by Elisabeth Naughton, Cynthia Eden, Katie Reus, Alexandra Ivy, Laura Wright, Joan Swan
Rio did enough moving for both of them. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, stuffed his hands in his pockets, turned in circles, rocked his weight from one foot to the other. He was about ready to walk down there and wring her beautiful neck when she reached up, rubbed her face, and heaved her shoulders in a sigh.
Normally, he would have guessed by her body language that she was hurting. Rio recognized the signs of pain, because he had squelched a fair amount of emotion since the funerals too—guilt, anguish, loneliness. But the lingering doubt about their…thing…on the beach last night made him wonder if he was reading her right.
He thought of their meeting as a thing because it sure as hell had been more than a kiss, and he didn’t know what to call it. Maybe foreplay. Because while their hands hadn’t been all over each other, their bodies had been. And by the way she’d encouraged him, he wondered now if they would have ended up in bed if he’d let their kiss go as far as she’d wanted.
And, shit, he couldn’t be thinking like that now. Thoughts of sex with her channeled all his blood to his dick. There was no room for any of the feelings or want or need she brought out. Emotions put him at increased risk in an extremely hazardous environment. Totally unacceptable. Especially now that he had Cassie’s safety to consider, regardless of her agenda or motives.
She finally scuffed a foot at the wooden planks and wandered back toward town. Rio waited for her to disappear, put his game face back on, and headed to the dock. He called to Mario, who scrubbed the weathered wood with a wide push broom two rows over.
The big man’s head lifted, and his gaze locked with Rio’s. “Señor Santana.” He lumbered forward and offered his hand. “Good to see you. What can I do for you?”
Rio shook Mario’s hand and lifted his chin in the direction Cassie had gone. “What did she want?”
A flush bloomed under Mario’s double chin. His fingers closed around the broom’s wooden handle, and he leaned into it. “Nothin’. She just come to visit the slip.”
“You talked for fifteen minutes, Mario. What did she say?”
Mario’s dark brow fell. Anger heated his eyes. Rio had found only two groups of men in town who stood up to him—men who made honor a way of life and men who lived stupid and died young. Mario was the former.
“I no need these problems, hey?” Mario said. “I already answer the fèdèrales’ questions jus’ like you ask. I no do nothin’ wrong.”
Rio pulled out his wallet, fingered through the cash, and forced the bills into Mario’s hand. “What did she say?”
Mario shoved the bills back at Rio. “I no want your money.”
He put a firm hand over Mario’s and eased it back. “You’ve earned it, Mario. And all I want is information.” He paused, then added, “To keep her safe.”
Mario’s scowl turned skeptical, but he pocketed the cash.
“She ask about Alejandra and Santos.” He lowered his voice as if someone might be listening. “When I saw them last, if I know them well. She want to know who uses the yacht, if they brin’ guests.” He shifted on his feet, wiped his damp brow with the back of his hand, and looked down at the dock. “Then she ask if I know Santos’s amigos. Was he part of a gang? Did they have the same tattoo he wore on his shoulder? Did they ever ride on the yacht? Who was on the boat the day it blew? She ask about maintenance, and Enrique, the mechanic.”
Shit. Mario wasn’t the only one who didn’t need these problems. And, double shit, she was in way deeper than Rio had guessed.
“What did you tell her, Mario?” Rio added a tell-me-and-you-won’t-get-in-trouble threat to his voice.
“I tell her nothin’.” His hands came out, palms waving toward Rio. “I tell her I don’ know, I can’t say, I don’ keep records of who goes on the boat. I tell her I jus’ manage the docks; the boats are the owners’ concern. I tell her nothin’, señor, I swear.”
“Come on, Mario. She’s a beautiful woman. I saw you two flirting.”
“She a beautiful woman to you, Rio. She a charming girl to me.” His voice, the glare he shot down his nose at Rio said, Don’t be disgusting. “And we were not flirting. We were talking. You young men, always jealous of everything. So insecure.”
