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.