Esparza had died six days ago.
Ángel saw the pieces clicking together in Charles’s mind too quickly for him to do anything to stop them. Shit.
He reached between their bodies and held on to the base of the condom as he lifted himself off Charles’s cock. “Now I have to shower again,” he said, rolling to the other side of the bed and standing up.
“Ángel.” Charles sat upright, seeming not to care that his hand was smeared with Ángel’s come and more was trickling down the rich, dark brown skin of his abdomen, catching in the hair around the base of his cock. “Who put those marks on you? It couldn’t have been Esparza.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s none of your business.” Ángel fetched his towel from the floor and tossed it to him.
Charles frowned at Ángel as he wiped off his hand and stomach. Just the sight of him sitting in the bed made Ángel want to fuck all over again: his ridiculous shoulders and broad chest tapering in a perfect V to his tight waist, so much power and strength coiled in those defined muscles. A hint of stubble shadowed his strong jaw.
“Did you go out last night?” Charles asked.
Ángel groaned. “Yes, Charles, I snuck out of an ATF safe house in the middle of the night after nearly being shot hours earlier, because I just needed to be fucked that badly.”
Charles didn’t rise to the bait this time—he was usually too relaxed after he came to respond to Ángel’s needling. He stripped off the condom and tied it in a knot. “Where did you get them, then?”
What the hell. Ángel wasn’t ashamed, and he already knew what Charles thought of him, anyway. Folding his arms across his chest, he said, “Oscar.”
“Oscar . . .” Charles’s brow furrowed, and then his eyes widened. “Oscar Palomo? Esparza’s brother-in-law?”
“Yes.”
Instead of the disgust Ángel had been expecting, Charles’s face went slack with dismay. He stood up and threw the condom in the trash can without looking at it. “Oh my God, Ángel, why would you let me fuck you?” he said, grabbing his boxers and pulling them on.
“What?”
Charles put on his pants as well, fastening his belt with jerky movements. “Did you tell the psychologist about this?”
Ángel closed his eyes for a brief moment, exhaling a long, slow breath. “You think he raped me.”
“Didn’t he?” Charles gestured to Ángel’s body. “Christ, look at your arm, I didn’t even notice—”
“No,” Ángel said. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It was consensual. I went to Oscar myself; I initiated the sex.”
Charles paused with his shirt half-on. “Why?”
“Because I needed his protection. The other men in the cartel . . . they tolerated Raúl fucking me, but once he’d been killed, it was a different story. Most of them wanted me dead or—or worse. I knew I could convince Oscar otherwise.”
“I saw you with him in El Paso,” said Charles. He flicked the last of his shirt buttons shut, but didn’t bother tucking his shirttails in. “You were afraid of him.”
“He’s not exactly a gentle lamb,” Ángel said.
“And Esparza was?”
“Raúl was predictable, and easy to control.” Ángel tilted his hand from side to side. “Oscar, not so much.”
That was understating the situation quite a bit. Oscar had only wanted Ángel because he’d been so jealous of Raúl; unlike his brother-in-law, he’d had no personal investment in Ángel. Once Oscar worked out his resentments, Ángel would have been in as much danger with him as any other man in the cartel.
Charles watched Ángel with tense shoulders, his mouth pursed.
“Just say it,” Ángel said, lifting his chin. “Say what it is you’re dying to say.”
He could still hear the revulsion in Charles’s voice the night he’d found Ángel with Jared, the vile accusations he’d flung Ángel’s way. They’d run a nauseating loop in Ángel’s brain for two years.
Charles shook his head. “I said those things because I was furious, and you have to admit I had good reason to be.”
“There’s no reason good enough for the things you said to me that night,” Ángel said quietly.
“Whereas what you did was perfectly justifiable?”
Ángel looked away. “Just go, Charles. You got what you came here for, didn’t you?”
With a sound of deep disgust, Charles said, “Don’t worry, I’m gone.” He snatched up his shoes and socks and stormed out of the motel room, though he didn’t slam the door—no matter how angry, Charles wouldn’t draw attention to Ángel when he knew Ángel might be in danger.
