Shaken: An Interracial Second Chance Romance (L.A. Nights Book 3)

by Sylvie Fox

  They were so caught up in what Jessie’s death would have meant for them, that they didn’t see how the quake had affected her.

  “Our own Yesenia Morales was a victim of the five point one quake,” a voice said. This was replaced by video of him, arms crossed, standing in a corner. “LAPD Lieutenant Cameron Becker, Morales’ husband, rescued her from the disabled elevator.” The camera zoomed in on the earnest look she’d carefully arranged on her face. “This is the story in her own words.”

  He was only partially grateful the broadcast was in English. He could understand everything Jessie said, but listening to her hide the anguish in her voice twisted his gut.

  Cam watched Jessie’s family watch the rest of the video.

  “All that expensive therapy worked then?” Dolores asked.

  Jessie’s sharp intake of breath was the only sign of her discomfort. “I did what was recommended,” she said.

  “Do you still take the drugs the doctors gave you?” Dolores asked.

  “Drogas son malísimas,” Reina interjected, shaking her head. Her thumbs-down stand on Jessie’s use of prescription drugs didn’t quite jibe with the smoke-permeated room of Dolores.

  “I don’t take the drugs anymore, Mama,” Jessie said. “I’m using breathing and visualization techniques these days. As long as I stay off elevators, I’m fine for the most part.”

  He waited for them to ask what they could do to comfort her. Or to probe the other part that wasn’t fine. But they didn’t.

  “Good thing all that therapy was worth it,” Reina said not quite under her breath.

  “I didn’t ask you to come to the U.S., Mama.”

  “What was I supposed to do? You were dying there in Mexico. You couldn’t leave the apartment. The doctors we were seeing there only gave you drugs that made you a zombie. I couldn’t take care of you all day and work. El coyote promised good, free medical care on this side of the border. So I did what I had to do. What any mother would have done.”

  On that single thing, the coyote had been as good as his word.

  “And you’ll never let me forget it,” Jessie said in an unusual show of defiance. Maybe she’d gotten some backbone in their years apart. He’d seen a little bit of it this morning, and more now.

  “What is there to forget, mija? I uprooted my whole family for you. We don’t expect anything in return, except a little help from time to time.”

  “Mama, I helped you buy this house. I pay some of the bills—”

  “What about Dolores? She listened to you and went to Cal State. Took out those loans. But without papers, she can’t get any kind of job. She needs help to get her green card.”

  “If I get a promotion, Mama, I’ll be in a better position to help.”

  “If I get this job, Mama. If I get married, Mama. Nothing has changed but you.”

  Jessie looked at Dolores’ eyes, pleading for someone to stand with her. But her sister said nothing, just rearranged her body for maximum comfort. Why couldn’t they see that Jessie had gone above and beyond? They weren’t doing anything to help themselves. His wife wasn’t Superwoman.

  “The empanadas were very good, Mrs. Prado,” Cameron said, ready to get his wife the hell out of here before her family sucked the very life from her. Where he’d been annoyed this morning with her notions about buying a place, he could see now that she needed it. Needed somewhere and something to call her own. He wanted more for her. He wanted to be the one to give her what she required.

  After a long commentary in Spanish, Dolores translated a single sentence. “Mama wants to know what you’re really doing here.”

  He hadn’t known why he was there an hour ago. But he was sure now. More sure than he’d been in years.

  “I’m here to get my wife back.”

  Chapter Four

  She was the frog in the pot, and someone had just turned up the heat.

  “Oh. My. God. Seriously?” Dolores asked. “This is gonna be good,” her sister said like they were in a South L.A. theater and had gotten to the good part.

  “Did he say what I think he said?” Mama said to Dolores in Spanish.

  “Sí, sí, Mamá,” Dolores assured Mama.

  She looked at her husband. “I can’t believe you’re doing this. You know this isn’t what I want.”

  “You haven’t given us a real chance,” Cameron said. “And after last night—”

  “What happened last night?” Dolores asked, looking like she was thinking about making popcorn for the public spectacle the end of their marriage had become.

  “We’ve given this a thousand chances.” She stood and gathered her bag. “Take me home, Cameron.”

  She needed to talk to him. But discussing her sex life or their divorce in front of her mother and sister held little appeal.

  “It was just getting good,” Dolores whined in protest. If Yesenia had been twelve she’d have slapped her sister when their mother wasn’t looking. Instead she used the only weapon she could.

  She pulled her hand from the doorknob and locked eyes with her sister. “Where’s the Honda?”

  Dolores’ mouth opened and closed like a goldfish starved for air. Mama got up and cleared the table with remarkable efficiency. Water splashed in the kitchen sink while she did dishes, loudly.

  “Raul borrowed it.”

  Any sentence that included Raul Vega was trouble. She dropped her bag and leaned against the front door, defeat nailing her feet to the floor.

  “And?”

  “He said it got a little banged up. So he took it to his guy to fix it.”

  “You’re telling me that Raul, who’s driving a new Escalade—”

  “It’s a Panamera now.”

  “Excuse me, a new Porsche. Raul needed my car?”

  Her sister squirmed. “You said I could have it.”

