Ángel rested his arm on the desk and buried his face in the crook of his elbow, the fingers of his other hand still biting into Charles’s thigh. He bucked his hips while Charles fucked his ass and jerked him off with perfect rhythm, crying out freely, surrendering every sense to the moment.
“You love this, don’t you? You love it when I give it to you rough like this.” Though Charles’s words were domineering, his tone was anything but—his voice was pleading, cracking around the edges.
“Yes, I love it,” said Ángel. “Make me come on your cock, Charles, do it—”
Squeezing Ángel’s cock on every upstroke, Charles gave him a few particularly rapid, well-aimed thrusts, and Ángel’s back snapped into a rigid arch as he came. His cock was still pulsing when Charles flattened his chest to Ángel’s back and pushed all the way inside, humping Ángel’s ass with quick, short jabs until he groaned through his own orgasm.
Ángel let go of Charles’s thigh and pushed his hair off his sweat-damp forehead, his chest heaving, Charles’s weight pinning him flat to the desk.
Charles must have some kind of illness. That was the only explanation for why he kept ending up balls-deep inside Ángel, despite all logic and common sense. He wasn’t any better at controlling himself around Ángel now than he’d been in Tucson.
Weak-kneed from the strength of his orgasm, Charles straightened up and pulled out. He looked down at Ángel’s flushed, swollen hole, gaping after the vigorous pounding Charles had given him. All Charles wanted to do was shove his fingers right back inside.
Yes. Definitely an illness.
Charles threw the condom in the trash, then turned away from Ángel to fasten his jeans and put his shirt on. When he turned back, Ángel had pulled up his own pants, though he’d left them undone. Still shirtless, Ángel stumbled across the room and collapsed on the bed.
Shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, Charles said, “Are you okay?”
“Mmm.”
Ángel lay with his eyes closed, his face relaxed and content. Charles glanced at the door. As desperate as he was to get the hell out, he couldn’t leave without saying . . . something.
After a minute of silence, Ángel opened his eyes and said, “I’m sorry, do you need me to pay attention so you can give me your whole ‘This was a mistake, it can’t happen again’ speech?”
“You know we shouldn’t be doing this,” said Charles. “I’m not— I haven’t forgiven you for what happened in Tucson.”
Ángel shot upright, glaring at him. “Who said I’ve forgiven you?”
Bristling at the implication that he shared blame for how things had ended between them, Charles scowled and folded his arms. He’d said harsh words in anger that night, things he’d regretted later, but he’d been provoked beyond reason. “This is what I’m talking about. What we’re doing is so fucked up, and if anyone found out—”
“They’d realize that you’re bisexual?” Ángel widened his eyes in feigned dismay. “Oh, the horror.”
“Don’t mock me,” Charles said, his back stiffening. Ángel had always done this, pressuring Charles to come out over and over again even though Charles wasn’t ready. He acted so self-righteous about it, like any queer person who didn’t want to come out was a selfish coward.
Ángel was gay, though, and when he came out, he had at least been assured of finding acceptance somewhere. He had never experienced the stigma of bisexuality—still less in black communities, where men on the down-low had long been blamed for increasing the spread of HIV.
Charles wasn’t going to take this from Ángel again. “Just because being out is the right decision for you doesn’t mean it’s the right one for me,” he said.
“You don’t have to be ashamed—”
“I’m not ashamed of anything!” Frustrated, Charles rubbed a hand over his face. “Wanting to keep my sexuality private doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of it, for Christ’s sake. Eva knows. As for everyone else—it’s just none of their business. You have no right to trivialize my feelings about this.”
Ángel flopped back down on the bed. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
It was, though, and it was nothing new between them. Half their fights in Tucson had been about this very issue. Charles had made it clear from the first time they hooked up that he wasn’t prepared to come out at work, and instead of accepting that, Ángel had pushed and pushed and pushed, making Charles feel guilty for a decision he’d had every right to make.
Charles shrugged into his shoulder holster and jacket. “I’ll ask Sakura to give you a ride tomorrow morning; you’re only a couple of minutes out of her way. Though we won’t have much to do, anyway, until the Jackals start moving those weapons.”
“They won’t sit on them for long,” said Ángel. His voice was still stiff with irritation. “If I had illegal M4s hidden underneath my trunk, I wouldn’t be able to unload them fast enough.”
“That should work in our favor.”
Charles slid back the door’s security chain and unlocked the dead bolt. As he was turning the knob, Ángel gave him one last parting shot. “You know, for someone who’s so adamant about not wanting to fuck me, you sure can’t seem to keep your dick out of my ass.”
“Jesus, Ángel,” Charles said wearily, and shut the door behind himself.
Moving out of view of both the peephole and the window, he waited until he heard Ángel get up and refasten the various locks. Then he headed for the stairs.
He was distracted on the walk to his car, berating himself for his utter lack of self-control. As he approached the far corner spot where he’d parked, he dug in his pocket for his keys.
Looking up, he stopped dead, the keys falling from his numb hand to clatter on the ground.