Mario made him sound like a five-year-old. Which, okay, was about how old he felt when he thought about Cassie taking him for nothing but a joyride. That wasn’t what he wanted from her. Wait. Reframe. That wasn’t all he wanted from her. He’d known that much from day one in the cemetery.
“Besides, are you loco?” Mario looked at Rio like he’d lost a nut. “You think I want trouble? Here? Now?” His eyes darted toward the spot where a van had been found abandoned less than two weeks ago, stuffed with mutilated, dead bodies. The van and the bodies were long gone, but the gang’s message lived on. “I don’ want her to get hurt. If she keeps askin’ questions like that around here, she’s gonna get hurt. She a nice lady. She love her mamà very much. Santos was a true brother to her. They a nice family.”
Yes, they were. Rio knew that from spending time with Alejandra and Santos. In a lot of ways, he felt like he already knew Cassie. Had grown fond of her through their stories and their love for her long before he’d ever met her at the funerals. Sweat gleamed on Mario’s dark face. “This is such a problem. I no good at lying, señor. I just a simple man, want a simple job. If los Muertos hear she’s asking questions, if they think I told her somethin’…”
Rio looked out over the blue sea, boats lined up in their slips, seagulls gliding overhead. Difficult to believe this serene setting provided a killing ground for the area’s most lethal gang—Muerte, or Death. Their claws sank so deep into this territory, every time they made another move, the community bled. Los Muertos was associated with a larger and far more powerful cartel based in Agua Prieta, and that gang wanted this harbor. But so did los Muertos’ rivals, los Diablos, or the devils. Of course, los Diablos also had powerful backing from a larger gang, their headquarters in Mexico City.
The complex weave of gangs and gang associations in this country created an exquisitely brutal tapestry. If Rio gave it too much thought, he’d throw his hands up in defeat, move to an island in the Bahamas, and weave baskets for food—where he’d be just about as useful as he felt now.
“You did good.” Rio took a long breath of the salted air and squinted into the distance. “If she comes back, just do what you did today and call me. I’ll come get her. And you make sure Enrique is as quiet as you are. She’ll stay safe, and you’ll stay out of trouble.”
The curses Rio muttered on his way back into town almost drowned out the ping of his BlackBerry—an alert from the wiretap software.
Rio attached headphones and tapped into Cassie’s call. One to San Diego, by the looks of the phone number.
“So, is he all you remember?” an unfamiliar woman asked.
“Not even close.” Cassie’s slow speech and sensual voice sent a rivulet of heat down the center of Rio’s chest. Shit, that was uncomfortable. “He’s soooo much hotter.”
Rio tripped on an uneven ridge in the sidewalk and stopped walking.
“Details, girl,” the other woman said. “I want details.”
God, so did Rio—if she was talking about him. If not, he wanted to put a knife to his own throat.
“Mmmm,” she hummed low and sexy. A rush of lust hit him solidly between the legs. “So handsome. I didn’t remember what he looked like at all, you know, but he’s got this thick black hair and light eyes, kind of green. And his body, oh, man, serious underwear-model material.”
Okay, he didn’t know about that last part, but, yeah, she was talking about him. He did have unusual green eyes, passed down from his mother’s side. Rio stepped backward until his back hit the brick façade of a storefront.
“Does he have a brother?” the other woman asked.
“Nat.” Cassie’s voice held teasing reprimand. “You’re married.”
“Married, not dead. Send me a picture so I can drool. When are you going to jump
him?”
Cassie laughed with a mischievous edge.
Rio’s throat closed. His body temperature spiked. Another rush of blood surged into his hard-on.
“Oh my God.” The unknown woman’s voice lifted. “Cassie Christo, did you already…?”
“No…” Cassie’s voice started off innocent enough but ended with teasing promise. “Not…yet.”
Rio clenched his teeth and leaned his head back against the wall.
If only.
“But I did kiss him,” she continued in that delicious I-couldn’t-get-enough tone. “And oh my God is right. You know how you can tell how good a guy will be in bed by the way they kiss?”
