The Traitor

by Jo Robertson

  She smiled, but wondered if it were true because she certainly thought she might be half in love with Rafe.

  #

  As Bella pulled out of the hospital parking lot, she thought with satisfaction of what they'd accomplished today. Everything was signed, sealed and delivered. Santos had refused any kind of protective custody with a sly smile that spoke volumes of his ruthlessness in saving his own neck.

  Edgy and restless, she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.

  Was Rafe still with Max? Why hadn't he contacted her? Dammit, if he planned to confront Jensen, she was going to be there, too.

  Less than an hour later, Bella pulled into the circular, gravel driveway in front of the house where Rafe had given her directions. The house was in a marginal neighborhood where row upon row of cookie cutter houses, new forty or fifty years ago, now lined streets with broken out street lights and grass growing between the sidewalk cracks.

  The house to which Rafe had directed her – 1300 Morene Way – was a little less dilapidated than the others. A white house with green trim, it sat further back from the street and boasted a large oak tree in the scanty lawn of the front yard. She didn't see Rafe's car.

  Bella rang the doorbell, but not hearing a corresponding sound, rapped sharply on the door. Max answered, looking casual in jeans, a black tee shirt and sandals. He held a large spatula and wore a draped cloth around his waist.

  His light blue eyes swept her from head to foot. "Hi, Bella. It's good to see you again."

  "Hi, Max. I need to talk to Rafe."

  "Early lunch," he said, holding the door wide. "Barbecue. Are you hungry?"

  She still wore the black suit and sheer white blouse she'd put on for the Santos interview and looked down self- consciously.

  "Never mind that," Max said, gesturing through the living area toward a patio door that looked out on a small, neglected back yard. A platter of produce sat alongside several bottles of condiments on a high, but narrow, serving table on the back patio.

  Bella glanced around the living area, which opened up onto a tiny kitchen to the left. One lonely bar stool was pushed up against the counter.

  The living room itself held only a small television teetering on a wooden box by a fireplace and a single recliner. A folding tray held several pieces of mail, an empty beer bottle, and a magazine.

  She ducked her head back into the foyer which opened up to another nearly empty room on the right. Not only did the house have a general air of deterioration, but it was practically devoid of furnishings. "Where's Rafe?"

  Max shrugged. "Said he had business in town. He'll be back tonight. The burgers are ready to flip."

  She nodded, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Something didn't sit right with her about Max and the house, but she put on a bright smile and tried to shake off the queasy feeling.

  "My grandmother just got out of the hospital and went into long-term care at a nursing home in Sacramento," Max explained. "My uncle Brian is kind of a lazy dude, hasn't gotten around to getting the house ready to sell."

  He took a deep pull on his beer. "He's sold most of the furniture, but actually, this works out well for me."

  "I'm glad you have a place to stay," Bella murmured politely.

  "Yeah, well, staying with my wife in L.A. wasn't an option." He grimaced. "And I thought I could keep busy doing repairs around here while I get my head straight."

  Bella heard the bitterness in his voice and mentally chastised her silent criticism of him. After all, the man's wife had left him. She flashed him a sympathetic look.

  Max handed her a soda. "So, how's the case going?" he asked as he scooped burgers off the grill.

  "Good." She wasn't going to elaborate about the deal she'd made with Santos. Not around a man she hardly knew.

  "I was helping Rafe down in L.A., so I know all about Vargas and Santos."

  Bella remained silent. Maybe she did or didn't trust the police officer, but she'd learned her lessons well from Slater. Play your cards very close to the chest and only reveal what you absolutely had to, especially to someone who was an unknown factor.

  "Rafe said you've got someone to turn on Vargas," Max said casually.

  Bella nodded briefly. "Bathroom?" She held up her hands.

  Max stared directly at her, ignoring the request. "Really? That's great. Who?"

  Amazed at the man's audacity, she mumbled, "Still too early in the deal. I'd rather not say." She smiled to soften the rejection. "Don't want to jinx anything."

