“Christ.” Ed scrubbed a hand through his neat beard. “All right. I’ll have this phone destroyed, but I can’t have you wandering around out there with no way for us to locate you in an emergency. If I issued you a new agency phone with access restricted to Jade alone, would you be comfortable with that?”
“Sure,” Ángel said, with a small smile for Jade.
Ed made a note for himself and said, “You’re still certain that Raúl Esparza isn’t behind all this?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d like to hear your thoughts on alternative suspects.”
Ángel looked surprised, but he recovered quickly. “Stalking is often a way for a person to relieve the intolerable psychological pressure created by an intense obsession with the subject. It doesn’t have to be love—it can be rage, fear, jealousy, any overwhelming emotion that demands release. But the relief is only temporary, because the stalking behaviors themselves feed into and strengthen the obsession. That’s why stalking tends to—to escalate.”
His breath stuttered on the last word. Charles started to reach out to him and caught himself just in time, drawing back his hand.
“If Raúl were alive and knew that I’d betrayed him, I could see him having me killed, maybe abducted,” Ángel went on. “He wouldn’t behave like this. Raúl was jealous and possessive, and he had a temper, but he wasn’t obsessed with me. If Raúl had successfully faked his own death, we’d never hear from him again. I definitely wasn’t more important to him than his own life.”
“Do you have any idea who was that obsessed with you, then?” Sakura asked.
“It’s gotta be someone in the cartel, right?” Shane said. “If they knew enough to take Warner and create doubt about Esparza’s death . . .”
“It has to be someone in the cartel for the simple reason that I haven’t had contact with anyone else for two years.” Drumming his fingers against the table, Ángel said, “I can’t think of anyone who exactly fits a profile like this, but there are a couple of people I’d look at first.”
Jade swiped her fingers over her tablet. “Give me their names and I’ll run them down.”
“There’s Roberto Ibarra, one of my bodyguards before Raúl died. He, ah . . .” Ángel paused. “Let’s just say he coveted his employer’s possessions.”
Charles’s stomach twisted. He believed Ángel that the sex with Oscar Palomo had been consensual, and from the way Ángel spoke about Esparza, it didn’t sound like he’d experienced any sexual violence there either—but Charles didn’t know that for a fact. He didn’t really know anything about what had happened to Ángel while he was with the cartel. There could easily have been occasions on which Ángel had “consented” to sex he didn’t want in order to protect his cover or even his life. A handsy bodyguard, for example, could have caused a lot of problems between Ángel and Esparza if left unchecked—
“And the other one?” Jade asked, cutting through Charles’s whirling thoughts.
“Mercedes Salazar, one of Raúl’s mistresses,” Ángel said. “She was his favorite before I arrived on the scene, and she loathed me beyond all rationality. I wouldn’t have thought her capable of the stealth and intelligence to pull this off, but she does have a cunning streak, so maybe with enough motivation.”
“You’d suspect Esparza’s mistress before his wife?” Eva said, tilting her head.
“Maria Elena?” Ángel smiled. “She’s not even on the list. Maria Elena and I got along very well. If she found out who I really was, she’d probably think it was hilarious more than anything else.”
Everyone at the table stared at him with varying degrees of astonishment.
“Her and Raúl’s marriage was a formality,” Ángel said patiently. “They’d been living apart for years by the time I came along. There was no love lost between them, trust me.”
“All right, so we’ve got Roberto and Mercedes,” said Jade. “Anyone else?”
“Well . . . there’s a second possibility for what’s happening.”
“Which is?”
“I’m being tortured, not stalked, by someone who’s well aware of what they’re doing and completely in control of their actions,” Ángel said, his face grim. “Maybe they chose this particular MO to redirect suspicion, or just because they find it amusing, but the emotions implied by their behavior aren’t genuine. They’re simply inflicting maximum pain before moving in for the kill.”
Shane slumped in his chair. “Shit,” he said, echoing the sentiment expressed by every face around the table.
