by Jordan Dane
A tear drained down Athena’s face as she stood in the dark, wishing she had the words to beg his forgiveness. But there were no words to comfort him. Those words did not exist.
She had no idea how much this case would rip at her brother’s heart. He’d teased about having a death wish, but now she wasn’t certain it had been a joke, after he’d so easily offered his life for hers.
Not even a machete to the throat had stopped him.
Athena had to help Rafael heal, and make him want to live, or she’d be forced to watch him crash and burn in front of her eyes. He’d reached out to her for a reason and she was only now beginning to understand the depth of his pain—and how powerless she’d be to stop his self-destruction.
***
Hotel Inglaterra
After midnight
It had been far easier to sneak out of the hotel than to find a way back to their rooms unnoticed. Rafe had insisted on returning the car he’d stolen, in case the owner hadn’t noticed it missing. That took time. To gain access to their private hotel suite after midnight, Rafael had pilfered a maintenance uniform from housekeeping and accompanied Athena as if she’d come looking for help in the lobby and found it.
“If anyone from the hotel asks, I’ll tell them Rafferty has a backed up toilet,” Athena told her brother. “No one would come to see that.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that aloud,” Rafe said.
When they returned to the suite, Jacquie was first at the door to greet them. Rafferty and Landry were putting a dent in the mini-bar. Athena gave a hand signal for them to wait to speak.
“Let’s reclaim our privacy. Jacquie, you know what to do.”
Without a word, Jacquie nodded and went to her computer to jam the signal for Ruiz’s listening devices. Until further notice, they would have their privacy. Athena’s team gathered in the common living area and took up spots on the sofa and chairs.
“Okay, it’s done. We’re free to speak.” Jacquie ran a hand through her blonde hair and joined Athena on the sofa. Her face looked flushed. “We were worried. You were gone so long. I wanted to call, but I knew I shouldn’t, not when you were in stealth mode.”
“Good instincts.” Athena winked at her. “We found something at the crime scene. We suspect this is evidence the police never found.”
“From five years ago?” Jacquie asked. “Was it exposed to the weather?”
“Yes and no.” Athena explained how the shell casing had been protected from the elements because it had been set into a notch in the stone. “Fingers crossed we get a lucky break on finding a useable latent print.”
“How do you know for sure it’s from five years ago?” Jacquie asked. “Maybe the Vice President of hand kissing had it planted.”
Athena stopped and stared at Rafael.
“I hadn’t thought of that. She could be right. We shouldn’t accept anything at face value or we could be playing into the hands of Ruiz.” Athena handed her the shell casing wrapped in latex. “Scan for prints and run it against our databases to see if we get a hit. Let me know when you have a name.”
Rafael sighed.
“I’m tired. The shower’s calling my name and I’m hitting the rack,” he said as he pushed off his chair. “Wake me if you want to talk.”
He stared at Athena until she said, “Yeah, okay.”
She sat beside Jacquie on the sofa as the men headed for their bedrooms and shut their doors. Jacquie kept her eyes on Rafe until he disappeared into his room before she said anything.
“Is everything okay with him?” the young woman asked.
“No, not even close.” Athena drew a frazzled breath. “Start your search. If you don’t get an easy hit, there’s always tomorrow. I have an autopsy to attend bright and early. There’s nothing like a shriveled corpse to start your day.”
Athena couldn’t stop thinking of her brother. She knew Rafael had to be exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t show him any mercy. Not tonight.
***
1:00 AM
Jacquie gloved up and carefully removed the spent shell casing from the rolled up latex bundle Athena had given her. When she had it positioned for a first pass, she had the brass surface scanned with the handheld fingerprint device she had brought from Omega headquarters. She took an image of the whole shell and its base to make sure she would capture any fraction of a fingerprint left behind by the shooter. When a partial appeared on the scanner with enough arches, loops, and whorls to identify, Jacquie grinned.
“Gotcha.” She shoved her large black framed glasses up her nose.
She uploaded the captured image into the Omega Team computer server and started the process of running a scan against the many databases they had from the United States and international resources. In the dim light of her bedroom, she watched the comparison rejects flash across the screen, washing her in a pale green light. The flashing digitals mesmerized her as if she were entranced by a roaring fire.
“Come on, baby. Gimme a hit. Momma needs to sleep.”
She settled in and kept her eyes on the screen, knowing the adrenaline coursing through her veins would keep her from getting much rest. Jacquie searched for the face of a killer and she got a rush knowing that she would be the first to know his name
***
A steady rain bled down Rafael’s bedroom window, capturing the city lights in its glistening veins. The gentle patter did not soothe him. It only reminded him that the world would be cleansed, but nothing could be done for him. The choices he had made were his forever, even the guilt he carried in his heart for Elena and Ariana’s deaths.
Rafael lay on his bed in the dark, feeling like a condemned man. He had showered but put on jeans and a T-shirt, knowing he wouldn’t sleep as he waited for a knock on his bedroom door. The shell casing Athena had found would finally bring justice. It had been long overdue.
