LOVER UNDER COVER

by Justine Davis

  Her smile this time was wider, and much more genuine. "I confess, so do I." She reached for a glass beneath the bar, then stopped. Her eyes were twinkling with humor when she looked at him then. "I've got some vanilla ice cream, if you're interested. Root beer floats are a specialty of the house."

  "Querida," Quisto said, pressing a hand to his chest with flair, "for a root beer float I would slay dragons."

  She ignored the teasing endearment. "I'll remember that the next time I come across one," she said dryly.

  He watched her turn to the old refrigerator that sat against the wall, humming rather noisily.

  "I would imagine you come across them quite often, around here," he said.

  She looked back over her shoulder at him. "Don't like the neighborhood, Detective?"

  "Please. We are becoming intimate friends. You are fixing me a root beer float." He grinned crookedly at her. "Can we drop the 'Detective'?"

  She looked at him for a moment, then turned her back on him without comment, apparently unaffected by the patented Romero grin. But Quisto didn't care at the moment; she'd bent to take the ice cream out of the bottom freezer, treating him to a lovely view of her trim backside and long legs, clad in worn and nicely snug jeans. When she straightened, the wavy mass of her hair swayed, falling halfway down her back. He'd never gone in for redheads before, but this one could definitely change his mind, he thought.

  This one would also probably take his head off if he even tried. It wasn't just that she was angry at him about Eddie; she seemed immune to his much-practiced charm, which left him at a bit of a loss.

  She turned back with a round half-gallon carton of ice cream in her hands. She set it on the bar, pried off the lid, then reached below the bar again and came up with a spoon. But before reaching in to scoop out the ice cream, she leaned forward, resting her hands on the bar, one still holding the spoon, as she looked at him.

  "You didn't answer my question."

  "Nor you mine," Quisto pointed out. "And mine was much simpler."

  She lowered her gaze to the carton of ice cream, as if the answer were frozen there. Her lashes were thick and long, and as softly reddish-blond as her hair; they reminded him of the finest of artist's brushes. And they would brush over his skin the same way.

  He drew back sharply, wondering where that thought had come from. She was most definitely not his usual type; however attractive she might be, a stubborn redhead with a temper, and a bleeding-heart surrogate social worker to boot, was so far removed from the kind of woman who usually attracted him that he caught himself nearly laughing. He schooled his face to impassivity as she looked up at him once more.

  "All right. What should I call you? Mr. Romero?"

  "Call me Quisto," he said. Then, grimacing slightly, "Or Rafael, if you must."

  "Oh? Then Quisto is … what, a nickname?"

  He didn't quite feel like explaining to her exactly where that name had come from. At least not yet. So he dissembled, picking a relatively harmless explanation that also happened to be the truth. Just not all of the truth.

  "It's a family thing. My oldest nephew started it, when he was little. Now everyone uses it."

  She looked thoughtful for a moment, and Quisto wondered if she was truly one of those who thought of cops as robots that came completely assembled, without emotions or feelings, much less an actual family.

  "And you don't like Rafael. Why?"

  "A bit … dramatic, don't you think?"

  She looked him up and down from behind the bar, her mouth quirking upward at one corner. "So are you."

  Quisto blinked. He glanced down at himself, wondering what had made her say that. He was dressed conservatively enough, in a pair of brown twill slacks and a tan cotton sweater. A bit neater, perhaps, than what she was used to around here, but nothing conspicuously flashy.

  "Your clothes," Caitlin said, her tone wry, "have nothing to do with it."

  He wasn't quite sure how to take that. He wasn't quite sure how to take her. It was a feeling he wasn't used to, especially around women, and it bothered him. Not seriously; it was just a niggling little sensation of wariness that would, he assured himself, go away as soon as he had Caitlin Murphy figured out.

  "I like Rafael," she said as she scooped ice cream into the two glasses.

  "Then, by all means, use it."

  "I don't think so."