“Yeah,” said Ángel. “I’m leaning more toward the first explanation—so far, the stalker hasn’t caused me any direct physical harm even though they’ve had tons of opportunity, which would suggest a measure of concern or possessiveness, or at least a desire to avoid personal confrontation. But it could just be that the perpetrator is playing with their food, so to speak. In that case, we’re dealing with an entirely different profile. It could be almost anyone with a serious grievance against me, which is a very long list these days.”
“Faking a stalking still indicates a certain degree of fixation, though,” Charles said. “Abducting a federal agent, following you all the way out here, placing you under surveillance, setting up these creepy stunts—that requires a serious commitment of time and resources, even if the base motivation isn’t the same.”
“True.”
“What about Oscar Palomo?” Sakura said. “Could he be doing this?”
“He’d be at the top of my list for the second explanation.” Ángel had shredded his entire cinnamon roll to bits without taking a single bite; he wiped his hands off on his napkin and pushed his hair out of his eyes in a gesture of exhaustion Charles knew well. “My escaping under his watch would have damaged his standing with the cartel, especially if it were known or later discovered that I was an undercover agent. He didn’t have any emotional investment in me, but he’s very proud and more than a little sadistic. It’s possible he would go to these lengths for revenge.”
“All right,” Ed said, leaning forward. “This is enough for now. We’ll pursue our current leads and then reassess. But you . . .” He turned to Ángel. “You’re taking the rest of the weekend off. No arguments.”
Ángel opened his mouth, but Ed preempted him with a stern pointed finger.
“¡Basta!” he said. “No quiero oír nada más. You won’t be doing yourself or Agent Warner any favors if you compromise this investigation because you burned yourself out. You are not to set foot inside this office for the next forty-eight hours. I’ll have you moved to a safe house—”
“We can’t do that,” said Charles. He’d been thinking about this since they found Warner’s body, and no matter which angle he approached it from, he always came to the same conclusion.
“Beg pardon?”
“The stalker has been able to find Ángel wherever he goes—even if the cell phone is how he was doing it, there’s no guarantee he won’t find another way now. If we keep moving Ángel, all we’ll accomplish is burning our safe houses one after the other and putting the custodial agents at risk.”
Ed sighed and said, “Do you have another suggestion?”
Steeling himself, Charles said, “He can stay with me.”
“What?” Ángel and Eva said in unison.
“We obviously can’t hide you,” Charles said to Ángel, uncomfortably aware of how his words recalled the message left on the motel room’s wall. “The best we can do is ensure you’re well defended while minimizing the risk of collateral damage.”
Eva glared daggers at him across the table. “I’m this team’s SSA. If anyone’s going to take responsibility for Ángel’s safety, it should be me.”
“Your husband and kids need to be your first priority. Shane has his wife, Sakura has her boyfriend, Jade has her . . .”
“I dare you to call them my roommates,” Jade said, her eyes flashing.
“Partners,” Charles finished. He didn’t really understand Jade’s polyam
orous relationships, so it seemed the most diplomatic response. “I’m the only one who doesn’t have anyone else to worry about, and I have plenty of room in my apartment. Besides, the stalker is already pissed with me; I’m sure he knows where I live by now. I couldn’t be making myself much more of a target.”
“Are you okay with this?” Ed asked Ángel.
“I . . .” Ángel glanced at Charles’s face, his lips pursed. “Yeah, sure.”
“All right, then.” Ed clapped his hands on the table. “That’s the plan. Charles, I want you to stick with Ángel for now, but I’ll call you if we need you to come in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
They managed to make it out of the office without being waylaid by Eva again. Once they were back in Charles’s car, Ángel said, “So are we going to talk about what a spectacularly bad idea this is, or just kind of glide right past it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Charles said without taking his eyes off the road.
“Come on, Charles. If I stay at your place, we’re going to end up fucking, and you know it.”
“I can control myself.”
“In general? Sure. Around me? History has pretty conclusively proven otherwise.”
