Renegade with a Badge

by Claire King

She wasn’t falling for it. “I won’t call Ernesto, you know.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  “And I won’t call the police.”

  Bobby looked around, chuckled. “I doubt there’s any to call.”

  Olivia shook her head. “All right. Just come on, then. I want to wash my hands.

  She used the bathroom at the back of the cantina, while Bobby dutifully stood guard outside. Whistling.

  The “facility” was spotlessly clean and, unfortunately, had a mirror. Olivia stared at herself, dumbfounded. Not in her entire life, not once, had she ever looked so…awful.

  Her hair was filthy, her clothes were worse. Her face was tracked with dirt and tears and small, vivid scratches. She dragged her fingers down her cheeks in shock. She was going to have to come up with one hell of a story to explain this when she got home.

  Using the trickle of water that flowed from the sink faucet, she made what reparations she could to her face and hair and hands. She stared in dismay at the rest of her. The bottom of her dress was ragged where she’d ripped the bandage for Rafe’s ribs. Her knees were dark with dirt, her ankles white with salt and sand.

  And her feet. She groaned out loud. Her feet were encased in thick black socks that slumped forlornly around her ankles, and were stuffed like sausages into frayed and broken sandals. The sandals had come unbuckled somehow, but her feet were so swollen she hadn’t even noticed.

  No one in their right mind would let her on the plane looking like this.

  Bobby pounded on the door of the bathroom. Olivia jumped at the sound.

  “Are you done?”

  “Is the food ready?”

  A slight hesitation. “Not yet.”

  “Then I’m not done.”

  Olivia heard a bark of laughter and rolled her eyes. “Lunatic,” she muttered under her breath.

  After a minute, another knock came. “Food’s done.”

  Olivia took a last look at herself. She’d made her dress much worse by attempting to sponge it off, but at least she had been able to wash herself and rinse out her mouth. She felt marginally better. Smelled infinitely better, she thought.

  Bobby escorted her dutifully back to the Land Cruiser. The food was in a brown paper grocery bag on the front seat. Rafe was still nowhere to be seen.

  Olivia dug into the food herself, handing Bobby a fat burrito, taking a taco for herself. She ate steadily for a minute, then asked around a bite, “Where is he?”

  “He’s making some phone calls,” Bobby said.

  Olivia stared at him. “Phone calls? Who is he calling?”

  Bobby smiled. “You think just because we live an alternative lifestyle, we don’t have people to call?”

  “Alternative lifestyle?” Olivia nearly choked on her last bite of taco. “I’m assuming that means something different here than it does back in California.”

  Bobby tipped his head back and roared with laughter. “I hope so, too,” he said.

  Olivia watched him carefully, her eyes narrowing. He got that, did he?

  “Bobby, where are you from?”

  “Originally?”

  “No, since last night. Yes, originally.”

  “Tepehuanes, in Durango.”

  “You were born there?”

  Bobby nodded, rummaged around the sack for a taco. “Born and raised.”

  “That’s funny. I know someone in Tepehuanes. He’s about your age, in fact.” She picked a name out of the air. “Tomas Escovar.”

  Bobby opened his mouth, bit off half the taco. He chewed slowly, watching her. “Don’t know him,” he said after he swallowed.

  “That’s funny,” Olivia said, her eyebrows raising. “He’s the doctor in the clinic there. Tomas Escovar? You’ve never heard of him.”

  “There is no clinic in Tepehuanes.” Bobby shook his head, smiling. “You’re not very good at this, Doctor.”

  Olivia frowned at him. “Well, it’s my first time.”

  “Tomas Escovar? You could have come up with something better than that. How about Juan Sanchez? Or Jesus Martinez?”

  Olivia chewed on her bottom lip, considering. “Those names are too ordinary. I wouldn’t have known whether you were lying or not.”

  Bobby lifted a shoulder. “You still don’t. It would have been worth a try.” He ate the rest of his taco in one bite.

  “I guess.” Olivia sighed, took another taco from the bag. The tortilla was warm and soft. “These are good. Do you know this place?”

