“Alejandro!”
“Shhh.” He pointed toward Angel. “Your nephew is sleeping.” His goatee tickled against her neck as he chuckled before laying a trail of kisses from beneath her jaw to her collarbone.
“Well… um… mmm…” Audrey struggled for breath. “We should, um… leave his room.” Audrey swallowed a moan as his lips lightly brushed her mouth.
“Uh-uh,” he began against her lips. “If we leave, you can escape and yell at me. This way…” He pressed a light kiss to the bottom corner of her mouth before taking the whole of hers in a smoldering kiss that sent a delicious shudder through her body. “I have your undivided attention.”
Attention? I’m not… not even… can’t think straight…
“Audrey, I don’t want this to end — what’s happening between us.”
Now she was alert.
“When this operation is all over, I want to see you.”
She swallowed at the overwhelming thought. “Like, a date?”
He laughed, his breath hot against her neck before another kiss scorched her skin. He leaned back, his eyes entreating. “No, more than that.”
Thanks to him, Audrey couldn’t find her voice to say yes. She only stared back, open-mouthed.
The look in his eyes turned wicked. “You look like you need convincing.” He squeezed her closer. “More kissing? You need more kissing…” Audrey laughed out loud as he leaned in. “Shhh!”
Angel moaned in his sleep and both Ale and Audrey froze. The tot snorted and rolled over away from the two of them. Ale took her hand and led her out of the room. In another minute, they were seated on the couch, with Audrey wiggling out of his attempt to scoop her onto his lap.
Ale held up his hands. “I won’t push you.”
With shaky hands, Audrey racked her hair behind her ears. She let out a quick breath and raised her eyes to meet his. “Tell me again. Now that I’m coherent.”
A rakish smile flashed, but did he just blush? “When this is all over, I want to be with you.”
Together. Be together. The concept had her mind in a fog. “In Virginia?”
He shrugged. “Wherever you want. I’m not picky.” His eyes turned warm and a wistful-like smile touched his lips. “It would be nice to see Rafa again. And my mother…”
Audrey saw the lump in his throat bob, watched as he blinked a few times.
“I need to make amends while I still have time.”
Still have time. With a pang of regret, Penny entered her thoughts. At least she still had her sister’s letters and the house. After Trujillo and Alba were locked up, she’d return to Penny’s home and take her time reconnecting with the sister she’d prayed Penny would turn out to be.
“You’re smiling. What are you thinking about?”
A tear slipped from her eye. “Penny.”
“Still regretting?” he asked, while using his thumb to wipe the tear from her cheek.
Audrey nodded. “But only a little. I’m happy to hear you want to see your mother and brother again.”
He leaned back, a lazy smile on his face, eyes never leaving hers. “Well, I have you and my mother to thank for that.” Pausing, his gaze drifted to the hallway. “And the kid.”
Audrey giggled. “The kid.” The kid! A dart of fear struck her. What would Angel think about having Alejandro around? She was his legal guardian. If things… if she and Ale ever…would he accept Angel?
Ale watched her through a shuttered gaze. “You look like you’re thinking about a million things at once. One thing at a time. First, we’ll finish the raid. Then, we’ll get you and Angel back to Virginia.”
“And third?” Audrey swallowed, heat rising to her cheeks in anticipation of him repeating what she’d already heard twice but couldn’t quite get enough of.
“Third.” His voice turned husky as he slid closer, his devilish grin tripling her pulse. Arm snug about her waist, he lifted her effortlessly into his lap. “Third, well, we’ll have to see, won’t we?” Mouth descending to take her own, Audrey relished the look of shock as she playfully slapped his face. She slipped from his grasp and backed up toward the hallway.
“Well, how about when you figure things out, you let me know?” Biting her lip to keep it from spreading to infinity, she winked before rushing to the safety of her room.
Chapter Eleven
ALE adjusted the wire taped to his left pectoral muscle, laying his shirt over it to detect any bulges. Last thing he needed was for Trujillo to spot the device and call him out as a fed. With his cover blown, Alba would be long gone, even with Carlos’s help.
