by Jo Robertson
A third tiny ping registered at the same time he remembered the sly look on the bartender's face. Rafe snapped back to reality with a rush of adrenaline that screeched danger. By then it was too late. He barely had time to swing around, shield Isabella's body with his own, and reach futilely for the handgun at his ankle. A split second to acknowledge the burly body of the attacker who'd crept up on them. Hell!
The sharp blow to his temple might've felled him except that the woman's body braced him at the back. A trickle of blood ran from his forehead into his eye, blurring his vision as he sank against her and they both toppled to the ground. A soft groan escaped her as she collapsed under the full force of his hundred and eighty pounds.
Swiping the blood from his eye and shaking his head to clear the dizziness, he unholstered his weapon and braced himself on one knee. By the time he'd swung around and gripped the pistol in a two-handed stance, the attacker had fled down the alley and darted around the corner toward the rear parking lot.
Rafe chased him to the end of the alley, ran past the waste disposal bin, and leading with his gun, eased around the corner. The lot was empty except for his green Hummer, a battered white truck, and Isabella's sisters huddling beside a blue sedan.
He put his finger to his lips and cautiously moved along the exit doors that lined the back lot, twisting each knob as he reached it. All locked. Crouching low, he approached the truck and peered through the windows, then checked in the bed and beneath the carriage. Nothing. The attacker had vanished.
"Which way?" Rafe barked at the older sister. Consuelo, he thought her name was.
With wide eyes both women shook their heads and pointed tremulous hands toward the street and the dark night beyond.
"Where's Bella?" Consuelo asked sharply. "What have you done with her?"
As the three turned back to the dark mouth of the alley, Isabella limped slowly toward them. Belatedly, he remembered the thud of her body hitting the pavement. Ah, shit!
"You always leave a woman sprawled out like that?" she quipped.
Her hip felt as if it had been ripped from its socket, her left knee burned from a bloody scrape, and her right arm tingled from wrist to elbow. But, damn it all, she would keep her sense of humor even if it killed her. Twice now she'd tumbled in front of Rafe, sprawling as gracelessly as a toddler. She was not going to revert to the shakiness that threatened her limbs.
"Bella," Nita wailed. "Are you hurt? Is anything broken?"
Connie ran practiced, assured hands over Bella and glared at Rafe. "What kind of a thug are you?"
Bella felt her face flush. "It's okay, Connie. I'm not hurt. Rafe's a polite thug."
"Looks like you're well enough to wrangle," Rafe muttered, edging Connie aside. He took Bella's hands and turned them over, observing the knuckles and then the palms. "So I guess you'll live." He glanced down at her knee. "My place is close. We'd better get some antiseptic on those abrasions."
"Gringo," Connie spat, although Rafe clearly was darker than she was. "She's not going anywhere with you. ¡Tonto torpe!" Clumsy idiot. Connie didn't mince words.
Rafe daubed at his temple with a snowy white handkerchief, but made no reference to his own bleeding wound, Bella noticed. Without another word he trotted back down the alley, retrieved his jacket from the ground, and gazed carefully around.
A few feet from where he'd dropped his jacket, he crouched down and touched his fingers to what looked from a distance like an oil stain on the asphalt close to the brick wall of the building. He dipped his fingers into the stain, lifted them to his nose, and sniffed. What had he found?
Bella shivered and Connie clutched her harder around the waist. What if their assailant came back while Rafe dawdled and poked around in the dark alley?
Suddenly she remembered the gun. Rafe's weapon. She had felt it jab into her leg when he slammed against her, but she hadn't realized what it was until he pulled it out after they tumbled to the ground.
Her analytical district attorney's mind clicked into gear. What kind of government agent was Rafe that he carried a weapon? Definitely not a paper pusher. Not the local police either. She would've immediately recognized the badge as one of theirs.
After several long minutes of examining the alley, leaving her and her sisters in the murky parking lot, Rafe returned. "Let's go." He touched her arm and started to guide her toward a giant Hummer parked directly beneath a street lamp, its dark green color shiny and fluid in the night air.