  Startlingly Max changed the subject. "Did Rafe tell you how me and him came to know each other?"

  "College, wasn't it?" Bella answered, wondering where he was headed.

  "We were college roommates, freshman year," he explained, a distant, puzzled look on his face as if he were trying to figure the answer to a math problem. "But we knew each other since fifth grade. He was a skinny little dude all the kids razzed because of his dark skin and tight hair."

  Bella looked thoughtfully across the rim of her soda can, feeling puzzled by the strange turn of Max's conversation.

  "He was ten years old, his mom had just dragged him from the deadly heat of the Middle East, and he spoke with his weird Arabic accent."

  The Middle East? Rafe had never told her anything about his ethnicity, his family, or his homeland. A shock of alarm trailed down her back. How could she know this man so intimately and yet not have learned important and basic details about him?

  "Yeah, the dude got his ass kicked nearly every day on the playground until I began standing up for him." His voice hardened and his eyes sparked. "I can't even count the number of times I rescued him." Max chortled mirthlessly.

  "Then he shot up like a giant during eighth grade." He finished his beer and lined it up next to four other bottles on the ground. "And he didn't need me to save him anymore."

  "Bathroom?" Bella said again.

  Max was unfolding a volume of history, but she couldn't decipher the subtext of the words. Something was off, but what?

  Max looked nonplussed for a moment. "Sure. Down the hall to the right."

  "Thanks."

  He flashed an easy grin. "Anything for Rafe's girlfriend."

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Santos drove away from the courthouse after signing his official statement in front of Isabella Torres, along with the incompetent district attorney, Charles Barrington. Unfinished business loomed ahead of him – business he could no longer put off, so he hurried.

  He was certain the loose-lipped Barrington would inadvertently leak the deal to someone, who would get word to Jensen. Taking out a police detective was a serious matter, but in this thing, Vargas was correct, if not for the right reasons. Jensen presented a dangerous threat to Santos, who had hoped the detective could remain as his informant long after Vargas was sitting in a federal penitentiary or state prison.

  Now he realized the timing of the matter was all wrong. Santos would have to create his own network of informants after Vargas was gone, and after all, that was probably the wise thing to do. Arrangements, of course, would be made regarding Diego Vargas, and Santos was confident El Vaquero would not survive the length of the trial.

  When he arrived at the ramshackle place where Jensen was staying, he drove slowly by the house for a cursory look and then parked some distance away. He walked casually down the street.

  No children played on the streets. No teenagers loitered on doorsteps. No housewives gardened nor old men walked their dogs. The neighborhood bore the stamp of careless neglect, a community running steadily downhill from middle class to low income.

  When he approached the house, he walked stealthily around the side yard, through the unlocked gate, and paused at the corner of the back patio. The door was open and through the screen he heard voices.

  "I didn't hurt her, Hash. I let her go. That's gotta mean something." Max Jensen's voice, jittery and manic.

  The other voice was muffled as if the man spoke around a swollen tongue.
"What happened to you, Max? God, what made you turn like this?"

  The questions were full of anger, but anguish too. Santos could hear the pain in the other man's voice.

  "Fuck you, Hashemi!" A loud, sickening whack of metal against flesh. A sound Santos was well familiar with.

  Another scuffle while Santos ducked his head around the back patio sliding door. Jensen faced away from him, kicking the bleeding body at his feet. Without warning the man on the floor grasped Jensen's ankle as it aimed one last blow toward his head. Jensen went down with a thud while Hashemi struggled to stand upright.

  Santos was not eager to intervene in a contest between two gringos, both law enforcement men, but he did not like to see an uneven match, and Jensen had both the pistol and a wicked knife in his hands.

  #

  While in Max's bathroom, Bella had made a cursory check of all the rooms. No Rafe. She had no choice but to leave.

  She would never know what prompted her to turn back after she left Max Jensen in the near house. Perhaps the smug look on his face, perhaps a sense of combativeness.

  Maybe she was the "little warrior" Santos had called her.