  “No.”

  “You have never been here before?”

  Bobby gave her a patient look. “No.”

  “Do you go into La Paz very often?”

  “No.”

  “Because it would take too long on your motorcycles?”

  “Dr. Galpas?”

  “Yes?”

  “What is it, exactly, you want to know?”

  Olivia worked her lip a little more. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m leaving Baja in the morning, right?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “And I’ve already said I won’t go to the police, or to Ernesto.”

  “And we appreciate that.”

  “But, Bobby, I just don’t think I can go home without…knowing.”

  “Knowing what?”

  Olivia levered off the bumper of the truck and began to pace. “I don’t know. Why you never speak a word of English, but somehow make jokes that sound vaguely American? Why you live on the beach and ride dirt bikes around and tweak Ernesto Cervantes by stealing from him when he clearly outguns you and out-mans you?”

  Bobby’s chest puffed out. “Out-mans us?”

  Olivia shook her head. “You know what I mean. And why you both seem so smart and capable, and still do something so stupid and dangerous for a living. Why Rafael—” She stopped abruptly.

  Bobby smiled at her. “Why Rafe, what?”

  “Why one minute he appears to be this horrible hardened criminal, and the next he’s risking his life and yours to get me to La Paz, and he looks at me as though he’s hurt that I think less of him for running drugs across the border.” She met Bobby’s eyes. “I’m a scientist. Everything in my world makes sense, even when it all seems like random data and inexplicable, unrelated occurrences. None of this makes sense, Bobby. You don’t make sense, Rafael doesn’t make sense, and the way I feel certainly makes no sense.”

  Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know how you feel, Doctor, so I can’t tell you why it makes no sense to you. But I can tell you, we’re doing what we have to do down here.”

  Olivia put her hands on her hips. “Right there!” she exclaimed. “What you said right there! What do you mean, ‘down here’? Down here from Durango? This is up here from Durango. See?”

  “Bobby!”

  Olivia whirled to face Rafael. He was glowering at his partner. “That’s enough,” he said through his teeth.

  Bobby grinned. “She coerced me,” he said.

  Rafe walked over and opened the back door for Olivia. “I’ll bet.” He looked at Olivia. “Did you eat?”

  “Yes. It was—”

  “Use the bathroom?”

  Olivia huffed out a breath. “You guys are certainly—”

  “Did she?” he asked Bobby curtly, leaving Olivia with her mouth open.

  He’d better stop interrupting every sentence, or she was going to have to take steps, Olivia thought.

  Bobby lifted his shoulders, amused with both of them. “I guess so. I didn’t go in with her.”

  Rafe turned back to Olivia. “Get in.”

  “You know—” she began menacingly.

  “Get in, Olivia. Right. Now.”

  Olivia squinted at him. “That’s not going to work on me forever, you know.” But she got in the back of the Land Cruiser.

  Rafe shut the door and motioned Bobby to follow him. They walked several paces away from the vehicle. Rafe turned his back to Olivia, who he knew was watching them avidly from the backseat.

  “A
rrieta says Cervantes has something big coming in, night after tomorrow.”

  “How big?”

  “Four hundred kilos of rock, maybe more.”

  Bobby whistled long and low.

  “He’s getting word through to Cervantes that we know about it, that we plan to pick up our ‘share’ at the drop-off.”

  “How’s he doing that?”

  “Through one of our guys on the inside.” Rafe looked up as a patron left the cantina, waited patiently for him to pass. “I don’t know how they pulled it off, but one of the federales was driving Cervantes around today. They got to within about fifty yards of where Olivia and I were. If it had been any of Cervantes’s men, I think we would have been bagged.”

  “You think Cervantes will bite?”

  Rafe glanced back at Olivia. “I think he’s pissed enough now, yeah,” he said wryly.

  Bobby followed his gaze. “She’s been convenient, hasn’t she.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Bobby gave Rafe a steady look. “It means she came along and worked things up a little in Cervantes’s tidy little world. It means we were making a little slow progress during the past three months, and a lot of very fast progress the past twenty-four hours. It means she’s helped the investigation.”

