Intimate Enemies (4 page)

She looked down at her legs. “I told…”
—s
he glanced at Rio without looking up
—
“Rio…it’s nothing. There was an accident on the freeway. A truck turned over on the median. I stopped to help. At least one woman died for sure, but I suspect there were more.” She straightened. “In fact, the truck was filled with women headed toward the border, and at least one of the men driving had a weapon. Obviously a human-smuggling operation.”

She
was the someone Tomás had told him about. Rio clenched his teeth when he really wanted to scream.
Holy Mary, mother of God
. What were the fucking chances? Rio pulled one hand from his pocket to rub his neck. The thought of her out there on the highway, in the dark, with the likes of Pedro, made his blood simmer. Thank God Tomás had been there, or Cassie probably wouldn’t be
here
now.

“Of course.” Saul smiled. “You never could ignore someone in need. A heart twice the size of Texas, your mother always said. Get a nice shower and some well-deserved sleep. We’ll talk everything over at breakfast tomorrow. You must be exhausted.”

Ignoring her stepfather’s direction—again—she turned an agitated gaze on Rio. “At the funerals, you said you were a chauffeur.”

“I apologize for any misunderstanding.” He forced his voice steady and flat. The last complication he needed was Saul reading Rio’s interest in Cassie. “But I can assure you, I never said that.”

The softness Rio had seen in her face vanished, and refreshed determination tightened her lips. She turned away and hoisted all three bags over slender shoulders.

“You’re right about one thing, Saul—I’ve had one hellish day. But we’ll have to discuss things at dinner tomorrow night. I’ve got a lot to do, and I’m getting an early start.”

“Of course, whatever works best. The guest suite is all ready for you. Marta always plans for the unexpected.”

“Oh, yes, Marta, Lorena’s replacement.” Cassie’s heavy-lidded gaze lazed toward Saul again. “Where did you tell me Lorena went?”

“Lorena retired to look after her grandchildren.” Saul smiled, the tilt of his head indulgent as if drawing endless patience for a trying child. “Good night, Cassandra. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Worry tingled in the back of Rio’s mind at the second mention of Lorena. She had financial incentive to stay quiet about the discomfort at the house before Alejandra’s and Santos’s deaths, but Rio also knew Lorena and Cassie were tight. Like loving grandmother-granddaughter tight. And if anyone could coax information out of sealed mouths, he had a feeling it would be Cassie.

She darted a glance between Saul and Rio. “How much longer will you two be…working?”“We’re just finishing our business,
mija
. Not long.”

“You…aren’t expecting anyone else?”

“No one else, Cassandra,” Saul said. “I’ll make sure Rio locks up the house on his way out. I know how you worry.”

Rio held his tongue until the door at the far end of the hall shut, followed by the
click, click
of the suite’s double locks.

Rio crossed his arms and dug his fists into the bend of his elbows, holding back the need to pound some sense into Saul’s perfectly designed face. “We can’t have her here now. You know that. We’ve only got a week until the Syrians dock. That kind of transfer is complicated. We need all our lines of communications open. We can’t be sneaking around behind closed doors, worried about who will hear what.”

His boss turned from watching Cassie’s retreat. His smile melted into a grim line, his eyes hard and black. The familiar shift never failed to amaze Rio and even sometimes still raised the hair on his neck.

“I tried to talk her out of coming.” Saul’s fingers contracted one by one like a spider’s crawl until his hands formed knots at his sides. “But that girl is just like her mother, does any goddamned thing she wants. Spoiled bitch.”

“There are other concerns.” He dropped his arms and blew out a breath, his frustration growing. Saul wasn’t seeing the magnitude of this problem. “We should talk about this in your office.”

“Fine.” Saul turned and started in that direction.

Rio looked down the hall at Cassie’s closed door. No way could he wait until tomorrow night at dinner to have another discussion with her about heading home. There was far too much at risk.

* * * * *

“Yes, I’m fine. I wasn’t involved in the accident,” Cassie reassured her best friend back home in San Diego for the third time. The warm ocean wind buffeted the mouthpiece of her phone, and she turned to block the breeze. “I just want you to use your connections to get information for me so I can find the guys who were. What good is a friend who’s an attorney if I can’t use her once in a while? You’d be a royal pain in the ass otherwise.”

