Renegade with a Badge

by Claire King

  She was willing to take just about any precaution to keep her mother from knowing about the past three weeks.

  She spread out her arms. “Ready?” she asked.

  She looked beautiful, Rafe thought. Pretty and bright as any American tourist, in that silly dress.

  He’d pounded on the door of a small shop in the heart of La Paz early this morning, until someone had come out of the back and opened the door. He’d flashed a fistful of American cash through the window first, to make the decision to open up on a Sunday morning a little easier for the shopkeeper.

  The man had had a miserable selection of mostly ancient, mostly dusty, mostly men’s work clothes. The dress Olivia wore was the single article of women’s clothing he could find that he thought might fit her. It was a terrible color, but she looked wonderful in it. Her hair gleamed, her face glowed. She looked as she had when he’d first seen her.

  “It fits,” he said.

  She looked down. “Yes. Thank you. And for…for the other thing.”

  He nodded. The receipt. It had been a little gift. Maybe it would help to ease the shame he knew she felt about being with him.

  He glanced down at her feet. “What about your socks?”

  Olivia held out the balled socks. “My feet aren’t swollen anymore. The sandals are fine.”

  “That’s because it’s first thing in the morning. They’re bound to hurt by this afternoon. Keep the socks.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to carry them. Besides, I’ll be home by this afternoon.”

  Right. Why did he keep forgetting that? She wouldn’t be with him by this afternoon. She’d be hundreds of miles away, laughing about her adventures over margaritas in some San Diego hot spot, most likely. Rafe took the socks and stuffed them in the front pocket of his jeans.

  The sun was already beating down on them, and the dust from the unpaved side streets was a haze that would only get worse as the day progressed. Rafe scanned the street briefly.

  “We’d better get going. We need to get through town and to the airport before siesta. We want to be as inconspicuous as possible.”

  “Lucky she’s wearing that orange dress, then,” Bobby observed.

  “It was the only one they had in her size,” Rafe said sharply.

  Olivia looked down, fingered the fabric. “It’s bright,” she conceded. She looked up at Rafe. “I don’t have to put the other clothes back on, though, do I?”

  “No. It’s fine.” He glared at Bobby, who snickered. Rafe suspected it was becoming Bobby’s mission in this situation to appear as obnoxious as possible. Rafe, as his superior officer by one grade, would have to tell him later what a damn good job he was doing of it.

  “How are we getting there?” Olivia asked.

  “We’ll have to take a taxi.”

  There were plenty around. March was a good month for tourists in La Paz. Sun worshippers from the north were still chasing the Baja desert sunshine.

  Rafe jerked his head toward the main plaza, and Bobby loped obediently off to flag down one of the taxis that cruised for sightseeing or shopping tourists.

  Olivia looked around, pretending interest in everything but the man in front of her. “I’ve always liked La Paz,” she mused quietly. Rafe watched her. It was his last chance to memorize her delicate features, her exotic, almond eyes, the creamy tint of her skin. He’d had such a short time with her, and he wanted to remember everything.

  “You can’t come back here, Olivia,” he said after a minute.

  She gazed up at him, the sun and the statement making her blink. “What do you mean, I can’t come back here?”

  “Until Cervantes is dead or behind bars, you can’t come back to La Paz. He’ll know you’ve been with me. He’ll know I’ve told you about him. You can’t come back to Baja at all.”

  Olivia’s heart dropped like a brick in her chest. She felt suddenly as though she’d been running again and couldn’t catch her breath. “I have to come back,” she choked out. “I…I have to come back next fall for a follow-up study.”

  Rafe shook his head. “Unless Cervantes is in jail, or someone’s killed him, it won’t be safe.”

  “Rafael,” she said urgently, “you don’t understand. I’m in Baja all the time. For the next six years I have to be here twice a year. We’re doing current studies in the gulf. Data has to be taken on a regular basis.”

  “Someone else will have to take it.”

  “No one else can take my data,” she cried, feeling desperate. Rafe seemed to look around to ensure she’d attracted no attention, but Olivia ignored the significance of the look. “That would mean giving up my promotion, my team.”

  Rafael’s expression hardened. “Then give them up, Olivia. If you come back here before he’s put in jail, he’ll kill you.”

  “No.” She shook her head frantically, as though if she denied his words forcefully enough, they would not be true. “He won’t. Even if what you’ve told me is true, I’m an American citizen.”

  He gave her a scornful look. “Don’t be stupid.”

  Olivia stared up at him. “This is insane. I have to come back to Baja in just a few months. It’s my job.”

  “Is your job more important than your life?”

  “Yes! No, I mean, that’s not a question I can even answer.”

  Not a question she could answer? Rafe thought he detected the slightest red haze in his normally clear vision. Not a question she could answer?

  “Are you out of your mind?” he whispered furiously. “Your life cannot be separated from your job?”

  “My job is my life. It’s my whole identity. It’s everything I’ve worked for since I was a child.” She gripped his arm. “Rafael, you can’t understand. I have worked so hard for credibility. It has taken me years to make people understand how serious I am. How smart I am. And still I get trotted out to press conferences and cocktail parties as the token Latina.

