"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."
"Jesus Christ! Are you sure it's her?"
"Yes, I'm positive."
Rafe gathered her close, tucked her head against his chest. "Babe, I'm so sorry."
"I'm glad he told me. He said she didn't suffer much, that she stayed with Vargas about a year and died in a car accident."
Rafe frowned over the top of her head. A year? Car accident? That didn't sound like the Diego Vargas he'd been hunting these last three years, but why would Santos lie to Isabella? "That's good, that she didn't suffer."
"And it's good that we know what happened to her. Now our family can really bury her."
He massaged her back gently and listened to her soft moan. The sound conjured up erotic images of other groans and the tiny breathless sounds she made when he was deep inside her, pounding into her willing body. Suddenly the urge for a repeat performance caused a tightening in his groin.
"Why do you think he did it?" Isabella asked. "I mean, why would he care? Why didn't he just walk away?"
Rafe tried to push back his body's response and concentrate on what she was saying. He knew she wasn't speaking of Diego Vargas or Max Jensen.
"I think Santos has a kind of thing for you."
She wrinkled her forehead in that funny way he found adorable. "You mean you think he likes me?"
Rafe shrugged and moved his hands farther down her back, cupped her bottom. "Maybe more than 'like.'"
"He's a cold-blooded killer, a man absolutely without principles or moral parameters."
He enjoyed watching her go into her warrior stance like a female ninja.
"Don't smile like that," she warned. "You know that Santos is going to take over the organization, build it back up again."
Rafe nodded. "But it'll take him years to do that, and when he does, I'll be right on his ass."
"Yeah, but he'll be tougher to catch than Vargas. It's strange but he has some kind of off-kilter internal guide. He'll kill at the drop of a hat, but he wouldn't let Vargas abuse his own daughter."