The Traitor

by Jo Robertson

  "Hmmm," Rafe said, sliding downward and pushing aside her panties to reach the wet, hot core of her. "It's never wise to ignore your superior's orders."

  Chapter Thirty-three

  "I'm going to be there with you when you make the deal." Rafe braced himself against the bathroom door, his fingers gripping the top of the door jamb.

  "No, I have to do this alone." Her face warm with insistence, Bella ran a brush through her hair. "And besides, Santos won't deal if you're there."

  "He won't go for it anyway," Rafe argued, "and if I'm there at least I can add some pressure."

  "No," she repeated, turning back to the mirror.

  Shirtless, the pair of shorts revealing his long legs, Rafe glared at her. The flesh of his chest was burnished copper with dark tendrils of hair curling around the middle and funneling downward to disappear beneath his waistband. "He's got to know the feds will give him a better deal."

  "Santos knows the feds could send him anywhere in the country," she countered, "and he won't go out of state. Besides, it's my deal to make," she insisted stubbornly.

  "That's stupid, Isabella." Rafe's dark brows slashed in the middle of his forehead like sharp swords. "A man like Santos is too dangerous for you to confront alone. Don't even consider it."

  His bossy tone rankled her and she took a breath to lash out when Rafe's cell phone buzzed on the dresser top. He held up a finger to indicate they weren't finished with the conversation.

  Eyeing her through the bathroom door, he barked into the phone. "What?"

  After a moment, he continued in a more controlled tone. "Ah, Max, shit, man, I forgot to call you." He ran his fingers through his hair and the ends stood up wildly. "Sure, yeah, whatever you say."

  He nodded, listened a moment, and then repeated an address as he jotted it down on note paper. "Fine, I'll see you there."

  He turned back to Bella. "Max," he said unnecessarily.

  "Your cop friend from L.A.?"

  "Yeah, he split from his wife and flew up to get his mind off the situation."

  "Why all the way up here?"

  "He was raised in northern California. I think his family still has property somewhere. He gave me directions." He laughed shortly, waving the note paper. "He probably wants a distraction from his personal problems. Thinks getting involved in my case will help."

  "Why is he helping you on the Vargas case?" she asked curiously.

  He shrugged a little too casually. "Max is an old friend."

  "Have you told him about Santos?"

  "He knows there's a leak, knows you have someone who's going to testify against Vargas."

  "But he doesn't have a name."

  "No," he said shortly, more angry with himself than Isabella because he knew better than anyone that in the vault meant in – the – vault. No one got to know anything. He followed her back into the bathroom.

  "Look ... I've known Max since fifth grade. He's not the leak."

  Her eyes looked sad. "Are you sure?"

  "Hell, yes!" He raked his fingers through his hair. "Maybe." He thought of the discrepancies over the last few years, of how Max had been privy to everything – Lupe's identity, the deliveries and pickups of the drugs – God dammit, everything! "Ah, Jesus Christ!"

  Instead of berating him as he deserved, she wrapped her arms around him. "We don't know what's true yet."

  "It's my business to know!" He hugged her tightly. "But Max ... God, he'd have to be in some kind of deep shit."

  "We can't do anything about it at the moment," she whispered in his ear, kissing his lobe. "Santos knows how to take care of himself. And as soon as he signs the plea agreement, I'll get him in protective custody."

  He looked askance at her. "You think he'll go?"

  "Not gently," she laughed. "But he'll go. He wants Vargas as much as I do."

  "Really? Why?"

  She shrugged and shook her head. "Don't know. Don't care," she spoke into his mouth, "but after Santos is secured, you can approach Max, discover the truth. If he's on Vargas' payroll, Santos will give me his name."

  She blew into his ear. "Right now I just want to put the whole Vargas case behind us. Just for tonight." She deepened the kiss and he let himself sink into the soft warmth of her face, her body and returned the kiss until she was breathless.

  They'd shed their clothes by the time they reached the bedroom. As she leaned backwards onto the bed, he pulled her upright. "No, I just want to look at you a minute."