  Rafe took a deep breath, realized his hands had gone to tight fists and his legs into a fighting stance. He would have taken apart his blood brother, his own cousin, if he’d intimated Olivia had been a convenience for him. A sexual release or something.

  In that regard, she had been anything but convenient.

  In fact, Rafe was very much afraid he was never going to get over how inconvenient Olivia Galpas had become, in every way.

  Chapter 7

  La Paz was wide awake when they sneaked into town. They’d ditched the Land Cruiser near a dump site on the outskirts of the city, though Bobby had argued vehemently for heading to the coast and driving it into the gulf.

  “Why don’t we go right to the airport?” Olivia asked.

  Rafe didn’t answer her, just got out of the cruiser and started walking.

  Bobby turned to Olivia. “If we park the cruiser at the airport and someone spots it and calls it in to the local police, we’re screwed. They’ll call Cervantes and he’ll know we’re here. We’ll all be in jail before he even leaves the hacienda.”

  “Oh.” Olivia looked forlornly at her socks and sandals. Her feet were only just beginning to return to their normal size. “So, more walking?”

  “More walking,” he confirmed happily, and motioned her in front of him.

  The three of them, looking terribly conspicuous to Olivia’s thinking, walked into town, using the alleyways when they could, tracking across open yards and through parking lots when they couldn’t.

  Rafael walked ahead of her without speaking. He was, Olivia decided, still upset about what had happened in the cave. She’d finally had enough time to think about how annoyed she was about that. He’d been judging her? Ha!

  Bobby walked behind her. His casual stroll was belied by his darting eyes. Every time Olivia glanced back at him, he was smiling pleasantly, his hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like a man out for an evening constitutional. Harmless.

  Until she looked at his eyes.

  They seemed to take in everything. Olivia knew if she stepped out of line, he’d be on her in an instant.

  In fact, Olivia was beginning to suspect that of the two of them, Bobby might actually be the more dangerous. After all, anyone with an ounce of sense and decent eyesight would see Rafael’s nasty disposition and physical menace coming a mile away. Bobby, on the other hand, could probably kill you while you were still laughing at one of his jokes.

  Olivia shivered at that thought.

  “Cold?” Bobby asked her.

  “No, I was just—oof!”

  She’d slammed into Rafe while looking back at Bobby. It was like hitting a cinder-block wall. Only warmer. She could feel the lump of his bandage under her cheek, wondered how his ribs were.

  “Are you cold?” Rafael asked her.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  Rafe looked down at her, skepticism in his dark eyes.

  “I am not cold,” she said slowly.

  He scowled at her for a moment more, then turned without speaking and began walking again.

  Olivia looked over her shoulder at Bobby, rolled her eyes. “Unpleasant man,” she whispered conspiratorially to the smuggler behind her, and speculated briefly on just how her life had so deteriorated that she was having small confidences with drug runners.

  Bobby grinned back at her, pinched his nose between two fingers. “In more ways than one,” he said.

  “I heard that, vato,” Rafe muttered.

  They made their way toward the town square. Alleys slowly became as crowded as the sidewalks, and there were no more dusty back lawns to cut across. They began to blend in with people already on the street.

  “What night is it?” Olivia asked, when for the third time she had to haul herself tight against a wall to allow a group of people to pass.

  “Saturday,” Bobby said. “Date night.”

  Olivia pivoted on her heel. “There it is again!” she accused. “Date night? What kind of thing is that for a Durango man to say?”

  Bobby just grinned at her, pushing her shoulder gently to turn her back around. “Keep walking, Doctor.”

  Olivia knit her brows. “You know, I seem to walk wherever and whenever you guys tell me, but I never know why.”

  “We’re getting a room for the night,” Rafe said without turning his head.

  Olivia stopped again, stared at the back of Rafael’s head. “What?”

  “We’re getting a room.” He realized she wasn’t behind him any longer and turned. She continued to stare blankly at him. “A motel room? Do you have them in the United States?”