Charles’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, the leather squeaking in protest. “I can’t be sure you’ll be safe if you stay anywhere else.”
“Oh.” Ángel’s eyes traveled from Charles’s tense knuckles to his rigid shoulders to the way he absolutely refused to turn his head. “Okay,” Ángel said, deciding to leave it alone.
He closed his eyes and leaned against the headrest, the exhaustion of the past twelve hours—hell, the past two weeks—weighing heavily on him. Though he’d gotten a grip on the dissociation, it had been replaced by a pounding headache and a roiling nausea that left a bad taste in his mouth.
Charles lived in an attractive complex of red-roofed, stuccoed apartments clustered around lush courtyards. Ángel got out of the car and trudged after him to the door of a first-floor unit, concentrating on putting one foot after the other without tripping. He’d never needed sleep so badly in his life, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get there with the image of Paul’s body seared into his brain.
Charles opened the door and gestured for Ángel to precede him. Once in the entryway, Ángel stopped short, blinking. Behind him, Charles locked the door and dropped his keys and wallet into a waiting bowl without noticing Ángel’s shock.
“Oh my God, Charles,” Ángel said. “Were you robbed?”
“What? No, of course not.” Charles slipped out of his shoes and lined them up by the door.
Ángel followed suit, looking around with growing unease. They’d entered into one large, long room designed to serve as both living room and dining room, with a U-shaped kitchen tucked in one corner and blinds drawn over a sliding glass door at the far end. The apartment itself was quite lovely—wide open space, pale hardwood floors and fresh white walls, cute electric fireplace set in one wall—but it was empty.
As in, empty. The only furniture in the whole room was a couch, an end table with a single lamp, and a television set up on a slim console table. There were no photographs, no books, nothing on the walls—no personal effects at all. Ángel turned in a slow circle and peeked into the kitchen. The spotless granite countertops were entirely bare except for a coffeemaker sitting all by its lonesome.
“So you’re going for Great Depression chic, then,” said Ángel. “Bold choice.”
With a roll of his eyes, Charles headed into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “I’ve never had a lot of stuff.”
That was true, though Charles’s minimalist style in Tucson had been an actual style, sleek and low-key and comfortable. This was just a bare-bones assortment of crap he could have bought off Craigslist.
Ángel waved off the water bottle Charles offered him. “Your apartment in Tucson didn’t look like this.”
“When Amy and I moved in together, I got rid of a lot of my things,” Charles said. He sipped his own water. “She took her stuff with her when she moved out, and I just haven’t gotten around to replacing anything yet.”
“She left you with nothing even though she was the reason you had nothing left to begin with?”
“You’re taking this out of context—”
“You don’t even have a kitchen table.”
“I eat on the couch,” Charles said, his voice sharp. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed out, then said more calmly, “I’ve got a futon in the second bedroom. I’ll sleep there, and you can have my bed.”
“No way,” Ángel said. “I’m not putting you out of your bed, Charles, come on.”
“Ángel—”
“I’m too tired to argue about this. Please.”
Charles led Ángel to the second bedroom, where the chocolate-brown futon was in its sofa configuration, its only companion in the room a floor lamp that wasn’t even plugged in. The cord trailed aimlessly across the carpet, far from any of the outlets.
This would be bleak for a broke grad student living off a tiny stipend. For a grown-ass man with a steady, fairly well-paying job, it was beyond depressing.
Charles lowered the back of the futon so it lay flat, then left the room and came back a minute later with an armload of sheets, blankets, and pillows that he dropped on top of the lumpy mattress.
“You don’t have any chairs, but you have eighteen thousand blankets?” said Ángel.
“You’re still shivering,” Charles said brusquely. “I turned the air conditioning down too.”
Ángel folded his arms across his chest, embarrassed and a little ashamed of himself. “Thanks.” When Charles started shaking out the sheets, Ángel caught his arm and said, “I can do it.”