  He ran his hands over her breasts, reveling in the soft peaks that hardened a moment later beneath his thumbs. His hands traced the length of her waist and hips and traveled down her thighs nudging them apart with his hands. He knelt in front of her and traced his tongue around her navel and dipped lower. "God, you are so beautiful."

  "Wait," she said. "I'm feeling grubby. Let's shower first."

  "I like that idea."

  He stepped into the shower and adjusted the temperature and spray, then pulled her in after him. He took the brunt of the pulsating water so her hair wouldn't get wet.

  She wrapped her legs around his hips and leaned her back against the shower wall. "I can't wait," she breathed. "I want you. Now!"

  "Huh uh," he panted, "I want to bury my face between your legs until you scream."

  "Oh, God, don't talk like that. I'll explode."

  "Then we won't wait." He thrust hard into her and felt her core already tightening and pulsing around him, and a few moments later he climaxed hard into her wet, slick body. The throbbing seemed endless and he felt the intense clutching of her inner muscles around him for a long time.

  Afterward they washed each other slowly and languidly and by the time they'd dried off, he was ready for her again. She turned the overhead fan on to cool their still-hot bodies and they tumbled naked on the bed. He slid down her body and lifted her knees around his shoulders, sank his mouth into her sweet, hot center and kissed and teased until she cried out in pleasure-pain. "God, Rafe!"

  He rode her climax with his mouth and his tongue as she gripped his hair and lifted her hips toward his face for greater access. She came for a long time and he felt a possessive pride in giving her pleasure like this.

  He slid back up her body, turned her hips around, and sank his face into her nape. Her hair formed a dark curtain around across the pillow as he breathed in the scent of her soap and shampoo and sex.

  One hand teased the now-sensitive nub and the other played with her nipples. The hard, hot length of him pushed hard against her soft hips, a fierce warrior demanding access to the castle. Jesus, he wanted to mount her again like a stud horse after a filly in heat.

  "Are you a filly?" he whispered, nuzzling her neck.

  "What?" Her voice was heavy with the drowsiness of a body sated with sex.

  "Are you up for another one?"

  She must have felt the hard length of him against her ass – how could she miss it? She giggled and turned around, draping one leg over him and finally straddling his body. His cock lay pointing straight up for all the world like a dangerous weapon.

  "Shall I disarm you?" she teased, grabbing him with her small hand and beginning a rhythm before bending over to wrap her mouth around the tip of him.

  He groaned and gave himself over to her ministrations, banishing every thought of Max's possible treachery from his mind.

  #

  Bella applied her makeup with Max Jensen on her mind, thinking how he and Rafe had a long history, but she barely knew the man.

  Rafe watched her in the mirror, thinking about Isabella's meet with Santos today. "Change your mind. Let me go with you when you bargain with Santos. Please."

  She shook her head, but kept her voice even, smiling gamely. "I'll be fine. The wild beast likes me, remember?"

  "That's what I'm afraid of," Rafe muttered. "Scarface likes you too much."

  "I'm counting on that to get what I want from him."

  "It's a dangerous game you're playing."

  He reached for h
er as she wrapped her arms around his middle. He smoothed her hair back from her forehead. "Santos is like an alligator. He strikes with cunning unpredictability when you least expect it. You can't know what he's going to do from one minute to the next."

  "I know what I'm doing." Bella allowed the smallest note of exasperation to creep into her voice. "You have to trust me on this."

  Rafe glowered at her as she twisted out of his arms and applied a final coat of lipstick. She half expected him to argue further, or haul her over his shoulder and carry her off cave-man style to some imagined safety.

  She braced herself for more discussion, but he simply stared at her, a calculating expression on his face. As he spun around to leave the bathroom and make his way through the bedroom where they'd begun the discussion, she wondered what plan he was concocting.

  Slipping on a robe, she caught up with him in the small kitchen where he'd just poured himself a cup of coffee. She stood beside him at the counter, reached in front of his large body and pulled down a mug for herself. They stood silently side by side, him leaning against the countertop, her facing the coffee percolator.