Left alone and naked, the echo of Charles’s thick cock still aching inside him, Ángel covered his eyes with one hand. “Goddamn it,” he said to the empty room.
“Whoa, what happened to you?” Eva said to Charles at six thirty the next morning. “You look like shit.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” If Charles told Eva he’d slept with Ángel, she would report it to Ed, and she wouldn’t be wrong.
They checked in with the rest of their team, then split up, resuming surveillance on the case they’d been working before they were tasked to extract Ángel. For months, they’d been tracking a street gang called the Jackals who ran guns down the California coast and across the Mexican border through a combination of straw purchasers—US citizens with clean records who’d been paid or coerced to purchase firearms and hand them over to the gang—and stock “diverted” from gun shows and stores, both with and without the owners’ collaboration. Their team had a good handle on the Jackals’ supply and smuggling routes, but limited knowledge of the gang’s internal hierarchy; they needed more evidence to nab the higher-level members and knock out the majority of the gang in one fell swoop.
As Charles and Eva leapfrogged each other, following one of the Jackals’ key foot soldiers around the city, Charles lost himself in the mind-numbing tedium of surveillance. He’d been up half the night rehashing his encounter with Ángel until his brain had finally tapped out from sheer exhaustion. At least work gave him something else to focus on, no matter how boring.
They hooked up with Shane and Sakura in the late afternoon and returned to the office for lunch, greeting Jade where she sat at their cluster of desks.
“Anything interesting?” Eva asked as they sat down. Shane tossed Jade a wrapped sandwich.
Jade, a consummate multitasker, used three computers to monitor every electronic source of surveillance they’d been able to get a warrant for. “Shauna is cheating on Billy with Marcus.”
“Nooo,” Sakura and Shane said in unison.
“I don’t blame her,” said Jade. “Billy is so ratchet.”
“Let me rephrase,” Eva said with infinite patience. “Anything pertinent to the investigation?”
“That’s gonna be pertinent when Billy blows Marcus’s idiot head off,” Sakura said.
Charles snorted, unwrapping his own Cuban sandwich and dousing it with hot sauce.
“It’s just the same chatter we’ve been hearing for the past week.” Jade popped open a bag of chips. “They’re all worked up over this shipment they’re expecting and some bigshot client who’s coming into town to inspect the purchase.”
“Any word on who the client is?”
Shaking her head, Jade said, “I don’t think they even know—too low on the totem pole.”
That meshed with what Charles and Eva had been picking up from their own targets, and a quick discussion confirmed the same with Shane and Sakura. “There’s something different about this one,” Charles said to Eva. “They’ve never had a client come in from Mexico to inspect the weapons before smuggling them. Think it’s too premature for a raid?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ll discuss it with Ed.”
Their conversation drifted away from work as they ate their lunches. Charles was settling into the groove of the familiar routine when Jade glanced beyond his shoulder and said, “Hottie with a body, two o’cl
ock.”
Charles wouldn’t have looked—she could have been talking about literally anyone—but Shane and Sakura perked up as well. Eva’s careful nonreaction confirmed it, and Charles turned around to see Ángel heading toward them, bearing a friendly smile and a long bakery box.
“Hey, Ángel,” Jade said. “What’s up?”
“I had to come in to teleconference with my old RAC from Tucson, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to thank you all properly for my extraction.” Ángel leaned over to place the box in the middle of their desk cluster, brushing against Charles’s shoulder.
He smelled like the woodsy shampoo scent he used to leave all over Charles’s pillows—and his couch, his car, and on several memorable occasions, his living room carpet. Charles held himself still and tried not to breathe too deeply.
“Ooh, Reggie’s!” Shane said, noting the box’s retro pink-and-white design. He flipped up the top and revealed a dozen fresh gourmet doughnuts of various flavors. “Dude, you are a god. Reggie’s is the best.”
Ángel smiled. “I asked a local.”
Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it—
“Did you buy these with your stipend?” Charles said.
Turning cool eyes on Charles, Ángel said with venomous sweetness, “No, I bought them with a blowjob. Is that a problem?”
This was met with an explosion of shocked snorts and giggles; even Eva’s mouth twitched. Charles scowled.
“How come he doesn’t get in trouble for stuff like that?” Jade said to Eva.
“Because he’s not one of my agents,” Eva said, “and he’s also never had his entire team dragged to a sexual harassment workshop.”
Jade said, “Okay, that was a total misunderstanding and very embarrassing for everyone involved—”
Sakura pegged her balled-up sandwich wrapper at Jade, receiving an indignant squawk in return. “You wanna sit down?” she asked Ángel.
To Charles’s utter horror, Ángel said, “Sure, thanks.”
As the closest person to Ángel, Charles should really have been the one to get up, but his legs refused to cooperate. Sakura stood instead, dragging a chair over from a nearby cluster and squeezing it into the space between Charles and Jade. When Ángel sat down, his thigh pressed right up against Charles’s, and he couldn’t have made it more obvious that he was doing it on purpose.
Charles inched his chair over, colliding with Sakura, who pushed him gently back into place. “I love you, Charles, but not enough for you to sit in my lap,” she said.
“Sorry,” he muttered, staring at his desk. Ángel’s thigh radiated heat, scorching him even through two layers of clothing.
Eva stood up far enough to reach across the desks and shake Ángel’s hand. “Eva Johansen,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you—for real, this time.”
“Likewise.”
Pointing around the cluster, Eva said, “Jade Montgomery, Shane Campbell, Sakura Matsui. And of course you know Charles Hunter.”
“So, are you all set now that you and Ed spoke to your old RAC?” Shane asked as everyone but Charles helped themselves to the doughnuts.
“Not quite,” said Ángel. “Metzger identified me, and he’s going to submit a signed statement, but they’re also waiting for the new Tucson RAC to send in whatever old records she can dig up. Obviously all my electronic records were purged when I went undercover, but there might still be some hard copies floating around that they missed.”
“What a nightmare,” Jade said.
Ángel huffed out a laugh. “Honestly, I’m more concerned about getting to my stuff. Campos is trying to get a warrant to break into the storage unit Paul kept for me in Dallas.”
Jolted out of his self-imposed silence, Charles said, “You can’t go back to Dallas. The cartel could be looking for you there.”
Ángel’s eyes searched Charles’s face before he responded. “Then I’ll hire movers,” he said. He plucked a doughnut from the box and held it out to Charles. “Don’t you want one?”
The doughnut he offered was maple-glazed—Charles’s favorite. His teammates knew that as well as Ángel did, so there was no way for Charles to refuse without coming off like a total dick.
“Thanks,” Charles said, accepting the doughnut. He could have happily punched Ángel right in his smug, beautiful mouth.
Fucking Ángel yesterday hadn’t gotten him out of Charles’s system. If anything, he’d burrowed even deeper inside, coursing through Charles’s blood like the first hit of heroin after two years clean, all the more potent for having gone so long without. Charles had lost his tolerance.
“Any idea where your next placement will be?” Shane asked.
“Not yet. They’ll let me choose instead of just assigning me, but Campos seems to be pushing New York pretty hard for some reason.”
“New York?” Eva said, with a glance in Charles’s direction. “Sounds exciting.”
“I don’t do well with the cold,” said Ángel.
Charles broke off a piece of his doughnut and said nothing.
“Hey, Hunter, you’ve got mail,” one of the admin assistants said, rolling past their cluster with a packed cart. He lobbed a bulging interoffice mail envelope onto Charles’s desk and continued on his way without pausing.
Charles wiped his hands off on a napkin, picked up the envelope, and raised his eyebrows at the way it had been addressed.
Special Agent Ángel Medina
c/o Special Agent Charles Hunter
“It’s for you,” he said, passing the heavy envelope to Ángel. “From human resources. Must’ve figured I was the best way to get stuff to you, since you have no address on record.” It would have been better protocol for them to send it through Ed, though.
