“You seem surprised,” Ruben said after they placed their orders. “Were you expecting me to take you to a cheap taquería instead?”
“To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect.” Luisa spread her napkin in her lap. “I still don’t.”
Ruben pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his aquiline nose, but they quickly slipped back down to the pointed tip.
“Are you always this suspicious?”
Luisa angled her chair so she was facing the door instead of sitting with her back to it. She wasn’t expecting anything to happen in such a public place and in front of so many potential witnesses, but if it did, she wanted to see it coming instead of getting caught by surprise.
“It’s what makes me a good police officer.”
“Being a good police officer could also get you killed.”
“Is that what happened to Carlos Ramos?”
Ruben’s eyes widened behind his thick corrective lenses, and he nearly choked on the complimentary chips and salsa the waitress had brought out shortly after they were seated.
“I could speculate about what happened to Carlos,” he said, taking a sip of water, “but no one knows for sure. Have you found anything in the case files that might lead you to his whereabouts?”
Luisa leaned back in her seat to give the waitress room to place her loaded chicken burrito and side of guacamole on the table. Despite the presence of the fragrant food and boisterous diners, the outing was starting to feel less like lunch and more like a fishing expedition.
She had discovered a few potential leads that hadn’t already been released to the public—such as the missing flap of skin on the four unidentified murder victims’ forearms—but some were years old, and she wouldn’t be able to determine how promising they might turn out to be until she followed up on them. She decided to keep that information to herself, however. She couldn’t risk having her nascent investigation compromised—by internal or external forces.
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
Ruben’s burrito weighed more than he did, but he devoured half of it before Luisa had taken more than a couple bites of hers.
“I, for one, am rooting for you,” he said, reaching for more chips and salsa. “Carlos Ramos was a good man. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.” The sentiment held an air of certainty Ruben probably didn’t intend to reveal because he immediately backtracked from his statement. “Whatever that might turn out to be, of course.”
Luisa was tempted to ask him what he knew, but she didn’t want to be too obvious and scare away a potential source—or possible suspect. She took a sip of her bottled water to give Ruben time to burn off his nervousness but pressed forward before he could get too comfortable.
“Do you think it’s more likely Ramos was paid off or rubbed out?”
Ruben frowned like she had besmirched the dead man’s honor. “Like I said, Carlos was a good man. I know his family. I knew him. We grew up in the same town.” His voice shook with emotion, revealing ties that were personal, not just professional. “He wasn’t dirty. He was trying to get at the truth. In the end, I think the truth found him.”
The irony of Ruben’s words didn’t escape Luisa. The truth was supposed to set you free, but it might have gotten Carlos Ramos killed. And if she weren’t careful, she could very well be next.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Ruben said. “I’m so far out of the loop in Records, I’m usually the last to know anything. But if I see or hear something you can use, I promise to share it with you.”
Luisa deliberately kept her expression blank so she wouldn’t betray either her excitement or her lingering doubts.
“What would you expect from me in return?”
“I want you to catch the bastards that most likely killed my friend.”
Luisa had been trained to tell when a suspect was lying to her. She examined Ruben’s face and body language for telltale signs he was being less than honest but found none. She tossed her napkin on the table and extended her hand.
“You’ve got a deal.”
❖
Finn checked the schedule. The day’s agenda was pretty light, most likely geared toward allowing the people who had signed up for optional excursions to feel like they weren’t missing out on something by being away from the hotel for hours on end. The pool games had just ended. She and the five members of her team had piled themselves on the same surfboard one by one and maneuvered it around the pool using only their arms and legs to propel them. They had finished a distant second to a bunch of ringers who had obviously played the game before. That was her excuse, anyway, and she was sticking to it.
With the pool games over for the day, her options for the rest of the afternoon included sitting through a presentation on SOS Tours’ upcoming vacations, taking a dance lesson in the fitness center, or trying her hand at speed dating on the beach. She could get a list of next year’s scheduled trips on SOS’s website, she already knew how to dance, and she still had nightmares from the last time she had tried to impress someone in sixty seconds or less. To save herself from further shame, she decided to take a walk on the beach in the hopes of capturing a few photographs to accompany her upcoming article and to see if she could make it from one end to the other before the tide rolled in.
The beach was narrower than she expected. The part closest to the water was hard-packed and easier to walk on, but the sharp angle made keeping her balance tricky. That left the soft-packed sand, which made for slow going and gave her a serious workout. Her calves and thighs were burning in no time. Perfect since her arms and shoulders were still numb from the thirty minutes she had spent trying to paddle a lesbian-laden surfboard around the pool.
“I used to think I was in pretty good shape until I started trying to keep up with these women.”
They not only partied hard. They played that way, too.
After she took a picture of two women walking hand in hand in the surf, she thumbed through some of the images she had already captured on her digital camera. The earliest photos she had taken after she arrived in Cancún were of her room, the hotel, and the surrounding grounds.
It was easier for her to focus on landscapes and animals rather than people. Money shots for the magazine subscribers who were as addicted to travel porn as she was.