  “I said you could use it so you could look for a job, drive Mama around. And I shouldn’t have even done that. You have no license. No insurance.”

  “The new law—”

  “Hasn’t taken effect yet,” Cameron interjected.

  The water shut off in the kitchen. Towel in hand, her mom came back to the dining room. “This is why she needs a green card. Without a job she gets up to no good.”

  “I don’t know what more I can do right now,” Yesenia said. Her shoes were glued to the floor. Any minute she expected the tug into the quicksand.

  “If you move back here, that’s two thousand a month we could pay un abogado.”

  In one deft move, their mother had turned the tables on her. Dolores doing something stupid with a car, one with Yesenia’s name on the title and insurance, became a reason to move back home and sacrifice her autonomy.

  Cameron’s phone beeped. In that moment, she loved him more than she ever had. They’d agreed to set off their phones, or way back when, their pagers when family became too much. “Gotta get into the station. I’ll drop you off.”

  Her mom and sister retreated. They may hate the police, but there was one LAPD salary they didn’t jeopardize. “You’ll be here for Sunday dinner?” Mama asked, her eyes pleading.

  “If I don’t have to go into KESP, of course,” she said before escaping out the door with Cameron.

  Avoiding lawn arguing again, she waited until they got into the car before she let loose.

  “What in the hell was that back there? This morning we were calmly and civilly discussing divorce and then you announce you want to get back together. In front of my family. Why?”

  “Let’s talk at your place.”

  The mechanic that fixed cars on their street sped by them at top speed, taking one of his customer’s cars for a test drive. She buckled her seat belt and kept mute, letting Cameron navigate out of her old neighborhood.

  Tears clogged her throat. It took a mile to swallow. Another to get her breathing back to normal. She was in a tangled web that was getting stickier by the moment.

  Cam’s phone beeped again.

  “I thought that last c
all was fake.”

  When they stopped at a red light, he looked down at the phone. “It was. This one’s real, though.”

  He pulled over on San Vicente. He picked up the phone, dialed and listened to the voice on the other end. After a moment, he opened the driver’s door and stepped out. The talking became more animated.

  If she’d had antennae, they would have twitched. “What’s going on?”

  He didn’t look her way. Instead he returned to the seat and turned the wheel like the power steering had short circuited, crossing three lanes of traffic. Startled drivers blared their horns.

  Cam had surprisingly little to say in the last ten minutes of their drive.

  “You gonna be okay?” he asked at her front door. In better control than she’d been hours ago, she found her keys and twisted them in the lock.

  “We’re not getting back together.”

  “Jess…I can’t do this.” He pulled the phone from his pocket. Looked at it. Typed something. Shoved it back in.

  “Why not? You can’t cut and run like this. Are you even going to sign the papers?”

  “Something’s happening on a case, Jess. You of all people know I need to do what I can to—”

  “Not you too. First my mother, then my sister, and now you. Because somehow every damn thing that happens is my fault. Why do you even want to try again if I’ve made your life a living hell and you don’t trust me?”

  “Who says I don’t trust you?”

  “What’s the case you’re working on?” It was the flicker of his eyes that snuffed out the tiny flame of hope she may have harbored. “Go to work, Cam.”

  “What about us?”

  “There is no us. I’ll send you the papers. Please sign them and send them back. After this place closes, I’ll see a lawyer about the divorce. Don’t fight me on this, please.”

  With one foot in her apartment and the other out the door, she saw Cam hesitate. But in the end, he did what he’d always done. He chose the force.

  She closed the door behind him, ready to get on with her new life.

  Cameron had to pee. Hydrate was the buzz word of the minute. Desert-dwelling Angelenos were suffering dehydration, department memos warned. Bottled water was everywhere. So he’d gotten into the habit of drinking, and drinking, and drinking. Now he had to go like a racehorse. Unlike a racehorse, though, he couldn’t let loose while walking, oblivious to the world around him. Laughter escaped his lips. Jessie’s nightly news could lead with,“Vice cop indecently exposes himself while on stake-out.” But in Spanish. That would kill his career dead for sure. No one got a third chance.

  Rivera put down her binoculars and turned her head his way. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. Gotta go.” They’d long ago made a cross-gender pact not to use plastic urine bottles in the car unless it was absolutely necessary.

  She pulled a folded paper from her pant pocket. “Go to this motel. New owner’s legit. Renting by the night and not the hour. He’ll let you use the john.”

  He made a quick exit, snaking around the corner to the back of the motel. The skin and drug trade swirled around him. Everyone was too busy avoiding eye contact to notice him. A white Honda raced by on a mission. Something about the car looked familiar. He almost pulled out his phone to snap a pic of the plate when it pulled in to park, but his bladder got the better of him. Probably wasn’t anything. At one time the car had been the bestselling vehicle in the US. Everyone from the rich to the poor drove that damned vehicle.

  Got the key from the grateful owner and relieved himself. No more water tonight. No one got dehydrated sitting on their butt.

  “Saw your wife’s rescue,” Rivera said before he could close the door good and tight.

  “I thought you were keeping your kids away from the news.”

