by Jordan Dane
“Shh. Don’t say that,” she whispered and pressed a finger to his lips. “Elena and your sweet Ariana wouldn’t want this for you.”
Rafael shook his head.
“I don’t deserve your understanding. I’m not the man I used to be. I can never be that again.” He let go of her hand and looked away. “I have no right being on Athena’s Omega Team. She needs to know what you found on that shell casing. You have no choice but to tell her.”
Jacquie felt sucker punched.
At first she thought she held his fate in her hands whether she chose to tell Athena or not, but no matter what she decided, Rafael had set his destiny in motion when he left that shell casing at the crime scene five years ago. She couldn’t save him. Anything she did wouldn’t matter. Rafe would push for the punishment he thought he deserved.
Still, if the decision had never been in her hands, why did she feel like his executioner?
“Hold me,” she whispered to him. “I need you to hold me.”
Rafael pulled her into his arms and held her tight against the warmth of his body. He cradled her as if she were something rare and precious. He’d shared his darkest secret with her. Not even his sister knew what he’d done. The intimacy they’d shared meant much more than her idea of hot fantasy sex.
When Rafe picked her up and placed her on his mattress, Jacquie thought he might kiss her, but he did something that surprised her more. He climbed into bed with her and held her tight. They stared out the window and watched the rain.
Jacquie clutched his strong arms around her and let the tears come. After seeing the faces of his wife and baby girl, she became profoundly connected to his grief, as if she sensed the depth of the emptiness in him. She knew what she had to do—what he wanted her to do—but it tore her apart inside. He’d lost too much and now, whatever remained of his life, he’d lose that too.
She’d been right from the start. Rafael Madero would break her heart—but sex would have nothing to do with it.
***
Rafael hadn’t felt this close to a woman since he held Elena in his arms. Jacquie asked for him to hold her, but once he pulled her into his embrace, he realized he needed a different kind of intimacy more. His burden had been lifted. Someone else knew his worst secret and he’d have one night to share with a good woman he didn’t deserve. By morning, everything would change. He’d have to settle for the few hours he’d have left.
For the first time in years, Rafael didn’t feel alone. He drew comfort from another human being who cared about what happened to him. He watched the rain and let it mercifully heal his soul for the time he had.
After he shut his eyes, he slept like the dead.
Chapter 8
Havana Medical Examiner’s Office
Ministry of Public Health - Cuba
The Next Day
Athena stood next to the entrance to autopsy room number 4, dressed in oversized green scrubs and latex gloves. Sam Rafferty wore the same gear because he volunteered to come. He’d been up early and accompanied her from the hotel.
“This place gives me the creeps.” Rafferty hoisted the waistband of his scrubs and tightened the drawstring. “What’s the shelf life for a human popsicle?”
“I really don’t want to know.”
“Good point.”
She saw a man inside the autopsy chamber, dressed like a doctor. The limo driver had instructed them to expect Dr. Luis Galvez would perform whatever procedures they would require. Galvez was the official head medical examiner for the Ministry of Public Health. Ruiz had seen to it they got the best.
“There’s our guy. Let’s go.” She stepped into the examination room, through a set of automated sliding glass doors that hissed when they opened. “Good morning. You must be Dr. Galvez.” Athena introduced the man to Rafferty.
The medical examiner stood solemnly by the body, dressed in blue scrubs and purple latex gloves. Age spots dappled his face and wrinkles cut deep into his forehead and cheeks.
“Can I offer you any coffee before we get started?” the doctor asked.
Rafferty only shook his head. He stared down at the body, completely engrossed.
“No, thank you,” Athena said. “Proceed when you’re ready, doctor.”
She had seen many autopsies during the course of her detective career in Homicide with the Tampa Police. She knew what to expect, but Rafferty was another story. A former Navy Seal, he would’ve worked covert missions and seen combat. He would know death intimately, but autopsies could be a challenge, depending on the condition and putrefaction of the body.