“I’m telling you, you’re already made.”
Ale gritted his frustration at hearing for the umpteenth time that the operation was compromised. “It’s fine, Mel.” He’d long ago given up logical arguments and instead chose the juvenile route.
“Then explain to me how Trujillo’s men knew to come to the bus station?”
“Again? You want me to explain again how they were probably retracing Lana’s — Penny’s — last steps to find out where she was hiding Angel?”
“Yes, again, Alejandro, because you’ve had some close calls lately and I’m concerned.”
Ale eyed his partner’s scowl and crossed his arms. He loved her. She had his back and took him to task all in the same breath. A great friend and partner. Now that he and Audrey—
He and Audrey.
If she was going home to Virginia, then he’d find an assignment and move there. In time, trust between him and his new coworkers would grow, but he doubted he’d find another truer friend and wingman — woman — than Mel.
Ale ran a hand down the front of his shirt, satisfied the wire didn’t produce a bulge noticeable to the trained eye.
An eye like Trujillo’s.
“First it was the hit at Lana’s house, and then it was the tail at the school, and now the bus station? Ale.” She grasped his hands, drawing his gaze from his shirt to her eyes. “I. Don’t. Like. This. I’m telling you, it’s a trap.”
Enclosing her hands in his, he drew them to his chest. “I’m touched you care. I’ve. Got. This.” He dropped her hands and sidestepped her, moving to the table opposite them to retrieve his ops folder. One last look at his target before taking him down.
“Alejandro, you can be a real mule sometimes.”
“Well, you know how stubborn I am, so you know I’m not going to stop until I have Alba and Trujillo.” He reached behind his back, readjusting the sheath holding a blade hidden inside his jeans, while keeping his eyes on the target’s profile workup. Alba’s picture was old, approximately six years, but it was all they had to go on. Unless he recently visited a plastic surgeon, Ale was counting on identifying Alba by the scar that curved from his right ear to the corner of his mouth. Rumor was he’d received the scar as a parting gift from his former boss — whom he killed.
Mel’s weighty sigh sat heavily between them as they locked eyes. He never knew her to fear anything — except maybe men. Not literally, just the thought of any romantic attachments. Strange, she was a beautiful woman with spunk. Every man’s dream. She didn’t hide the trepidation in her eyes, and for the first time, Ale was nervous. “Melody, don’t look at me like that. Last thing I need, hours before we take this guy down, is to second-guess myself. That’s,” he pointed a finger in her direction, “where mistakes are made.”
“I know.”
“Then just have my back.”
“I will.”
“Good.” Nodding, his lips slacked into a half grin. “This will be over before you know it.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits before she stomped from the room. He followed her into the command center for a final briefing. Special Agent Brooks of the DEA had just called the room to order and the last of the instructions were given about the raid. Ale glanced at his watch.
Seven p.m.
“I’ve got to get back to the garage. I don’t usually take a long dinner break,” he whispered into Mel’s ear. “Do me
a favor and call the guy at the safe house for an update, okay? And tell him to let Audrey know everything is okay.”
“You’re leaving me for her, aren’t you?” Mel asked, keeping her eyes trained on the speaker. Her lips twitched ever so slightly northward.
Ale smothered a grin with his hand. “You knew it wouldn’t have ever worked. You’re too good for me.”
Mel snorted, and then faked a cough when eyes darted in her direction. “Would you just leave? And Ale…” She laid a hand on his arm to stop him. “Be careful. I mean it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, before bumping fists with her.
“Marshal Santiago is on his way out there,” Brooks told the group.
Ale lifted his hand in farewell as other agents acknowledged him with nods. “I’ll be waiting for the signal.”
Ten minutes later, Ale was standing in Trujillo’s garage with a clipboard, flipping through the last of the drug orders he expected to see from this place. All the vehicles were prepped, and in a few minutes, he’d brief the drivers. Alba was due to arrive any second, and Trujillo had delayed the transportation until after Alba’s departure. The amount of money the drugs were worth would alone make the headlines, even if he didn’t have Trujillo and Alba. And when the order was given, the men would drive out to the waiting DEA roadblock.
