"We're all better off. A cop doesn't have the greatest life expectancy in the world. Dead or in prison—it doesn't make much difference to a kid without a father."
"So you make the decision for everyone, is that it? How arrogant can you get?"
"That's easy to say—" he ground out, stalking back to stand before her "—when you're not alone with a handful of kids and a truckload of bills to pay."
She stood up, her steady gaze never faltering. "You may think you're being selfless, but I don't think you've learned the most important lesson of all from your mother's strength. A woman is more than capable of doing what she has to. And more than capable of making her own decisions.
She was meeting him toe-to-toe, unflinching. As she always had. Living proof of her own words. She was, behind that soft, seemingly vulnerable exterior, as tough as she had to be. Not hard, not cold, just tough. And in that moment he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and hang on, because right now he needed some of that toughness, needed some of her strength, because he was, as Chance had said, floundering in unfamiliar territory.
He'd always thought he was protecting any woman who might come to care about him; he'd never thought about needing any protection himself. But Caitlin made him feel that way—not that he needed it, but that if he ever did, she was strong enough to do it. And that was such a revelation to him that when she picked up her things, indicating she was ready to leave, he had to stop and remember why he'd been in such a hurry to get her out of there.
And later, as he sat in his car, watching, waiting to make sure Caitlin didn't come back for some reason and wind up in the line of fire, he had far too much time to think. Too much time to spend in unaccustomed self-examination, which yielded results he didn't much care for.
When shouts, squealing tires and echoing thuds, followed closely—but not too closely, he noted with silent thanks to Gage—by the sound of sirens, announced the Pack's raid, he stayed where he was. It was usually difficult, this ignoring of a smaller crime in the hope of solving or preventing a larger one, but tonight, Quisto Romero found it much easier. Because tonight, he wasn't thinking like a cop.
He was thinking like a man probing the boundaries of unfamiliar territory.
* * *
"Did you see those flames? Man, the whole front of that place went up!"
"Yeah, thirty seconds, and you couldn't even see inside."
"Gotta hand it to Ryan, he sure knows how to start a fire."
Quisto heard, but didn't react to the Pack's boasting. He'd talked to Gage late last night—or early this morning, he amended with a yawn—when he at last went home after the area was clear and he was reasonably sure Caitlin wouldn't be wandering back to get into trouble. The Trinity West detective had told him everything was under control, that they'd set up the store with some highly flammable material in front—and been waiting with Halon extinguishers behind it, holding it down until the fire department arrived to quickly control what had initially appeared to be an inferno.
"It made for a great show," Gage had said. "For about two minutes. And by then your pals were gone."
"The old man's all right?"
Gage had chuckled. "Yeah. Didn't like the idea of leaving his store to us, though. Ornery old guy."
"As long as he's all right."
"He's fine. The whole thing went down perfectly. Almost too perfectly. The fire was controllable, and the Pack didn't stick around, no civilians got in the way… I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"I know the feeling," Quisto had said, quite truthfully; in cynicism, it seemed, there was little difference between Marina del Mar and Trinity West. Then he had thanked Gage again before hanging up and heading for the warehouse.
And now he had to stifle another yawn as Alarico avidly studied the papers he'd given him. The hit hadn't come until nearly three, and it had been nearly five when Quisto finally got to sleep, and even though he'd slept until afternoon, he was still feeling a bit groggy. But he'd decided to wave some more bait under the man's nose now, when he was flush with the success of last night's attack, small though it might have been. And the slightly blurry copy of James Worthington's insurance papers, listing the appraised value of his wife's considerable jewelry collection, appeared to be serving its purpose quite well; Alarico was all but drooling. It had been worth another stop at Worthington's office, even though he'd ended up cooling his heels for an hour while the busy man finished up a late-afternoon meeting.
A chorus of voices from outside the leader's office drew Quisto's attention; more reveling in last night's success, he supposed. He glanced toward the source of the noise. And froze.
It took him a moment to recognize the new arrival. Several, in fact, as his mind raced through images, faces. Then he had it. Four years ago. Crawford—he couldn't remember the first name. Small-time thief, who'd been considering branching out into narcotics. It had been the first arrest he made with Chance, the week they'd been paired up as partners. That was probably why he remembered it so clearly. Watching Chance convince the not-too-bright Crawford that he didn't have the tools to become a dealer had been an education in itself.
Quisto watched as Carlos clapped the newcomer on the back and began to lead him toward the office. He glanced at Alarico; he was still intent on the shopping list before him. Quisto tugged up the collar of his coat and, grateful that his hair was still damp from his shower, quickly ran a hand over it to flatten it down, a small thing that he knew changed his looks slightly. He didn't know how sharp Crawford's memory was, and knew that he'd been arrested enough times to perhaps not remember each incident clearly, but Quisto wasn't about to take any chances.
He stood up, not wanting to wait until the man got there and risk drawing his attention more than necessary.
"Good work, Rafael," Alarico said. "You can perhaps get more of these before this society ball?"
"I'm working on it."
