by Claire King
And now, particularly, was not a good time to be wondering where she was, praying fervently that if nothing else right happened today, she was safely away. That she’d remember him, just a little, after she married some brilliant and rich and educated son of a bitch who didn’t deserve her and couldn’t possibly love her until he was sick with it.
“They’re coming in,” Bobby muttered. “You want to pay some attention, here, vato?”
Rafe rolled to his side, yanked his gun out of his waistband and checked the load. “I’m paying attention,” he muttered.
Bobby followed Rafe’s lead and palmed his gun. “Good. Because I don’t want to go down there like Zorro and find out you’re still back on that boat with Olivia.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Rafe said testily. “I don’t see Cervantes yet. I wish I had the binoculars. Dammit. The bastard better show up.”
“He’s there. He’s just getting out of the second cruiser.”
Rafe’s mouth went dry. “Oh, hell.”
“What?”
“Look at his pants.”
“Oh, hell,” Bobby echoed. “He’s been in the water.”
“She better have gotten off the boat before he found it,” Rafe said fiercely.
“I’m sure she did,” Bobby said. “But if she didn’t, Rafe, you can’t do a damn thing about it.”
Rafe’s teeth were clenched so hard he thought he might pop a molar. “I can shoot him where he stands,” he hissed, his lips barely moving.
“Yeah, you can do that. And then, if he’s got her, if he’s holding her somewhere, you’ll never know, will you,” Bobby asked quietly. “Jeez, Rafe, pull yourself together. She got off the boat. It’s past eleven o’clock, and he’s just now showing up with his pants wet. If she radioed out at eight o’clock like you told her to, she’d have been long gone by the time he found the boat. If he found it.” Bobby narrowed his eyes, followed Cervantes’s approach to the beach. “Maybe he’s just so scared of us, primo, that he’s pissed himself.”
Rafe didn’t answer. He was working desperately at keeping himself together, at not finding out for himself how many plugs he could put in Cervantes before he killed him. He had to focus on the matter at hand. If he killed Cervantes now, and Cervantes had gotten to Olivia this morning, Rafe might never find her. Dead or alive.
He felt a strange buzzing in his head at that terrible thought, and his tongue thickened against his clenched teeth. Funny, he’d never noticed before how many physical manifestations there were to a man’s fear. Maybe he’d never really been afraid before.
Olivia couldn’t be dead. He’d been willing, just barely, to give her up to her old life. But he’d be damned if he’d give her up to death.
Olivia was alive, but only by the narrowest margin of luck and the superior speed and stamina of youth.
She took in another shuddering breath. Every few minutes the scene would replay in her mind, of Cervantes standing in the surf, of Manuel’s blood saturating the sand, of the moment when she realized she was alone and running from a madman.
Thank heaven the madman had finally given up an hour or so ago and gone back—to his zippy little boat, Olivia presumed. Apparently there were things more pressing than following one woman through the desert. Like a drug shipment to protect.
Cervantes probably thought she’d die out here, anyway. But he underestimated her, she knew. Dr. Olivia Galpas had overcome every obstacle ever set in front of her. She’d broken through the race and gender barriers in her profession and had been published and promoted and applauded. There was no way in hell she was going to let Ernesto Cervantes mow someone down in cold blood and get away with it. She’d be screaming his name from the rooftops until he was put behind bars.
First, she had to get out of this desert.
The sun was becoming unforgivably hot on the back of her neck and the arroyos and creek beds she crossed gave up not a drop of water. She’d sucked on a stem of barrel cactus carefully snapped from a large specimen, but it was a poor substitute for a nice glass of iced tea, which, since about an hour earlier, had become the focus of all her desires.
Meanwhile, her anger at Rafe grew, as his words ran in circles through her head.
So, he doesn’t love me, she thought, the frustration giving her renewed energy to trudge over another hill. Not that he’s not sexually attracted to me. I was just there. To put it bluntly. Not that we’d ever run into each other.
