Jacked Up (Bowen Boys #4) (4 page)

“Rita, your grandson is no match for Elle. She would eat him alive. I don’t mean any disrespect, dear.” Violet hurried to appease them both. “He is a sweetheart, but Elle needs…”

Elle looked at her, waiting for the grandma to finish. It would be good to know what she needed, seeing as she had no frigging clue herself.

“Fire. Backbone. Someone solid as a rock who wouldn’t budge no matter how hard she pushed. Our Elle is a fighter.”

Elle smiled. She wasn’t a fighter. One needed to be strong to be a fighter. She wasn’t; she was a runner. A classy one who did it with a smile, but a runner nevertheless. She’d proved that again and again after the death of her father and her brother. Before that too. Her default response was to fly; never stand her ground and fight, especially if that meant facing unpleasantness and feelings she didn’t want to revisit.

“We miss you around here. Your workshops were the best. No one has taken up Zumba for seniors since you left. We got an instructor that treated us like deaf, dumb mummies.”

“I miss you guys too.” In spite of the sad circumstances surrounding her mother and Elle’s move to Florida, she’d loved it down here. It had provided her a permanent source of escape; comings and goings all day long. A hectic job at the airport. Endless student parties. And she’d needed it so badly.

“You still organizing the Zumba class tomorrow?”

“Sure I am.”

“Great. I’m taking my husband along,” Mrs. Nicholson said. “I finally convinced him.”

As they were talking, she noticed that the TV program had been interrupted and a picture of a man was on the screen.

“Who’s that?”

“They’ve been broadcasting about it the whole night. Dick Aalto, the politician, has been found dead.”

“What do you mean ‘dead’?” Elle turned on the volume on the TV, staring, stunned, at the picture of the man she’d seen boarding the corporate jet this morning.

“Squashed into the pavement, flat as a pancake,” Violet said and made a very descriptive sound. “In the Florida Keys. Almost gave a heart attack to the couple who ran over him with the car. Squashed and run over. Poor fella. They don’t know how long he’d been there in the middle of the road because that’s one of those backwater places, hardly no traffic. Police suspect he was thrown from an airplane but they can’t find his name in any passenger manifests.”

Of course they couldn’t, and they wouldn’t, because she hadn’t written down his name.
Oh God
. She sobered up right away.

“Lately he’s been making a lot of noise about illegal immigrants and the need to tighten and restrict entry into the US. He has the port all but paralyzed. An old-school loony Republican, if you don’t mind me saying,” Violet added. “As if this whole country wasn’t based on immigrants searching for a better future to begin with.”

Mrs. Nicholson started talking, but Elle wasn’t listening. She had to speak with Marlene. They had to call the cops.

She grabbed her cell and dialed Marlene’s number. She’d left her at her place before asking the cab driver to take her to the Eternal Sun. There was a good chance she was still awake.

The phone rang but no one was picking up. Finally, someone did.

“Marlene?”

“Who is this?” a male voice asked in response.

“A friend of Marlene’s. Who are you, and why are you answering her phone?”

“I’m Detective Sheehan from the Miami police. I’m afraid something terrible has happened to Ms. Cabrera.”

Chapter Three

“Protective custody? Are you serious?” Elle asked, gaping at the detective sitting in front of her.

“Dead serious. You don’t know who this guy is and what he’s capable of.”

No, she hadn’t known who Joaquín Maldonado was. Now she did. Apparently, he was the biggest, most powerful narco this side of the Milky Way.

“Look at this,” the detective, Hensen, continued, pushing a picture toward her. It was the pilot of the morning flight. “Dead. Apparent heart attack.” Then he put another picture on the table. “This is Dick Aalto’s driver. Dead. Apparent hit and run. And Marlene Cabrera,” he finished, showing her a shot of her friend lying on the floor of her condo in a pool of blood. “Dead. Apparent home invasion. Oh and let’s not forget this one,” he said, tapping at what looked like…she wasn’t sure what. “Dick Aalto, a bit worse for wear as you can see. Apparently fell from a plane.”

Elle’s head hurt, and she was in a daze.

After speaking with the police on the phone, she’d rushed to her friend’s to find the place cordoned off. A home invasion gone wrong, they’d told her. A case of wrong place, wrong time.