Connie shoved his hand away. "No!" she commanded, fierce as a momma bear with her cub. "She will go home with us."
Bella started to agree, but curiosity overtook caution. What was the elusive Ashraf, call me Rafe, long A, up to? He wore a gun to a fancy bar and met with a guy who clearly didn't belong there.
He engaged in a pickup date, but got mugged in an alley. In her mind his badge was protection enough for her to go along until she discovered what he was up to. Some kind of undercover, she decided. Anyway, she didn't want to go back to her mother's small house in Pico Rivera, and apart from the cursory flash of his badge hours earlier, she knew innately that she was safe with him.
"Consuelo, I'll be fine," she insisted. "Rafe ... uh ... works in ... uh ... law enforcement."
He grinned wickedly and flashed his badge again, aiming it Connie's way. "I'm close by," he said, "and I'll bring her home. No worry."
Connie reluctantly agreed to leave with Nita after they'd exchanged phone numbers, addresses and car license plates. Rafe got a grilling stricter than screening for the CIA.
His apartment was indeed a short distance from the district that housed Stuckey's Bar. His neighborhood was one of those gentrification projects that sprang up from time to time in crowded cities. Abutting a more worn, seedier area to the west and upper-middle class property to the east, it accommodated young professionals with incomes on the rise.
Up a flight of well-worn stairs and down a poorly lighted corridor, a door at the end of the hall opened into a surprisingly spacious and homey apartment. Bella took in the sparse furnishings and understated décor. A man's place, arranged for convenience and comfort with minimal distraction.
Rafe pushed her into a deep, oversized arm chair that faced a giant plasma television screen, propped her feet on the hassock in front of the chair, and left the living area through a white shuttered swinging door. Bella glanced at the small end table to her left, littered with half-opened mail, yesterday's newspaper, and the latest television guide.
He returned moments later bearing a small first-aid kit containing bandages, antibiotics, and hydrogen peroxide, along with a clean white towel. He pushed the end-table contents onto the floor, set down the items, and knelt to inspect her knees. As he hunched over her wounds, she noted the flecks of gray woven through the thick jet waves.
"This might sting," he warned, dabbing at her knee with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball.
"Ouch!"
"Don't be a baby," he chastised, blowing on her knee and sounding exactly like Consuelo. But the slight roughness of his callused fingertips as he held her calf wasn't anything at all like her sister's touch.
"That's fine," she said impatiently, attempting to rise from the chair.
"Whoa, there, you're not going anywhere until I bandage that knee."
He shoved her back down and quickly smoothed ointment onto the abrasion, then fitted on a large bandage. Without a word he took her hands in his and examined the scrapes on the heels. Dabbing them with more peroxide, he then placed them in her lap, his own large hands covering hers.
Now his face hovered inches from hers as he examined her eyes. She hated the strong betrayers of her emotions, the flush that crept into her normally pale cheeks and the pattering of her heart.
"Is it that hard for you to let someone help you, Isabella?" Rafe's breath fanned her cheek and the tangy scent of liquor filled her nostrils. He seemed sincerely curious and rather gentle.
She blinked furiously and protested, "I let people help me." Her voice sounded thi
ck in her own ears.
"Like hell you do," he said softly, tucking an errant curl behind her ear. An eternity passed with him alternating between staring at her lips and examining her eyes. And then he said what she'd been thinking all along. "Do you want to kiss me, Isabella?" Her name rolled off his tongue with the intoxicating accent of one schooled in her native tongue. Ees – sah – BEL - la.
She expected it, but even so, she felt a thrill of shock when what they'd begun in the bar and continued in the alley looked like it might finish right here in Rafe's apartment. The night's danger fled her mind like trees stripped bare on a windy day.
"Do you, Isabella?" he murmured again, just as if he'd read her mind, and the answer to the question was a simple, unqualified yes.
"What about my knee?" she whispered staring at his mouth. "What about the scrapes on my hands?" She held them up for his inspection as if they were proof of required kissing.