The smell of old death and the pungent aroma of dirt hit Athena as she stepped closer to the stainless steel gurney where the body had been laid out, uncovered. Skin had turned brown and looked like leather. It shrank over the bones like a drape and exposed the shape of the skeleton underneath. The victim’s misshapen head had a shattered skull. The fracture was consistent with the point of entry for the sniper’s round—from what Athena had witnessed at the crime scene and the fractured driver’s side window of the vehicle.
“You requested this autopsy,” the doctor said, as he slipped on his protective headgear. “As you can see, the body is badly decayed. Tell me what you will require for your investigation.”
“Let’s start with the fingers.”
Not being in a trusting mood, the first thing Athena asked the medical examiner to do was cut off an index finger and thumb from the corpse and secure them in a sealed evidence jar. She’d have the skin rushed to the United States and rehydrated in order to positively identify the fingerprints.
“Next we’ll need the bullet. If there is anything to retrieve, I’ll send it for analysis.”
Athena hoped the bullet could be found. Given the shoddy police procedure in this case, she couldn’t be certain the bullet hadn’t dropped from the body as it was handled.
Dr. Galvez grabbed an instrument from his stainless steel cart and inserted it into the skull. With a grimace, he tugged at bone until it gave up its prize. Athena grabbed an evidence jar from the side cart and held it open for him.
“We’re in luck.” The doctor dropped the bullet into the jar. “You are a fortunate woman.”
“Compared to this poor man?” She nudged her head toward the body on the table. “Yes, I guess I’ll take my luck over his any day.”
Athena had been careful not to identify the name of the victim to the good doctor. She didn’t know how much Ruiz had shared with the man. In the case of a dead drug lord, she preferred the fewer people who knew of his exhumation, the better.
After the autopsy was concluded—and the body of Hector Borrego had given up any last remaining secrets—Athena thanked Dr. Galvez and left the autopsy room. She and Rafferty stripped off their protective coverings and dumped the scrubs in a receptacle at the exit.
“Well, I was hungry. Now, not so much,” Rafferty said. “And I’m swearing off beef jerky ‘til the end of time.”
“Thanks for the visual,” she said. “We’ll hit an overnight delivery service before we head back to the hotel. I’ll report in and get Grey to expedite the identification of the body. I don’t trust Ruiz and the last thing we need is to get in the middle of a drug war.”
“Yeah, I’d prefer to not end up in an acid bath and tossed into an oil barrel as human soup. This face is too pretty.”
“That would never happen, Rafferty. No one could get that big head of yours into a barrel. You’re safe.”
Once Grey received their overnight evidence package, shipped to Omega Team headquarters, they could rush and bird dog the analysis using resources Grey trusted. The first priority would be to identify the body of Hector Borrego using forensics to rehydrate the decomposed skin. Grey would also get the caliber confirmed on the bullet Galvez had retrieved from the skull, and he’d check the direction of the rifling marks and the degree of twist to narrow down the weapon’s manufacturer. The results could be uploaded into the NIBIN, the National Integrated Ballistic Infor
mation Network, to search for the ballistics ‘fingerprint.’
“With any luck, we’ll get a database hit if the weapon has been used in a crime before,” she said. “If this is the work of a pro, we may not find a comparison until we have a suspect and get our hands on the rifle he used.”
If they found the murder weapon, a new slug fired through the targeted rifle would be compared under a microscope to the bullet taken from the body, to look for identical striations. If they found a match, the evidence could ID the shooter.
“This is text-book investigation 101, so why didn’t the local cops do anything to identify Borrego’s killer? Even if they didn’t have a suspect, they could’ve collected evidence for a trial, if that ever happened,” she said, as they headed out the front entrance of the medical examiner’s building.
“The local cops are probably sleeping easier knowing he’s not part of the gene pool. It’s not surprising they looked the other way. The shooter did them a favor.” Rafferty stood on the street and waved a hand at the limo driver, to get him to pull up to the curb.