  She didn't elaborate or explain, just went about filling the glasses with root beer. Quisto watched her smooth, practiced motions, wondering what it was about this woman that had him so nonplussed. He was never at a loss for a quick comeback, yet his brain seemed to have shut down this morning.

  Caitlin gave both glasses a quick stir, stuck a straw in each, then set one on the bar in front of Quisto. He took a long sip, then sighed in satisfaction.

  "Dragons," he said again.

  "Which brings me back to my question, Detec—Quisto."

  "Ah. About your lovely neighborhood." He stirred the root beer concoction with his straw before asking, "Are you saying you do like it?"

  "Answering a question with a question is a technique used by lawyers, cops, kids in trouble, and adults dodging something they don't want to answer."

  "And I'm two for four, is that it?"

  She took a sip of her own float, then set it down. "Are you?"

  Slowly, a reluctant smile curved his mouth. She was truly something, Caitlin Murphy was. "I am a cop," he conceded, "and I'm dodging giving you an answer that will no doubt make you angrier at me than you already are."

  "Are you sure of that?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Give me an answer and see."

  Quisto looked at her for a moment. "All right. No, I don't like your neighborhood. It reminds me too much of what I escaped, what I spent my teenage years running away from, the fact that this is the kind of place too many of my people lived in. And died in."

  "But you did escape."

  "Yes. I did. My mother saw to that. She knew education was the key, and she made sure we knew it, too. My oldest brother is a doctor. My oldest sister is a lawyer. A defense lawyer, I might add."

  "Must make for some very interesting dinner-table conversation."

  "Yes," he said, looking at her speculatively. "You really are not angry with my answer. Why?"

  "Because you just proved my point. My whole reason for being here."

  "I did?"

  She nodded. "Escape is possible. Just because you're born in a place like this, that doesn't mean you have to stay here. You can get out. Rise above it. Or survive to change it. It can be done." Her expression became very solemn. "Eddie was determined to do it."

  Quisto had no answer for that. He knew the boy had been determined. His determination just hadn't been strong enough to overcome the lure of his own bad habits.

  He bent his head over his glass and took another long, cooling drink. When he looked up, Caitlin was watching him, stirring her float with her straw, as if to hasten the melting of the ice cream in the bottom of the glass. She seemed to be waiting for something, and he wasn't at all sure what it was. He wasn't sure of anything with this woman. Except that, good-hearted though she might be, she was kidding herself.

  "Did Eddie ever tell you how we first met?" he asked finally, his tone intentionally casual.

  Caitlin's eyes narrowed. "He told me you arrested him once, if that's what you mean."

  "Yes. He was twelve then. And he was holding a kilo of marijuana."

  She drew back slightly, her motions with the straw stilled. "A—a kilo?"

  She wasn't surprised by the charge, Quisto realized, just by the amount. "Yes. A nice big brick." Then, guessing but still fairly certain, "I suppose he told you it was just a couple of joints?"

  He saw by the faint pinkness in her cheeks that he was right. And that she had believed the boy. He could understand that; Eddie was—had been—a charmer.

  "I could have popped him for sales," Quisto said. "But he insisted he was just hold
ing for somebody else, and I believed him. He was too scared not to tell me the truth. He talked a big game about how tough he was, but when he sat in that cell, looking at those bars, he reverted to a scared twelve-year-old kid very quickly."

  He saw her close her eyes for a moment, and he could guess all too well the images that were playing through her mind, images of a boy who had wanted out so badly, but hadn't made it. When she opened her eyes again, they were troubled, but the anger he'd seen yesterday on the department steps was there, as well. And it was in her voice when she spoke.

  "He told me that was the first time he became an informant for you. That he told you who gave him the stuff."

  Quisto smiled wryly. "I'd hardly call it becoming an informant. In exchange for lowering the charge to misdemeanor possession, and a promise that we'd keep him safe from retaliation, he gave us the name of the dealer he was holding for."

  "And you arrested him?"

  Quisto shook his head. "Never got the chance. He dropped out of sight, then surfaced six weeks later. Literally. In the water off Pelican Point."

  "Oh."