He took her hands in both of his, smoothing rough fingertips over the tender palms, and then in turn, lifting each one to his mouth and placing gentle kisses on them. Then he leaned in slowly to kiss her mouth. Not like the kiss in the alley, not the heated passion of mating, but a gentle melding of two people in tentative like with each other.
Tremors started in her thighs and injured knee and traveled upward to her shoulders while tears prickled her eyes. Clearly recognizing her case of the shakes, Rafe pulled her into his arms. He brushed back the damp hair from her forehead and wrapped his large, hard body around her.
"It's just a delayed reaction." He spoke into her temple, his lips warm against her skin. "Don't worry."
Swiping at her tears, Bella gave him a little shove, her arm braced against his chest. "What kind of idiot reacts to an event hours after the fact?"
He smiled. "A normal kind of idiot." He picked up another bandage and affixed it to her shin where a smaller abrasion had begun to redden. Then he sat back to admire his handiwork. "There, I think you're put back together again, Humpty."
Chapter Six
Diego Vargas stepped back from the dead body and wiped his feet on the short grassy patch at the water's edge. "Fuck!" He leaned over to peer at his shoes. "These loafers just came last week from Italy. You want to know how much they cost me?"
Gabriel Santos glanced up in carefully controlled irritation from where he crouched over the man's body. The question was rhetorical, he knew, but still a ridiculous comment when compared to the more serious problem he knelt over – the bluish body lying on a black tarp.
He eyed his boss's scowl and erased all emotion from his own face. Santos had been an actor in the old days. Well, a stunt man at any rate. But perhaps that was not the same thing. Perhaps he was no actor at all, but had only the credentials to take and give a serious beating.
The dead man lying naked before them had been an actor too, an up-and-coming young star full of bright promise. At least, according to the tabloids. He lay on his back, his lips a darker blue than the pale tinge of his flesh, his muscled body glowing in the light from Santos' flashlight. Fresh needle tracks marred his right arm, and his open eyes showed wide dilations of black that nearly eclipsed the blue of the irises.
Santos knew if the actor's so-called friends had called 911 at the onset of overdose, the naloxone cocktail the EMTs administered might have saved his life. But paramedics and emergency room doctors asked too many questions whose answers could not safely be scrutinized. So the young actor had died with fatally low blood pressure, rattling respirations, and convulsion.
It was an ugly death to behold.
Apparently the dead actor was too estúpido to realize the smack he'd just purchased at the Blue Mango Cocktail Lounge in Bakersfield should be used sparingly. The China White was much purer than the black tar heroin the gang-bangers schlepped over the border from México. A fraction of the drug was enough to kill someone.
As evidenced by the body before them.
"¡Idiota de mierda! Fucking idiot. Such pure smack is wasted on someone like this." Diego shook his head and spat toward the body.
Santos sighed inwardly and shuttered his eyes. "DNA," he reminded, referring to the spit, although of course, the warning was too late. Ay, sometimes he believed that Diego was the idiot. Spitting near a dead body? Now Santos would have to dump the young actor's body somewhere else to avoid any chance of El Vaquero's DNA being connected to the overdose victim.
Santos sighed again as he reached for the edges of the tarp he'd used to transport the body. He wrapped it around the stiffening corpse, hefted the slight weight onto his shoulders, and trudged toward the black sedan parked in the breakdown lane at the top of the promontory. Diego strolled ahead of him, fishing in the breast pocket of his jacket for a cigarette and whistling a tuneless melody.
Santos wondered yet again why he worked for such a man.
On the drive to another dump site, Santos thought of the beautiful face of Magdalena Vargas and knew exactly why he put up with a pig of a man like Diego Vargas. He smiled to himself. It was true that El Vaquero paid very well for the kind of services only Santos could deliver.
But it was also true that the wife of Señor Vargas was worth more than gold. What was it the Bible said? Her price was far above rubies.
"Why do you grin like a jackass?" Diego complained from the back seat. "A man's death is a funny event?"
"Vaquero, I deal in death every day." Santos shrugged philosophically. "If I did not find humor at such a time, when would I laugh?"
"Verdad." Vargas barked out a harsh laugh. "And the loss of such a man is not so significant."