As she pushed on through the hot sand, anger wrestled with the ache in her heart. How could she fall for a drug agent? Maybe he was no better for her than a common thief. He probably would be gone all the time, making friends with criminals, and would most likely end up getting killed in the line of duty.
She thought of her family, how they expected her to marry a white-collar professional. A Latino doctor or lawyer or something, but not a drug agent.
So, fine. Let Rafe walk out, she told herself. Who needs him? She could feel tears welling up from her chest, then spilling down her cheeks.
“Not me!” she shouted as loudly as her dry throat would allow.
She slogged doggedly on toward Aldea Viejo, keeping well clear of the coastline. Olivia had no idea on which beach the drug exchange was to take place, and she was taking no chances.
It didn’t matter, anyway, Olivia decided, as long as it wasn’t in the middle of town. She intended to make her way to Aldea Viejo and slip into the village unnoticed. That would be much easier to do if the two men she’d been involved with during the past month weren’t shooting at each other in the streets.
Olivia squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, pursed her lips resolutely. She’d learned a lot from Rafael in the past few days. She was now an expert in covert activity. She’d be just fine.
Her lips trembled just a little. Oh, Lord, it was an idiotic plan. Even sunstruck and frightened and miserable with heartache as she was, she could see how impossible it would be to get in and out of Aldea Viejo without someone who worked for Cervantes seeing her and alerting the ever-present, khaki-uniformed thugs.
But she had no choice.
Aldea Viejo was the only town around for miles. She knew she had to take her chances there. Because the only other option was to take her chances here, in this arid wasteland. She would do just fine if someone would plop an ocean down in front of her, but the desert baffled her.
Aldea Viejo was also where she’d left all her money, her identification and her plane ticket home. The little motel where she’d dressed for Ernesto’s party—was it just last Friday?—would surely have held her belongings for her. Once she had money, a decent pair of shoes on her feet, and at least one clean pair of underwear, nothing could stop her from finding a way to make Cervantes pay for Manuel’s death.
She skidded down another wash, wondering crossly where all the water was that had formed the thousands of gullies she’d forded since escaping Cervantes. She was concentrating on keeping at least some of the dirt out of her shoe, so she didn’t see the man until she was almost on top of him.
She shrieked abruptly in surprise. He loomed in front of her like a mirage in the shimmering glare of the noon sun. One moment he wasn’t there, the next he was. In his khaki uniform and with his big, shiny gun.
Olivia almost dropped to her knees and wept.
“Dr. Galpas. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Cervantes must have radioed his people to be on the lookout for her. She should have known: she’d seen him shoot Manuel; he’d never leave her alone.
Olivia stood stock-still, weighing her options, realizing she didn’t actually have any. The man hadn’t raised his weapon to her, but Olivia knew he wouldn’t hesitate to do so if she gave him any trouble.
“I’m sorry to have been so long,” she said calmly. She pointed to her feet. “The wrong shoes, you understand.”
He apparently did not, the big dummy. He stared at her feet a moment, then grunted. “Come along. Señor Cervantes wants to talk to you.”
&n
bsp; “Okay, that’s it. Let’s go.”
Rafe and Bobby had been lying on their bellies for nearly an hour, watching Cervantes’s men off-load the cargo from the boat. Cervantes surveyed the whole process from the beach, arms crossed, the arrogant overlord. Rafe would have arrested him for the smug expression on his face alone, if he could have. Cervantes was so certain his presence and the display of muscle and the midday exchange would keep away the little maggots that had been stealing from him that he didn’t even bother to swivel his head every once in a while to see who might be coming out of the dunes.
Well, Rafe and Bobby were coming out of the dunes. And Cervantes’s twenty-year reign as drug king of Aldea Viejo was over.
So focused was Rafe that he missed the flash of sun reflecting off the windshield of the third Land Cruiser as it made its way down the beach road. Bobby saw it, however, and hooked an arm around Rafe’s ankles as he rose, dragging him back to the sand.
“What?”
Bobby pointed. “More company.”
