Marisela Morales 03 - Dirty Little Christmas - Julie Leto

by Contemporary Romance

  “This shouldn’t have happened,” she said once the story was told.

  “Then why did it?”

  “I don’t know,” Marisela said, dropping to her knees beside Toni and taking her and Lia’s hands in hers. “But I’ll find out. You know I will.”

  Toni muttered a long string of words in Italian. Marisela wasn’t fluent, but she picked up enough to know that the woman was battling between her instincts to protect her daughter and her desire to see justice done—which included outing Marisela to the police.

  “Where’s Belinda now?” Toni asked.

  “I don’t know,” Marisela answered.

  Toni squeezed her hand a little tighter, causing a lump of something warm and gooey to form in the back of her throat. She swallowed it, ignoring the hot, bitter taste.

  “What about your parents? Do they know?”

  Marisela shook her head. “No, and I can’t tell them. They’re in Orlando. I arranged for them to stay in a hotel tonight. They’ll be safe and by the time they get back, I’ll have found my sister. I swear, Toni. I won’t let anyone hurt her.”

  “You couldn’t stop them from hurting my Angelia.”

  “No, and they’ll pay for that. But first, I need to ask her some questions.”

  “The police—”

  “—don’t know about Belinda,” Marisela admitted.

  “They can help you! They have resources you don’t.”

  “I have Titan,” Marisela lied. She still had hope that her calls for assistance would be retrieved by one of the workaholics on the Blake payroll. But in the meantime, the company directive to keep law enforcement out of their business whenever possible solidified Marisela’s silence. If she needed them, she’d break the rule, but in the meantime, she couldn’t let them slow her down. “I can’t wait for the police to go through their procedures and policies. I need to find my sister.”

  She held back her ace in the hole—the fact that Belinda was pregnant. She knew this would light a fire under Lia’s mother, but it also might send her flying down the hall to wave down the nearest uniform. Unlike Marisela and Frankie, the Santorinis had faith in the system. They’d never had any reason not to.

  “If you want,” Marisela conceded, “anything Lia says, you can repeat to the police the minute I leave. But I need to get out there and start looking or I will lose my mind.”

  It seemed like a lifetime before Toni gave a curt nod, released Lia’s hand and backed away, but in seconds, Marisela had taken her place in the chair beside the bed. Lia’s head was no longer wrapped in gauze, but her left eye was covered by a protective shield, taped in place. Her cheeks were puckered and red. Her lips were as pale as ash. But despite how it scraped her core to do so, Marisela leaned in and whispered her name while shaking her just enough to wake her.

  “Marisela?” she ground out.

  “Lo siento, Lia,” Marisela apologized. “Lo siento del fondo de mi corazón.”

  Though it seemed like a struggle, Lia turned her head and smiled. The weak curve of her mouth tore directly into Marisela’s chest with more heat than a .45 hollow point.

  “I’m so sorry,” Marisela repeated. “From the bottom of my heart.”

  Lia gave her head a tiny shake, enough to communicate that Marisela’s regret—per usual—wasn’t required.

  “Where’s Belinda?”

  “I don’t know. I need you to tell me what you saw.”

  Lia’s tongue darted from her parched lips, but before Marisela could reach for the water cup on the wheeled tray, Toni slipped the straw into her daughter’s mouth.

  “Ma?”

  “Tell Marisela what she needs to know, Angelia. Then you’ll rest, okay?”

  Marisela watched a silent stream of emotion and understanding pass between mother and daughter, making her ache for her own mother, so far away and as always, utterly clueless about the trouble her daughter had gotten herself into. Though Toni had eventually found out about every infraction Lia had ever committed—usually at Marisela’s urging—Aida Morales was forever kept safely and blissfully in the dark.

  Toni’s approval freed Lia’s tongue and she turned to Marisela with her full, though drugged attention. “He wanted her bag,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The kidnapper. When he stopped for me, all he wanted was her bag.”

  “Did you see Belinda? In the truck, did you see her?”