The pictures of iguanas sunning themselves on the sidewalk and bath towels folded to look like cranes gradually gave way to more personal images. Jill pensively staring at the sea from her perch on a beachside cabana. Aurora floating in the water while her handlers held her aloft. Katie leading a group of Indies through a game of Twister during Happy Hour at the seafront bar. Sasha learning to fly on the trapeze as she rehearsed for tomorrow night’s amateur circus.
Finn felt a connection to these women. These five hundred strangers who were starting to feel like lifelong friends. Some were marginalized at home and weren’t able to be out year-round. But for this week at least, they were finally, utterly free.
Finn shook her head, marveling at how far the gay rights movement had come over the years—and how many strides still needed to be made. But she was proud to find herself in the company of these women and overjoyed she was able to address many of them by name. Who would have thought when she left San Francisco a few days ago she would end up here? Not alone or surrounded by strangers, but among friends.
Her assignment no longer felt like a job. It felt like coming home.
And then there was Luisa. Finn glanced at the picture Luisa had taken of her and Porky Pig in the airport bar in Dallas. Then she slid over to the photograph she had taken of Luisa at the hotel less than a mile away. Luisa was smiling and happy in the photo, her brown skin standing in sharp contrast to the white sheets tangled around her semi-covered body.
Finn hadn’t felt the need to define their relationship then, but she needed some boundaries now. Was Luisa a friend? Was she a lover? Or was she something else entirely?
Finn had never felt this way before. Th
is strange combination of falling and flying she experienced each time she heard Luisa’s voice or called her image to mind. Was this what it felt like to be in love, or was Montezuma exacting an entirely different kind of revenge?
The only time she had felt something remotely similar was back in high school when she realized she couldn’t mend Nancy Everhart’s broken heart because she wanted to be the one Nancy was crying over instead of the quarterback who had dumped her for the head cheerleader. Then she had attributed the feeling to finding herself. Now it was due to finding someone else.
She had been searching for something her whole life. A new destination, a new experience. Always something new. And always just out of reach. Was Luisa who she had been searching for this whole time? Could Luisa give her everything she had been trying to find, or would she keep waiting for the phone to ring? For the next adventure to come calling. Could she stop trying to outrun the past and enjoy the present?
Finn powered off her camera and looked back to see how far she had walked during the thirty minutes since she had left the resort. The Mariposa was still in sight but several properties away. Dozens more multimillion-dollar hotels and resorts loomed in the distance. She looped her camera strap over her shoulder and kept going, though the hotels on the end of the beach seemed just as far away as they had when she’d first set out on her spur-of-the-moment journey.
After another hour of walking, she resigned herself to the fact she wouldn’t make it to the end of the spit of land curling in the distance. On foot, the trip would probably take at least two hours one way, and Mother Nature had other plans. Finn watched as dark clouds began to roll in, obscuring the hotels on the far end of the beach and sending frustrated sunbathers in search of shelter. Then she moved out of the way as the twelve camouflage-clad Federal Police patrolling the area drove their four all-terrain vehicles toward Mariposa’s end of the beach.
“Do you need a lift, miss?” one driver asked after he skidded to a stop.
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
The two gunmen on the back of the ATV eyed her up and down before the roar of a passing speedboat forced them to turn their attention back to the water, where several windsurfers and two parasailers were continuing to play despite the bad weather slowly making its way toward them.
Finn felt a sudden sense of foreboding but attributed it to the dark skies in the distance and the ominous roll of thunder that made the sand vibrate beneath her bare feet. The storm was closing in fast.
“You’ve got about thirty minutes before the skies open up,” the driver said. “I suggest you head for cover if you don’t want to get wet.” He flashed a disarming grin. “Don’t you hate it when it rains in paradise?”
He flipped his visor over his eyes and sped off without waiting for an answer. The gunmen kept one arm curled around their assault rifles and wrapped the other around the rollover bar that had been attached to the modified vehicle.
Finn squinted as the ATV’s oversized wheels kicked up sand in its wake. The encounter with the policemen reminded her of Luisa. Luisa had the same professional manner the driver had shown, and Finn bet she’d look great in camouflage. Great. Even more fuel for her fantasies.
Not for the first time, Finn wondered when—or if—she and Luisa would see each other again. Had their encounter in Dallas been the only one they would have, or would it turn out to be the first of many?
Luisa wasn’t the first woman Finn had met while she was on the road, but Luisa was definitely the first she longed to see again. And the first she was reluctant to leave. But how could she possibly stay when leaving was what she did best? For her, saying good-bye was infinitely easier than saying hello. Or sometimes saying anything at all.
She headed to the bar as the first drops of rain began to fall. She ordered a drink as the room started to fill. When her phone rang, she was surprised to see it was Luisa calling several hours before she expected to hear from her.
“I would ask how things were going,” Luisa said, “but from the sound of it, I’d say things were going quite well.”