  It took him a moment to understand the disappointment in her tone. "Caitlin, Eddie overdosed. Plain and simple. It wasn't a retaliation murder by the guy he turned in two years ago, or the Pack. They don't bother with kids, except to use the street gangs as a training ground."

  "He may have overdosed, but somebody did it to him. He wasn't using!"

  Her voice rose on the last words, and Quisto lowered his gaze from her face. There wasn't much to say in the face of such stubbornness. He'd seen it before, in people like Caitlin, do-gooders who had a lamentable tendency never to see what was right beneath their noses.

  "Never mind," she said, dumping what remained in her glass into the old, stained sink behind the bar, as if it had lost its flavor. "You don't believe me, Gage didn't believe me, nobody does. Everybody just wants to write Eddie off as another kid who fell victim to his own weakness, another casualty of the streets. Well, he wasn't. I don't care what any of you say."

  "Caitlin—"

  "Especially you," she snapped, glaring at him. This was the woman who had slapped him. "You had no business letting Eddie get involved with this kind of thing. He couldn't have known how dangerous it was, not really."

  "I told you—"

  "I know what you told me. And I know what Eddie told me. And I'm not a fool, contrary to what you seem to think. I know that the truth is somewhere in the middle. But no matter what, Eddie was still a child. More so than most fourteen-year-olds around here. You should have made sure he stayed safe."

  Quisto knew she was reacting out of grief, but still, it stung. "What was I supposed to do? Follow him around twenty-four hours a day? Maybe move in with him?"

  "Did you tell him you couldn't have made those arrests without him? Did you tell him he'd been instrumental in stopping the Pack from getting a foothold in Marina del Mar?"

  Quisto shifted uncomfortably on the stool. "Well … yes, but it was true, and he deserved to know that."

  "And I suppose it never occurred to you that you were pumping up that boy's dreams, that you were feeding his fantasy of being a hero, something special, special enough to get out of this place? And you never thought that with all that praise you might be encouraging him to do more of the same thing that got him all those pats on the back to begin with?"

  "I also warned him. I told him to stay out of it, that we didn't want or need any more from him. I told him he'd taken too big a risk even coming to us the first time, and not to do it again. Contrary to what you seem to think, I don't make a habit of using children as informants."

  "But you used this one."

  Quisto sighed, feeling a bit battered. He'd undergone cross-examinations that were less wearying. "He'd already come to us. That damage was done."

  "So you stopped the Pack, kept them out of your peaceful little enclave, probably got your own pats on the back, then tossed Eddie back into the cesspool, is that it?"

  Quisto's temper sparked, but he'd learned long ago to rein it in when dealing with people who were upset. Still, there was an edge in his voice when he spoke; something about Caitlin Murphy got to him in a way he wasn't used to at all.

  "I checked on him every few weeks. And I told him if he ever felt like he was in danger, to call me. He even had my home number, for God's sake. What else could I have done?"

  Caitlin wrapped her arms around herself and stepped back from the bar. She leaned against the low counter behind her, lowered her head and shook it sadly. Her hair fell forward, masking her face.

  "I don't know," she said, her voice tight, as if she were fighting tears. "Order up a miracle, I suppose."

  "I'm sorry, Caitlin," he said gently, "but miracles are the first thing a cop loses faith in."

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  Quisto sat idly tapping the end of a pen on his desk. There were many things he should be doing. He felt like doing none of them. But anything would be better than what he'd been doing for the past two days, walking around seemingly in a fog, only sharpening to attention at a glimpse of red-gold hair. And spending far too much time wondering about the woman who had brought that particular shade of strawberry blonde to his attention.

  With Chance on vacation, he was at loose ends, clearing up paperwork and reports that had backed up during their last undercover operation. That it might indeed have been their last one together was not something he wanted to think about. Chance had become more than a partner, he'd become a friend, more of a friend than Quisto had ever expected to find in the legendary detective. It had taken time. Chance had been very closed off after the death of his wife and unborn son and the suicide of his former partner, but eventually he'd let Quisto get past his formidable walls.