Someone had beaten the shit out of his car, cracking the windshield in three places so that fractures in the glass spiderwebbed out in each direction. The headlights, taillights, and all four windows had been smashed in, the side panels were dented, and every tire had been slashed to ribbons. Glittering chunks of glass and long peels of black rubber encircled the car, strewn across the ground like the mechanical version of arterial spray.
Dazed, Charles rounded the car to the other side. A message had been keyed into the doors in large, jagged letters:
STAY AWAY
The sound of a door closing startled Ángel from the doze he’d fallen into, slumped in an uncomfortable chair after yet another sleepless night in a safe house. He cleared his throat and pushed himself upright.
Charles and Eva sat on either side of him, the former stiff as a board and the latter calm as ever, her long legs crossed at the knee and her foot dangling at a perfect angle for Ángel to admire the red-lacquered sole of her Louboutin pump. Her husband must be raking in the cash, because no way did Eva make enough here to afford Louboutins—
Ángel’s rambling thoughts derailed as Campos came around to sit behind his desk, dropping a couple of file folders onto its cluttered surface. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Campos said. “This week just keeps getting better and better.”
Campos placed both hands on his desk, took a deep breath as if steeling himself, and looked Ángel in the eye.
“Your motel room was bugged to hell and back,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s not the worst of it. Forensics combed through your belongings, and there were GPS trackers in your shoes, bugs hidden in the lining of a couple of your jackets.”
“Oh my God.” Ángel’s stomach cramped with nausea. “I bought those things here in San Diego.” At least the clothing he wore now had been provided by the safe house.
“I know,” said Campos. “You may have been under electronic surveillance this entire week.”
This stalker, whoever they were, had known Ángel was in contact with the San Diego field office—this was where they’d sent his file. It would have been difficult, but not impossible, to wait for Ángel here and follow him back to his motel room. After two years undercover, Áng
el was paranoid about being followed and took every precaution, but without his own vehicle, he was limited in the evasive maneuvers he could employ.
Once the stalker knew where Ángel was staying, they could have broken in at their leisure to tamper with his belongings, negating the need for physical surveillance thereafter.
Ángel didn’t dare glance at Charles, who he was pretty sure had stopped breathing. “So that’s how they knew that Charles was with me last night.”
“Seems like it.” Campos turned to Charles. “Why were you in there long enough for someone to wreck your car, anyway?”
“Yes,” Eva said, her tone glacial, “what an excellent question.”
She knew. Ángel was certain she did; he just wasn’t sure how. Even knowing Charles was bisexual, most people’s first assumption wouldn’t be that he and Ángel had slept together. Unless Charles had told Eva about Tucson . . .
“I didn’t want to be alone,” Ángel said smoothly, because Charles couldn’t lie for shit when he was anxious. “Charles came in to keep me company, watch a movie.”
Campos accepted this without question. “Well, I don’t think whoever has it out for you appreciated that.”
“You don’t really think it’s Raúl Esparza, do you?” Ángel asked.
“I won’t believe Esparza is alive until I see concrete proof,” Campos said. “But I think we need to keep our minds open to the possibility.”
His voice short with impatience, Ángel said, “If Raúl wanted Charles to stay away from me, he wouldn’t have keyed a nasty message into his car. He would have waited by the car, or inside it, and then killed Charles when he came out of the motel.”
The other three absorbed this with thoughtful expressions, so Ángel pressed the point harder.
“If Raúl were alive and he wanted me dead, he would kill me,” he said. “If he wanted me back, he would take me. He wouldn’t send me threatening notes written in blood and pay men to freak me out and bug my motel room just so he could lurk around in the parking lot and fuck up Charles’s car. This is stalking.”
“You don’t think Esparza would stalk you?” Charles said, the first time he’d spoken since they’d entered Campos’s office ten minutes earlier.
Ángel shrugged one shoulder. “I think Raúl’s version of stalking would be much more straightforward, not to mention lethal. He didn’t fuck around and he didn’t play games, especially not when he was angry. This kind of sneaky, nonconfrontational behavior just doesn’t fit his psychological profile.”
“Maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did.”
Pinning Charles with an incredulous glare, Ángel said, “I spent two years constantly at his side.”
“He could say the same about you,” said Charles, “and obviously he didn’t know you very well.”
As Ángel opened his mouth in outrage, Eva held up a hand. “I think we can all agree that, out of everyone in this room, Ángel knew Raúl Esparza best.” She waited until they’d both settled down before speaking again. “Ángel, do you have any idea who other than Esparza could be responsible for this?”
“I . . . not really,” Ángel said. “It’s just that this behavior is so—”
“Creepy?” Campos suggested.
“Yeah. I could rattle off two dozen or more people who wouldn’t bat an eye at abduction and murder, but this particular brand of psychopathology?” Ángel shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
“I want to encourage you again to take some time off and get out of San Diego,” Campos said. “Leave the country, maybe.”
“You sound like Jesenia.”
“Who?”
“My friend Jesenia, the DEA agent who was undercover with me in the cartel.” Leaning back in his chair, Ángel raked a hand through his hair. “She wants me to stay at her uncle’s cabin in Canada.”