  She nodded, but the movement cost her. She winced. “She was in the backseat. Only saw for her a second, but she didn’t look afraid. Just, I don’t know…desperate? Confused? He left the car door open when he got out. I heard her say, ‘I need my vitamins.’”

  Vitamins? Her sister had always been obsessed with healthy living, but enough to put Lia’s life in danger?

  “I don’t understand,” Marisela muttered.

  “Her prenatal vitamins,” Lia suggested. “I think she was worried about the baby.”

  Toni gasped. “Baby? What baby?”

  Marisela held up her hand, not out of rudeness, but expediency. Lia’s uninjured eye was fluttering closed. Her time to interrogate her one and only witness was running out.

  “Did you notice anything about the car? About the men inside?”

  Lia pulled in a deep breath. “Ford Expedition. Temporary tag. Dealership on Dale Mabry. They tried to scrape off the sticker, but I saw it. That’s the last thing I remember. I’m sorry. Find her. You have to…”

  She drifted back to sleep. Marisela kissed her softly on the forehead and then took a few seconds to brush her hair with her fingers so that it didn’t look quite so matted and flat. Lia had given her vital information—the least she could do was help her look presentable to the handsome doctors.

  She moved to leave, but Toni grabbed her wrist, holding on with a strength that only someone who didn’t know her would be surprised she possessed.

  “Belinda is pregnant?”

  “Yes,” Marisela answered. “We didn’t know until she got off the plane. And the kidnappers only had her for thirty seconds before they went for vitamins. It’s as if—”

  “—whoever took her cares about whether or not she and the baby stay healthy.”

  Toni had spoken from a place of experience and common sense, but without knowing, she’d given Marisela a direction to pursue. She hugged her before heading toward the door.

  “What do I tell the police?” she asked.

  Marisela paused. “Tell them the truth if you want to. Tell them nothing if you want to stay out of this. If the kidnapper cared about my sister’s pregnancy, then that means they cared about the baby. Maybe even about her. And it proves the attack wasn’t random. Lia wasn’t targeted—she’s just collateral damage.”

  “You make that sound like good news.”

  Marisela forced a melancholy smile. “She’ll be safe now.”

  Toni ran her hand over Lia’s arm, then looked up, her eyes brimming with the kind of rage that would send even the toughest wise-guys running for cover. “I can’t say the same for the kidnappers.”

  Marisela put her hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. “No, you can’t.”

  Eight

  The moment of solidarity ended when a text from Frankie, who was keeping look out from the lobby, alerted her that the police detective she’d been avoiding, the Amazon named Flores, had entered the building. Marisela said a quick good-bye, took the staff elevator down to the lobby and then cut across to the emergency room, using her stolen access key.

  Lia’s information at least cleared one thing up—the kidnapping was about Belinda, not an offshoot of any of her cases for Titan. She wondered if she should still keep the cops in the dark, but no matter how their resources might help, involving law enforcement would mean frustrating delays and worse—and a layer of protection between her and the bastards who took her sister. Marisela didn’t give a damn about chains of evidence or fair trials. She only wanted Belinda back. She’d trust Lia and her mother to give the police any information the
y might need, but she’d follow her own leads and hopefully, beat them to the punch.

  Literally.

  In that pursuit, she slipped down to the ER before meeting up with Frankie. She found Dr. McFuego chatting up a pair of nurses, though when he spotted her, he made a beeline in her direction, grabbed her by the arm and tugged her into an empty exam room.

  “Hey!” she objected. “Some bedside manner you have.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, snapping his pen light out of his breast pocket.

  She grinned alluringly. “Aw, how sweet. You’re worried about me.”

  He held her chin still and flashed the light in her eyes, then felt around to the bump on the back of her head—the one that hadn’t been hurting until he pressed hard on the tender flesh.

  “Ow!”

  “I was hoping not to see you again.”

  She pouted. “You’re hurting my feelings. And my head,” she said, jerking out of his hold.

  He held his hands up in mock surrender. “You left AMA. Unless you’re experiencing pain in a more vital organ than your thick skull, I have real patients to deal with.”