“That was fast,” Sakura said.
“Too fast. I only spoke to the RAC this morning.” Ángel turned the envelope over, his brow creasing. “Maybe she faxed something over?”
He unwound the envelope’s string, pulled out a sheaf of papers—and made a horrible choking noise Charles never wanted to hear again, his face draining of color. Ángel dropped the papers on the desk with a weighty fwump, shoving his chair back and stumbling to his feet. Charles snatched the papers up before anyone else could.
They were a hard copy of Ángel’s file, the one that had been missing from the lockbox Paul Warner had kept for him. On the top sheet, Ángel’s demographics, a message had been scrawled in what was unmistakably blood:
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE
“Needless to say, human resources denies sending you that envelope,” Campos said, sitting across from Ángel and Charles in his office with the door shut and the blinds closed.
Charles had flat-out insisted on being included in the meeting, and Ángel had been too shaken to protest. Besides, Charles had a steady, rock-solid presence that made him reassuring to have around in a crisis.
“We’re reviewing security footage,” Campos continued, “but it’s like looking for a specific strand of hay in a haystack. Anyone with a legitimate reason to be in the building could have dropped an interoffice mail envelope into anyone’s outbox. It’s going to take the lab a couple of days to test the blood, too.”
“They don’t have to test it,” Ángel said. He had his arms folded across his chest, hands tucked against his sides to hide their tremors. “The blood is Paul’s.”
“You don’t know that,” said Charles.
Ángel looked at him, unable to even muster a glare.
Charles sighed. “Though it probably is,” he conceded. “Warner’s the only one who had access to that file.”
“The good news is that it wasn’t much blood,” Campos said. “Forensics said it wasn’t any more than you’d have drawn at the doctor’s for a few tests. He could easily still be alive.”
“Yeah, he could be alive and wishing he were dead.” Ángel straightened in his chair. “Sir, I need a gun.”
Campos hesitated, clasping his hands together on his stomach. “For me to issue you a
service weapon, you’d need to be an employee of this field office. Now that we have your records, I can push that through, but I’d strongly recommend that you get as far away from Mexico as possible instead. I’d even suggest witness protection—”
“I am not letting those assholes force me into hiding,” Ángel said fiercely, “and anywhere I go under my real name, they’ll be able to find me. No. I’m not leaving this office unarmed. I don’t care what that takes.”
“Ed,” Charles said. “Come on. Send him out there without a gun, and you might as well kill him yourself.”
Campos nodded and leaned forward, jogging his mouse to wake up his computer. “I’ll start the paperwork. Medina, you’ll need to change motels as a precaution, so I’ll send another agent with you to get whatever stuff you have.”
“I’ll do it,” Charles said. Ángel turned to him in surprise, but Charles didn’t look at him.
Ed raised his eyebrows. “You sure? It’ll be hours before I’ve got him set up and ready to leave.”
Charles’s face was expressionless. “That’s fine. I’ll run it by Eva, but I don’t think she’ll object.”
“All right, go ahead.”
Charles stood and left the office without acknowledging Ángel, who pushed his bewilderment aside and returned his attention to Campos.
“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” Campos asked. “I could have you on a plane tonight, anywhere you want to go. We always recommend that returning undercover agents take leave before going back to work, anyway.”
“So I could wait there until they catch up to me?” Ángel shook his head. “Thank you, but no. My best option is to stand my ground and make sure they go down for good when they come.”
“That’s the spirit we like to see around here,” Campos said with a chuckle. “By the way, the FBI wants to talk to you about this.”
“Awesome,” Ángel said.
Between one thing and another, it was after seven by the time Ángel and Charles left the office and headed for the parking garage. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you still drive this piece of shit,” Ángel said as they approached Charles’s ten-year-old black Nissan. “There must be two hundred thousand miles on this thing by now.”
Can't Hide From Me Page 5