“Did something special happen tonight? Something that stood out of the ordinary? Some guy showing too much interest?” the police officer had asked Elle while taking her statement.

No, nothing out of the ordinary. Not in the evening anyway. Not sure it had anything to do with it, she’d explained about her—that is, Marlene’s—morning flight and Dick Aalto boarding it with a guy named Maldonado, and the officer had turned white. He’d gotten on the radio and soon after that four plainclothes cops had flanked her and unceremoniously escorted her to the police station. That had been hours ago.

Elle looked at the pictures in front of her on the table, trying to avoid Marlene’s, feeling totally overwhelmed. “This is insane.”

“Let’s go over what happened one more time,” the detective insisted.

She threw her arms over her head. They’d gone through it a million times. “I told you. Dick Aalto showed up at the last minute. He boarded the plane with Maldonado and two of his bodyguards and they flew away. End of story.”

“Are you one hundred percent sure this man is the one you saw with Aalto?” Hensen asked, jabbing at a mug shot of Maldonado.

“Yes and yes. Totally sure. I still don’t see the need for protective custody, though.”

“These are the people that saw Aalto getting into Maldonado’s plane. All of them dead on the same day. What do you think is the chance this is accidental and unrelated? What do you think will happen to you when Maldonado and his goons discover there’s a witness they haven’t dealt with?”

Good question. Elle gulped. “You have my statement. Can’t you arrest him?”

“Your word might not be enough. We need hard evidence.”

“I don’t understand the problem. You already know who was with Aalto when he was thrown from the plane. Three passengers. Maldonado and two men that looked like his security detail. I don’t remember their names, but they are on the passenger manifest at the airline’s office. Isn’t this info enough to, I don’t know, get an order to search the plane? Check the cameras at the airport? I watch
CSI
. I’m sure you can find some physical evidence that Aalto was on that plane and build your case. You don’t need me.”

“The plane is not in the US now. According to our information, Maldonado is coming back tomorrow. You can bet your sweet ass that plane is going to be pristine. We’ll try to find other evidence to link Aalto to that plane, but at the moment you are it for us. Not to mention the little detail that our star witness was committing a major felony. Juries and judges do not take kindly to witnesses who break the law.”

And they were back at the point Hensen had been hammering for hours already: the fact that apparently she’d broken a thousand laws and breached national security by taking Marlene’s shift, and now she belonged on the FBI’s most wanted list.

On top of that, they wanted her to go into protective custody. She wasn’t sure if it was the hangover or the shock. Probably both, but nothing made any sense.

There was a knock on the door, and a woman with a police badge on the waist of her pants entered and approached Hensen. Since being escorted to the station, she’d been kept incommunicado, and hadn’t seen a single police uniform. Just suits. She spoke in his ear, and Elle couldn’t make out what was being said.

“We found Marlene Cabrera’s killer,” Hensen informed her once they were alone again. “Dead. Overdose. A small-time criminal and junkie. His fingerprints were all over the crime scene. He apparently forgot he was left-handed and injected himself in the wrong arm.”

“What does that mean?” Elle asked, confused. She’d been awake since God only knew when. She felt nauseated, and her head was spinning.

“It means that someone helped him overdose. Whoever gave him the job to eliminate Marlene Cabrera was tying up loose ends. People are dropping dead left and right, and you’re our only witness.”

“I can’t go into protective custody.” She would go insane locked in some stinking apartment. Unable to sleep. Unable to escape into work. Besides, she couldn’t disappear. Tate was recovering from giving birth and she had her hands full with the baby. Elle needed to pull her own weight and take care of Rosita’s. “Maldonado doesn’t know I exist; he thinks I was…Marlene.” Her voice cracked at the mention of her friend, but she fought to regain composure. Crying would get her nowhere and she couldn’t afford to break down. “I’m leaving for Boston today. Nobody would think to search for a person they don’t know exists. When the time comes to testify, I’ll fly back.”

“And who ensures that, sweetheart?”

She stared at him, offended. “I give you my word.”

The man let out a bark, not a speck of humor in it. “I told you, your word ain’t good around here, and protective custody is the least of your problems, lady. Dead people do not testify.”

