Aztec Sun

by Judith Arnold

  “And did she seem clean to you?”

  Rafael exhaled wearily. “What could he do? Give her a blood test every morning when she showed up for work?”

  “Come on, Rafael—don’t tell me you didn’t notice she was sky-high half the time. Diego was always the one to comfort her, talk her down, mellow her out. He was with her more than anyone else. She told me his job was to keep her happy. And he did.”

  Rafael looked torn. “You can’t prove it.”

  “I can’t prove he’s been harassing your sister all these years, either. But I believe Rosa.”

  Something altered in his expression, skepticism giving way to rage. “If he’s been harassing her I’ll break his neck.”

  “Violence won’t do you any good right now, Rafael. Be reasonable. You only just got bailed out.”

  He shot her a savage look. “Don’t tell me you care if I rot in jail.”

  “You know I do.”

  He studied her face for a moment, and again his expression altered. He almost looked as if he wanted her to care, as if her opinions meant something to him. Then he shut down, withdrew, his eyes hardening as he yanked open the door of a Jeep parked near the court. Sandra assumed this was the practical car he’d admitted to owning. Without awaiting an invitation, she climbed in on the passenger side.

  He shot her another look but said nothing. She supposed she could have followed him in her own car, but he accepted her presence in his. And she didn’t want to let him out of her sight, not when he was so close to exploding.

  He jammed the key into the ignition, then reached into the back seat and pulled a fresh T-shirt from a duffel bag on the floor. He wriggled into it, concealing his glorious torso from her view, and she offered a silent thank-you. If he was going to be forever out of her reach, she didn’t want the temptation, the torture of gazing upon what she could never have.

  Seething with barely repressed fury, he tore away from the curb, cutting off a delivery truck and winning a loud blast on the horn from the truck driver. Sandra belatedly fastened her seat belt.

  “I told you Rosa was none of your business,” he said.

  “She isn’t my business. She’s just someone who cares very deeply about you.” Like me, Sandra longed to add. “What is my business is whether you’ve been charged wrongly. I think you have been.”

  “That would make a big story for you, wouldn’t it.”

  “The hell with the story!” she exploded. “This isn’t about a story, Rafael! I’m trying to save your life!”

  “Such a generous soul,” he muttered. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but she sensed a slight softening in him.

  It took little time to reach Aztec Sun—they could have walked the distance if they’d wanted. The guard seemed at first astonished and then delighted to see Rafael. “Mr. Perez! You’re back!”

  “Yes,” Rafael grunted, in no mood to exchange pleasantries with the guard. With a curt nod, he cruised through the gate and into a parking space.

  Once again Sandra had to run to keep up with him as he stalked to the office building, shoved open the door with hinge-rattling force and bore down on the receptionist. Her smile froze as she read the anger in his face. “Mr. Perez!”

  “Get me Diego,” he demanded.

  She surveyed his attire—the scuffed sneakers, wrinkled jeans, casual T-shirt. If Rafael was at the studio to do business, it certainly wasn’t business-as-usual. Looking increasingly worried, the receptionist lifted her phone and pressed Diego’s number. “Is Mr. Salazar in his office?” she asked, her eyes round and anxious on Rafael. She listened for a minute, then hung up. “He’s over in Building B,” she reported.

  Without a word, Rafael turned and charged out of the building, Sandra at his heels. They sped past the parched grass, across the parking lot, through the glaring sun and into the blinding shadow of the converted warehouse. Rafael swung open the door and strode onto the sound stage, gracefully navigating around scaffolding, cables, lights and props.

  The tenement set was brightly lit, clear of dressing. At the kitchen table, Diego sat with John Rhee, conferring quietly over a script. Without breaking stride, Rafael leaped onto the stage and slammed his hands down at the center of the table. “Do you send her roses?” he asked, his voice ominously quiet.

  John looked uncertainly at Rafael. “Hey, Rafael. How are you doing?”

  “Get out of here,” Rafael ordered him.

  John’s eyebrows arched high enough to vanish beneath his backward baseball cap. He raised his hands in mock surrender, pushed his chair away from the table, and hurried away from the set.

