Traitor, The
The Traitor
A Romantic Thriller
by
Jo Robertson
Copyright © 2011 Jo
Robertson
All rights reserved
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the many women who've enriched my life and
supported me on my writing journey: my daughters Shannon, Kennan, and Megan; to
the extraordinary women at Romance Bandits. Thanks also to the writers who've helped
me along the independent publishing trail.
And gratitude to the men in my life. They balance out my overwhelming
estrogen moments: Boyd, my husband, and my sons, Lance, Robb, Tyler, and Rand.
I love hearing from my readers. After all, you're the folks
I write for!
If you enjoy "The Traitor," I'd love you to leave
a review at http://www.amazon.com. To express my appreciation for your support,
I'd enjoy sending you a free download of any one of other of my books.
You can contact me at [email protected].
Life-time readers, life-time learners!
Other Books by Jo
Robertson
The Watcher
The Avenger
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the lovely boy, the chuckling baby
who entered our lives and left five months later. Baby Tyler, I knew you for
forty minutes, but I'll miss you forever.
Gabriel Santos was not a man to cross.
His name among the Mexicans was
El Diablo
and
although his given name reminded José of a holy angel, the street runners had
forewarned him
.
Indeed, the persistent rumors of the man's ferocity and
the myth that he had made a pact with Satan seemed true.
Stepping from behind the industrial waste bin, Santos
emerged from the shadows and caught José off guard.
El Diablo's
enormous
bulk morphed from among the gray shades of the alley into one dark silhouette
as he stood at the narrow end like a legendary titan.
José trembled like a leaf in the wind even though the drug
runners had also told him to show no fear around Santos. With his long black
hair tied at the neck, his lean hard form, and his dark scowl, he looked like
un
angel caído,
a fallen angel.
But José knew the man was no angel.
"A good
soldado
does not keep his
jefe
waiting," Santos said, lips barely moving, a puppet whose strings were
pulled by an unseen force. "Nor does he flinch to show his fear."
The warning was clear, and José worked to control the
shaking of his body.
Sí, El Diablo.
And did he only imagine the smell of
sulfur? He crossed himself and scurried to close the distance between them.
When Santos motioned toward the opposite side of the alley,
José stationed himself at the brick corner of the building. Then he followed
Santos' lead and crouched down to wait in the shadows. In this way as their
target approached them, he would be flanked on both sides of the alley's narrow
end.
There would be no escape.
Long minutes crawled by and the muscles of José's thighs
began to cramp. He longed for a cigarette, but did not dare risk lighting one.
He wondered, not for the first time, why Santos had chosen him for the job
tonight.
José did not mind smacking the girls around. He was very
good at controlling
putas.
But to take the life of a man, that was
serious business.
He shifted position, dislodging minute chunks of debris
under his feet. The small plink of gravel sounded like thunder to his taut
nerves. Seconds later, the scratch of a match being struck preceded a tiny
flare of light, and the rich, smoky odor of a cigarillo wafted across the
alley.
El Diablo
enjoyed smoking these so-called
seven-minute cigars, unconcerned about alerting his victim with the pungent
odor. The boss once claimed if he could not dispatch a target in the seven
minutes it took to finish his cigarillo, he himself should face a firing squad
for being such an inept assassin.
José had no doubts the man they now prepared to kill would
be dead long before his nostrils detected the scent of the cigarillo.
In the brief moment of the lighted match, José glimpsed Santos'
battled face, the vicious scar that carved its length from brow to chin, the
thick black hair, the hollow eyes. Not for the first time, he wondered how so stone-hearted
a man had won the trust of Diego Vargas.
And the greater mystery – how he had won the affection of
the beautiful Magdalena Vargas. Wife of Diego,
El Jefe de Jefes,
the big
boss. The one they called
El Vaquero
because he was descended from a
long line of cowboys who roamed the plains of Mexico.
Ay,
what a dangerous life Santos lived!
The clink of steel-toed boots striking gravel at the street
end of the alley attracted José's attention. He saw Santos rise, reach for his
weapon at the small of his back, and draw the silencer from his jacket pocket.
Unhurriedly, he fitted silencer to gun barrel, his gloved hands steady, his
damaged face impassive.
¡Un qué corizón frío!
A cold-blooded man.
Preferring the deadly quiet slice of the knife, José had his
long blade in hand by the time the man reached ten feet of where they lurked in
the shadows.
Santos waited until the man passed between the two of them.
"Hombre,"
he spoke, his voice a deadly whisper in the night air.
The man seemed unsurprised. Without turning, he lifted his
arms out from his sides, parallel to the ground as if to show that he was
unarmed. At a nod from Santos, José stepped forward, knife swinging loosely
from his left hand. Carefully, he patted the man between the legs and around
the chest.