  “This was my first team, my first assignment in charge. Not as the assistant scientist, but as the boss. I know it was mostly because of my Spanish, my connection with Mexico and the fact that my name opens some doors here. But I earned it, too, with long days on a thousand different boats in a dozen different waters. If I have to tell my colleagues that I can’t go back to my job in Baja because I got mixed up with a bunch of drug-running Mexican bandits, I will never get another team or another assignment of my own again.”

  He glared at her, putting every ounce of menace into the look. If she wouldn’t listen to reason, maybe she’d respond to good old-fashioned intimidation. He understood what she was saying, of course. He, too, had dedicated his life to a very specific goal. He’d earned every promotion, when often the brass had thought of him as just another barrio boy who could translate for the border patrol.

  If, after all that work, someone had tried to tell him he couldn’t come to Mexico, couldn’t come after Cervantes, he would have told them to go to hell—and he’d have come, anyway.

  But this wasn’t him. This was Olivia. And the thought of Cervantes finding her, hurting her, made him nuts.

  “I don’t care if you never get another assignment,” he said, wearing his fierce, implacable stare. “I don’t care if you never take another current reading in your life. I don’t care if you get fired, if you have to wash dishes to make a living. You are not coming back to Mexico until Cervantes is behind bars.” He poked her in the chest with his middle finger. “And then only if I call you personally and tell you it’s safe to come back.”

  She stared at him, dumbfounded. “What are you talking about?”

  He realized too late what he’d said. He straightened, raked his fingers through his hair, buying time. “What am I talking about?” he bluffed. “I’m talking about your life, Olivia.”

  “No.” She frowned up at him. “I mean, why would you know when it was safe for me to come back? Why would you call me? Why would Ernesto go to jail, and not you or Bobby? What did you mean by that?”

  He looked aro
und for their taxi. Where the hell was Bobby? “I only meant that you have to take this as seriously as I do. You don’t know what Cervantes is like, Olivia. You’ve only seen that smarmy charm of his.”

  Olivia’s brows snapped together. “Smarmy?” He’d never spoken a word of English to her, but he tossed words like smarmy around?

  “He’s insane, Olivia. And not just the regular kind of insane. I’m talking about a man who kills people without a second thought. Who terrorizes his little town until they’re afraid to so much as talk to the police or the drug agents out of fear for their families. He’s not like the rest of us,” he added, intentionally including himself in the rundown of moral degenerates, if only to erase that dangerously considering look from her face. “He’s not in it just for the money, although he makes more of that than most small countries. He’s in it for the power. If he finds out you know about him, or if he even suspects it, which I imagine he already does, your American citizenship and your PhD and your family name aren’t going to mean anything. He’ll put you on a little boat and set you on your precious gulf—and you’ll never be seen again.”

  “I am just as dangerous to you, Rafael. Why haven’t you put me on a boat and set me adrift? Why are you helping me? I could just as easily turn you in, make the police suspicious of you.”

  Rafael couldn’t possibly answer that question. He didn’t have a clue. Even if he had been the kind of man she thought he was, even if she had posed that kind of threat to him, he would still be sneaking her out of the country, would still be keeping her safe. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

  So he didn’t answer. He only looked down at her, at her hair and how it gleamed in the sunlight, at her lovely face and the brilliance in her eyes and the strong, stubborn set of her chin.

  He lifted a hand, brushed back a strand of thick hair that had escaped its ruthless braid. “Princesa,” he said. “If anyone has been set adrift, it is me, I think.”

  A horn blasted, making them both jump.

  Rafe broke eye contact first, watched the taxi Bobby hired pull to the curb, while Olivia watched Rafe.

  The man quite simply devastated her. Just when she had him pegged—a desperado, a drifter, a ruthless smuggler—he turned out to be something entirely different. He pushed her and bossed her and dragged her around, scaring her out of her wits most of the time. Then he tipped up her chin or brushed back her hair, and he’d be someone else. Someone who moved her.

  He was moving her, now. In more ways than one.

  “Hey!” Olivia snapped, as Rafe practically tossed her into the back of the cab beside Bobby, giving curt instructions to the driver as he scooted in next to her.

  They drove in silence out to the airport, which was really not much more than a single runway and a tiny terminal.

  The taxi dropped them off, as Rafe had instructed, at the entrance to the terminal parking lot. After the driver gave them all a curious once-over, he circled around and parked behind several other taxicabs to wait for the next wave of American tourists to come filing out of the terminal, eyes blinking in the sun.

  Rafe, Olivia and Bobby stood on the asphalt in a small knot, Olivia sandwiched carefully between the men. Bobby and Rafe faced outward, surveying the parking lot.

  They nodded at one another briefly, and Bobby faded into the low-growing windbreak trees that ringed the lot.

  “Where is he going?” Olivia asked.

  “To the terminal.”

  “Is this all necessary? I mean, Ernesto doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who could or would operate covertly. If he were here, wouldn’t he be here with some of those Land Cruisers he likes and fifty men?”

  “Probably,” Rafe grunted. “And if you don’t stop calling him ‘Ernesto,’ I’m going to have to gag you.”

