"Yeah, probably." He grinned unrepentantly. "I'm pretty much a bastard."
"That's what I figured," she said, but with a smile that made his heart skip a beat or two.
Rafe tried again, this time gentling his voice because he sensed something grievous under the surface of her smooth façade. "Why are you so hell bent on ignoring the drug case, Torres, when it's much easier to prosecute than human trafficking?"
She lowered her eyes, but not before Rafe saw a flash of pain in them.
"Okay, never mind about that," he said, unwilling to probe into whatever had caused that distress, unwilling to hurt her more. Time enough to pour salt in the wounds later, he thought. "How about another quid pro quo?"
She raised those dark chocolate eyes to meet his and from his higher position he noted how they were lushly surrounded by thick black lashes. Aha, a spark of interest.
"What do you have in mind?"
"Tell me what happened at the Santos arraignment." The Nevada court proceeding was information he could easily obtain, but he wanted to broker a truce with her. Five minutes later, she'd given him the shortened version, but he didn't mind. He still believed any information about Santos wasn't significant enough to pursue.
"I think Santos is the key," she said, completely upsetting Rafe's train of thought.
He perched on the edge of her desk and leaned forward. "How so?"
"Santos is the attorney of record." She held up her fingers one at a time. "He's been with Vargas a very long time. He's moved from thuggish bodyguard to closest confidant. We should be tailing Santos as closely as we follow Vargas."
Rafe considered. "If there are secrets, you think Santos will know where the bodies are buried?"
She nodded, started gathering up her papers and stuffing them into a battered briefcase. The top of her desk remained as cluttered as when he'd walked in, but Torres seemed ready to call it a day.
An impulse he'd no doubt later kick himself for took over his brain and the words tumbled out of his mouth before he had time to reconsider. "How about we get a late dinner?"
She glanced at the clock before saying, "Oh, I don't know if that works very well for us, Hashemi."
"Why's that?" he pressed.
She walked to the door where he trailed her out and watched her lock up. "Because every time we eat or drink together, we fight."
"Not every time, Torres." He grinned and watched the flush creep up her neck to paint her pretty cheeks a dusky rose beneath the golden skin.
Chapter Twenty
The leggy blonde staggered out of the downtown Sacramento bar ahead of the guy, groped in her jacket pocket for her keys, and pressed the unlock button on the brand new, silver Lexus. All riiiight, he thought, this babe has green. Or else Daddy does. Slightly less drunk than the girl, the guy tried to wrestle the keys from her grip.
"Nuthin' doin,' pretty boy," she laughed and then hiccupped loudly. "Oops, sorry." She burst into a series of giggles that both of them found hilarious.
"Hey," he warned, "it's your ride."
"Damn straight. Come on, Shel," she urged the dark-haired girl just coming out of the bar. The brunette tottered on alarmingly high heels. "Thas right, girl, get going."
The second girl – Shelby, the guy thought her name was – climbed into the back of the Lexus and immediately stretched out on the seat. For some reason the blonde – what the hell was her name? – burst into another round of laughter. Come to think of it, the whole situation was pretty hilarious.
The blonde climbed into the driver's seat and fumbled with inserting the key into the ignition. "Damn key. Whas wrong?"
After a few tries she made it, and by this time, the guy had settled into the passenger seat and hooked up his seat belt. The broad wasn't sober enough to drive and he didn't want to be scraped off the asphalt. This reminded him of the drunk driving video they'd watched in high school – Red Asphalt – which he'd found unbelievably comical, and he started laughing again.
The blonde looked so adorable trying to figure out what to do next with the car that he reached over and kissed her soundly on the mouth, sticking his tongue hard between her lips. God, he hoped he could get it up with all the booze in his system. Shame to miss doing this one.
The girl in the back seat started to snore softly as they peeled away from the curb on Sixteenth Street. The blonde got a dozen or so blocks from the bar without an accident and approached the onramp.
They'd left the bar before midnight, too early to call it a night. "Hey, I got an idea," the guy said. "Take the next ramp, no, not there, next one." He directed her south on Interstate 80, and they lurched onto the freeway. "I just 'membered where we can get some really good smack."
"Oh yeah, baby, I like that idea," she said, running her hand up his thigh and lingering over his crotch.
God, he really hoped he could keep a hard-on. Maybe the H would help. After turning east on Highway 50, he directed her to the Folsom turnoff and pointed the way toward a middle-class neighborhood in an older section of Folsom.
When they arrived at the blue-trimmed stucco house shrouded in shrubbery and barely visible from the street, he stumbled from the car and lurched toward the porch. No light on. These people liked to stay under the radar.
A few minutes later, he made the exchange and returned to the Lexus. "Babe, this is primo H. You'll like it."
"Where to?" she asked, staring at the white glassine packets.
"Turn right onto Auburn-Folsom. Let's go to the lake."
"Great plan," she said, starting up the car. "Beale's Lake, right?"
Twenty minutes later they pulled up to the barricaded entrance gate at Beale's Lake, and the girl – Joanie was her name, he suddenly remembered – parked the car in the turnabout. They left Shelby in the backseat of the car sleeping off her drunk, and hauling a blanket out of the Lexus' trunk, walked the short distance to the beach.
They spread the blanket on the sand near the water. The lake was closed at this hour and the beach deserted. He used to come here all the time when he was a teenager. The park was closed, but he knew the rangers hardly ever bothered anyone unless they built an unauthorized fire on the beach.
After settling down, the guy produced the packets and prepared the heroin for snorting. Then they both lay back on the blanket and looked at the night sky. In minutes he could feel his heart rate slow down and his blood pressure drop. Euphoria swept over him like a warm blanket, a surge of pleasure that was better than sex.
He glanced at Joanie, but she'd already closed her eyes. God, this was great stuff. He thought he said the words aloud, but wasn't sure.
When he looked over at Joanie again, he saw her lips had turned blue and her body was very pale in the light from the moon. With effort he propped himself on an elbow and opened her lid, looked at the pinpoint pupils. Damn, she probably wasn't used to the good stuff. Was she going into a coma?
Fuck, he thought mildly, but couldn't bring himself to get worked up about it. Why was this his problem? He didn't know how to do CPR, so what the hell could he do?
Anyway, he didn't want anything to interfere with the melting away of all his troubles. He lay back down and stared at the stars, feeling the girl's body begin to tremble next to him.
As she convulsed, he wondered why she was bumming his high.
"Not every time," Rafe repeated as he followed Isabella to the elevator. He remembered the night she had spent in his apartment, the excitement and thrill of all that soft fullness and warm passion against him. He knew she was thinking the same thing by the way she avoided his eyes.
He shook his head and warned himself off. It was just as well she'd refused his dinner invitation. "Suit yourself," he said with as much nonchalance as he could muster when she refused a second time.