"He is not armed," he said.
"Ah,
amigo, mi buen amigo."
Santos addressed
the man's back. "How foolish of you to walk alone so late at night." The
man turned around slowly to face them. "Especially in such a part of town.
Es muy peligroso.
Very dangerous."
"I have important information for Diego Vargas,"
the man said, arms still extended. "Information concerning
el árabe."
José knew by the look on
El Diablo's
face that Santos
was surprised at this news, and it was no small thing to take a man like Santos
unawares.
"The Arab,
el terrorista?"
Santos asked.
"Sí."
The man smiled, revealing yellowed
and broken teeth. "Ashraf Hashemi, the agent who works for the federal
government."
José knew that the man he spoke of, this Hashemi, was not
really a terrorist. It was the name the Norteños had given the Arab-American
DEA agent who so trailed them so doggedly.
Un dolor en al asno. A pain in the ass,
Diego Vargas
had claimed many times, one whose relentless pursuit of the Norteños and the
location of their latest drug routes had caused his organization a great deal
of trouble.
"What information?" Santos prodded.
"I have learned the name of Hashemi's informant."
"Tell me," Santos commanded, lowering his weapon, "and
I will pass the information along to Diego."
The man let out a whoop of laughter. "Ah, I think not,
my friend. I will take the information to
El Vacquero
myself. I am not
so eager to die this night."
Santos smiled, but not with the black holes of his eyes. "Perhaps
you will die, nonetheless."
There was a fraction of a second between the realization of
the deed and the deed itself during which José knew the man about to meet his
death clearly saw the foolishness of challenging one like
El Diablo.
He
was a cold-blooded killer, but he was a practical man, which was why his next
move startled José.
Santos slowly removed the silencer from his gun and placed
it in the pocket of his pants. Then he lifted his jacket and stuffed the gun
into the waistband of his pants.
Finally, with a motion so quick José could not follow and
the target surely never anticipated, Santos slipped a blade from his jacket
sleeve, palmed it, and in one swift slash, slit the man's throat. The mark clutched
both hands to his neck. Blood spurting from between his fingers, his eyes wide
and vacant, he fell to his knees and toppled face down on the asphalt.
Santos squatted beside the body and slowly wiped his knife
on the man's jacket. He removed the cigarillo from the corner of his mouth,
glanced at the tip, and ground the butt out. He placed the remains in his
jacket pocket.
"Sé el nombre." I know the name.
Seven minutes, José confirmed, glancing at his watch.
"A good soldier knows when to keep counsel,"
Santos said, grinning up at José with perfectly even, white teeth that flashed
with startling beauty in the scarred face. "And when to speak."
Dios.
Now they would both have to answer to Diego
Vargas for what happened here.
There was no doubt at all in José's mind.
El Diablo
had not only made a pact with the devil, but
él está loco.
"You're a big coward!"
Isabella sneaked another peek around her sister's shoulder
in the dim lighting of Stuckey's Bar. "No, I just don't like taking risks."
"Same thing," taunted Anita, flashing her wide,
sexy eyes heavily rimmed in blue shadow. Her tarty-eyes look, Consuelo claimed.
"Chaquitas, silencio,"
Consuelo commanded. "Stop
bickering." She reached across the circular table to cover her younger
sister's pale, slender hands with her own blunt-fingered one. "Bella."
She spoke slowly as if to a child or a dimwit. "We went over this already.
Tonight you are a fully grown and very desirable woman."
"Sí,
and not an automaton," Nita piped up.
The girl fell silent as Consuelo glowered at her and turned
back to Isabella. "You are going to flirt and dance, and maybe meet a
delicious and very sexy man."
Isabella clapped her hand over her mouth and giggled between
her fingers. The Margaritas and Piña Coladas had begun to affect her. "I
think I'm a little tipsy."
"Good," Connie replied. "You need to loosen
up. You are fearless in that courtroom where you work way too many hours, but
Madre
del Dios,
Anita is right. When it comes to men, you are
un cobarde
."
"A big, fat coward," Nita repeated.
Isabella eyed her evening attire. Dress neckline practically
down to her belly button, thanks to Nita's wardrobe. Dangling from her ear
lobes, the red and gold earrings borrowed from Mama. Hair a tumble of thick
curls that hung around her bare shoulders rather than the usual tight knot she
forced them into. She didn't look like an overworked and uptight lawyer tonight.
Bella caught the misty look in Connie's eyes. No, she looked
exactly like the pictures scattered around their mother's house of their
beautiful dead sister Maria.
A pain shot right below Bella's ribs, deep into her bones,
and throbbed like a migraine. She knew when Connie thought of Maria, gone these
many years, she wanted to stick herself away in a nunnery and spend her days on
her knees bargaining with God to take her instead of their innocent sister. But
God didn't want Connie's lighted candles and Hail Mary prayers.