Alarico nodded, then looked up as the newcomer and Carlos reached the doorway. As Quisto had hoped, Carlos, who had never warmed up to him after that first day, ignored him as they came in. With a nod to Alarico, Quisto walked past them, out of the office, without a word. Crawford glanced at him, looked away, then looked again, but there was no recognition in his eyes, only puzzlement. Quisto kept going.
Damn, he thought as he drove away, this was going to make things very tricky. Obviously something had registered in Crawford's mind, even if it was only a vague sense that he'd seen Quisto before. Somewhere. Out of context, and looking slightly different—his hair had also been much shorter back then, in the very early days of his assignment to narcotics—he thought there was a chance he wouldn't put it together for a while. But sooner or later, the man would probably figure it out, unless he was even dumber than Chance had told him he was. He could only hope his visits to the warehouse didn't coincide with the man's presence very often.
He checked in with Chance then, finding out that Lieutenant Morgan was getting antsier by the hour, called his mother and dodged her question about when he was going to bring that nice girl back again, and called Worthington once more to thank him for supplying the slightly doctored insurance papers that had made Alarico light up like a Christmas luminaria.
And then he just drove for a while, thinking. And wishing he could stop. But there were far too many things roiling around in his mind, and he felt as if he'd lost every amount of certainty he'd ever had. Finally he pulled over at a turnout on the Coast Highway
that was a prime spot for watching the sunset. He stared at the ocean without really seeing it, wishing the rhythmic motion of the waves could soothe the chaos in his brain.
* * *
"Sandra, you should at least go to the clinic—"
"No! He'd kill me."
Caitlin sighed and continued to gently cleanse the girl's battered face, wishing she could shelter all the women who put up with this kind of thing, wishing they all had a safe place to stay until they learned it was wrong to s
tay with a man who treated them like this. Seeing it starting like this, so young, was even more heartbreaking. And no matter what she said, no matter how she tried to calm the girl, Sandra seemed on the verge of falling apart. She wasn't really badly hurt, but she was obviously traumatized, and Caitlin didn't know what to say to her.
Sandra gave a sudden start, and a tiny whimper. Caitlin had already begun to apologize for hurting her when she realized the girl's eyes were fastened on a point over her shoulder. That odd sensation of awareness and knowledge rippled through her, and she knew before turning around that it was Quisto.
"What happened?" he asked from the office doorway.
"A boyfriend who thinks beating up a girl half his size makes him a man."
"Lenny's not so bad," Sandra said through puffy lips, defending the one who'd done it to her, even as she cringed from Quisto's male presence.
Quisto seemed to sense the girl's panic, but instead of leaving, he came forward. Sandra pulled back farther, but her expression became one of puzzlement as he crouched before her so that she was looking down at him. The girl winced when he put his hands over hers, which were clenched into fists in her lap, and held them almost tenderly.
"Anybody," he said to her, in a voice so soft and gentle it made Caitlin stare at him, "who takes his temper, his bad news, his bad mood or anything else out on someone smaller, younger or weaker than he is, is contemptible. There is no excuse for it. Ever."
Sandra blinked, staring at him as if he were some species she'd never seen before. "Lenny's not mean, not really," she said.
"No one has the right to do this to you. No one." Then, even more gently, he added, "But you don't have to deal with that now. You don't have to deal with anything right now. You have time to sort it out in your mind. You don't have to decide anything, you don't have to go anywhere, do anything. Not right now."
As if it were a tangible thing, Caitlin saw the tension drain out of the girl. Somehow, perhaps because of his years of experience with victims such as Sandra, he had found the right words, had known the one thing she needed. Time. Time to sort through what had happened. She stared at him as he continued to talk to Sandra, quietly, reassuringly, and the girl began to nod.
He was being exquisitely gentle with the frightened girl. He was handling her so kindly, she couldn't be frightened of him. And that, Caitlin thought suddenly, was as important as anything else, subtly making the girl realize that not all men were like Lenny, not all men felt the need to control and used violence against the most vulnerable to do it.
This was the other Quisto, she thought. The Quisto she'd learned about at his mother's home, the Quisto who was the favorite uncle to a crowd of nieces and nephews, who was the loving son of an incredible woman, who was the proud godfather to his partner's son. And he was as much that man as he was the tough, cynical cop. A man who held himself apart, a man who denied himself the kind of loving family he'd grown up in, simply because there was the chance that family would wind up having to go on without him. As his own family had had to go on without his father.
"He'll do it again, you know," he said later, as the girl left. The club had closed, Sandra had finally consented to let Caitlin call her mother to come and get her, and the distraught woman had arrived to take her home.
"Probably," Caitlin said with a sigh. She rubbed at the back of her neck, then at her temples, where a dull ache was beginning. "At least her older sister is a nurse. She'll be able to take care of her."
"You've been doing a lot of patching people up lately. You look tired," Quisto said, moving to stand close behind her.
"I am," she admitted. "It's been a terrible day. First poor Mr. Cordero, then this. Did you see his store? It's awful, what they did."
"I saw. But it could have been worse." His hands went to her shoulders. "He wasn't hurt."
"Thank God for that," she agreed fervently. She could feel his heat, and it felt so good that she didn't even try to move away, even though the gentle massaging he'd begun was making her a bit nervous.
