Traitor, The (22 page)
Santos drove away from the courthouse after signing his
official statement in front of Isabella Torres, along with the incompetent
district attorney, Charles Barrington. Unfinished business loomed ahead of him
– business he could no longer put off, so he hurried.
He was certain the loose-lipped Barrington would
inadvertently leak the deal to someone, who would get word to Jensen. Taking
out a police detective was a serious matter, but in this thing, Vargas was
correct, if not for the right reasons. Jensen presented a dangerous threat to
Santos, who had hoped the detective could remain as his informant long after
Vargas was sitting in a federal penitentiary or state prison.
Now he realized the timing of the matter was all wrong.
Santos would have to create his own network of informants after Vargas was
gone, and after all, that was probably the wise thing to do. Arrangements, of
course, would be made regarding Diego Vargas, and Santos was confident
El
Vaquero
would not survive the length of the trial.
When he arrived at the ramshackle place where Jensen was
staying, he drove slowly by the house for a cursory look and then parked some
distance away. He walked casually down the street.
No children played on the streets. No teenagers loitered on
doorsteps. No housewives gardened nor old men walked their dogs. The
neighborhood bore the stamp of careless neglect, a community running steadily
downhill from middle class to low income.
When he approached the house, he walked stealthily around
the side yard, through the unlocked gate, and paused at the corner of the back
patio. The door was open and through the screen he heard voices.
"I didn't hurt her, Hash. I let her go. That's gotta
mean something." Max Jensen's voice, jittery and manic.
The other voice was muffled as if the man spoke around a
swollen tongue. "What happened to you, Max? God, what made you turn like
this?"
The questions were full of anger, but anguish too. Santos
could hear the pain in the other man's voice.
"Fuck you, Hashemi!" A loud, sickening whack of
metal against flesh. A sound Santos was well familiar with.
Another scuffle while Santos ducked his head around the back
patio sliding door. Jensen faced away from him, kicking the bleeding body at
his feet. Without warning the man on the floor grasped Jensen's ankle as it
aimed one last blow toward his head. Jensen went down with a thud while Hashemi
struggled to stand upright.
Santos was not eager to intervene in a contest between two
gringos, both law enforcement men, but he did not like to see an uneven match,
and Jensen had both the pistol and a wicked knife in his hands.
#
While in Max's bathroom, Bella had made a cursory check of
all the rooms. No Rafe. She had no choice but to leave.
She would never know what prompted her to turn back after
she left Max Jensen in the near house. Perhaps the smug look on his face,
perhaps a sense of combativeness.
Maybe she was the "little warrior" Santos had
called her.
Whatever changed her mind, twenty minutes from the seedy
neighborhood, she veered right into a Taco Bell parking lot, made a u-turn, and
headed back the way she'd come, all the while punching in Rafe's number on her
cell phone. Each time it went direct to voice mail.
Where are you, she wondered, worry a lump of fear in the
middle of her chest.
If Rafe had intended to confront Max Jensen directly, why
had he gone off, as Max claimed? Jensen's name was not among those Santos had
revealed in his recorded statement, so where was the proof against Max?
Maybe her instincts were wrong. Maybe Max was just what he
appeared to be – a good detective and a good friend to Rafe.
When she reached the house in Highland Heights, she heard
muffled voices and didn't bother with polite knocks this time. She pounded on
the front door.
"Let me in, Max! I know Rafe's in there." She
twisted the knob.
Locked.
"Open up!"
A moment later the door jerked open and Max grabbed her arm
before she could react. He shoved her into the living room, still holding her upper
arm in a vise-like grip.
She saw Rafe, bloody and beaten, struggling to stand against
the far wall. "What did you do to him?" she screamed.
"It's your fault, you little bitch. We were like
brothers and I had to stuff him in a bloody closet to hide him from you! I
thought I'd killed him! You turned him against me."
He's mad, she thought. Insane.
"Keep her out of this, Max." From the corner of
the room Rafe's voice was thready and he looked barely able to stand. His shirt
was smeared with blood.
"Shut up, Hashemi." Max's voice quavered with
drink and delusion.
Bella thought she detected a wound in Rafe's upper left
chest.
Bullet?
God, the blood loss was horrendous. "Let me tend to
him. He's losing so much blood."
"Why didn't you just fucking tell me who it was?" Jensen's
voice resonated crazily, tinged with panic. "Who made the deal to give
Vargas up? It didn't have to come to this, Hash."
#
Santos pulled his weapon and stepped into the kitchen from
the concrete floor of the patio.
"Stop it! Let me go!" Isabella shouted, anger
tinged with fear in her voice.