“You mean like you are every day?” Natalie Brogan asked, the sound of computer keys tapping in the background. “Which email did you send it to? My personal or the firm?”

“The firm. It’s a big file, and I was afraid to send to your Yahoo account.” Cassie stood on the beach, one hand pressed to the rough rock outcropping, and looked out at the dark ocean where whitecaps had just started to form. “I was also worried about security.”

“For God’s sake, Cassie, you haven’t even been there three damn hours.”

“You make it sound like I look for trouble.”

“I haven’t decided if you look for it or if it finds you. I wish you’d taken me with you. Or let Mike help you deal with Saul.”

Cassie smiled, thinking of Nat’s husband, Mike. He was bigger than two of Saul put together. And as a detective for the San Diego Police, he could be damned intimidating. Unfortunately, intimidation would only be a temporary fix where Saul was concerned.

“Mike did help me,” Cassie said. “He hooked me up with the PIs. Without that, I’d have nothing. And we both know you can’t take time from your practice right now.”

“I got the email. Opening it now.”

“Oh, Nat.” Cassie straightened. “Before you play that vid—”

“Oh my God.”

Too late. “Sorry. I should have warned you sooner. You’re so damn fast.”

“What the hell, Cassie?”

“Listen.” Cassie moved forward with her plan before Nat went all overprotective on her. “If you can’t trace the license plate right off or can’t get the IDs of the men from the video, pass it on to your investigator, Peter Calloway. I just wanted to make sure it got to someone I trust.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized it sounded like she thought something might happen to her. And she wondered if the comment had been a Freudian slip.

“Promise me you’ll call.” Natalie’s voice rose into that protective, sisterly tone Cassie both loved and hated. “If you get into trouble, if anything feels wrong.”

“I promise.”

“You answered too fast. I don’t believe you. Once a day. Until this Saul shit gets straightened out, we’ll talk once a day. Deal?”

Cassie grinned. Waited. “Deal. Did I wait long enough?”

“Bitch,” Natalie quipped.

Cassie laughed and took a deep breath of the salty air. With the information from the accident in good hands, she let go of the defenses she’d been holding on to. Her smile fell under the sudden weight of everything she’d endured that day. That month. That year. “They buy and sell women, Nat. Just girls. I want these guys. I want these guys bad.”

“Focus your energy, Cass.” Her voice had shifted, responding to Cassie’s change in disposition, she knew. They were like that, she and Nat. Able to read each other that way. Now, Natalie took on the nurturing parental role. “Remember, you have to get your life straightened out before you can go back to saving the world.”

“Thanks.” Cassie didn’t have to work at the sarcasm that tainted her voice. “Needed to hear that.”

“Grieve your family, Cassie,” Natalie said, undaunted by Cassie’s snark. “Find your balance.”

“I know.” Cassie heaved a sigh. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

She disconnected, then turned her face up to the dark sky—her sky, her shore. This was
her
home. But the estate hadn’t felt like home from the first day Saul entered their lives. And with Saul there, nothing about the estate felt like the joyous sanctuary she’d known as a girl.

A familiar emptiness weighed heavily in her chest, dragged at her shoulders, and throbbed in her head. Saul was going against everything Mamà believed in. He was degrading everything she loved.

She let out a throaty moan. She hadn’t thought it would be this hard. But being here made all her emotions dig deeper, cut sharper.

She watched the choppy surf and brushed at the hair whipping against her face. The gauzy, thigh-length cover-up she’d changed into after her shower blew around her legs. But the wind was warm, the sensation familiar, and she imagined the air collecting her anger, spiraling into the sky, and whisking all her problems out to sea.

She let her mind drift toward the memories of her teen years and so many nights she’d spent wandering the beach with Santos during tropical storms. They’d become unlikely siblings when her mother and Saul married. Santos had been just shy of seventeen and Cassie still half a year shy of her
quinceañera
. But as allies against Saul’s insane battle of wills, they’d become and stayed best friends.

