Yes, they were mostly all Hispanic.
As I stood there, shivering in my satin, with goose bumps cropping up all over my arms, one of the men detached himself from the group and sauntered toward me, cigarette dangling in the corner of his mouth. “Hola, senorita!”
“Hi,” I said. I took high school Spanish, but I wasn’t about to embarrass myself by trying to use it.
He switched over to lightly accented English. “Looking for company?”
“Looking for a friend,” I said, to give myself an excuse for being there.
He tilted his head. “What’s his name, your friend?”
It just fell out of my mouth, I swear. “Jorge.”
He grinned, putting a hand against his chest. “I’m Jorge.”
“Another Jorge.”
“Tell you something.” He grabbed my elbow and led me toward the door. “I take you in. If your Jorge’s not here, maybe I can be Jorge for you.” He winked.
I smiled back, while I thought, Not on your life. He was several inches too short, a couple years too young, and his shirt was open halfway down his chest, which was scrawny. What I said was, demurely, “Thank you.”
“De nada,” Jorge said, and stood politely aside to let me walk through the door first.
At first glance, La Havana didn’t look too different from other establishments of its kind I’d seen in the past. There was a long bar along one wall, with a mirror behind it, and a couple of bartenders staying busy. There was a sound booth in the other corner, where someone was juggling CDs or songs on an iPod. There was no stage, and no live entertainment, just the music blasting from speakers at all four corners of the room, at eardrum-popping decibels.
Something else there wasn’t, was seating. There were no chairs or tables anywhere, not even at the bar. People stood around talking or flirting, or they danced.
“See him?” Jorge asked next to me.
I looked around. “No.”
“What’s he look like, your friend?”
“Tall,” I said, “dark hair, dark eyes, goatee, tattoo of a dragon on his back.”
Fake, as far as I knew, since he hadn’t had it the first time I’d seen him naked, and it had appeared pretty much overnight, which probably hadn’t been enough time to have it properly done. The dragon was one of Jorge’s distinguishing marks. Rafe only had one tattoo of his own: a viper curled around his left bicep. I added, “And a snake on his arm.”
“I don’t see him.”
I didn’t either. And given the fact that most everyone here was my height or shorter, he ought to have been pretty easy to spot.
“There are games in the back,” my new friend told me, pointing in that direction. “Maybe he’s there?”
“Maybe.” I glanced down at him. “What kind of games?”
Jorge shrugged. “Billar. Póquer.”
“Billiards and poker?”
Jorge nodded.
Rafe played pool. I’d seen him. And I thought he might play poker as well. It was something I’d expect him to know how to do, plus, when I’d originally fetched up against him back in August, I’d Googled him, and someone with his name had turned up as a player in online poker tournaments. It could have been someone else, of course, although Rafael Collier isn’t the most common name.
“I’ll check there,” I said.
“I’ll wait here,” Jorge answered and let go of my arm.
I made my way along the edges of the room, not wanting to push through the crush of bodies on the dance floor. The space was so tight they were all just bumping and grinding, rubbing against one another, and the idea of having to get into the middle of all the gyrating, possibly being bumped and ground along the way, didn’t appeal. I really am a prude, I guess. I don’t think I’d mind bumping and grinding with someone I cared about, even in public, but I didn’t want to do it with strangers. A few of the dancers were practically making love fully dressed, or so it seemed.
It was a relief to make it to the other side of the room, where a small doorway led into a second room. It was smaller than the first, and unlike it, there was plenty of seating. A couple of pool tables were set up in the middle, while all around the edges of the room, groups of men sat around round tables playing cards while well-dressed women hung over their shoulders.
And unlike in proper casinos—where I’d honestly never been, since gambling is illegal in Tennessee—they weren’t playing for chips. Instead, there were stacks of bills in the middle of each table.
I stopped in the doorway, staring.
With all that money staring back—from the looks of it, enough to pay my bills for a year—it took me a moment to notice anything else. When I did, I looked up and straight into the eyes of a woman standing beside the nearest table.
I gulped. I had guessed that Carmen must have a connection with this place, since it was owned by the same corporation or entity that owned the warehouse where she’d spent the best part of the afternoon, but I hadn’t actually expected her to be here. I guess perhaps I should have, but honestly, she hadn’t even crossed my mind.
She was just as stunning up close as I had expected from seeing her at a distance a couple of times. Back inside the red dress she’d had on the other night at Fidelio’s, she looked like all the money on every table put together and multiplied, and she managed to make me feel both dowdy and too conservative in my tight and backless red satin. That long, straight brown hair fell over her shoulders, and her face could have graced the cover of People Magazine. Huge, dark eyes, long lashes, and full, red lips.
I managed a weak smile. “Um... bathroom?” Throwing my mind back through the mists of time, I dragged a word up from the forgotten recesses. “Servicio?”
I’m sure my accent was atrocious. It was at least ten years since I’d had occasion to use the Castilian Spanish I’d learned in school.
Carmen rolled her eyes and muttered something. I didn’t ask her to translate it, since I could hear from the tone that it wasn’t complimentary. She pointed down the hall to the left.