  “Any gunshot vics?”

  He narrowed his intensely blue eyes. “Why? Did you shoot someone?”

  “Recently or just in general?” she replied, avoiding giving an answer that would force him to call security.

  “Ms. Morales—” he started, but she cut him off by snagging his cell phone from where he’d clipped it to his waist.

  “Look, doc, I’m not in the business of hurting people randomly, okay? But I am trying to track down a really bad guy who might be suffering from a GSW, but who also might have information about someone who could be hurt worse. If he shows up here bleeding out of his left shoulder, right about here,” she said, pressing her finger into the spot on the doctor’s shirt that matched where she’d shot the kidnapper, “I can guarantee you he’ll be less willing to talk to the cops than me. And that person who is hurt worse? She’s also very pregnant. If I don’t find this creep, she might not get the help she needs. Entiendes?”

  With unexpected swiftness, he grabbed her wrist and twisted it, then pushed aside the leather bracelet she always wore to cover up her tattoo—a purple crown topped with a trio of blood-red jewels. “Don’t try to appeal to my Hippocratic Oath, Ms. Morales. What I understand all too clearly from working in this ER is that vigilante justice makes my job a bitch.”

  She tugged her hand out of his, then shoved the cuff back into place. She resisted the urge to shove him, too, but she couldn’t afford the luxury. She needed his help. “I haven’t run with Las Reinas in years.”

  “Not since they tried to kill you,” he shot back. At her obvious surprise, he added, “The hospital keeps good records.”

  “The hospital doesn’t know the whole story.”

  “Then tell me,” he insisted. “If you want me to believe that you’re not just some gang-banger looking to settle a score, I need more information than you’re providing.”

  She wanted to tell him that her past was none of his fucking business, but she held her tongue, too interested in soliciting his help than in shutting down his questions. She’d been a kid then—barely old enough to know anything except that the gang life had lost its shine real quick. “Listen, doc, I won’t deny that I was once a hard-ass bitch. And maybe I haven’t changed so much deep down, but this time, I’m trying to help someone I love. One day, we’ll sit down to some café con leche and I’ll tell you my whole sob story, but right now, I’ve got a pregnant woman to find. If you hear anything that could help, I’d be forever grateful if you’d call, even if it’s after you’ve notified the police.”

  She hadn’t wanted that concession, but she knew do-gooders well enough to know he wouldn’t help her any other way. If Dr. McHottie caught wind of a gunshot wound victim in this or any other local ER, she needed to know about it.

  She programmed her name and cell number into his phone, then returned it.

  He glanced at her entry, then at her. “You swear that this isn’t gang-related?”

  She stared straight into his eyes. “This,” she said, holding up her wrist, “is old news. I’m not putting my neck on the line, or yours, for stupid kids trying to score street cred. This is life and death.”

  She reached out her hand to seal their tentative trust. He eyed her skeptically, then pulled a second cell phone out of his back pocket and handed it to her.

  “What’s this?” she asked, plugging in her info into the second phone.

  “Most hospital workers carry two cells—one for personal calls, one for business. If I hear anything and if I decide to call you—which I’m not promising I will—I won’t be doing it from my official phone.”

  Marisela couldn’t help but grin as she programmed her number into his second phone. How could she resist a good-looking man who was smart and thought ahead? Too bad he was married. Her personal code of behavior wasn’t extensive, but it had always included a ban on messing around with another woman’s man.

  When he took her palm in his, forcing her to yet again note the warmth and softness of his skin and the intense blueness of his eyes, she wondered if she could stick to it.

  “Your wife is one lucky woman.”

  He tugged her close so that his aquamarine twinkle nearly blinded her. “You have no idea.”

  She allowed herself three seconds to inhale the crisp scent of aftershave clinging beneath the odors of sweat, blood and disinfectant, then made her way out of the ER. She hopped the fence and slid into the passenger seat of Frankie’s retooled GTO, parked just out of range of the streetlamp. Two hours had passed since the explosion and she wasn’t any closer to locating her sister, but at least now, she had somewhere to go—something to do, even if it meant breaking and entering.