Rafe swore viciously. “We have no choice but to go in, anyway,” he said, impatient and frustrated. “They’re nearly finished unloading. This is too good to pass up.”
“I don’t think so,” Bobby said grimly. “Look—”
The cruiser stopped next to Cervantes. The driver got out and opened the back door and dragged something—someone?—from the back seat.
Rafe’s insides froze solid despite the rising heat of the day.
Olivia.
Bobby began a low, foul litany against Manny first, then against the man who yanked Olivia from the vehicle, then changed focus and swore steadily under his breath at Cervantes, who was admiring the restraints that held Olivia’s wrists together.
Rafe didn’t even hear him.
He watched, stupefied, as Cervantes said something to her. Olivia said something back, and was backhanded for her trouble. Rafe’s vision blurred. He didn’t notice that the delivery boat roared off toward the open sea, just as he’d supposed it would, at the first sign of trouble.
He did not panic or weaken, as he had back in that little bunk, telling Olivia goodbye. He rose from the sand like a giant, feeling as strong as ten men.
No drug-dealing son of a bitch was going to hurt Olivia Galpas and live to tell the tale.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bobby asked.
“I’m going to get her.”
Bobby tackled Rafe again, sitting on his chest when his cousin began to struggle mightily. “Calm down, you idiot. You’re going to get her killed. Calm down.”
Rafe flipped Bobby off him as though his partner weighed no more than a pup, and started back down the dune. Bobby hit him behind the knees this time and took him down. Rafe hung on, cursing at his partner.
“Do you have a plan? Any way to get to her without getting shot, then get her off the beach alive? Rafe!”
In the distance, Rafe saw Cervantes slap Olivia again, saw her teeter on her feet.
“I’m going to break every bone in his hand,” Rafe said ominously. “And then I’m going to break every other bone in his body. That’s my plan, primo.”
“Well, it’s not much of a plan,” Bobby said. “Why don’t you spend a minute or two thinking up a better one.”
On the beach, Olivia stood her ground before Cervantes, after having been hauled roughly out of the back of the Land Cruiser. The mirage man had strapped her hands behind her back before he’d shoved her in there, and then had set the child safety locks so that even if she wriggled free, she wouldn’t be able to get out of the car. He was, apparently, not as dumb as he looked.
Ah, and there was Ernesto. The pig. She stumbled when her captor pushed her lightly between the shoulder blades and she ended up toe-to-toe with the man who had chased her across half of Baja California.
“Olivia,” he said cordially.
She set her mutinous jaw and glared at him. He looked hideous. All the handsome veneer was obliterated by a lumpy jaw, two black eyes and a veiny brick in the center of his face that passed for a broken nose. Good work, Rafael, Olivia thought.
Cervantes raised his remaining perfect feature, one shapely eyebrow. Olivia wondered nastily if he plucked it.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“You killed that man in cold blood.”
“Ah, no. I did not. I merely shot an escaping fugitive, after warning him to stop. I am the sheriff of this district, Olivia, and I had reason to believe this man was a drug runner. I saw him in the company of two known narcotics smugglers only two days ago, on the same boat.” He smiled, clucked his tongue. “As I did you, Olivia. You should be more careful of the company you keep.”
Olivia shook her head derisively, summoned up her best Rafael sneer. “Like you?”
Cervantes cocked his head, gave Olivia a regretful look. “Ah, but you had your chance, querida.”
“I would rather keep company with the scorpions. You’re a monster.”
He backhanded her casually. Olivia saw stars, tasted blood. “I’m a businessman,” he said pleasantly enough. “You have caused me no end of embarrassment, Olivia. You ruined my party, and I had to make explanations to everyone.”
Her eyes flashed. “I’d like to kick in your capped teeth, Cervantes.”
He hit her again. She almost went down with that one, but steadied herself defiantly. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her drop to her knees.
“I don’t have time to trade insults with you, Olivia.” He motioned the men behind him forward with the barrel of his gun. “Put her back in the car. We’ll have to take her back to the house with us.”