A loud smack and a harsh gasp.
Santos was an expert marksman. He had no doubt of his
prowess in that area, but through the open door, he saw Jensen holding Isabella
in a death grip, his gun arm wrapped around her chest and waist from behind, a
knife glinting at her throat.
Her cheek bore a large red mark where Jensen had slapped her
and her blouse was torn. One shoe lay across the room, the heel broken.
"You bitch!" Even as Jensen snarled the words,
Santos could hear the slurring that indicated he was under the influence of
drugs. His eyes were wildly dilated and his face flushed.
Santos stepped into the room, holding his weapon leisurely
at his side. "Detective Jensen." His voice was a calm contrast to the
chaos in the room.
"Santos!" His eyes bulged out of their sockets and
he shook his head as if to clear his vision. "What the fuck are you doing
here?"
"You and I – we have unfinished business."
Understanding slowly crawled over Jensen's face. "You! God,
you screwed me over, you son-of-a-bitch!"
"Easy, Detective Jensen."
Santos turned to Isabella. "Are you all right, Miss
Torres?"
She nodded without speaking, but Jensen did not loosen his
grip on her.
"Let Miss Torres go,
por favor."
"Fuck no!" Jensen screamed.
"I do not like to make requests more than once, but for
you I will. Let the assistant district attorney go."
Santos heard his own voice, calm and deadly, a sign to those
who knew him that his anger was barely controlled. "And I will not cut out
your tongue."
What happened next occurred within seconds, but to Bella
they seemed unbearably long. She saw Santos raise the gun he'd dangled so
carelessly from his fingers at the same moment she felt the sharp prick of the
knife at her neck and smelled the coppery odor of her blood trickling from the
wound.
Instinctively she collapsed her legs beneath her, shifting
her weight so that Max's body was exposed. She heard the loud report of the
weapon in the small room and smelled the acrid odor of the gunshot residue.
Max toppled to the floor as a red flower blossomed on his
chest and the knife and gun clattered from his hands.
Santos stepped forward, kicked the weapons away and checked
Max's pulse, but Bella knew by the vacant look of his eyes, that he was already
dead.
"Are you all right?" Santos asked, helping her to
her feet.
As the shock of the near fatality reached her brain, Bella
began trembling, her teeth chattering and her knees weak. Santos led her to the
single chair and pushed her head between her legs even as she struggled to get
to Rafe.
"Breathe slowly and deeply," he advised. "In
and out. Slow.
Muy bueno."
His voice was a deep rumble that was
oddly comforting.
After a moment she slapped his hand away and scrabbled to catch
Rafe as he tumbled to the floor. "Towels," she shouted, and
surprisingly, Santos did her bidding.
She staunched the blood flow and felt for a pulse.
"Call 911," she ordered.
"Lo siento mucho,"
Santos replied, a near
comical look on his face.
"I'm very sorry,
but I cannot
remain." He dialed emergency and relayed the information to the operator.
A moment later she looked up to see him standing over her. "Thank
you," she whispered, wondering at the oddity of the situation. Of Santos
being their rescuer.
She looked up at him through her lashes. "Max Jensen
was the one name you didn't give me," she reprimanded, hearing the
petulance in her voice. "You held out on me."
Santos laughed. "I see you are recovered,
poco
combatiente,
and ready to do battle." His white teeth gleamed in his burnished
face.
As he knelt beside her to press another towel on Rafe's
chest, she noticed his hands for the first time.
They were lined with white scars slashing through the dark
skin, but they were well-shaped, the fingers long and perfect like an artist's.
Suddenly she remembered his first name, which she'd remained ignorant of all
the months she'd been working on the Vargas case until she took his statement
this morning.
Gabriel.
She stared at his hands and imagined the fingers
gently tapping out the sweet, haunting notes of a trumpet.
Bella ran a finger down Rafe's bare chest, in a highly
distracting movement. "Do you want to talk?"
"About what?"
She lifted one slender shoulder, her face quiet and
sympathetic. "Max."
He shook his head.
As they sprawled across her wide, comfortable bed, they'd
discussed the ramifications, all angles of the case until they were both sick
of it, Rafe imagined. Disgusted by the wide ring of human trafficking, the
sordid circle of drugs and dealers, the abuse of Magdalena Vargas and her
daughter.
Gabriel Santos had arranged for the girl to live with her
mother's relatives in Mexico. Magdalena Vargas was still missing. Diego Vargas
awaited trial in Placer Hills.
Isabella stretched her leg across him, her pretty toes
painted a rich crimson which he found wantonly attractive. "Tell me a
little about him," she urged.