“Can I have a break?” Elle asked, overwhelmed. “I need some air. And coffee.” Her adrenaline was crashing. In other circumstances, she would have tried to charm her way out of this, and she still might, but at the moment she was too exhausted to even think, let alone pull any kind of stunt that required the use of brain cells.

“We are not done yet.”

“I want out of here,” Elle demanded, standing up and heading for the door. The walls were closing on her, her lungs too. “You can’t keep me here. And you can’t force me to go into protective custody.”

The detective got in her face. “You’re in deep shit. You broke the law and you’ll do as we say or so help me God— “

Suddenly the door burst open.

Elle turned to the menacing man dashing in. Dark hair, beard. Piercing, ice-cold blue eyes. Her jaw dropped.
Oh my God
. “Jack?”

He didn’t address her. He stepped in between her and the detective and growled, “Back the fuck off.” He didn’t scream, but the threat in his voice was so evident Hensen staggered back before regaining his ability to speak.

“She’s in big trouble and—”

“I said back the fuck off. I won’t repeat it a third time. You put a finger on her again, you lose it.”

* * * *

Jack watched through the two-way mirror as Elle lay curled up in the chair of the interrogation room, finally asleep, after running herself ragged, pacing up and down for a long while.

“Who is she to you?” Mullen, the FBI agent in charge asked, after approaching.

Jack pondered his response. The bane of his existence? A pain in the ass? The woman responsible for his permanent hard-on and his permanent bad mood?

“My godson’s aunt,” he answered finally. The last person he’d thought he’d find in that interrogation room. As soon as Mullen had informed him that they had a witness tying Maldonado to a murder, Jack had rushed from Puerto Rico to Miami, ready to squeeze that witness mercilessly and use him to get the drug lord. Until he’d seen who the witness was. Then all his protective instincts had kicked in. That Elle had thrown herself at him and hugged him tight, hiding her face in the crook of his neck, trembling, hadn’t helped a bit.

“Can you vouch for her? That what she’s telling is true?”

“Yes,” he said resolutely, not having to think about it. Whatever Elle was, she wasn’t a liar. And that little trick of switching IDs had Elle written all over it.

Leave it to her to come to Florida for a couple of days, do some dumb shit, cross paths with the likes of Maldonado, who’d just recently moved to the US, and end up with all the three-letter security agencies in the country and then some, fighting to claim jurisdiction over her.

It seemed that the case was going to be turned over the Feds, which was a stroke of luck, because Mullen and his men owed him.

“What the fuck was Maldonado doing in a plane to Cuba with a tight-ass politician like Aalto?”

“My guess? Maldonado was taking Aalto on a friendly trip to share a cigar and talk business. Something happened and the friendly trip was cut short. Aalto’s latest proposal was to tighten travel restrictions and drastically limit tourist visas, which Maldonado’s men depend upon to come and go from the US. Maldonado’s infrastructure would have suffered. He was probably trying to influence Aalto, get him to lighten up.”

“Why throw Aalto off a plane?” Jack asked. “It doesn’t make sense. There are easier ways to get someone to disappear.” Not that making the politician disappear made much sense either way. Killing a high-profile public figure was never a good move. Especially if you wanted to sway his decisions.

Mullen shrugged. “It was probably unplanned. Strong winds yesterday. Maybe they miscalculated and thought the body would fall into the sea, never to be found again. You know Maldonado’s got a temper.”

Even though Elle was asleep, Jack could see the reflex movement under her lids. She looked exhausted, but jumpy too. With her hands under her face, she snuggled into the chair as if she were cold. Of course she’d get arrested wearing nothing but a tight dress just slightly bigger than a fucking bandage and smelling like a distillery.

Hensen stopped next to them, his greedy gaze on the two-way mirror. “She’s out of options. I say we use her as bait to draw Maldonado out. Fine piece of ass like that, she wouldn’t have problems—”

Jack turned to him, blocking Hensen’s view of Elle and crossing his arms over his chest, then stared straight into the guy’s eye.

“You don’t talk to her. You don’t look at her, and you sure as fuck don’t use her for anything, especially not bait.”

“Who put you in charge?” the asshole demanded.

Jack smiled predatorily. “Way above your paygrade. And clearance. When it comes to Maldonado, you do as I say.”