  Rafe sighed. "All right. I won't force you to let me in on the meet with Santos."

  She smiled. "Good."

  "Even though I could."

  She merely lifted an eyebrow.

  "I could take over the entire investigation. Make my own federal deal with Santos. Get to him ahead of you."

  She dropped her jaw. "You wouldn't."

  Suddenly serious, he turned her to face him. "Yes, Isabella, I would. If I thought it would do any good, if you wouldn't go off half-cocked and do something reckless out of sheer stubbornness. But for now I'll settle for you acting responsible around the thug."

  The tone of his voice, worried and sympathetic at the same time, warmed her. She leaned against him, drawing a little comfort for the task ahead. She had to cut a deal with a monster in order to catch what was undoubtedly a larger monster.

  Santos was the devil incarnate. Of that she had no doubt. He'd been responsible for the death and destruction of countless victims in his role as legal counsel and enforcer for Diego Vargas' drug cartel.

  But she had a personal stake in seeing that Vargas went away for the rest of his natural life. She believed he had a hand in her sister Maria's disappearance twenty years ago, even though she had absolutely no proof.

  "What are you going to offer him?" Rafe asked at last.

  "I'll take the death penalty off the table," she answered promptly, knowing Santos wasn't the kind of man who'd submit to life in prison.

  Rafe shook his head. "He'll never go for it."

  Bella shrugged.

  "What do you expect from him?"

  "As much as I can get. Vargas and his connections for sure, more if I can get it."

  "For life without parole? Santos is a wild animal. He won't let himself be caged like that."

  She knew Rafe was right. She read the concern for her safety on his face. "I'll be okay," she said, edging away. "Don't worry."

  Rafe captured her face in his hands, the long brown fingers rubbing across her cheeks, the thumbs trailing sensually over her lower lip. She caught his thumb between her teeth as she rested in the cradle of his thighs.

  "I'll be careful," she promised again. "I won't let him trick me. I just need to get everything from him that I possibly can."

  "Don't let him hurt you, Isabella," Rafe whispered into her ear, his breath warm at her temple. "I'll have to kill him if he hurts you."

  #

  Rafe had no intention of letting Bella meet with Santos, even in broad daylight, without sufficient protection. And that meant him tailing her, along with an agent and a deputy. He figured what she didn't know couldn't hurt her.

  After dropping by the Sacramento field office, where he'd enlisted another agent, he stopped at the hospital to check on Slater, whose condition was much improved. The sheriff told Rafe everything he remembered about the attack at the safe house.

  Who else, Rafe wondered, had Vargas gotten his hooks into early on and set up as an informant for the cartel? What other traitors led secret lives of betrayal that'd gotten Luis Rodriquez and the girl Esperanza killed?

  After leaving Slater, Rafe secured his seat belt, started the ignition, and swung his car onto the freeway, heading toward the courthouse where he knew Isabella was pounding out the deal she planned to offer Santos.

  At a gas station while Rafe filled up the car's tank, Max Jensen called again. Rafe slipped on his sunglasses, merged with the traffic on Interstate 80, and put his cell on speaker mode. "What's up, Max? Did I forget something else?"

  "Hashish, old man." Max's voice held an undertone of forced conviviality.

  The strain of his marriage must be getting to him, Rafe thought, as a squiggle of uneasiness wormed down his back. "Are you okay, buddy?"

  "Nah, Hash, I'm a fucking mess."

  Rafe attempted humor. "Just like my case, huh?

  "Sounds like I came just in time to rescue your ass." Max's tone didn't quite measure up to his words and Rafe made a quick decision.

  "I'll be there in a few hours," he said and disconnected. First he'd observe Bella's meet with Santos, then he'd attend to Max.

  Thirty minutes later he watched Isabella leave her vehicle and wend her way through the American River Parkway. If she was going to broach Santos alone, he'd be sure to have her back.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The two men were shouting at each other, their voices loud and vicious, certain to wake up Corazon who slept in the other room. Santos clenched his jaw and tightened his fists until they became great sides of beef, weapons to kill with a single blow.