He didn’t care what happened to him. He hadn’t cared about that since Elena and Ariana were brutally taken from him. But tonight his gut twisted over how Athena would look at him. She would know he’d crossed a line. There’d be no hope of return. He had no business being a part of the Omega Team—men and women worthy of the ideals they fostered—and he had no right to claim Madero blood. Not anymore.
When his thoughts drifted to Jacquie, his eyes burned and he shut them tight. Her sweet face came to him in the dark, along with the velvet feel of her skin. Her innocence shined through her eyes and in her gentle smile. She would never share her body and soul with a man like him. She deserved better.
The man he used to be died five years ago. He just hadn’t buried the body.
***
Minutes later
“No, this must be a mistake.” Jacquie gasped.
She stared at her laptop screen until her eyes burned. Memories raced through her mind as she replayed everything she knew through her head. Please…this can’t be. When her vision blurred, she realized she’d been crying. No way. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath.
“This can’t be right. I gotta run it again.”
She punched the keypad and double checked her findings. Twice more. Rafael Madero’s police personnel record kept coming up. Dressed in uniform with his hair short, he held his chin high and had stared into the camera that day, a different man than the brooding and withdrawn man she knew. Jacquie couldn’t get her mind to accept what she’d found.
Why would Ruiz do this?
It had to be a conspiracy. Why would a Cuban politician ask for Athena by name, to solve a cold case murder on foreign soil? It was too much of a coincidence that her boss was related to Rafael, but why would Ruiz plant Rafe’s fingerprints and how had it been done? Rafael’s passport had only one stamp for Cuba. He’d never been to this country before now.
None of this made sense.
Yet Rafael’s face still stared at her from the screen. She couldn’t look at it anymore. Jacquie stood and headed for the window, fidgeting with her hands until she stuffed them in her
pockets. Lightning streaked across the horizon and rain sluiced down the glass in a steady stream, casting a painter’s tableau of city lights across her bedroom.
“What’s the connection?” She shook her head and chewed her lower lip.
A sudden impulse gripped her. Jacquie had to discover the link between the Maderos and the drug cartel leader, Hector Borrego. She raced back to her laptop and ran a query on several keywords. Link after link filled pages of her Internet search. She scrolled down and looked for anything that would tie Athena or Rafael to a Cuban drug kingpin.
When one article had a photo of Rafael and his wife and child, Jacquie stopped breathing. With trembling fingers, she clicked on the link and a news story spread across the screen.
“Oh my God.”
She didn’t need any more confirmation. Cartel boss Hector Borrego had been connected to a police investigation into the murder of Rafael’s wife and child. The online post talked about leads that were proven false, but the damage to the investigation had been done. Rumors insinuated that Elena Madero, Rafe’s wife, had been part of the cartel. It didn’t matter that the rumors were unfounded. Since the murder had an unsavory connection to a drug deal, all the dead ends turned the case cold and no suspects were found.
Rafael had more than enough motive to wield his own justice, but would he have done it?
Jacquie could only imagine how devastated Rafael would’ve been to read such trash. To accuse his wife—and the mother of his little girl—of drug connections that had gotten her killed, would have been the final indignity. The justice system had failed him. Money talked and people could be bought. She had no idea what she would’ve done in his place, but it ripped her apart to imagine the depth of his pain. No man should lose his wife and his baby girl to such a gruesome murder—with no hope for justice.
No way. I don’t believe this.
“Rafael,” she whispered his name and turned off her laptop. Athena would want to know.
***
Rafael felt gut punched when the knock finally came to his door. Lying on his bed, he stared at the ceiling and took a haggard breath before he sat up and flipped on the lamp. He braced himself for the look on his sister’s face. She would know Ruiz hadn’t planted his fingerprints—that the digital scan of his prints was correct—and he was capable of murdering in the name of Elena and Ariana.
How could she not know this?
He trudged across the room and grasped the handle. When he opened the door, Rafael was surprised to see Jacquie Lyles.
“We have to talk,” she said as she pushed by him.
“Please. Come in.” He closed the door behind her, to give them privacy.
Jacquie walked toward Rafe’s window and didn’t turn to face him. She looked beautiful in the glistening rain with her blonde hair picking up the pastels of the city. He wanted to remember her like this, before she turned and accused him of murder.
Chapter 7
Hotel Inglaterra
1:45 AM
“I found an article online about the death of your wife and little girl,” Jacquie said with a catch in her voice. “I didn’t mean to pry, but I think you know why I had to do the search.”
Rafe didn’t say a word. In the reflection of the glass, she saw him slump onto the corner of his mattress, waiting for her to go on. The rain bled trickles of color down his face and body. She wanted to hold him, but she couldn’t.
Jacquie crossed her arms tight and stared out his bedroom window, watching the storm outside. She had things to say and she didn’t want to be distracted by his soul searching eyes. His little girl’s face haunted her. She couldn’t imagine the magnitude of his loss at losing a child.
“The article said there was a link between Elena and Ariana’s deaths and the Borrego drug cartel. How is that even possible?”
She didn’t believe in coincidences in her line of work. She’d learned to be skeptical from her time with the Tampa PD and her work with the Omega Team, but she found it nearly impossible to believe Rafael would lie to his sister about the tragic deaths.