Athena understood how cops thought about known criminals, like Borrego. They lived in a jaded world and witnessed atrocities that changed a person forever, but to not even go through the motions of a basic investigation, something was wrong.
She had a bad feeling Esteban Ruiz knew more than he let on.
***
Hotel Inglaterra
Morning
Jacquie opened her eyes and sighed with a sleepy smile, still comforted by the scent of Rafael on his bed linens. As she breathed him in, she remembered the way his arms held her last night as they watched the rain paint city lights onto the shadows of his room. But the glimmer of bliss soon sank into the dark hole of another memory—the faces of a baby girl and young mother killed by a drug cartel—and the desperate husband and father who refused to be denied justice for their brutal deaths. That reality gripped her like a harsh slap.
Jacquie rolled over and reached for him, but Rafe wasn’t there.
“Rafael?” She called out to him, but no answer.
She sat up in bed, put on her glasses that were on the nightstand, and let her eyes search the room. Where could he have gone? When she saw a handwritten note that had been folded and placed on his pillow, with her and Athena’s names on the outside, her stomach kinked into an achy knot. Jacquie grabbed the note and opened it with trembling fingers.
The reputation of the Omega Team should not be tarnished because of me. I know what I must do. Forgive me. Do not stay in Cuba. I cannot guarantee your safety if you do.
“Oh my, God,” she gasped, with a hand over her mouth. “What have you done, Rafael?”
She didn’t have a choice now. She had to tell Athena everything. Rafe had seen to that. He wouldn’t allow her to protect him. He’d forced her hand, his way.
Still dressed from the night before, Jacquie tossed back the sheets and comforter and slid out of bed. She ran a hand through her hair and straightened her clothes, but now wasn’t the time to worry about what Athena would think of her spending the night in Rafe’s room. She clutched the note in her hand and rushed to find Athena.
Jacquie would have a lot of explaining to do.
***
Rafael didn’t bother sneaking out of Hotel Inglaterra undetected through the kitchen, as he had done last night with his sister Athena. He didn’t care who knew. He made himself a target and walked out the front entrance in broad daylight, unarmed. He’d left his belongings in his hotel room. He wouldn’t need them now.
Rafe squinted into the light and took small pleasure in the warmth of the sun on his face. He filled his lungs with fresh air, mixed with the fumes of the city, and walked at a leisurely pace as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
He didn’t want to rush his last day.
Rafael kept his eyes alert for anyone following him and he wasn’t disappointed. Two men in dark suits didn’t bother with a low profile. One walked behind him, keeping his distance. The other kept pace with him on the other side of the street.
Although in Cuba he couldn’t be certain, Rafael suspected Esteban Ruiz ordered the tail. He took a gamble the men following him were from the Vice President. They looked like doppelgängers to the bodyguards the politician had with him at the reception.
But where Rafael was headed, he didn’t need protection or interference from an outsider.
“Sorry, Ruiz. This is where we part ways,” he muttered under his breath.
Rafe ducked under the red awnings and through the wrought-iron gates of the Partagas Cigar Factory—a four-story building of orange-colored columns with cream stucco walls. The open air atrium, with its high ceilings, echoed with noise and the sounds of bargain hunters haggling and construction workers renovating the historic factory. The air carried a mix of dust, the heady rich aroma of tobacco, and the pungent tang of the workers’ sweat.
With only a furtive glance over his shoulder, Rafael slipped into a large crowd of tourists starting a tour. He stayed low so his height wouldn’t give him away.
Ruiz’s men ran into the building and peered over the crowds. One suit pointed to the back of the atrium and both men disappeared into the flurry of shoppers. It wouldn’t take the men long to realize what he might’ve done. Rafael left the tourist group and cut through rows and rows of tight work spaces, filled with women toiling over hand-rolled cigars, dressed in sparse clothing because of the heat.