  When he stepped into Vargas' office, the noises ceased abruptly. Diego planted his feet on the rug in front of his desk, his florid face even ruddier than usual, a white dress shirt pulled tight across his gut, and a blue-patterned tie choking him off at the neck.

  In front of him stood Max Jensen.

  "All I'm sayin' is you've got a traitor in your organization." He punched his bony forefinger into Diego's chest. "And I'm not fuckin' going down because you can't control your cartel."

  Santos stepped between the two men and nudged the policeman aside. He took Vargas by the arm and led him to his great leather swivel chair, then brought him a glass of water. "What's wrong?" he asked, turning back to Jensen.

  "Someone's going to name names," he grumbled. "Dates, times, places – Christ, God! – everything!"

  Santos knew the little ADA would not have released his name to anyone she was not positive she could trust. Who then? "How do you know this?"

  "Never mind how I fucking know! Vargas' whole operation is crumbling around him, and I'm not gonna be destroyed in the process!"

  Santos took one step forward and not-so-gently shoved the man into an armchair. He loomed over him, planting both arms on either side of the chair. "How?" he asked again without raising his voice.

  Jensen licked his lips as if he were thirsty. Santos knew he was buying time and did not want to give his source.

  At last Jensen sighed heavily "What does it matter now?" He struggled to rise, but Santos' arms kept him bound to the chair as if they were steel ropes.

  "¿Cómo?" Santos' voice was a deadly whisper.

  "Hashemi, the DEA agent, told me. Rafe Hashemi."

  "Ah!"

  Jensen peered around Santos' arm to catch Diego's eye. "We've been friends since we were kids."

  Santos took a calculated risk. "So tell us, Detective Jensen, who is this great traitor who has infiltrated El Vaquero's organization? Who is the man with the cojones to attack a man like the councilman?"

  "I – I don't know the name yet," Max muttered.

  Santos turned back to Vargas, spread his hands, and shrugged elaborately. "No puedo luchar al enemigo que no conozco."

  Vargas' small pig eyes, flat and emotionless, stared at Santos for several moments. Then he swung them back to Jensen.

  "W
hat'd he say?" Jensen demanded.

  "'He cannot fight an enemy he doesn't know,'" Vargas answered, bouncing his eyes back and forth between the two men as if he could not determine who to trust. "Verdad, it is true. When you hand me an enemy I can see, touch, whose blood I can taste ... " The words spewed like venom from his mouth. "Then come back to me."

  "I'm telling you – "

  "Get out!" Vargas roared.

  Santos followed the detective out through the gates to the rental car parked just inside the drive. "When you discover who this ... traitor is, see me personally." He flashed a warning smile. "Do not disturb El Vaquero's peace of mind needlessly again."

  He thought the detective would protest. Indeed, his fists clenched and his eyes narrowed. "You tell Vargas to be careful," he warned. "Some big shit's gonna hit the fan. I'm not having the turds land on me."

  Without another word, he stepped into the car and drove off.

  Detective Jensen was now a huge problem, Santos thought. One they would have to soon deal with.

  When he returned to Diego's library, the man was pouring a large glass of brandy. He devoured the drink in one gulp, swiped at his thick lips with the back of his hand, and threw himself heavily into his chair. "Get rid of that detective. He is more trouble than he's worth and I do not want anyone to trace him back to me."

  Santos stared down at Diego from his position by the bar. "Are you certain? He has provided us with excellent information over the years."

  "Fuck, yes! And make it so the body is never discovered."

  #

  The meet with Santos took place in an area off the American River Parkway near Discovery Park. Bella left her car in the designated parking lot and walked the short distance alone as Santos had insisted.

  Several officers in plainclothes, probably handpicked by Slater, waited in a copse of trees by an unmarked car. They looked armed and fiercely protective, and she made them immediately.

  Rafe had battled her over the location, the time of day, and the lack of guards, but he appeared to have stayed away. Or at least kept well hidden.