  “Find out anything?” Frankie asked as she clicked her seatbelt.

  “The truck was a new buy,” she said as he turned south out of the lot, heading back to her office. “But if Lia’s mother talked to the police after I left, which I’m betting she did, they’re going to be waiting for me. Let’s hit that Ford dealership on Dale Mabry—the one closest to the airport. Lia saw their sticker on the SUV that took Belinda.”

  Frankie turned down a side road, driving slowly because of the overflow of cars parked in the street rather than in the narrow driveways that led to one-car garages. She took a second to drink in the lazy quiet of the neighborhood before she leaned into the back seat and retrieved her bag. Inside, she’d stuffed her go-to goodies—extra ammo, burner cell, lock-picking tools, black, soft-soled shoes, dark jeans and a turtleneck. She whipped off the scrub shirt and punched her fists into the sleeves of the knit top, her stomach flipping a little at Frankie’s guttural growl at the sight of her favorite bra.

  “Do we have time for a…diversion?”

  “Que desea,” she taunted, though admittedly, she wished they had time to pull over to the side of the road for a quick distraction. “Just drive.”

  “I take it we’re staging a break-in?” he asked, trying to cover the lusty tone in his voice by turning up the radio.

  She wiggled a little more than was strictly necessary as she pulled the snug sweater over her curves. “The bastards either bought or stole their vehicle. I’m going to find out which one.”

  Though Dale Mabry highway was the busiest thoroughfare in Tampa, the eight-lane highway was mostly deserted when they did a quick recon around the dealership, noting the security measures with a combination of previous knowledge and equipment Frankie kept in the trunk of his car. Fifteen minutes after he pulled in to the bankrupt electronics box store next door, he disabled the security cameras in the back lot right before Marisela breached the interior office without triggering the alarms.

  In the sales office, she discovered that of all the SUVs sold in the past two days, only two had been black. One was a new model transferred to a specialty department for detailing and the second was a former rental, sold used and paid for with c
ash. Though she guessed the information on the paperwork was mostly bogus, she jacked it anyway. She had to start somewhere.

  When she jumped back into Frankie’s car at the pre-arranged rendezvous, he was disconnecting a call.

  “How’s your mom?” she teased.

  He snorted. “I bet the whole house smells like garlic and roast pork. I could be swiping spoonfuls of flan out of her fridge right now, but instead, I’m helping you commit petty larceny.”

  “The pettiest of petty,” she said, waving the file folder at him. “I was tempted to replace my gorgeous new Camaro with one of those Mustangs, just sitting there, all alone, begging to be someone’s Christmas present.”

  Frankie flicked on his headlights only after they were back on the road. “I’m glad you settled for the paperwork. What did you find?”

  “I don’t know yet. The buyer’s name. An address. Chances are all the information they provided was bogus and whoever they were paid in cash.”

  “No luck with the security cameras at the airport, either,” he said.

  She turned to face him. “How’d you get into airport security?”

  “I didn’t,” Frankie answered. “I told you I had a contact in the police department. Since the cops didn’t find anything useful on the tapes, sharing that fact wasn’t a breach of national or even local security. The license tag on the SUV seen leaving the garage shortly after the explosion was, like Lia said, a temp. The driver’s face was in shadow. The police interviewed the toll attendant and he didn’t notice anything unusual.”

  “He didn’t notice a pregnant woman?” Marisela asked

  “He remembered seeing a woman and another man in the backseat. He only remembered that because the man seemed to be in pain, but the woman didn’t seem concerned, so he thought they were playing. And a car had just blown up. The guy was probably distracted.”

  She understood. As much as she loved the adrenaline still shooting through her system after the dealership break-in, she couldn’t help think the operation had been a waste. Though she did have the name of the salesman who’d sold the car. Maybe she could do something with that—or maybe she was deluding herself rather than face full-on the impact on her life if anything happened to Belinda and her baby.