  Whatever changed her mind, twenty minutes from the seedy neighborhood, she veered right into a Taco Bell parking lot, made a u-turn, and headed back the way she'd come, all the while punching in Rafe's number on her cell phone. Each time it went direct to voice mail.

  Where are you, she wondered, worry a lump of fear in the middle of her chest.

  If Rafe had intended to confront Max Jensen directly, why had he gone off, as Max claimed? Jensen's name was not among those Santos had revealed in his recorded statement, so where was the proof against Max?

  Maybe her instincts were wrong. Maybe Max was just what he appeared to be – a good detective and a good friend to Rafe.

  When she reached the house in Highland Heights, she heard muffled voices and didn't bother with polite knocks this time. She pounded on the front door.

  "Let me in, Max! I know Rafe's in there." She twisted the knob. Locked. "Open up!"

  A moment later the door jerked open and Max grabbed her arm before she could react. He shoved her into the living room, still holding her upper arm in a vise-like grip.

  She saw Rafe, bloody and beaten, struggling to stand against the far wall. "What did you do to him?" she screamed.

  "It's your fault, you little bitch. We were like brothers and I had to stuff him in a bloody closet to hide him from you! I thought I'd killed him! You turned him against me."

  He's mad, she thought. Insane.

  "Keep her out of this, Max." From the corner of the room Rafe's voice was thready and he looked barely able to stand. His shirt was smeared with blood.

  "Shut up, Hashemi." Max's voice quavered with drink and delusion.

  Bella thought she detected a wound in Rafe's upper left chest. Bullet? God, the blood loss was horrendous. "Let me tend to him. He's losing so much blood."

  "Why didn't you just fucking tell me who it was?" Jensen's voice resonated crazily, tinged with panic. "Who made the deal to give Vargas up? It didn't have to come to this, Hash."

  #

  Santos pulled his weapon and stepped into the kitchen from the concrete floor of the patio.

  "Stop it! Let me go!" Isabella shouted, anger tinged with fear in her voice.

  A loud smack and a harsh gasp.

  Santos was an expert marksman. He had no doubt of his prowess in that area, but through the open door, he saw Jensen holding Isabella in a death grip, his gun arm wrapped around her chest and waist from behind, a knife glinting at her throat.

  Her cheek bore a large red mark where Jensen had slapped her and her blouse was torn. One shoe lay across the room, the heel broken.

  "You bitch!" Even as Jensen snarled the words, Santos could hear the slurring that indicated he was under the influence of drugs. His eyes were wildly dilated and his face flushed.

  Santos stepped into the room, holding his weapon leisurely at his side. "Detective Jensen." His voice was a calm contrast to the chaos in the room.

  "Santos!" His eyes bulged out of their sockets and he shook his head as if to clear his vision. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

  "You and I – we have unfinished business."

  Understanding slowly crawled over Jensen's face. "You! God, you screwed me over, you son-of-a-bitch!"

  "Easy, Detective Jensen."

  Santos turned to Isabella. "Are you all right, Miss Torres?"

  She nodded without speaking, but Jensen did not loosen his grip on her.

  "Let Miss Torres go, por favor."

  "Fuck no!" Jensen screamed.

  "I do not like to make requests more than once, but for you I will. Let the assistant district attorney go."

  Santos heard his own voice, calm and deadly, a sign to those who knew him that his anger was barely controlled. "And I will not cut out your tongue."

  What happened next occurred within seconds, but to Bella they seemed unbearably long. She saw Santos raise the gun he'd dangled so carelessly from his fingers at the same moment she felt the sharp prick of the knife at her neck and smelled the coppery odor of her blood trickling from the wound.

  Instinctively she collapsed her legs beneath her, shifting her weight so that Max's body was exposed. She heard the loud report of the weapon in the small room and smelled the acrid odor of the gunshot residue.

  Max toppled to the floor as a red flower blossomed on his chest and the knife and gun clattered from his hands.

  Santos stepped forward, kicked the weapons away and checked Max's pulse, but Bella knew by the vacant look of his eyes, that he was already dead.