  “They went to soccer practice with their dad. Got an eyeful of you and Yesenia with my morning coffee.”

  Cameron opened another bottle of water. Took a swig. Anything not to have this conversation. But Rivera stuck her nose in anyway. “She ready to divorce you?”

  “As a matter of fact, she is.”

  “Good.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  If eyes could talk, Rivera’s would have called him ten times a fool. She lifted the binoculars to her eyes and peered down the street. In a split second he was back in a different car or a different darkened street on a different night.

  Rivera had been looking through similar binoculars, but there’d been nothing to see. The warehouse that had been the Wednesday night hotspot for betting and cockfighting was as empty as a beggar’s pocket and as silent as a tomb.

  He’d flipped through his notebook making sure they were in the right place.

  “They must have gotten a whiff of what was going down,” Rivera had said.

  “We have a mole?”

  “Don’t know. But let’s call the Lieut and see what we should do.”

  But they’d never made that call to their superior. Instead the call had come in that they were to see the Deputy Police Chief immediately.

  No time to change into civilian clothes or uniform, they’d come in looking like cat burglars and smelling like burgers, burritos, and piss.

  If there had been any more brass in the room, the LAPD could have started a marching band. They were ordered to sit and someone had pressed a remote. The hiss of magnetic tape on spindles had filled the room, then he’d seen Jessie on TV.

  For a long moment, he’d thought that someone was playing an elaborate joke on them. Then he’d looked at Rivera and realized it was no practical joke.

  Jessie was standing outside the same warehouse he’d just vacated. But this time, there was a swarm of activity. Birds squawked and flapped. Men scattered like roaches in broad daylight. And Jessie stood there yelling toward Christian Brooks, the star of TV’s most popular sit com, Temporary Family.

  “Sergeant Becker,” the Deputy Chief had started. He knew what was coming. The weight of it hit his chest like a fist. “Are you married to Yesenia Morales?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you give her confidential information regarding this six-month long investigation?”

  He took a long time to answer. And if he’d had it to do again, he’d have asked for his union rep. But he was young and stupid and in love. “Inadvertently.”

  It hadn’t mattered at all what he’d said after that. He and Rivera had been separated. That night he’d begun his year long acquaintance with Internal Affairs. On the other end of that year, he bought sturdy shoes and walked the beat, alternating between downtown skid row and the seedy side of Hollywood Division.

  “Earth to Becker.” Fingers snapped in front of his face, bringing him to the present. Rivera talked into her radio, then to him. “Got a twenty on a situation.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Black SUVs are rolling in.”

  The city fleet. Los Angeles council members had drivers who took them to various events around the city’s very spread out four hundred plus square miles. The mayor being who he was had an LAPD officer chauffeuring him around. The council members being who they were had to fund drivers from their own budget. In political speak, it gave them accountability for not wasting the taxpayers’ money. In real terms, it gave them discretion. Rumor had it at least two of their illustrious city representatives had an appetite for prostitutes.

  Which was why Cameron, years out from this kind of grueling work was back at it again. Like any political organization, the leadership had changed. And the mentor he’d had out of the academy was one of the top brass now. That meant forgiveness was in order, his good work on earlier busts was recognized, and his one indiscretion set aside.

  If he did this one right, by the book, and made some righteous busts he’d been promised that his career would get back on track. So he was sitting, bladder nearly empty, field glasses in hand, ready to bust this one wide open.

  “Got him,” Rivera exclaimed. She tucked the pocke
t sized video camera between the seats. “Let’s go,” she directed into the handheld radio.

  Cameron, Rivera, and six other undercover vice cops moved out of position. They all hightailed it to Hollywood Boulevard.

  The working women knew the score and weren’t much of a challenge. They never ran. He left them to the officers who weren’t in academy fit shape and ran after the high-priced johns.

  Rarely did he see out of shape middle-aged men run as fast Olympic sprinters but shiny badges and fear of exposure were adrenaline.

  The exhilaration of the hunt coupled with the specter of exoneration from his past mistakes kept his legs moving as he closed in on the man, his silver hair glinting under the streetlights of Lanewood Avenue.

  He barreled into the other man with all his weight. They both went down.

  “L.A.P.D.” he ground out between breaths. “You’re under arrest.” He pulled out one of the zip cuffs he’d looped on his belt and pulled them tight.

  He marched the perp back to Sunset where the patrol wagon should have been situated by now. He gave the guy the eyeball under the first street light they came upon. Wasn’t Mitch Rasmussen, the council member they were looking to bust. But the guy wasn’t chump change either.

  “You Palmer Clemens?”

  The heir apparent to a soon-to-be vacated council seat nodded. “I was only driving.”

  That remained to be seen. He continued to the main drag where thankfully the van was waiting.

  “Everybody caught?” he called out to another officer.

  The officer nodded and gave him the thumbs up. For the first time that night, Cameron breathed easier. He handed Clemens off and spotted Rivera.

  She joined him next to their car.

  “They doing Mirandas?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Cameron had come to get his notepad. He needed names and birthdates of the arrestees. “I’ll get the particulars,” he said, thinking past the high of the initial bust about what it took to build a real case, one that would hold up in court.