"Max? God, just like he said. I was a skinny
dark-skinned kid whose mother was some kind of hippie reporter in the Middle
East."
He glanced down at her and ran his hand over her back.
"My father was a soldier in the Jordanian army. They met, fell in love,
made me in a single night of passion, and then he died in the Six Day
War."
"With Israel?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, Rafe. I'm so sorry."
"Mom stayed ten years over there. She wanted me to
learn the culture of my father, but finally she realized that part of that
culture was indoctrinating males in their supreme role as patriarchs over their
women and children." He laughed. "She was too much of a feminist to
allow that, so she came back to the states."
"And you were a strange fish out of water."
"I was. Could hardly speak English, couldn't adjust to
the sea of white faces around me."
"But you inherited your mother's green eyes," she
guessed, kissing him at the corner of each one. "Those beautiful, green
eyes."
"Freakish." He smiled. "Max was the only
person who accepted me back then. After Nine Eleven, even though I was an agent
by then, the storm came down on anyone of Arabic descent. Max stuck by me
through all of it."
And that was the trouble, he thought. Max had always been
his wing man and the pain of his betrayal would remain a long time.
Belatedly he realized he'd never asked Isabella the final detail
of the deal she'd made with Santos. She'd told Rafe that Santos had given her
everything she wanted, and added a bonus.
"What was the bonus Santos gave you?" he asked, propping
himself on one elbow.
"My sister," she said simply.
"Maria?"
"Yes. Vargas is the one who took her. Santos has known
all this time. He had a picture of her."
"Jesus Christ! Are you sure it's her?"
"Yes, I'm positive."
Rafe gathered her close, tucked her head against his chest.
"Babe, I'm so sorry."
"I'm glad he told me. He said she didn't suffer much,
that she stayed with Vargas about a year and died in a car accident."
Rafe frowned over the top of her head.
A year? Car
accident? That didn't sound like the Diego Vargas he'd been hunting these last
three years, but why would Santos lie to Isabella?
"That's good, that
she didn't suffer."
"And it's good that we know what happened to her. Now
our family can really bury her."
He massaged her back gently and listened to her soft moan.
The sound conjured up erotic images of other groans and the tiny breathless
sounds she made when he was deep inside her, pounding into her willing body.
Suddenly the urge for a repeat performance caused a tightening in his groin.
"Why do you think he did it?" Isabella asked. "I
mean, why would he care? Why didn't he just walk away?"
Rafe tried to push back his body's response and concentrate
on what she was saying. He knew she wasn't speaking of Diego Vargas or Max
Jensen.
"I think Santos has a kind of thing for you."
She wrinkled her forehead in that funny way he found
adorable. "You mean you think he
likes
me?"
Rafe shrugged and moved his hands farther down her back,
cupped her bottom. "Maybe more than 'like.'"
"He's a cold-blooded killer, a man absolutely without
principles or moral parameters."
He enjoyed watching her go into her warrior stance like a
female ninja.
"Don't smile like that," she warned. "You
know that Santos is going to take over the organization, build it back up
again."
Rafe nodded. "But it'll take him years to do that, and
when he does, I'll be right on his ass."
"Yeah, but he'll be tougher to catch than Vargas. It's
strange but he has some kind of off-kilter internal guide. He'll kill at the
drop of a hat, but he wouldn't let Vargas abuse his own daughter."
"He's a practical man and a survivor." Rafe
slipped his hand between her legs. "Like you."
Isabella – Rafe could never think of her as Bella and even
in his thoughts he used the name that conjured up the Isabella of the night
they'd met in the bar – pushed him aside and sat up.
Confused, he stared at her. "There's nothing wrong with
being a survivor."
"I'm not like Santos," she insisted.
"Of course not." He reached for her again. "Look,
Santos gave you the information about Maria for no practical reason. You'd have
given him full immunity regardless of getting the real story about your sister."
"That's true." She sank back and let him wrap his
arms around her. "Learning about Maria was ... extra."
"The important thing is that Vargas is locked up, he's
not getting out of prison until he's a very old man, if even then, and you have
some peace of mind about your sister."
Her face softened as she reached for his, holding it between
her two hands. "And I have you." She smiled and brushed her lips against
his.
He laughed as he dipped his mouth to hers. "What more
could you ask for?"
"Uh, why don't you show me?" she whispered in his
ear, darting her tongue out to tickle and tantalize his lobe. "I might get
out of practice."
"No chance of that." He rolled over to cradle
himself between her thighs. "I intend to allow you plenty of time to ...
refine your skills."