And while Santos had moved out of the estate shortly after Cassie had gone away to college, he’d stayed locally in Ensenada, living the carefree bachelor’s life with a successful surf shop, a bungalow on the beach, endless friends, and even more girlfriends.

He’d moved back into a casita at the estate only a year ago, telling her Mamá had needed company with Saul traveling so much. When Cassie had pushed, he’d claimed hard times at the surf shop. And even though both her mother and Santos denied it, Cassie still believed Santos had been keeping watch over troubled waters between her mother and Saul.

Now, foam bubbled along the sand at her feet, the almost-full moon setting the grains of the secluded cove’s private beach sparkling like pixie dust. The sheer beauty intensified Cassie’s agony.

She tried to twist her mind the opposite direction, to embrace the happy, loving memories and compress them into tiny gems that she could store in her head and draw out during dark moments to keep her going. But the water extended to the horizon as a black mass broken only by growing whitecaps. The infinite sight tugged Cassie’s mind back to the reality that she would never see her mother or Santos again. Ever.

A familiar sorrow took hold. One that felt as if someone had stabbed Cassie’s heart and twisted the knife.

“Storm’s coming.”

Cassie jumped and whirled toward the voice. Her chest burned with a quick jab of fear, but the very real rocks nearby sliced the back of her arm. Pain lanced her triceps. Her phone flew out of her hand.

“Whoa, whoa.” His voice was soft, but his hands were firm. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s just me. Rio.”

Cassie let out a whoosh of breath but didn’t completely drop her guard. The Rio she’d met inside was very different from the man she’d known at the cemetery. Just one more huge heartache to add to her life.

“You’re hurting me,” she said.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” His hands loosened but didn’t let go. “Come away from the rocks.”

When she’d put several feet between herself and one of the many cove outcroppings, he released her and leaned away. That was when she got her first good look at him. And, yeah, it was really good. He wore nothing but swim trunks, his body wet, light from the moon falling across his torso and defining muscle in a variation of shadows.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” She hugged her elbows and purposely slowed her breathing, struggling with the rush of emotions that didn’t make any intellectual sense.

“Just taking a swim.”

“At this time of night. In the dark. You’re” —
an
idiot—
“crazy.”

“You aren’t the first to say so.”

He ruffled the wet, black waves of his hair in a careless, absentminded way. Cool seawater sprayed Cassie. A laugh popped out of her mouth, surprising her.

“Hey.” She held her hands up as if that would help keep her dry. “Stop it.”

He lowered his hand, grinning. A sheepish, slightly mischievous, tiny bit guilty, lopsided smile. “Are you going to melt?”

Cassie’s stomach squeezed and twirled the way it did when she’d thought about seeing him again.

Then he dropped his head and shook it. That wet-dog-just-out-of-the-bath shake. Water sprayed in every direction. Little arcs splashed Cassie, and she squeaked at the cold against her skin. Then laughed with the sheer pleasure of his playfulness.

And when he stopped and looked at her again, the smile cutting across his face tightened her chest. Wide and warm and happy, around beautiful white teeth and making his pretty eyes sparkle. A mirror image of how she felt inside. His laugh was deep and rich, easy and sexy. And so real. But it was the dimples that gave him that finishing touch, that something extra. God, dimples? Really? Like he wasn’t gorgeous enough without them?

Her joy must have risen too high, reached some internal warning level, because as quickly as it had filled her, the happiness took on an edge. Something that nagged at her like anxiety.

She broke his gaze and lifted both hands to her face to wipe at the water. The back of her arm pulled and burned. Cassie hissed in a breath and twisted her arm to look at the back.

“Let me see.” His voice was close, and she looked up to find him there, already reaching for her arm, leaning in to inspect the scratch.

He eased her arm across her chest and turned her into the moonlight.

“It’s nothing.” Her voice came out breathy. She didn’t like sounding—or feeling—nervous. “I’m fine.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He dusted dirt off the wide scrape. “You said that about your knee too. At least this one isn’t dripping blood everywhere.”

His body heat reached out and filled the space between them, caressed Cassie’s bare arms and legs. He smelled like fresh seawater and something very unique, very Rio. Something male and alluring. Parts of her that she’d begun to worry were permanently broken started to function again.