Leopard 04 - Wild Fire

was wrong with the chief of tourism and had come prepared. What other sources did they have?
    “Come with me, Isabeau, while I get a clean shirt,” Elijah commanded. With another smoldering look at Philip, he took her arm and walked her toward the entrance. “You’re biting your lip.”
    “Am I?” She felt like she could breathe again, out of the presence of the chief of tourism and his penchant for hurting others.
    “You do that when you’re upset.”
    “How did you know about Sobre? He’s a sadist, isn’t he?”
    “He’s a killer. He likes to hurt people. He gets off on it. Men and women both from what I understand and he’s got a perfect partner in Imelda. She shares his dirty little secret, in fact, she encourages it. As long as he kills his victims, she can control him.”
    “They sound like a perfect couple.”
    “They were a couple for a while. I suspect Imelda wants a dominant personality, and Philip would never be that to her. He’s too afraid of her.” Elijah stepped back to allow Rio to open the SUV door for him.
    Elijah waved her into the car.
    “When we go back inside, I want you to look as if you’ve received a lecture from your badass cousin.
    Sobre will expect that I don’t want you near him—which I don’t. I know exactly the way his mind works. He thinks I have a weakness for my cousin and as he would never stop himself from taking what he wants, he believes neither would I.”
    “He makes me sick. His smell. His eyes. The way he looks at me. Everything about him. Something was in that drink.”
    Elijah nodded. “I got a whiff of it.” He unbuttoned his shirt. “If the server hadn’t bumped me, I would have found a way to drop it. Don’t you find it interesting that he didn’t want me drugged? Cortez is more anxious to talk to me than I expected.”
    “How did Rio know about Sobre?”
    “Adan gave Rio Marisa’s diary as proof of who he was. He needed to establish that he meant us no harm. She was investigating Sobre. She’d been suspicious of him for some time. Apparently . . .” He pulled a black shirt from a small suitcase, flashing her a small grin. “ . . . always be prepared.”
    She rolled her hand in a circle over and over indicating for him to continue. “Apparently what?”
    “Several women had disappeared in the area over the past few years, enough that Marisa became suspicious. She was the ‘medicine woman’ around these parts and many people, both from the tribes and other villages, sought her out, so she heard things more than others.”
    “And she heard about Sobre?”
    Elijah nodded as he buttoned his shirt. “She zeroed in on him after a young woman from England disappeared. The woman had come here with three friends to hike in the rain forest. She somehow got separated from the others and they never found her.”
    “Why Sobre?”

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    “Sobre had told them about a particular trail, one little known and he didn’t recommend a guide. At least that’s what the other two women said. He claims he mentioned the trail in a conversation to them and even handed them cards with the names of tour guides on them.”
    “What else?” She knew there was more and she didn’t know whether to be angry or just sick about walking into Sobre’s lair without her team fully disclosing what they knew.
    “Sobre came here when he was seventeen years old. He’s now fifty-one. Marisa discovered that girls have been disappearing for thirty-four years.”
    She pressed her fingers to her mouth. “My God, he’s a serial killer for real.”
    “That was the conclusion Marisa came to.”
    “Do you think Sobre knew she was on to him? Could he have deliberately used Suma and the raid on the village to target her?”
    “Maybe, but we’ll probably never know. Imelda Cortez has most likely known about this and probably not only encouraged him, but helped him. They have a bond, those two, and it’s sick and perverted and definitely unhealthy.”
    “You already knew it going in,” Isabeau said, “and you didn’t tell me.”
    “Imelda Cortez would never go out into the open unless she completely controlled the situation, which meant, if she was attending this party at Philip Sobre’s residence, she had him in her pocket. It wasn’t that difficult after reading Marisa’s suspicions to know where to start our research. She wasn’t far off the mark. Every one of our leopards