I couldn’t have planned this better myself.
Except for one thing — and he blamed Mel for this: the chill that bit into his spine and nearly shattered it when Trujillo caught his eye on his way into the shop minutes before. Something wasn’t right. Well, something hadn’t been right for a while, but this was new.
The door to his right opened and Carlos entered the working bay. Alone. Ale gave him a look as Carlos strode in. “Where is he?” his whisper sliced the air.
Carlos didn’t even flinch. “Minutes behind me. But you have bigger problems.”
“Qué?”
“Trujillo.”
Ale tried not to act annoyed. Anything other than the appearance of a casual conversation with Carlos would look suspicious. “What about him?”
Carlos leaned in a bit too close for Ale’s liking, but with his voice so low, Ale couldn’t blame him. “He knows.”
Two little words. Mel had guessed it, and deep down Ale sensed it as far back as his first meeting with Carlos in Trujillo’s office. He knows. “What does he know?”
“That you carry a shield, bro.”
Trujillo knew he was a fed. Ale cut his eyes to Trujillo’s glass-enclosed office on the second level. Trujillo stood near the pane closest to Ale and Carlos, his hard, even stare on him. Willing the muscles in his throat not to swallow, Ale focused on Carlos. “What does Alba know?” he whispered, glancing down at the clipboard in his hand, attempting to give off an unconcerned appearance. Even if Trujillo had discovered him, Ale still had to play as if he were completely in the dark about Trujillo. He’d make Trujillo believe he had the element of surprise.
“This will all be over the minute Alba steps inside.”
“Alejandro! Carlos! Vamps.”
Ale and Carlos exchanged wary glances as Trujillo came down the steps from the office. He waved his hand for them to join him and both men fell into step behind Trujillo. Where are we going? Isn’t Alba coming here? If Carlos had betrayed him to Alba, he’d wring his neck. Trujillo uncovering Ale’s identity was one thing; Alba knowing it was something entirely different. If they lost him tonight, Alba would go into hiding and be lost until he decided to resurface.
Hurried voices surrounded them as they walked through the garage. Alba’s name was mentioned more than once. He’s here. So why was Trujillo leading them outside?
“Trujillo? Oyé, I need to speak to Alba,” Carlos said.
Trujillo continued leading them past curious stares, out the garage and into the scrap metal and broken-down cars that formed the junkyard.
“Jefe! Alba está aquí.”
“Gracias, hombre.” Trujillo kept his back to his employee and lengthened his stride, forcing Carlos and Ale deeper into the piles of scrap metal.
Mel was right; this is a trap. With Trujillo still looking in the opposite direction, Ale eased his cell out of his back pocket and opened the screen. He pushed the Send button on a pre-written text ready to go. The kill order, so to speak. Not having eyes on Alba was a risk he had to take, now that he was certain Trujillo planned to murder him and Carlos and leave their bodies in the junkyard.
He’d done it before.
By sending the text, he hoped his gut was right — Alba was on site and would be captured. Now all he needed to do was stay alive long enough for a rescue.
“I don’t have time for this—”
“Shhh, Carlos—”
Carlos silenced Ale’s attempt to interject. “Alba is here, and I need to see him.”
Blast!
The sound of a shot rocketed through the air and Ale instinctively raised his arm when warm liquid splattered on his face. Dropping his arm and his eyes, Carlos’s lifeless eyes gazed up at him from the dirt. Ale stilled. Even if he could draw and get a shot off, Trujillo had a gun on him and clearly an itchy trigger finger.
“You got something to say, Alejandro?”
Ale slowly met his enemy’s eyes. The emphasis on his name wasn’t lost on him.
“Is that even your real name?”
“Yes.”
A harsh laugh blew the last of the smoke from the gun — pointed at him — lingering in front of Trujillo into the wind. “How many years have we been working together, Alejandro? You think after all this time I’d know when someone was betraying me — why all of our shipments weren’t reaching their destinations, or the drivers were getting caught.”