Finn tipped the bartender a dollar for her mojito and moved to a quieter locale so she could hear better. She slipped inside the theater, where several women were auditioning for Lovers and Friends, the game that would provide tomorrow night’s entertainment. The competition was an SOS favorite and pitted two sets of best friends against two couples to see who knew more about the other, those who were in a platonic relationship or those who were in a romantic one. Finn had read that some women couldn’t wait to enter the competition while others would rather watch others squirm than put their own relationships on the line by not being able to provide the right answers to questions such as her pet name for her lover’s lady parts or the most unusual place they’d had sex.
Finn saw Jill and Ryan in the crowd of hopefuls. Communication appeared to be the key to doing well in the game, but Jill and Ryan seemed to have a distinct lack of it, considering Jill was in love with Ryan and Ryan didn’t seem to realize it. Nevertheless, she gave them a thumbs-up to show her support for their quest to be chosen over the dozens of applicants.
“This is new,” Finn said, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t disturb the auditions.
“I was following up on some leads on a cold case. My appointment ended earlier than I expected, so I decided to check in with you before I headed back to the office.”
“Did you catch the bad guys?”
“Not yet. I spent the afternoon beating my head against a wall of silence, but I feel like I may be on to something. I’ll know more tomorrow.”
Finn noticed Luisa answered the question without providing any details about where she had been or who she had gone to see. Not that Finn wanted to know. She hated the idea of Luisa risking her life over what was probably a lost cause—ending Mexico’s drug trade was an impossible task hundreds of other law enforcement officials had tried and failed to accomplish—but she admired Luisa’s persistence.
“But I didn’t call to talk shop,” Luisa said. “I called to let you know I have a dinner date Saturday night.”
Finn felt a pang of jealousy until she heard the mirth in Luisa’s voice. “So you and Javier are finally going to get together?”
“Mrs. Villalobos offered me tamales. How could I say no?”
“So food is the way to your heart. I’ve been going about this the wrong way. I thought all I needed to do was to ply you with beer and ironic humor.”
“That’s how you get me in bed, but it isn’t how you get me to stay.”
“No? How do I do that?” Finn held her breath, anxious to hear Luisa’s response.
“I could tell you, but that would be taking the easy way out. You strike me as someone who would rather discover things on her own than be spoon-fed the answer. That’s you in a nutshell, isn’t it?”
Finn laughed softly, remembering the way Luisa’s face lit up when she was amused and how it glowed when she made love. How could someone who could be so warm and loving in bed be made of steel at work? Was it the gun, the badge, or something inside her that helped her make the change? Finn didn’t know the answer, but she looked forward to finding it.
“How do you know so much about me, super cop?”
“I can tell everything I need to know about a woman by the way she makes love.”
Finn scooted down in her seat. She wished she had taken Luisa’s call in her room instead of a public place. Then she could have been free to steer the conversation in a much different direction.
“Is that what that was back in Dallas, an interrogation technique? If so, you are really good at your job. Perhaps I should plead the Fifth next time.”
“That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun, though, would it?” Luisa’s voice deepened the way it had in the bar. When she had invited Finn to follow her and Finn had done so without thinking twice. “But I’m sure I could still find a way to make you talk.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Is that
a dare?”
“I would never dare someone who’s licensed to carry a gun. Consider it a challenge instead.”
“In that case, challenge accepted.”
Finn shuddered, her body awash in memories—and a fresh wave of desire. She wondered how upset Brett would be if she blew off tomorrow afternoon’s activities in favor of a day trip to Mexico City. She and Luisa had crammed a lifetime into two hours. Imagine what they could do with four or more. Unfortunately, this time the risk exceeded the reward. Luisa had to work, and if she didn’t complete her assignment, Brett might conveniently lose her number when it was time for a new one. Then where would she be? Miserable and missing a paycheck, that’s where.
“By the time I’m done,” Luisa said, “you’re going to tell me everything there is to know about you.”
Finn usually liked leaving some things unsaid to provide an air of mystery, but Luisa made her want to open up and spill all her secrets. She wanted to share herself with Luisa. In every way. But if she put herself out there, she didn’t want to do it alone.
“Do you promise to return the favor?” she asked.
“Of course. What do you want to know first?”
“Everything.”
“That could take a while.”
“That’s what I’m counting on. So when you call me tonight, start from the beginning and go slow.”
“Whatever you say, mariposa.”
“See how much easier life is when you agree with me?”
“I see how much easier my life is with you in it. That means something, doesn’t it?”
Finn’s breath caught. This was the point when she usually ran the other way. Fighting her instincts, she decided to move closer.
“It means everything.”
❖
Luisa didn’t like to bring her work home with her, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the trip she had made to Santa Martha Jail that afternoon. She wanted to forget the jeers and whistles that had greeted her arrival. She wanted to forget the smell of piss, shit, and sweat that assaulted her nose. She wanted to forget the fruitless interview she had conducted with Salvador Perez, a sullen teenager too caught up in the vicious cycle of machismo, fear, and intimidation to answer her questions. And most of all, she wanted to forget Director Chavez ripping her a new asshole for planning to visit Perez’s mother in Agua Dulce tomorrow without taking backup along for the ride. He had praised her dedication and investigative instincts just as he had during their first meeting, but that had come long after he had started his harangue.
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