"I wish you'd known," she said. "Maybe you could have told someone, and they could have stopped it."
His hands stopped. "I … did know."
She turned to stare at him. "You knew? And you let them do it?"
"I couldn't stop them without giving myself away."
"But they set his place on fire!"
"Caitlin, they wanted to kill him."
She paled. "Oh, God."
"I did what I could. I let some people know. He's okay. The damage isn't as bad as it looks, because … they were ready. And I've got a little more time."
She lowered her head. "I … don't know how you do it. How do you deal with people like that, day after day, year after year, and not think the whole world is like them?"
He resumed the gentle massage. It felt wonderful, and she leaned back against him, surrendering to the warmth he was generating. "Sometimes I do," he said at last. "So I have to keep reminding myself that there are people like you out there, too."
Her mouth quirked. "Naive little fools, you mean?"
She heard him chuckle; it was a deep sound that rumbled up from his chest. "You are many things, Caitlin Murphy, maybe even naive, but you are not now and I doubt you ye ever been a fool."
She turned around then, looking up at him. "Thank you."
He stared at her for a long moment. When his gaze shifted to her mouth, she knew what was coming. Knew it and welcomed it. He started to lower his head.
"You're welcome," he said, and before the last syllable died away, his mouth was on hers, and the fire that leaped to life so suddenly between them was set loose once more.
He kissed her with skill, she knew that, knew he'd had much more practice at this than she, knew that should bother her, but how could it, when the low sound he made when she flicked her tongue against his was accompanied by a tremor she could feel beneath her fingers as she touched him? How could it, when in the instant her body sagged against his, he groaned hoarsely, from deep in his chest, as if the sound had been ripped from him against his will?
His hands slid down her back to her hips, to hold her more tightly against him. She flattened her palms against his chest, feeling the beat of his heart accelerate as she felt the insistent nudge of aroused male flesh against her. Driven by an urge she'd never felt before, she moved her hips, as if reaching for him, caressing his body with her own, until he wrenched his mouth from hers with a gasp.
"Dios mío," he panted. His eyes closed, and she saw him take three long, deep breaths.
"Quisto?" she said, her voice sounding much like his as she asked… She wasn't sure what she was asking.
His eyes opened. He stared at her for a moment, and she couldn't deny what she saw in his face. Yes, there was heat and raw sexual need there, but there was more. There was wonder, almost shock, there, as well. And more than a touch of wariness.
"I should have known," he muttered.
"Known … what?"
His mouth twisted ruefully. "That I was in trouble."
Uncertainty flooded her. "Trouble?"
"Honey, I have never spent so much time trying to figure out a woman. So much time trying to keep one out of my head. The first time I saw you, I knew you were dangerous, and it had nothing to do with you slapping me. And every day since, I've sworn I wasn't ever going to get to this point."
She wondered again why that honey sent such a thrill through her. Perhaps because she had the feeling he had to really think about it, to choose to use it, as opposed to the querida that seemed to roll so easily off his tongue. And she knew she was fixating on that because she was afraid to hear what he was going to say next.
A little breathlessly, she asked, "What point?"
He let out a long breath. "The point where I want you so much I can't think of anything else. The point where nothing else matters, even my job. The point where, if you tell me no now, I'm going to curl up and die right here."
Color flooded her face. Never in h
er life had a man said anything like that to her. She'd long ago decided she was far too much the girl-next-door type to inspire such passion in a man. Especially a man like this. And until Quisto, she'd doubted she could feel such passion in turn. And yet here she was, her heart racing, her body tingling, a consuming heat building low and deep inside her for this man.
"I don't want to say no," she whispered, a catch in her voice.
Quisto took another deep breath. "But?" he asked, his voice as gentle as it had been with Sandra, as if he'd sensed her fears.
"I'm … not much on female competition."
He closed his eyes again, wincing. "Caitlin, don't. This isn't … like that."
"It isn't?"
She heard a long exhalation from him. He opened his eyes again and looked at her intently. "I can't change my past, Caitlin. I've done what I've done, and that I'm not very proud of it anymore doesn't make it go away."
"You … had your reasons."
"Maybe." She saw in his eyes the concession that her guess about his motives, and about his absent father's influence on them, had been accurate. "Maybe they were even good ones. And I could tell you I've changed in the past couple of years, and it wouldn't be a lie. But I have no way of proving that to you. Except to say that … this is different."
She wanted to believe him, wanted it more than anything. Wanted to delude herself, a warning voice in her head echoed.
"I think," Quisto added, in a voice so low and rough it sent a shiver through her, "that's why I've been fighting it so hard. Because, deep down, I knew it was different. I'm scared, too, Caitlin. You scare me. You, and the way you make me feel. And I've never admitted that to a woman before in my life."
She believed him. And in this moment, it didn't matter to her what his past had been. It wasn't that Quisto she wanted, anyway. It was the man she'd seen tonight, who had so gently dealt with a frightened girl. The man she'd discovered in his mother's home, the loving son and uncle. The man who had denied himself that kind of loving family, for reasons that made her heart ache for him.
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