What? Electricity arced through his body. Something about the words how good a guy will be in bed coming out of Cassie’s mouth made him feel like a rocket ready to launch.
“This guy would be…will be…off the damn charts—the back-arching, toe-curling, sheet-fisting, multi-orgasmic charts.”
Mother of God… Snapshots of Cassie, naked, in his bed, experiencing those very stages of pleasure, flashed in his mind. And, damn, he couldn’t breathe.
“Cass,” the other woman groaned Cassie’s name, just the way Rio would have if he could speak. “You’re killing me here.”
She wasn’t the only one Cassie was killing.
“I’ll give you something more to think about while you suffer,” Cassie said. “I got a nice feel of his equipment during that kiss, and let’s just say his tool chest…is plenty full.”
“Jesus.” Rio breathed the word and jerked the earpiece from his ear, because the woman had his equipment working at full torque from nothing more than her voice and her words.
He pushed off the building, wiped sweat from his forehead, and started up the street again. That phone call had done nothing to provide intel—other than what he’d missed out on last night. What he would miss out on tonight. And every night in the future because of this damned situation.
That and the fact that Cassie Christo was the hottest woman in the Western Hemisphere.
Cassie peered around the side of the building where she waited inside the recessed doorway of Miguel’s taqueria.
“Okay,” she said to Natalie as she spotted Rio well down the street, returning his phone into its holster. “He’s not listening anymore, but he’s headed my way. I have to go. I need to put in a quick call to Santiago. Thanks for the help.”
“Hold on, missy.” Natalie’s voice dropped back into her serious lawyer tone. “First, you owe me another call today. That one, as fun as it was, doesn’t count.”
Cassie clipped out a distracted, “Sure.”
“And two, was any of that true?”
“Everything, unfortunately,” she muttered, irritated and frustrated.
“And three, did you report the accident?”
“I was at the police station when they opened their doors.”
Natalie sighed, clearly relieved.
“And I ate all my Brussels sprouts,” Cassie teased.
“Ha-ha.”
“I gotta go,” Cassie said. “I’ll call you later.”
She disconnected, pulled open the back cover on her phone and removed the battery. Beneath, tucked into a shadowed corner, a tiny listening device clung to the frame. She’d discovered the device when she’d swept her room for bugs the night before, something she’d been doing since Saul had started using the bugs in her teen years. She pried it loose, dropped it into her pocket and reassembled her phone.
Then she dialed Raymond Santiago, an attorney her mother had used exclusively until Saul had insisted she change to someone else as soon as he’d learned of Raymond’s sincere, longtime, and deep fondness for Alejandra. Cassie had secretly wished for so long that her mother would marry Ray. Had secretly wished he could be her father. He was such an amazing man—intelligent, patient, kind, generous—and Cassie was sure she’d never seen a man love her mother more than Raymond had loved Alejandra.
Saul had killed so many dreams. He’d shown up, all high-profile flash. He’d made her mother feel glamorous and beautiful and sexy and young. And he’d used her mother’s needs to manipulate Alejandra right into giving him total control over the estate, their family, and, ultimately, her life. Only years later, after his claws were too deep to remove without substantial damage, and his façade had tarnished and faded did her mother see beneath the pretense and realize just what she’d allowed.
Alejandra had successfully removed some of his talons, but unfortunately not all, before she’d died. Which was yet another thought that floated in the back of Cassie’s mind when she thought about the yacht explosion.
Raymond’s secretary answered on the third ring and immediately transferred Cassie to the attorney.
“Cassie,” he answered the line, his voice deep and robust and warm. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Oh, yeah? Something good, I hope.”
“Actually, not…really. I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking over your mother’s fideicomiso.” A sigh drifted over the line, the sound thick with disappointment. “I truly want the same thing you do, mija. You know I adored your mother, and I can’t express how much I despise Saul. And while I could suggest several good investigators to help you get dirt on him, from what I can see in this document, that won’t invalidate Alejandra’s provision for his residency at the estate.”
Cassie’s heart plunged straight to her gut. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth against the immediate sense of defeat.