  The door closed with a sigh, and then silence claimed the room. It was an electric silence, the molecules jumping around Rafael, enveloping him in a force-field of sinister energy. Sandra wondered whether Diego was aware of it, whether his gleaming smile was as false as it looked.

  “I heard you made bail, Raf,” he said. “We were all so happy—”

  “Do you send her a dozen red roses every week?”

  Diego’s smile widened, stretching his pretty mouth as far as it would go. “Who are you talking about? I’m friendly with so many lovely senoritas—”

  Rafael’s scant supply of patience was spent. He grabbed Diego, one hand on the collar of his elegant suit, the other snagging his hand-painted silk tie, and hauled him out of his chair with such force it fell backward with a clatter. “My sister,” he growled. “Do you send her a dozen red roses every week?”

  Diego’s smile began to look sickly. “Hey, look, amigo,” he wheedled. “Flowers are nice, right? It’s a gift, a gesture, that’s all.”

  Rafael gave him a menacing shake. “And the notes? The dirty love notes you send her?”

  “It’s not love notes. Come on, man! Just little cards, telling her I’m thinking about her.”

  Another menacing shake, this one tugging the knot tighter on Diego’s tie. “She’s a nun, for chrissake! You send dirty love notes and roses to a nun?”

  Evidently Diego wasn’t willing to let Rafael manhandle him. He shoved Rafael into the table, freeing himself. Then he loosened his tie and swallowed. “You think there’s something wrong in what I’m doing? I’ll tell you, Perez, you’re the one who’s wrong. You kept me from her all those years ago. You told her to go be a nun. It’s unnatural. She should have had a man’s love all these years. I would have shown her what real love is. Not that virginal married-to-God crap but real love. Manly love. But you kept us apart. You kept her from me. The only woman I ever wanted, and you kept her from me.”

  “She didn’t want you, Diego. She wanted what she has. You tried to force yourself on her, remember? And I beat you bloody for it. And as God is my witness, Salazar, if you ever bother her again, ever talk to her, ever call her, ever send her anything, ever even ask about her...I will beat you again.”

  “Oh, you will, eh?” Diego shrugged his jacket higher on his shoulders. He wasn’t as tall as Rafael, but he held himself as straight, his chin raised pugnaciously and his eyes fierce with indignation. “You always had luck on your side, man. But next time you won’t. Next time I won’t blow it. You’ll be dead, man.”

  Ice snaked down Sandra’s spine. What did he mean, next time? She inched closer to Diego, suddenly wary, afraid. This wasn’t about Rosa, it wasn’t about Melanie, it wasn’t about cocaine. This was something different.

  Rafael seemed to perceive the difference, too. His eyes narrowed and he moved with great care, so as not to spook Diego. “What are you talking about?” he asked in a deceptively calm voice.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Diego retorted, as enraged as Rafael was controlled. “You beat me up because I was in love. You humiliated me, Rafael. I did nothing wrong, I only tried to persuade your sister to love me, but you stole her from me and beat me up. You hurt my pride, you broke my heart—what did you expect me to do? Next time, compadre, I’m warning you—next time I’ll aim better. Next time the knife will find your heart.”

 
; In the split second Sandra had to scream, Rafael sprang at Diego, knocking him back off his feet. Stage furniture went flying, a lamp on a pole crashed against the hard floor, and Rafael had Diego trapped beneath him, his hands wrapped around Diego’s throat, his thumbs pressing the bone.

  “Stop!” she shrieked, trying to pull Rafael away. “Don’t kill him, Rafael! Don’t kill him!”

  He lightened the pressure of his thumbs just enough to let Diego gulp in a lungful of air. “Tell me. You never meant to save my life?”

  Diego made a gurgling sound. His complexion was turning crimson.

  Rafael loosened his hold enough so Diego could inhale again. “Tell me. The knife cut me from behind. You were behind me, right?”

  “I thought—” Diego coughed and Rafael slid his thumbs back and forth over his windpipe. “Come on, man—”

  “Tell me, Diego.”