“Gracias,” I said. And followed up with, “Thank you.”
“De nada,” Carmen said. But she didn’t seem to mean it, and when I pushed off from the doorway and headed down the hall to the left, she watched me until I was out of sight.
For that reason, I thought I’d better actually visit the servicio. So I checked my makeup in the cracked mirror above the sink, applied a little more lipstick, rinsed my hands, and managed not to squeal when I noticed a big cockroach lying on its back in the corner behind the commode, all six legs folded on its stomach.
That done, I opened the door again and headed into the hallway, my head twisted and my eyes still on the cockroach, just in case it decided to stop playing dead and come after me. I wasn’t watching where I was going, and as a result I ended up walking straight into a hard, male body parked right outside the door.
I bounced back.
“I’m...” The rest of the apology froze on my lips when I looked up and met a pair of hard, black eyes. It was a long time since he’d looked at me with that expression, and my heart started thumping erratically. From nerves, in case you wondered. There’s nothing sexy about Rafe when he looks like he wants to commit murder. He’s just plain terrifying.
He opened his mouth, and as expected, it wasn’t a friendly greeting. “What the hell are you doing here?”
His voice was pitched just high enough to carry above the steady thump of the music, and it was tight with anger.
“It’s a public place, isn’t it? Anyone can—”
I broke off with a gasp when he shook me. Actually, physically, shook me. Hard enough that the back of my head knocked against the wall. And before I’d recovered from that, he’d leaned down to where our noses were within an inch or two of one another. “Don’t fuck with me, Savannah.”
“I’m not,” I protested, shaken as much by his tone as by the combined use of a four letter word—something he tends to avoid around me, unless he’s rea
lly, really upset—and my name. “I had no idea you’d be here.”
He eased back a fraction of an inch. Not enough to really make a difference, but I was able to draw breath again. “You still following Carmen?”
I shook my head. “No. I swear.”
“How d’you know about this place, then? And don’t try to tell me it’s a coincidence.”
“I checked the ownership of the warehouse where Carmen went this afternoon,” I said. “The same people own this, along with that warehouse in East Nashville where Julio Melendez ran his import/export business before he was arrested. Remember?”
“I worked with the man,” Rafe said, “I ain’t likely to forget.”
“I can’t get into any of the warehouses. But I could just walk in here. So I did.”
“Gonna get yourself hurt,” Rafe said.
I rolled my eyes. “Who’s going to hurt me?”
He didn’t answer, just arched a brow, and I scoffed. “You won’t hurt me. Not that way.”
“You have no idea what I’ll do if I have to,” Rafe said, and looked around. “You gotta get outta here.”
“Why? I just got here. And I’m not bothering anyone.”
“You’re bothering Carmen. She told me to get rid of you.”
I chill went down my spine, although it could just have been the cold cinderblock against my bare back. “What do you mean, get rid of? Permanently?”
“Right now,” Rafe said, “just getting you outta here will do. If you come back, then yeah. Permanently.”
“Do you always do what Carmen wants?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Rafe growled, his hands tightening on my upper arms. “You know I ain’t gonna hurt you. Not that way, whatever the hell that means.”
I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what it meant, but he shook his head. “Save it. Damn, I wish you wouldna done this!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, since he seemed sincerely upset. Disproportionately so, if you ask me. A whole lot more upset than the situation warranted. I mean, it wasn’t like anything was liable to happen to me. The place was full of people, most of them probably quite nice, like my buddy Jorge. So what if they were gambling in the back room? It was none of my business. It wasn’t like everyone else here hadn’t already seen it. And if he didn’t want me here, I could just walk out. Right?
No sooner had I thought the thought than there was a noise from the front of the building; a shrill whistle loud enough to cut through the music and the buzzing of voices.
“Damn,” Rafe said.
“What?”
He shook his head, just shoved me ahead of him toward the end of the hall and the fire door—Salida de Emergencia Solamente. As he fumbled with the heavy iron bar keeping the door closed, a chattering wave of panicked humanity started pushing at us from behind. I don’t speak much Spanish anymore, but I recognized words like polizia and heard others like redada and prisa.
“What’s prisa?” I asked over the din of buzzing of voices.
“Hurry,” Rafe said, lifting the bar lock on the door and pushing it open. An alarm started shrieking, adding to the chaos. The mass of people surged forward, pushing me forward too. I grabbed hold of him so I wouldn’t lose him in the crush.
“What about redada?”
“Raid,” Rafe said. He got an arm around my waist and pulled me out of the way of the stampede. It took everyone a second or two to realize that we’d all rushed straight into a flood-lit back parking lot and that we were surrounded on all sides by... I did a quick left-to-right count—at least a dozen official vehicles: black and white police cruisers, unmarked police cars, recognizable by their extra mirrors and antennas that civilian vehicles don’t have, and sleek black SUVs with the logo of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations and the FBI. Along with the cars, there were dozens of police officers and agents with guns trained on us, hands braced on car roofs and doors. Someone with a foghorn kept shouting orders to stop—“¡Alto ahi!”—in Spanish and English.