At the end of an aisle, an elderly black woman grinned with yellow teeth as she smoked a foot-long cigar. She was dressed in a breezy white skirt with a lacy blouse. Her hair was adorned in large red and purple flowers and her neck bore a heavily beaded choker. When she winked at him and pointed to an exit, he winked back and shoved through the door. He bounded down the stairs until he hit the ground level.
Rafael cracked the door open and peered outside. The exit would put him at the back of the building near a loading dock. He slipped out the door and skirted the stucco wall, careful not to be seen from any of the factory windows above him. If Ruiz’s men spied him, he’d have to ditch them again.
After he walked far enough away from the cigar factory—and he didn’t sense anyone following him—his thoughts turned to his sister Athena—and Jacquie, the sweet woman who had shared his bed and her heart with him last night.
He would never see them again. He’d hit rock bottom and he had nowhere else to go.
“Just do it, Madero,” he said as he picked up his pace through another pedestrian boulevard. “What else is there?”
***
Hotel Inglaterra
Noon
“What?” Athena stared at Jacquie and shook her head as she sat on a sofa next to her computer tech. “No. There’s been some kind of mistake. Rafael has never been to Cuba. His passport—”
“If I had to get in and out of a country, undetected, I could do it. That passport stamp means nothing,” Rafferty said, and Landry nodded.
“I can’t tell you how his passport has only one stamp in it, but I—” Jacquie stopped and shut her eyes before she went on. “I asked him about it last night.”
“You what?”
Athena’s mind raced with her thoughts of Rafael. She’d dismissed his mood swings as triggers of his torment over losing his wife and child, but now she wasn’t so sure.
“I thought there was a mistake, too. I had to hear his side before I took it to you. I know you’re my boss, but—” Jacquie couldn’t look her in the eye. “I felt bad for him. My heart trumped my head. I’m sorry.”
Athena waved a hand and said, “Let’s just stick to the facts, for now. We can talk about your priorities another time. Tell me about what you found, the evidence.”
Jacquie went over her findings, step by step. She told Athena about retrieving a viable print off the shell casing and how she ran it through a law enforcement database that identified Rafael.
“That’s when I did an extensive search on what connection Rafe had to Hector Bor
rego. It took awhile to find it, but here it is.” Jacquie handed a printout of the article to Athena with a shaky hand. “It doesn’t come right out and say Borrego ordered the hit on Elena and Ariana, but the insinuation is there. The papers reported Elena was a drug dealer. Can you imagine how that hurt Rafe?”
“But you confronted my brother, yes?” Athena said. “What did he say?”
“He didn’t deny his prints were on the spent shell, but he didn’t confirm it either. He only said that I had to do what was right.” Strain showed on Jacquie’s face. “In all honesty, I’m not sure what the right thing is. How does someone kill an innocent mother and child and get away with it? If I were in Rafe’s shoes, I don’t know what I would’ve done, do you? Any of you?”
Tears trickled down Jacquie’s cheek and Landry handed her a tissue.
“Your brother probably investigated on his own,” Rafferty said with his steely stare on Athena. “If he found the proof he needed to link Hector Borrego to his wife and kid’s murder, I can see how he’d hunt the man on his own turf. I would’ve pan fried the bastard’s balls and fed them to him. A single shot wouldn’t be enough.”
“What’s not in this newspaper article is what I saw in the case file, the crime scene photos,” Athena said. “I don’t usually talk about what happened to Rafe’s family. That’s his story to tell, but whoever killed his wife and child, they signed their work with a knife. The killer left an identifying mark for the cartel on their bodies. Rafael must’ve found out who the sign belonged to. It would’ve linked the murders to the drug lord who gave the order.”
“Son of a bitch,” Landry cursed.
Athena held the note her brother left in his room.
“Now Rafe’s missing,” she said. “He didn’t take his gear. He’s on a one way mission to confront Camila Borrego, the man’s daughter. She knows he’s my brother and Rafe is right, in his note. If we stay, that woman could lash out and not settle for taking only his life. With these cartels, we’re dealing with psychopaths who aren’t afraid of the law.”