  Olivia ignored the threat. She’d found, over the past few days, that his threats held no real peril for her. “Then why do all this?”

  “Because Cervantes isn’t the only sheriff in Baja, Olivia.” And except for a handful of Mexican federal agents, no one knew he and Bobby were not actually drug runners. He didn’t particularly care to be shot down in the line of duty while trying to buy Olivia a plane ticket. Not much glory in that for his family, Rafe thought.

  “Oh,” Olivia said. She watched him as he followed Bobby’s wary progress through the trees toward the terminal. Every few seconds he would focus on the taxi drivers, who were out of their cars now, smoking and chatting. His beautiful black eyes were never still.

  “How can you live like this?” she said, almost to herself.

  He didn’t look at her. “You get used to it,” he said.

  “I couldn’t get used to it.”

  He flicked his gaze over her. “You’ve had a choice, señorita.”

  Ah, the other Rafael, now. The snide, irritable Rafael. She wanted to be angry with him, but she suspected he was trying to provoke her. She didn’t have the heart to rise to the bait.

  “Everyone has a choice, really.”

  Rafe didn’t respond to that. Mostly because he wasn’t sure he believed it was true.

  “Come on.” He grabbed her hand and started walking toward the terminal.

  Olivia looked around for Rafael’s partner. “Where’s Bobby?”

  “He’s inside. Everything checks out all right. We can go in.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because Bobby told me.”

  “How? I can’t even see him.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you can see him, princesa,” Rafe said absently, keeping his eye on the cabdrivers as they passed. “I can see him.”

  “You guys have some sort of secret code, don’t you.”

  Rafe laughed shortly. “No. But we grew up together. You get to where you can communicate pretty well without having to say much. Very useful in our business.”

  They entered the terminal. It was not air-conditioned, and felt warmer inside than it did outside. Olivia was grateful for her summer dress, orange though it was. She still could not see Bobby, though, and that fact gave her the funniest little tickle on the back of her neck. She’d had that tickle before…oh, right. Well, maybe she did have women’s intuition, after all.

  “Where is he?” she whispered.

  “You don’t need to whisper, Olivia.” He looked around. “There’s no one here.”

  “Then why doesn’t he come out?”

  “Because that’s not the plan.”

  “Then what is the plan?”

  Rafe sighed. “I know you like to know everything, Dr. Galpas. But try to curb that impulse just this once.”

  “Fine. But what if there aren’t any flights to Tijuana today? Then what?”

  “Then we make a new plan.” Rafe read the departure schedule above the Mexican Airlines counter. “But there is a flight out, this afternoon.” He glanced at his watch. “Three hours from now. Are you hungry?”

  “Uh, yes. I am.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  She dug in. This man had been dragging her all over Baja for two days now. She didn’t want to go another step without knowing where she was going.

  “Wait a minute. What about my ticket?”

  “We’re not going to buy it until the last minute. If Cervantes or anyone else is looking for you, it’s too easy for them to check with the airline agents. If they know you’re holding a ticket for the 2:45 flight, they’ll just wait around here until you show up to get on the plane.”

  “But if the plane is sold out?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What do you suppose the chances are of that?”

  Olivia looked around the sleepy little airport. There were only half a dozen or so other people in the whole place: two ticket agents behind a counter, a slow-moving older man cleaning out ashtrays in the lobby, and a small knot of tourists enquiring, in very loud English, about their lost luggage, which had somehow ended up in Guadalajara. It occurred to Olivia that the taxi drivers would have a very long wait for a fare.


  “And if it’s sold out, we just wait for the next one. Or you go out on the 4:24 to Cabo San Lucas, then take a flight from there tonight. They run planes back and forth to Tijuana all the time down there.”

  “You’re not concerned by this?” she asked him. “You’re not concerned that we have to hang around for three more hours like sitting ducks, while Ernesto is looking for us?”

  “Concerned?” He felt a petty satisfaction that some of Olivia’s fears had transferred away from him, at least partially, and onto Cervantes. Whether she wanted to admit it or not. “Are you concerned?”

  She opened her mouth. Nothing came out at first, she was so astounded by his relaxed attitude. Wasn’t this the man who brooded over every little thing? “What if he finds us?”

  “Then he finds us. We’ll deal with it then. I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t tracked us down already,” he added calmly.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Look, Olivia, there’s nothing more we can do. We’re at the airport, we know when the flight is, we’ve ditched the Land Cruiser and we have new clothes.” He smiled. “What else is there to do but to have lunch?”

  “Worry. Obsess. Plan for contingencies.” She met his mild stare. “Okay. I guess you’re right.”

  He gave her a patient smile. “I can rise to the occasion when I have to.”

  They bought tacos from one of the small travel trailers that worked every town in Baja. It was parked just outside the east entrance to the parking lot, awaiting the airport workers and cabdrivers and occasional intrepid tourist that made up the bulk of its business. Olivia and Rafe stood under the scrawny awning of the trailer and ate from paper sacks.

  Olivia finished a second hot-sauce-soaked taco and peered into the sack. “Is that it?”

  Rafe grinned. “Want more?”

  “No. I was just wondering if you were going to take any back for Bobby.”