“There’s only one connection between Hector Borrego and the death of—” He couldn’t finish. “Me. I’m the connection.”
Jacquie didn’t know what he would say next, but whatever it would be, Rafael paid a price whenever he spoke of Elena and Ariana.
“Talk to me, Rafe. You know why I’m here. I have to know the truth.” She turned and knelt in front of him, pleading for him to trust her. “If you tell me you didn’t do this, I’ll believe you. Just say it. Please.”
Rafael couldn’t look her in the eye. The fact that he didn’t question what she meant by ‘Tell me you didn’t do this’ confirmed her worst fears—that he knew they’d find his fingerprints on the shell casing—but she had to hear it from his lips. She had to understand how it had happened and why.
“I can’t do that, Jacquie.” Rafael reached for her hand, but pulled back from her.
His silence made it hard for her to breathe.
“What do you want me to do?” The words came out of her mouth before she really understood what she meant.
Would she lie for him? Could she forget about their mission and dismiss a man’s murder because his death didn’t count as much as an innocent woman and her child?
“I can’t tell you that either,” he said. “Do what you have to do, Jacquie. My sister trusted you with the evidence. It’s out of your hands and out of mine now. You have to do the right thing.”
Jacquie didn’t understand. He was pushing her to turn him in, as if he didn’t care. Malicious killers didn’t act like this. They lied. They ran from the police. They did anything to avoid the punishment they earned by their evil actions.
But she couldn’t answer one question that had plagued her since she confirmed his fingerprints were on the shell casing. If she were in his place, what would she have done?
To answer that question, she had to know what it would mean to become a mother. She thought of loving a man so much that she wanted to have his baby and bring a precious life into this world together, only to have evil cross the threshold into the shattered safety of her loving home and kill that future. The insanity of that cruelty churned heat through her blood—pure rage—just imagining the utter loss and powerlessness of losing a child.
If she understood only a fraction of what he truly felt, she knew she’d be capable of doing the same thing he did. He’d challenged her to ‘do the right thing,’ but there was nothing right about what happened.
There was no justice in any of it.
“I have to hear you say it, Rafe. How did your fingerprints get on that shell casing?”
“You know how,” he said. “Ruiz had nothing to do with it.”
“Then tell me how you got on Borrego’s radar when you lived in Chicago and he lived in Cuba.”
Shadowy fingers of rain trickled down his bedroom window and cast him in undulating darkness. She traced a hand down his muscled arm, tracing a fleeting glimpse of light, until he entwined his fingers in hers. His large hands made hers look small.
“My SWAT team in Chicago got a call. A hostage rescue,” Rafe said. “Three idiots strung out on crystal meth had taken hostages. They got caught trying to rob an older couple who were babysitting their two grandkids. When a neighbor called 911 and cops showed up, things escalated.”
When he heaved a sigh, she knew that she’d forced him to relive a terrible memory, and she squeezed his hand.
“Addicts turn real paranoid and mean,” he said. “They killed the grandfather, right in front of his wife of thirty-five years. Those kids saw everything, too.”
Chin down, he shook his head.
Jacquie couldn’t imagine dealing with such a life or death situation. Her worst day might mean dealing with a paper cut. She couldn’t fathom what it would take to save a life by taking another.
“That’s terrible. What happened?”
“The leader came out of the house, screaming and holding a gun to th
e head of a five-year-old little boy,” he said. “The hostage negotiator ordered my sniper team to take the shot if we had a play. I had a clear shot and I took it.”
“But you saved that little boy, right? You helped those hostages.”
Rafael nodded.
“Yeah, taking out the leader diffused the situation fast. Arrests were made and the rest of the hostages got out alive, but the kid I shot was only twenty years old. I’ve never forgotten his face. I wish we could’ve rescued those hostages without firing a shot, but that doesn’t always happen.”
Rafe fixed his gaze on her.
“The kid’s name was Mateo Borrego, the son of Hector’s younger brother who lived in Chicago. Mateo got hooked on his own product. Never a good thing.” He shrugged. “After Hector found out what happened, he put me on a hit list. I thought only my life was in danger, but that bastard knew how to really kill me.”
“I hate that this happened to you, to your wife and little girl. It’s so unfair. You were only doing your job.”
“That’s not how a man like Hector Borrego sees it, but I’m no better than him. I took the law into my own hands. How is that any different than what he did?”
“But it is different. I know you’ve lived your life with a strong sense of right and wrong. That’s why you became a cop.” She touched his cheek as she knelt in front of him. “But I think you’ve blamed yourself for what happened to your family and that’s the real reason you want to be punished. You want to stop feeling the pain of missing them, but maybe all you did was balance the scale.”
Jacquie couldn’t believe she’d said that killing a man in cold blood had only made things right, but how could any notion of justice make him whole again?
“After we had Ariana, I never knew I could be so happy. I thought there would always be the three of us, but now it’s just me and it’s…unbearable.” He lowered his chin and a tear rolled down his cheek. “It’s not that I have any real death wish, but I think I just want my body to feel, what I feel in my heart.”