  “Are you insane?”

  “You ask me that so often, señorita, I am beginning to wonder,” he said, and started walking again.

  “I have to get home,” she said, running to catch up with his long strides. She jogged beside him. “I have to get a plane out of here.”

  “How do you plan to do that when the airport is closed?”

  Olivia shook her head frantically. “The airport is closed? Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  He stopped, and she took two more steps before she realized he’d planted himself on the earthen sidewalk. “You’re a PhD, are you not?” he asked mildly. “I assumed you would be able to figure out for yourself that the airport in La Paz, Baja California, would be closed at midnight. This is not LAX.”

  “I thought we were coming into town to get a taxi.”

  He started off again. “We’re not. I need some sleep and a shower.” He glanced down as she trotted up beside him. “And I assume you want to find something else to wear home in the morning, presuming we can get you a flight out.”

  “Oh, yes. I guess that would be easier to explain to my family than having to—” She stopped again. Rafe and Bobby stopped, as well, at the horrified look on her face. “I don’t have my documents.”

  “You’re okay,” Bobby said. “You can fly into Tijuana and have someone collect you there and drive you across the border.”

  Since he was the only one who answered, Olivia looked at him, her eyes wide. “I don’t have anything, though. Not my driver’s license or my credit cards or any money. They won’t even let me on the plane without identification. And how will I pay for my ticket?”

  Bobby put his hand on her shoulder. “Rafe has lots of money. He carries it with him in big wads.”

  Rafe watched Olivia study him for a moment, her horrified look turning to one of aversion. He wanted to shake her. Right after he punched Bobby in the mouth. Big wads. What a yutz.

  It’s not drug money, princess, he wanted to tell her. I get a paycheck the same as any working stiff. From the same government that funds your ocean experiments, in fact.
>
  Of course, he said none of that, but the muscles in his jaw worked with the effort not to.

  She would let him buy her a ticket home, Olivia decided finally. Then, when she got home, she’d donate an amount equal to the price to a drug rehab shelter in San Diego. That would make it even, she thought miserably.

  “Okay,” she agreed, stretching out the word as a measure of her reluctance, “but what about actually getting onto the plane? A one-way ticket paid in cash for a woman with no identification is going to get me strip-searched.”

  Bobby closed his eyes dreamily. “We can only hope,” he said. Rafe’s head snapped around, but Bobby ignored him. When Olivia didn’t laugh, though, he touched her lightly on the arm again. “We’ll think of something in the morning. Once you’re cleaned up and have some new clothes and use that American accent and that pretty smile of yours, no one will even think to question who you are.” He let his eyelids droop suggestively again. “They may strip-search you, anyway, for the fun of it, but they won’t ask for ID.”

  “Very comforting.”

  “Can we go, now?” Rafe asked roughly. “Or do you two want to hold hands here on the street until Cervantes actually drives past on his way to the fiesta?”

  Olivia sighed and began walking. Bobby held back a moment, long enough to punch his cousin, hard, in the biceps. “She’s had enough.”

  Rafe lifted a single brow. “Has she?”

  Bobby’s mobile mouth pursed in disgust. “Look, I don’t know what happened in that cave back there, but whatever it was, she’s holding up better than you,” he said. “Ease up.”

  Rafe grabbed Bobby’s shirtfront. “I don’t need you to tell me how to talk to her.”

  Bobby stared him down. “I think you do.”

  Rafe eyed his partner a moment more, then let go of his shirt and backed up a step.

  Bobby made a show of brushing out the wrinkle Rafe had put in his already hideously wrinkled shirt. “You should never have gone to that party.”

  “I know,” Rafe replied shortly.

  “I told you that.”

  Rafe once again struggled against punching his cousin in the face. “You were right,” he admitted through clenched teeth.

  “She would have married Cervantes and had an heir to the empire on the way before we busted him, and you never would have been the wiser. She could have come to the trial eight months pregnant and cried into a little hanky, and you wouldn’t even have noticed her.”