Charles hummed. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“I’m not running away,” Ángel snapped.
“Because staying here to risk death is so much more exciting?”
“How dare you—”
“Boys,” said Eva. “I understand that you’re both running on very little sleep, but could we maintain a little professionalism, please?”
Ángel flushed and mumbled an apology, which Charles echoed. Eva gave Ángel’s forearm a gentle squeeze.
“You’ll need to change motels again, obviously,” Campos said. “I want you to choose it yourself this time, under an alias you’ve never used before, and don’t tell anyone where you’re staying—not any members of your team, not even me. Your cell phone was clean—no bugs, no evidence of hacking—so you can pick it up from forensics whenever you’re ready.”
Ángel nodded.
“Charles, I’ve arranged an agency vehicle for you. You’ll need to fill out the paperwork downstairs before you leave.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Eva, what’s the status on the Jackals’ weapons?”
“The vehicles transporting the M4s are all parked at residences belonging to their legally registered owners,” she said. “The ones we don’t have trackers on are being monitored by local police via license plates. We’re not sure when the meet with the buyer is scheduled, but chatter on the street suggests it’ll be within a day or so.”
“Fuck,” Ángel said abruptly, as realization set in. “Sorry, it’s just—Charles and I talked about the case in my motel room. Not in a lot of detail, but enough to tip off anyone who was listening. And if I’ve been bugged while at work . . . the stalker could know as much about this case as we do. More, even, if they have their own connections to the cartels.”
“I considered that,” Campos said, frustration written all over his face, “but we absolutely can’t allow this hardware to make its way into Mexico. Up to this point, whoever’s targeting you has only seemed interested in you personally, and our window of opportunity is so small here that we’ll have to risk moving ahead with the raid once the weapons are en route to the buyer. Eva, set up whatever you need to, get your preparations in place, and then you and your team take the rest of the day off so you’re fresh and ready to move when you’re called. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Eva said.
Campos dismissed them, and once they were in the hall, Eva breezed between Ángel and Charles.
“You two come with me,” she said as she passed. She disappeared into a nearby conference room without a single backward glance.
Charles sighed, but didn’t hesitate to go after her. Ángel followed, closing the door to the conference room with some trepidation.
Eva rounded on them with her arms crossed, a frown darkening her lovely face. “You slept together last night.”
“It was a mistake,” said Charles.
“A mistake?” Eva said. “Leaving aside your prior relationship, and the fact that you’re coworkers—you knew Ángel was being stalked by someone who’s dangerously obsessed with him, and thought the wisest course of action was to have sex with him? It never occurred to you that might be throwing gasoline on a fire?”
Charles opened his mouth, closed it, and shot Ángel a helpless glance.
“We got caught up in the moment,” Ángel said. “We weren’t thinking.”
Eva raised her eyebrows. “And is this the first time since you’ve been back that the two of you ‘got caught up in the moment’?”
“Yes,” Charles said at once.
Ángel kept his mouth shut and his face blank as Eva gave him a searching look. She was perceptive, but he’d fooled some of the most suspicious men in the world for years.
“This cannot happen again,” Eva said, stressing every word. “There are half a dozen reasons the two of you shouldn’t be fooling around, and if I find out you’ve been having any more moments, Ed is going to hear about it too.”
“It’s nobody’s business—” Ángel started.
“It is when it’s putting the two of you in danger. Besides, coworkers engaging in a rom
antic relationship have a responsibility to disclose that relationship to HR. There could be serious professional consequences for you both, you know.”
Charles grimaced, though Ángel wasn’t sure if he was objecting more to the word romantic or relationship. “It won’t happen again,” Ángel said, and he was so angry with Charles in that moment that he actually meant it.
“Good.” Eva uncrossed her arms, her face softening. “I understand that the two of you have a lot of history together, and I can imagine the temptation that presents. All I’m asking is that you think about the consequences of your decisions before you make them. Okay?”
“It’s not going to be a problem,” Charles said.
Eva nodded and left the room, clapping Charles’s shoulder on her way out. She rather pointedly left the door wide open.
“When did you tell her about Tucson?” Ángel asked, wondering if Charles had confessed everything to Eva in some kind of panic after they’d extracted him.
Charles shoved his hands into his pockets. “About a year ago, I guess.”
“Oh.” Ángel blinked. If that was the case, Charles and Eva were closer friends than he’d assumed. “Does she know about . . .”
“Yes.”
Meaning Eva had heard about their disastrous fight on Charles’s birthday—or Charles’s version, at least, in which Ángel wasn’t presented in a sparkling light. No doubt he’d left out significant chunks of the story, because Ángel was certain that Charles still considered his own behavior to have been one hundred percent excusable.
“We should get to work,” Ángel said, and hurried out of the conference room before he could give in to the urge to punch Charles in the face.
They spent the morning making all the necessary arrangements to launch a multitarget tactical assault at a moment’s notice. Because the meet up was an inspection, not an actual hand over of goods, it was likely the Jackals would only bring two or three cars at most. All the weapons had to be seized at the same time, however, which meant liaising with local law enforcement for backup on top of everything else.
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