  "Are you all right?" Santos asked, helping her to her feet.

  As the shock of the near fatality reached her brain, Bella began trembling, her teeth chattering and her knees weak. Santos led her to the single chair and pushed her head between her legs even as she struggled to get to Rafe.

  "Breathe slowly and deeply," he advised. "In and out. Slow. Muy bueno." His voice was a deep rumble that was oddly comforting.

  After a moment she slapped his hand away and scrabbled to catch Rafe as he tumbled to the floor. "Towels," she shouted, and surprisingly, Santos did her bidding.

  She staunched the blood flow and felt for a pulse. "Call 911," she ordered.

  "Lo siento mucho," Santos replied, a near comical look on his face. "I'm very sorry, but I cannot remain." He dialed emergency and relayed the information to the operator.

  A moment later she looked up to see him standing over her. "Thank you," she whispered, wondering at the oddity of the situation. Of Santos being their rescuer.

  She looked up at him through her lashes. "Max Jensen was the one name you didn't give me," she reprimanded, hearing the petulance in her voice. "You held out on me."

  Santos laughed. "I see you are recovered, poco combatiente, and ready to do battle." His white teeth gleamed in his burnished face.

  As he knelt beside her to press another towel on Rafe's chest, she noticed his hands for the first time.

  They were lined with white scars slashing through the dark skin, but they were well-shaped, the fingers long and perfect like an artist's. Suddenly she remembered his first name, which she'd remained ignorant of all the months she'd been working on the Vargas case until she took his statement this morning.

  Gabriel. She stared at his hands and imagined the fingers gently tapping out the sweet, haunting notes of a trumpet.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Bella ran a finger down Rafe's bare chest, in a highly distracting movement. "Do you want to talk?"

  "About what?"

  She lifted one slender shoulder, her face quiet and sympathetic. "Max."

  He shook his head.

  As they sprawled across her wide, comfortable bed, they'd discussed the ramifications, all angles of the case until they were both sick of it, Rafe imagined. Disgusted by the wide ring of human trafficking, the sordid circle of drugs and dealers, the abuse
of Magdalena Vargas and her daughter.

  Gabriel Santos had arranged for the girl to live with her mother's relatives in Mexico. Magdalena Vargas was still missing. Diego Vargas awaited trial in Placer Hills.

  Isabella stretched her leg across him, her pretty toes painted a rich crimson which he found wantonly attractive. "Tell me a little about him," she urged.

  "Max? God, just like he said. I was a skinny dark-skinned kid whose mother was some kind of hippie reporter in the Middle East."

  He glanced down at her and ran his hand over her back. "My father was a soldier in the Jordanian army. They met, fell in love, made me in a single night of passion, and then he died in the Six Day War."

  "With Israel?"

  "Yeah."

  "Oh, Rafe. I'm so sorry."

  "Mom stayed ten years over there. She wanted me to learn the culture of my father, but finally she realized that part of that culture was indoctrinating males in their supreme role as patriarchs over their women and children." He laughed. "She was too much of a feminist to allow that, so she came back to the states."

  "And you were a strange fish out of water."

  "I was. Could hardly speak English, couldn't adjust to the sea of white faces around me."

  "But you inherited your mother's green eyes," she guessed, kissing him at the corner of each one. "Those beautiful, green eyes."

  "Freakish." He smiled. "Max was the only person who accepted me back then. After Nine Eleven, even though I was an agent by then, the storm came down on anyone of Arabic descent. Max stuck by me through all of it."

  And that was the trouble, he thought. Max had always been his wing man and the pain of his betrayal would remain a long time.

  Belatedly he realized he'd never asked Isabella the final detail of the deal she'd made with Santos. She'd told Rafe that Santos had given her everything she wanted, and added a bonus.

  "What was the bonus Santos gave you?" he asked, propping himself on one elbow.

  "My sister," she said simply.

  "Maria?"

  "Yes. Vargas is the one who took her. Santos has known all this time. He had a picture of her."