  And when he was going through hell, falling in love with a woman everyone else considered a suspect in the biggest money-laundering operation Marina del Mar had ever seen, it had been Quisto Chance had turned to for help. And he had helped him, because that was what partners did. It had broken down Chance's last reservations; the bond between the two men was unshakable now.

  And he himself, Quisto thought with a soft smile, now had a namesake and godson in Sean Rafael Buckner, who, at a mere year and a half old, had everyone in his family—and Quisto's—wrapped around his tiny finger.

  The phone sitting at his elbow rang, and he grabbed it quickly, gratefully, hoping for something sufficiently distracting.

  "Romero."

  "Gage Butler," the voice on the other end supplied succinctly. "Got something here I think you might be interested in."

  Quisto straightened. "What?"

  "That kid, the OD?"

  "Eddie."

  "Yeah. Salazar. I got the analysis on the contents of the syringe back this morning."

  "Already?"

  "I have a friend at the lab."

  "Useful," Quisto said.

  "Often," Butler agreed.

  "So what was it? Heroin? Coke?"

  "Neither. That's just it. It wasn't anything like that. It was procaine."

  Quisto's brows furrowed. "What?"

  "Procaine. It's a commonly used local anesthetic. Like lidocaine. My source tells me rapid intravenous injection would most likely cause a complete cardiac arrest. And that it wouldn't take much."

  "Damn."

  "Exactly. Looks like maybe Caitlin was right, after all. Not much chance the kid did it himself. Somebody either did it to him, or fooled him into thinking he was shooting up something else."

  "Damn," Quisto said again.

  "Kind of thought you'd feel that way. That's why I wanted to let you know."

  Quisto's jaw tightened. Murdered. Eddie really had been murdered. That silly, eager kid. He felt the slow heat of anger starting to build.

  "I'll have to turn this over to our felony unit now," Butler said. "I'll let you know who lands it."

  "I'd appreciate that," Quisto said. "Anything else in
his system?"

  "Don't know. Won't, until the toxicology reports are in, and you know how long that takes. But I thought you might want to hear about this right away."

  "Yes. Thanks. Will you let me know about the blood analysis?"

  "As soon as I get it."

  "Thanks, Detective."

  "Gage."

  "Quisto."

  "You got it. Later."

  Perhaps, Quisto thought as he hung up, he hadn't given Gage Butler enough credit. He'd been misled by the youthful appearance. Or those all-American blond good looks. It had happened before; he'd had his doubts about Chance, too, at first. But he'd soon written them off to a gut-level reaction he'd thought he'd beaten long ago, when he'd come to terms with the fact that he would never be one of the fair-haired boys of America, in more ways than one. He had beaten it long ago. He didn't know why he was thinking about it now, but apparently he needed to work on it a little more, if it was throwing off his judgment.

  So Caitlin had been right. It had been murder. Perhaps she'd even been right about Eddie being clean, as well. He wondered if Gage had called her, too. Probably, he thought rather morosely. If the man was serious about wanting to know her better, he wouldn't pass up a chance to score some points with the lovely and stubborn Ms. Murphy.

  Well, let him, Quisto thought. He had other things to do than worry about than Caitlin Murphy. Like worrying about who had killed Eddie. And why.

  Not that he really had much doubt about the latter. The way Eddie had died had message written all over it; it had been an execution. Somebody had found out that the boy had cooperated with the police.

  He sat there for a long moment. The anger within him was building. Eddie had been a kid—tougher than most of the fourteen-year-olds in Marina del Mar, yes, but not as hardened as many in Marina Heights. He'd still had a chance to come out right.

  He thought again of Caitlin's wall, of all those young faces. Of Eddie's face, added to that grim parade of death. He threw down his pen, grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and walked up to the front of the detective division office. He flipped the switch on the light next to his name on the display board, turning it from green to red, and scribbled Unknown on the chalkboard for his return time, then out of the City for his destination. Then he headed for Lieutenant Morgan's office.