Charles stepped back from the futon. “Good night, then,” he said, though it was almost nine in the morning.
“Night.”
Once Charles left, Ángel closed the door, opened the blinds over the window to let in some sunlight, and made up the bed. He did a sloppy job of it, but he was worn out and it wasn’t like he had to impress anyone with hospital corners or whatever.
Ángel collapsed onto the futon, curling around one of the pillows and pulling the blankets up to his chin. Relentless images of his blood-spattered motel room whirled around in his head and chased him even into sleep.
Ángel heard the door open and close in the distance, but he stayed where he was, leaning over the balcony railing of his villa on the grounds of Raúl’s compound. He listened to the heavy footsteps approach, letting Raúl think he’d caught him by surprise.
“There’s my beautiful boy,” Raúl said as he stepped onto the balcony.
Ángel turned around with a pleased smile. He was careful not to pay attention to the laptop case Raúl lowered to the ground, keeping his eyes on Raúl’s face instead. “You’re back,” he said, and held out his hands. “How was Torreón?”
Raúl took Ángel’s hands in his and pressed a kiss to each one before pulling him into his arms. “Very dull without you there.”
He kissed Ángel deeply, greedy after a week spent apart. Wrapping his arms around Raúl’s neck, Ángel melted into it, giving Raúl the enthusiastic welcome home he was expecting. Raúl slid a hand inside Ángel’s robe and groaned when he found Ángel naked underneath.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I brought you anything?” Raúl said, breaking the kiss to nuzzle Ángel’s neck.
“Oh, I know you brought me something.” Ángel dropped his own hand to Raúl’s hardening cock and gave him a devilish smile.
Raúl laughed, smacking Ángel’s ass beneath his robe. “Then I suppose you don’t want the original Dalí I purchased with your bedroom in mind?”
“You’re joking,” Ángel said with genuine surprise.
“Not at all.” Raúl pulled his hand back to brush Ángel’s hair out of his eyes, then traced his thumb down the side of Ángel’s face and over his mouth, eyes warm and e
xpression soft. “The next time I go out of town on business, you’re coming with me.”
“I’d love to,” said Ángel. Finally. Six goddamn months just to get to the point where he’d be able to travel with Raúl.
They kissed again, Raúl untying the belt of Ángel’s robe and spreading it open, bending his head to run his mouth over Ángel’s chest. Ángel glanced over Raúl’s shoulder at the laptop case that lay forgotten by the door.
When Raúl made to pull Ángel inside, Ángel resisted. “Wait,” he said, and shrugged out of his robe, letting it puddle at his feet. He leaned back against the railing, giving Raúl a good long look at his naked body in the afternoon sunlight. “Why don’t you just fuck me here?”
“Really?” Raúl arched an eyebrow, gesturing toward the grounds. Though very private, they were regularly patrolled by teams of armed guards. “Someone could see.”
“I don’t care.” Ángel seized the lapels of Raúl’s jacket and tugged him closer, playfully biting at his lower lip. “I want them all to know I belong to you.”
Raúl was almost too easy. He moaned, turning Ángel around to bend him over the railing and already reaching for the packets of lube he kept in his wallet. Ángel braced himself on the wrought iron, restraining an eyeroll.
Indulging Raúl’s exhibitionism would have him in a good mood for days, and a few rounds of vigorous, energetic sex would knock him out long enough for Ángel to spend some quality time alone with his laptop. He’d have to get in touch with Paul, update him on his progress—
A strong hand gripped Ángel’s shoulder. With a panicked shout, Ángel flailed out blindly, grabbing the man by the throat and throwing him sideways. He rolled with the momentum, crouching atop his assailant, and pulled back his free hand in a fist.
Charles grabbed Ángel’s fist before it could smash into his face, the fingers of his other hand tight around Ángel’s strangling wrist.
Ángel shook his head, his mind clearing as Charles came into focus beneath him and he remembered where he was. “Sorry,” he said. He released Charles’s throat and sat back on his heels.
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