  “I thought to pull you out of the way—”

  “You had my blood all over you. Bastardo. You cut me.”

  “You think that was any worse than keeping me from your sister? Anyway, you’re a lucky SOB. You didn’t die, did you?”

  “Get a policeman, Sandra,” Rafael muttered, his gaze never leaving Diego’s ruddy face. “Get one fast, because if you don’t I’m going to kill this monster.”

  She dashed across the room to the door, and fumbled with the knob because her hands were shaking too much. At last the latch gave way and she bolted outside. She blinked in the glaring sunshine, praying for her eyes to adjust. Once they did, she surveyed the area. There had to be a policeman somewhere. The place had been crawling with them for the past two days.

  She spotted one over near the front gate, talking to the guard. She sprinted, faster than she’d known she could move, and shouted for him to come with her. Blessedly, he didn’t ask questions. He came.

  They reentered the building, and once again Sandra had to blink her eyes until they grew accustomed to the shadows. She grabbed the policeman’s hand and hustled him through the obstacle course of wires and scaffolding to the set, where Rafael was still skimming his thumbs over Diego’s throat.

  “You think it’s all my fault?” Diego was babbling. “You think I killed that stupid blond chica? Who you think I got the cocaina from, eh? Your filthy stinking brother, that’s who. He’s the pipeline for drugs, man. He knows the people on the outside, he has the connections. He made the arrangements. I was just a delivery boy. They’ll punish him for it, not me—”

  “You’d better not say anything more,” the policeman said, tearing Rafael’s hands from Diego’s throat and slapped handcuffs onto Diego’s wrists. “Wait until you’ve talked to a lawyer, Mr. Salazar.”

  “What are you cuffing me for? He’s the one who tried to murder me!” Diego shrieked, nearly hysterical. He stood up, tried to brush off his suit and stared in amazement at the manacles binding his wrists together, making preening all but impossible. “You saw him, Sandra—Rafael Perez tried to strangle me! Tell the cop! He tried to kill me!”

  Sandra said nothing, although she supposed her expression told Diego exactly what she was thinking. She watched, grim and mute, as the officer led Diego away. Then she turned to Rafael.

  He dusted off his hands. They weren’t dirty, but he apparently wanted to wipe all traces of Diego from them. She knew he wasn’t hurt—physically. But spiritually, he must be in agony. The man he’d considered his closest friend, his ally, practically a brother...

  Merely imagining the extent of Diego’s treachery made Sandra want to weep.

  Next to Rafael a chair lay on its side. Slivers of glass from the broken lamp shimmered like diamonds where the overhead light caught them. A pulsing muscle in Rafael’s jaw was the only part of him that moved. His eyes were dark, impenetrable as he stared at her. His hands—the hands that had palmed a basketball, that had throttled Diego, that had touched Sandra in ways she’d never been touched before, eliciting feelings she’d never felt before—hung motionless at his side.

  The silence grew unbearable. “Say something,” she implored him, her voice thin and tremulous in the cavernous room.

  “What should I say?”

  Say you forgive me, she thought. Say you have faith in me. Say you love me. “I don’t know,” she conceded. If he couldn’t say those things—if he couldn’t think them without her coaching him—then there was really nothing for him to say at all.

  He said nothing.

  And she turned and walked out of the building.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A LOW MOAN AROSE from the depths of the night. It could have been an owl, a dove, or perhaps the song of his grieving heart.

  He leaned back in the canvas chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. Above him the sky was strewn with stars, the moon a wink of silver. Beside him on the table was his bottle of tequila. He had been sitting on his deck for hours with the damned bottle at his elbow, but he hadn’t yet drunk from it.

  There was relief in what he felt, but no joy. No sense of vindication or triumph. Just a numb, hollow satisfaction, a deadness too encompassing to wash away with liquor.

  All but one charge against him had been dropped, and that one—destroying evidence—he’d pleaded guilty to. The judge had discussed with Tracy Hester and Mike Broylan the option of sentencing Rafael to community service, but then they’d all decided that Rafael already did plenty in the way of community service. The cocaine he’d flushed down the drain wasn’t significant to the state’s case against Diego Salazar, and—by virtue of Rafael’s having discarded the stuff—it would never harm anyone. The judge wound up sentencing him to time served: eighteen hours behind bars.