“I’m not finished combing through it,” Ray offered in her silence. “And there is a slim possibility I could still find something that will work to get him out, but…I don’t want to give you false hope, Cassie.”
She drew air through a tight throat. “I understand.”
“It did occur to me…” Ray started, then paused.
“Yes?”
“Uh, this isn’t particularly…professional of me…”
“Ray…” Cassie tried to push compassion into her voice, but it sounded more like frustration to her own ears, and she hoped Ray didn’t take it that way. “You’re talking to me, here. I’ll take anything that will get him out of the house. Anything.”
Still, Ray hesitated. Finally, he said, “The dirt an investigator would dig up might not affect the state of the fideicomiso, but if it’s something you can make stick, he could end up in prison.”
For a moment, Cassie’s brows pulled in a frown. Then she got it and, in a classic V8 moment, slapped her palm against her forehead. “I never thought of that. Ray, you’re brilliant!”
“No, just vindictive. It’s not pretty, but there you have it. Human nature’s weakest link. It’s not a permanent solution. If he were to go to prison, he would eventually get out, and the fideicomiso would still remain valid. But you would gain time. Laws can change with time. Even mortality status can change with time…especially for an arrogant bastard like Saul in a Mexican prison.”
“Good point. If I don’t have any other options, I’m not above looking into that one.”
“So, we’ll keep our appointment in two hours? I’ll be finished with the document by then, and you and I can sit down and make a game plan.”
Cassie smiled. “You’re on.”
She hung up with at least a sliver of hope. There was a certain cosmic rightness to Saul going to prison.
Beneath the awning of Miguel’s, Cassie sank back into the shadows and waited with complex strands of emotion weaving through her chest. As vengefully fun as it had been to create a little punishment for Rio bugging her phone, the sex talk had also rekindled all the heat they’d shared the night before. More, if she were honest. Which was a strange sensation layered over the frustration at discovering him tailing her and the pain of standing over that empty slip at the marina.
She had managed a semi-coherent conversation with Mario, but the absence of Endless Pleasures had been a violent reality check. One she’d thought she’d been prepared for.
&nbs
p; She’d been so wrong.
That yacht had held her best, most vivid childhood memories, second only to the estate. Her mind was too swollen with grief to recall any specific event, but the boat had represented love and joy and life—all the wonderful moments shared with Mamà and Santos out on the water.
Each breath brought a stab of pain as if her lungs didn’t have room to expand. She closed her eyes against the building pressure of tears. She couldn’t let them fall. If they started, they’d never stop, the way the dam had broken at the cemetery and she’d clung to Rio.
Cassie wiped her face and cleared her mind. It didn’t matter what she’d hoped to find in Rio. He’d clearly chosen his loyalty to Saul over her last night—not only by his words but by his action of bugging her phone.
What this all meant for Cassie now was that she had to stay cool and maintain the upper hand. Saul’s games were always slippery, but if she remained focused, she would win.
The first thing she needed was control. And the first step in gaining control was drilling into the enemy’s weaknesses and utilizing leverage. Saul had sure as hell taught her that.
She peered around the edge of the building again. Rio was still walking, head down, hands in his pockets. She dropped back beneath the awning’s shade to wait.
She flexed the tension from her hands and readied herself to confront him. By his pace, she could gauge the time it would take him to reach her. Five, four, three… He strode past right on cue. Cassie straightened from the wall, and Rio caught the movement in his peripheral vision. He sidestepped and twisted toward her, moving back at the same time, hands up and defensive.
She was startled by the sheer smoothness of his movements, suspicious over the way he braced his feet wide, knees slightly bent, and remained so intensely still. He was quick, agile, practiced. He was trained. He was a goddamned professional. She knew one when she saw one.
But here, professional didn’t mean what it meant in the States—a cop or private investigator or security specialist. Here, professional meant someone who could make things happen, get things done, legally or illegally. Someone who could protect and kill. Which begged the question: why did Saul need someone with these skills? And a follow-up question of: who and what the hell was Rio?