“When did you know?”
Hard lines shaped Trujillo’s sinister features, and his dark eyes gleamed in the night light while the nearby halogen lamps cast his shadow into a giant figure threatening to swallow Ale in the darkness. “Not until the last shipment was intercepted. You were clever in not handling every single one, but nearly all of yours fell into this deep crack called the DEA. How did they know about my men? A man on the inside…”
Sirens in the distance accompanied loud shouting nearby. “It’s over, Trujillo.” Trujillo’s gaze shot past Ale, the arm holding the weapon slacking. The garage was in chaos by the sounds of the yelling and the gunfire. “It’s not you that I want — it’s Alba. If you testify against him—”
Trujillo raised his arm and Alejandro dove to the side. Rolling on the ground, he slammed into something hard, and whatever it was, it sliced through his shirt and shredded the skin on his back. Ale cried out in pain, but the pings of metal around him being hit with bullets had him drawing his arms over his head. His left arm was on fire and the burn steadily increased. Tucking his arm close to his body, Ale grunted against the pain and rose to one knee while drawing his weapon.
Where was Trujillo? Edging to the end of the pile of scrap metal, Ale raised his weapon and glanced around his jagged lump of a shield. Fresh tracks in the dirt moved away from his position. Trujillo had nowhere to go. The junkyard was a dead end. A fence surrounded the property. A lean man like Trujillo wouldn’t have any problem climbing the chain-link fence and hoisting himself over the barbed wire, but he’d be skinned before he dropped to the ground. Weapon raised, Ale raced toward the back end of the junkyard, nearing the painful howl he suspected was Trujillo.
Rounding another scrap car, Ale scanned the fence to its height. Trujillo dangled by his shirt and pants, blood running down his arm and pooling on the ground on the street-side of the fence.
“Police!”
Several men, in tactical gear with weapons at the ready, rushed forward on the freedom side of the fence. With no mercy, they snagged Trujillo from the wired clutches holding him captive, slamming him to the ground. Someone recited the Miranda rights and another clicked on the cuffs. In all of this, the muscles in Ale’s stomach clenched at the sound of Trujillo’s laughter. Bile slowly
crept up Ale’s throat. What’s wrong with me? Trujillo was down. Lowering his weapon, Ale motioned for one of the officers to meet him at the fence. “Alba?”
“We got him.”
And yet that knowledge didn’t settle the churning acid in his stomach.
“I’m going to get my son.”
Ale swallowed a curse, jamming his weapon into his sheath beneath his waist. He gripped the fence with his good hand, meeting Trujillo’s surprisingly satisfied gaze. “He’s not your son,” he spat. “Carlos was his father.”
Trujillo shrugged as he was hauled away. “Like father, like son.”
What? Brows colliding in confusion, Ale only watched as the officers draped in DEA-labeled protective vests dragged Trujillo to a waiting van for transportation downtown. Sounds dimmed as time slowed down. Like father, like son. Ale’s head snapped in the direction of Carlos’s body. If Trujillo knew he was a fed that meant…
Sprinting back toward the garage, Ale ripped his cell from his back pocket and dialed the number to the extra man posted near the safe house. By the fifth ring, he broke out in a cold sweat, his heart dropping into his gut. “Mel!” Moving rapidly among the officers who had swarmed the garage, he shouted his partner’s name again and again.
He found her in conversation with Agent Brooks on the street in front of the building. “Mel! I’m going to the safe house.” He ran past his startled partner to his vehicle.
“What? Why?”
“It’s been compromised!”
Mel’s look of horror was the last face he saw as he tore out of the parking lot. God, I pray I’m not too late!
****
Audrey kept her hand over Angel’s mouth and her arm wrapped securely around his waist. Hunched over his small form, she inched her knees closer to her chest to make them as small as possible, even though they were hidden behind the door to a small cubbyhole located in Ale’s closet. He’d shown her this spot on their first night in the house. If danger ever entered the house and he wasn’t there…
Alejandro (The Santiago Brothers Book Two) Page 16