"Connie," Bella interrupted softly, knowing where her
sister's thoughts had wandered.
"You should march right over there." Connie wagged
her forefinger under Bella's nose. "And sit down in the empty side of that
booth where that man has been hanging out for over an hour and ask him to buy
you a drink."
"Yeah," Nita added. "He's been checking you
out, girl, for the last ten minutes. I see those snappy green eyes whipping
around the room and landing right on you."
Isabella frowned.
"I'm telling you, the man can't take his eyes off of
you." Anita brushed thick straight bangs off her forehead, swiping at the
beads of sweat that glistened on her round, pretty face. "Trust me,
chica.
The man wants you."
Isabella sneaked another look at the man across the room. "He's
looking at the door. He's waiting for someone," she protested.
"You have a chance to get out of that stuffy district attorney's
office and meet someone for a change," Connie insisted, glancing casually
at the stranger in the corner booth and meeting his direct gaze.
"Muy
hermoso."
Bella followed her gaze. At first glance, she'd thought the
man was Latino, but now she saw he was a strange mix of something else, maybe
middle eastern, maybe Hispanic, but definitely darkly exotic and very easy on
the eyes. "He could be a serial killer," she mumbled.
"He's too clean," Anita said. "It's just
talk, Bella, and a little dancing."
"You're the clever one, Bella, the law school graduate
with top honors, already an assistant district attorney." Connie gave her
sister a gentle shove. "Now it's time to get a life outside that
job."
"Just go over and say hello on your way to the little
girls' room or something," Anita urged.
"And on the way back," Consuelo added, "see
if he wants to dance." She grinned and watched Isabella make her way
towards the bathroom, her hips swaying gently.
Isabella looked back at the two of them perched on their
chairs where they wiggled their fingers and smiled. She dipped her lashes down
once and tossed her head like a proud mare. She could do this.
#
Because Guadalupe Juan Diego Rodriquez had been born on
December 12, the feast day of the Virgin Guadalupe, his mama had named him for
La
Virgen de Guadalupe
and also for Juan Diego, the Mexican to whom the virgin
appeared in 1594.
Lupe didn't care about the origin of his names, but he did
feel unreasonably blessed. He had been a happy baby and became a cheerful man,
and at this moment he delighted in the prospect of passing along information to
a man he considered his friend as well as his employer.
The paper he'd tucked into his pants pocket and which he
would, within the next hour, deliver to his connection, was
muy importante,
significant enough to bring down the man who'd been responsible for the deaths
of many young Latinos. Thus, Lupe admitted to himself that he did this work
gladly, and not solely for the money.
But, of course, the money was welcome.
At the moment, however, he glanced nervously around the dark
streets. Having no car, he had walked the twenty blocks or so from the
apartment of his girlfriend to the club. Twenty very edgy blocks because at
first he was certain someone followed him.
He zigzagged back and forth, left turn, right turn, making
the twenty blocks closer to forty, in order to shake off the phantom shadow
that tailed him. Crossing himself and kissing the Virgin of Guadalupe medal
that hung around his neck, he made the final turn and ended up at the rear
parking lot of Stuckey's Bar.
He lit a cigarette and leaned against a car parked at the
darkest corner of the lot. From there he observed the movements of patrons and
workers who regularly moved in and out of the popular singles bar.
Five, ten, twenty minutes passed while he smoked yet another
cigarette, grinding out the butts on the asphalt beneath his feet. Nothing
suspicious.
Absurdo,
he chastised himself. He was acting foolish. The only
danger was in his stupid imagination. No one had followed him.
Since Francisca had become
embarazada
– with a
strapping baby boy he hoped – Lupe had been increasingly edgy and nervous, like
una vieja mujer,
an old woman.
Now that he was to be a father,
perhaps it was time to put this dangerous business behind him.
#
Rafe took another long pull on his beer and let his eyes
glide one more time around the softly lighted room. Stuckey's Bar was a classy
place with high-end clientele from the looks of them. Agents, lawyers, all
kinds of L.A. power brokers. He wondered briefly why his informant had chosen a
fancy-priced singles bar like this for their meet.
Beneath the booth he stretched his legs, glanced at his
wristwatch for the tenth time in as many minutes, and swore under his breath.
Damn Lupe! Even though notoriously late, he'd never failed to show up
altogether. Now the man was nearly an hour overdue.
The dumb bastard probably got himself made. Or worse, the
somber thought intruded, killed by some very bad hombres. The possibility of
losing his informant disturbed him, not only because Lupe Rodriquez was an
excellent source, but because he genuinely liked the man.
Nah, he finally concluded, Lupe Rodriquez was far too wily
to be caught.