He leaned over the seat to tap his bodyguard on the shoulder. "There must be no more of these foolish deaths, Gabriel. No more." He punctuated each word with a sharp jab to Santos' shoulder and then blew cigarette smoke into the side of his face. "Our distributors must let their customers know how pure the China White heroin is."
"Yes."
Vargas sat back and gazed at the glowing tip of his cigarette. Through the rearview mirror, Santos watched him. Ay, did El Vaquero expect the distributors to hold a seminar in safe drug usage of illegal substances?
Santos smiled again, but this time discreetly.
#
Humpty dumpty, indeed, Bella thought, pushing away. Rafe, no-last-name, was trouble with a large dose of sex appeal, and while she'd thought that's what she wanted, she now realized with the Vargas case on her plate a distraction was the last thing she needed. "I should call a cab," she decided.
"Nuh uh," he insisted, "You've had a shock and you're not going anywhere until you rest."
"But my clothes ... my sisters ... " She stared at her sister's dress smudged with dirt, oil, and God knew what else. The ruined clothes against her skin made her feel vulnerable. She heard the rising panic in her voice, the shakes taking over again. "I don't want to wear these anymore."
"Okay, I'll find something for you to put on." He headed down a short hallway off the main room, and she heard the opening and closing of drawers and closets. Returning a few moments later, he handed her a stack of clothing. "Try these. You might have to roll up the sleeves and legs." He examined her face. "Maybe you should get washed up first. You'll feel better when you've showered."
She opened her mouth to protest, but clamped down on her jaw, then snatched the clothes from his hands and marched down the hall to the room he'd just exited. At the entry, she paused, eyeing him suspiciously. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing," she said as she reached the door. Did he think she was a complete fool?
She glanced around the luxurious bedroom suite. To the left rose a bank of four narrow windows that stretched from floor to ceiling with white wooden shutters opened wide so she could see the clear, dark sky through the slats. All three doors to the right of the bed were closed. Maybe she was an idiot. She didn't know which was the bathroom.
Amused, Rafe listened to the slamming of the bedroom door. He'd let her keep her pride. The first tremors of panic after an assault were all t
oo familiar to him, the vulnerability that hung on long after the attack was over.
He hadn't felt these emotions for years, but he remembered them vividly. Right now showing her claws was healthier than giving way to hysteria. When he heard the sound of running water minutes later, he figured she'd found her way around his bathroom. He used the time to make a call about the suspicious evidence he'd examined in the alley.
Max Jensen, a local homicide detective, was catching tonight. "Blood, huh?" Max said after listening to the account of the attack in the alley. "Why'd you call me, Rafe? Why not your field office?"
"Just reporting an assault."
"But you didn't go to the hospital, right? No one sustained injuries?"
Rafe ran his fingers over his temple. "The lump over my eye might argue with you, but no, neither of us got seriously hurt."
Max laughed. "Shit, I figure your head's too hard."
"Check that alley, Max. I'm pretty sure that was blood I found. Recent."
"I'll send a crime scene unit out."
"And check out the bartender, would you? I have a feeling about him. Hold him overnight if you can."
Max snorted. "Sure, old buddy. LAPD lives to serve the DEA's needs."
By the time Isabella walked back into the living room, Rafe had tended to his own wounds, showered in the guest bathroom, and dressed in sweats and a long-sleeved police academy tee-shirt.
"Feeling better?" he asked when she curled up in the wide armchair across from where he sat nursing a brandy.
She nodded. "Thanks for the clothes."
The oversized tee-shirt was a remnant from his college days at Stanford. The hardened peaks of her breasts told him she wore nothing underneath it. She'd turned up the sweatpants several times so that her red painted toes stuck out beneath the rolled hem.
The unexpected image of a pair of red panties popped into his maverick brain. Tonight was stacking up to be a long night, and his self-control was ebbing fast. Maybe calling that cab wasn't a bad idea after all.
But instead, he strode toward the bedroom, calling over his shoulder. "I've got fresh sheets for the bed. You should get some sleep."