls had been fashioned from some kind of gourd, and were now smashed almost beyond recognition. If they’d hit me, they might have left a nasty bruise, but a lethal weapon they weren’t. Which meant . . .
    Somebody resented well-dressed turistas ? The highlands of Peru had been a hot bed of Mau-inspired revolution only a decade ago
    Or, put together with our recent problems in Peru, Fantascapes had an enemy. Most likely a rival who wanted to scare us off.
    Or was it personal?
    No way. My stock in trade is an ability to get my way without ruffling feathers, particularly sensitive male feathers. I almost never piss people off. I was in the holiday business, not . . .
    Oh, shit! The brothers. Logan and Doug could easily have enemies lined up from Terra del Fuego to Archangelsk. From Dublin to Peking. And if any one of their enemies wanted revenge, guess who was the youngest, most visible, most vulnerable link in the Halliday chain.
    Since I didn’t fancy being anyone’s pound of flesh—I mean, if someone wanted payback on the Hallidays, the least he could to do to demonstrate his machismo was tackle the ones over one-fifty. With penises.
    Yuck! The thought of my brothers as anything but asexual was enough to overcome my altitude sickness and propel me down the block, across the Plaza de Armas and into the lobby of the Monasterio.
    My weak knees stiffened still further and my heaving stomach froze to ice when I caught sight of a familiar face. Not the