“Why? Are you worried that if you stay any longer, Rafael will come and steal your poison out from under your nose, as he has for months now?”
Cervantes laughed, but his face flushed darkly and Olivia could see his nonchalance was forced. “So, he told you about that, did he?”
“That you are a drug smuggler and a killer? Yes.” Olivia smiled slowly, narrowed her eyes. “He told me many things,” she said. “He is my lover.”
Cervantes’s red face turned purple. He spat a filthy name at her, a name her brothers would have beaten him for speaking, but Olivia only laughed.
“All the time you were courting me with those long, boring speeches about wine and art, I was with him,” she lied, taunting him. “Since the very beginning.”
“You put yourself in peril, woman,” Cervantes bit out.
“No, Ernesto, you have put me in peril. You and your lies and your fraudulent life.” She gave him a disgusted once-over. “You pretend to be a man of family and education, but you are nothing but a common, low criminal, as your father was before you.”
She was pulling the tail of the shark, she knew, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She knew perfectly well that he was going to kill her, and she was not about to go down like a mewling miss.
The shark only grew calmer, the more she yanked, however. He was looking at her, considering her now. Olivia felt a trickle of dread slip down her spine.
“Lovers?” He pulled his pistol from the holster at his hip, cocked it.
Olivia held her breath.
Cervantes smiled. “Lovers?”
His gun hand twitched. Olivia knew he wanted to kill her.
But he wasn’t going to. Not just yet. Because of her brash words, she was to be used as bait to lure Rafael into a trap, she realized with a sudden sick emptiness in the pit of her stomach.
Well, she assured herself, whatever Cervantes’s plan was, it wouldn’t work. She almost looked forward to seeing his battered face when he realized she was no better at being bait than she was at being the ideal wife-to-be of the local sheriff.
Rafael would never compromise himself or his operation for her. She was simply a woman he’d had sex with—and, judging from his amazing skill in that particular area, one of many. But Cervantes was the man who’d killed Rafe’s brother, the man he’d dedicated his entire life to bringing to justice.
<
br /> Olivia knew Rafael wouldn’t choose to save her at the risk of losing Cervantes. Never. Never.
Cervantes put his hand in her tangled hair, yanked her around so that her back was pressed against his chest.
“Come out, cabrón,” he shouted in a enticing, mocking voice that sent goose bumps down Olivia’s arms.
Olivia smiled bitterly, triumphantly. “It won’t work.”
Cervantes yanked brutally on her hair. “We’ll see.” He ground the barrel of the pistol to her temple and yelled again, “Are you out there, cabrón?”
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the surf. Olivia focused on that. She was glad, actually, that the sound of the ocean would be the last she ever heard.
“I’ll kill her where she stands,” Cervantes yelled.
Olivia closed her eyes. Odd that at the last moment of her life, it would be Rafael’s face she would see—not her mother’s or her father’s, faces she’d known a lifetime. His face. And it was smiling. How very odd.
“I’m here.”
Olivia’s eyes snapped open. She stared at Rafe as he walked down the dune, his hands in the air. A sob wrenched from her throat. She hadn’t wept when she thought she was going to die, but the sight of Rafael walking across the dunes made her cry out in agony.
Oh, she didn’t want to die. She was terribly afraid and she didn’t want to die. But more than that, she didn’t want Rafe to die.
“Don’t,” she screamed in English.
Cervantes yanked her hair again until her chin pointed to the sky. “Shut up,” he said in her ear. He watched Rafe slip on his heels down a sand hill. “Stop where you are. Lift up your shirt.”
Rafe stood, yanked his shirt up around his chest. Olivia saw that his bruises had turned a sickly yellow color over the past two days.
“Turn around.”
Rafe pivoted slowly, letting Cervantes see that he carried no weapon.
“Let her go, Cervantes,” he said ominously. “You want me, you got me.”
“Don’t do it,” she said, again in English. “He’s going to kill me, anyway. I saw him kill Manuel. Don’t, Rafael.”