It was like a scene from a television show, and for a second I think my heart stopped. I’ve never had reason to be afraid of the police before, not even when Spicer and Truman caught me coming out of Maybelle Driscoll’s house last week. I knew I’d broken the law, but it never occurred to me to fear for my life or my freedom. Spicer and Truman knew me; they’d know I hadn’t done anything wrong.
This was different. These were cops I didn’t know and couldn’t recognize, scary in their black caps and bulletproof vests with SWAT written across the back, and they were holding guns. Guns that were aimed at me.
I must have made a noise, or maybe Rafe noticed my instinctive move to burrow into his side, because his arm tightened. I felt him draw breath, but before he could give voice to anything he might have thought of saying, Carmen burst out of the door and got caught in the floodlights. I glanced at him to see what he’d do, whether he’d drop me like a hot potato to rescue her.
He didn’t. Or maybe he didn’t have time. One of the spotlights swung toward us, and the next second we were lit up like a Christmas tree, outlined against the black wall of the nightclub.
The second after that, my breath went again.
Two things happened simultaneously: the guy with the foghorn yelled, “There he is! I see him!” while all the guns swung in our direction. The next moment, I found myself in front of Rafe with no real idea how I got there. I suppose it’s possible that he pulled me around from his side to his front, but knowing him, I doubt it. It’s more likely that I stepped in front of him. I’d done it once before: put myself between him and what I perceived to be danger. Then, I’d had a gun. Now I didn’t. Although it seemed he did, because before I knew what was happening, a muzzle was pressed to my head, while his other arm crossed my body, pinning my arms to my sides.
I think I gasped. It was so sudden and so shocking—I hadn’t even realized he was carrying a gun!—and the muzzle was cold against my temple. My knees buckled, and only Rafe’s arm held me upright as I sagged against him.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Another figure in SWAT black ran out in front of the others while the crowd, squealing wildly, scurried in the other direction. “I need him alive. Don’t shoot!”
Carmen glanced at Rafe over her shoulder and must have decided to abandon him to his fate, because she ran after the rest of the crowd as quickly as the four inch patent leather heels allowed.
Rafe muttered something.
“What?” I managed through the chattering of my teeth. Between the December nighttime chill and the fear, I was shivering like a Chihuahua.
“C’mon.” He started inching along the wall toward the corner of the building, dragging me along with him.
“Is the safety on?” I croaked as I concentrated on shuffling my feet along. Since I was wearing high heels of my own, it wasn’t easy. It didn’t help that the ground along the back of the building was littered with debris: empty bottles, crumpled paper bags, and cigarette butts.
He chuckled. I felt the vibration against my back more than I heard the sound. “Course, darlin’. Don’t worry.”
Right. I had a gun pointed to my head, and a dozen or so other guns pointed at the man behind me, and we were outlined against the wall like ducks in a shooting gallery. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
“Where’s your car?” Rafe asked in my ear. We’d gotten to the corner, only to find that the other side of the building was also surrounded by every law enforcement agency in Nashville. They had rounded up the fleeing patrons and were herding them onto a big bus. I saw my buddy Jorge peering out the window, his eyes huge when he recognized me.
“To the right. Halfway down the row.” I’m pretty sure my voice hitched on every other word. I couldn’t seem to draw a deep breath.
Rafe’s voice was level and perfectly calm, low and steady in my ear. “When we get there, scoot across the gearshift and into the passenger seat. Let me drive.”
I nodded. “I’m scared.”
“Do
n’t be. I won’t let nothing happen to you.” It might have been my imagination—it probably was—but I thought he might have dropped a kiss into my hair before he raised his voice. Then again, maybe not. “Listen up!”
The buzz quieted down as everyone did as he said.
“We’re gonna get into this car over here.” There was a hint of a Spanish accent to his voice that he didn’t usually have, something he’d affected to pretend to be Jorge Pena. “Don’t nobody try to stop us, or I swear to God, I’m gonna put a bullet through her brain!”
His voice hardened on the last few words. He tightened his arm around me, and I squeaked. Everyone tensed.
That same black-clad figure from earlier had followed us around the corner, and spoke up again, both hands up and empty to show the lack of a weapon. “What do you want, Mr. Pena? Whatever it is, you got it.”
The voice was female, and even through the terror, I recognized it.
Rafe chuckled. “A million dollars and a helicopter would be nice, but I’ll settle for nobody trying to stop me.”
“Why don’t you just let her go? She’s an innocent bystander. Not a part of this.”
Thank you, I thought. Nice of Grimaldi to reinforce the idea that I was nobody, and so not worthy of retaliation if any were to come down from this.
“She’s my ticket outta here,” Rafe answered, his voice clear and carrying. “You ain’t gonna shoot me while I got her. At least I hope you ain’t stupid enough to try. Cause if I die, she dies too.”
He pulled me along, step by step closer to the Volvo. I fumbled in my bag for the key, and undid the alarm and the locks just as we reached the car.
“Open the door,” Rafe said in my ear. “Get in. Scoot across. Hurry.”
A Done Deal Page 13