  Tequila wasn’t appropriate. Rafael ought to be popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. He’d been cleared of the serious charges. He’d be able to retain possession of his studio and get on with his life. The snake had nipped him, but its deadly venom hadn’t entered his bloodstream. Once again, Rafael had survived. He ought to be in a festive mood.

  He heard the moan again, the sound of loneliness itself. In the dim light that spilled onto the deck through the living room window, he could see the honey-amber liquid in the bottle, beckoning.

  He closed his eyes. He wanted a different sort of intoxication, the honey-amber fire that came from a woman. One woman.

  But he’d lost her, too.

  He would have thought losing Diego would be more painful than losing Sandra. He’d known Diego so much longer. They’d come from the same place, the same life, and they’d shared so many experiences, so many struggles...

  Except that they hadn’t shared a damned thing. Rafael had experienced everything as Diego’s friend, but Diego had experienced everything as Rafael’s Judas—always, always looking for an opportunity to get his revenge. Rafael’s struggle had been to make a decent, comfortable, secure life for himself. Diego’s had been to take down the man who he thought had kept Rosa from him—preferably with the news media looking on so the humiliation would be even greater. He’d planned it that way, courting the press, hoping for witnesses to be on hand when Melanie succumbed.

  Rafael had telephoned his sister from the court house, and she’d confirmed what Sandra had told him. Too shell-shocked to think straight, Rafael had lit into her. Why hadn’t she told him the truth? Why had she let him think the best of Diego?

  “I was afraid if I told you the truth you’d kill him,” Rosa had answered, proving she knew her brother very well. “Besides, Raf—let me be frank—I’m a little sick of you running interference for me. I’m almost thirty-two years old. I can take care of myself.”

  “But—”

  “And, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got God on my side.” He’d heard the exasperation in her tone, and the love. “Listen to me, Rafael. You’re the one you need to be taken care of. Not me.”

  “Don’t tell me I look thin,” Rafael had warned her. “I’ve heard it from too many people already.”

  “I won’t say you look thin. I’ll say you loo
k sad, and alone. I saw the way Sandra Garcia came alive when she talked about you, whenever she thought about you. You don’t have to be alone, Rafael.”

  “It’s too late,” he’d muttered. “There’s nothing between Sandra and me. And you of all people shouldn’t be giving me advice about my love life.”

  “I, of all people, understand you better than you understand yourself. That woman would have moved mountains to save your neck, Rafael. Don’t let her slip away.”

  Ah, but she was already gone. By the time he’d recovered enough from the shock of Diego’s duplicity to reach for her, she’d disappeared. The one person he should have trusted—the person who had discovered the truth and opened his eyes to it, the person who had saved him from his own blindness—was the person he’d assumed the worst of.

  He could go after her, and beg her to forgive him. But what he’d accused her of—planting evidence, seducing him to get a story—was so ugly, he couldn’t expect forgiveness from her. As it was, he couldn’t even forgive himself.

  So. That left the bottle of tequila, and the owl filling the night with its mournful lament, and the rest of his life to endure without Sandra.

  He reached for the bottle—and heard a rustling sound. Either it was the wind rising up from the reservoir and filtering through the eucalyptus leaves, or else someone was walking along the winding path that led from the street to the back of the house. He squinted at his watch in the dim light. After midnight. Who would be visiting him at this hour?

  Sandra.

  Her appearance near the steps to the deck jolted him, a spear of lightning striking his soul. His heart stopped; his nerves burned and his body felt shaken to its core. And he realized, in the instant the smoke cleared and sensation returned, that she was the bravest, most honest, most daring woman he’d ever known, to have come to him after the way he’d treated her.

  She looked weary. Dressed in a cotton sweater and blue jeans, a pouch purse slung on a strap over her shoulder and a newspaper clutched in one hand, she appeared drained and sad and utterly beautiful.