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

by Sylvie Fox

He made a mental note to get all the info he could. He’d call it in, get the paperwork in motion. Demotions aside, he’d been on the force too long to wrangle with the ever-changing computer system. That’s what wet behind the ears officers were for. His mind strayed from details to the scene around him. This case would be made by the people in the van. But he didn’t want to miss something big around him. Then a car caught his eye.

  Rivera poked him in the shoulder. “What are you looking at, space case?”

  “It’s that Honda parked across the street. Can you make out the license plate?”

  Rivera retrieved her field glasses and recited the string of numbers. Something about it sounded familiar, but he didn’t want to leave the perps on ice too long.

  “Can you run that plate?” he asked.

  She nodded, already slipping into the vehicle and messing with the computer.

  He opened the door of the patrol wagon with a slam. Despite being handcuffed to their seats, they jumped. Good.

  “Listen up. Names, birthdates, socials. Don’t lie. You’ll only end up in lockup longer,” he barked.

  Rivera came in. Their communication was a wordless nod. She took one side, he the other. The first girl wouldn’t even look up. He resisted looking at his watch. Processing better not take all night. He was looking forward to a beer, SportsCenter, and thoughts of Jessie. “Name.”

  She mumbled something. An older woman, who looked tweaked out, nudged the girl—hard. The woman needed to get fingerprinted, sprung, and back to work. The LAPD had eaten into her profits. She shoved a skinny leg against the perp. The young girl tossed her long brown hair from her face defiantly and finally locked eyes with him.

  “Dolores Morales.”

  Cameron nearly swayed in his boots. Not twelve hours ago, he’d been standing in a house watching this girl lay across the furniture as high as a kite.

  No matter that this wasn’t his fault, Jessie was going to kill him. Any chance of getting back together had just gone up in smoke. He wanted to pull Dolores aside, find out what in the hell she’d gotten wrapped up in. For his wife, he might have even let her go on the sly. But it was far too late. Everyone had seen her from the patrol officers to Rivera.

  “Address?” His voice was flat.

  “Think you know that.”

  The junkie next to Dolores, seeing an opportunity, suddenly looked sober. “You all know each other?”

  He looked at his pad and scratched down the address of the home that he co-owned. He didn’t ask her social because she didn’t have one.

  Cameron finished the last two women and peered at the faces on the other side of the van. Raul Vega wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Good thing. He would have killed that little son of a bitch. This crap had his fingerprints all over it. Another vice cop pulled at him.

  “I’m done. What’s up?”

  “Couple of undocumented here. Someone from USCIS will meet us down at the station.”

  Cameron shoved his notebook in his pocket, jumped from the back of the van and slammed the door on his future. A misdemeanor was one thing. Possible detention care of Homeland Security was another matter altogether.

  That beer and bed was a long ways away.

  “You have a collect call from…Dolores Morales. This call is from a correctional facility,” an automated voice interspersed with her sister reciting her name.

  Sopa seca hit the floor. Noodles, cheese, and red sauce spread out on the tiles like small animal entrails. Her sister was in trouble. Its inevitability didn’t make the reality any easier. Dolores was going to be deported. Yesenia would have to face her mother and take the blame. Through the interminable staticky delay, she gripped the phone for dear life, stepping over the food into the dining area.

  “Yesenia!” her sister’s yell came through the phone’s earpiece.

  “Dolores…” Yesenia paused to swallow the bile rising bitter in her throat. “What happened?”

  “Cameron arrested me.”

  How could he do it? Arrest her sister. Better than anyone, he understood what would happen if she got arrested. He’d seen it happen a thousand times. They’d talked about it again and again, between themselves and with her sister. But Dolores hadn’t given up Raul or her daily marijuana habit. Yet Yesenia had comforted herself with nothing more than an illusion of safety. But Dori and Mama had never been safe. And what little security they’d shared, Cameron had crushed tonight.

  Their tacit agreement had been shattered. If he saw Dolores, he was supposed to look the other way. If as Cameron said, the cops turned a blind eye to the illegal activities of celebrities and their kids, politicians and their kids, not to mention the consulates and their kids, hadn’t her sister deserved at least that little bit of consideration from her brother-in-law even if he was a soon to be ex? All the thoughts turned her brain to mush.

  “Where are you?” Yesenia asked, making a monumental effort to keep panic at bay.

  “Hollywood division.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Leaving the phone dangling and the food for the ants, she shoved her feet into her boots and sped to Hollywood in less than ten minutes.

  She eyed the desk sergeant. “I need to see—”

  “I’ve got this,” Cameron said, elbowing the other officer out of the way and entering the lobby through a side door.

  “I can’t believe—”

  His voice and grip were steel. “Not here,” he said and steered her through a door and toward what looked like an interrogation room, if the chairs bolted to the floor and the cuff tie down loops were any indication.

  She took the initiative and slammed the door. Leaning against it, she drew in four deep breaths. Interlacing her fingers, she clasped her hands together behind her back. Doing violence to an LAPD officer in a police station would not turn out well, no matter how much provocation she could prove.

  “I didn’t know it was her,” he explained.

  That was his opening gambit? “You’ve known Dolores a dozen years, but you couldn’t pick her out of a crowd?”

  “She had her—”

  “Please don’t tell me you think we all look alike. I never thought you were that—”

  “Hey. Hey,” he said, walking right up to Yesenia, not leaving even an inch between. Forced her to look up. “Don’t ever say that again. I’m not that guy. I was never that guy. You know who I am, Yesenia. I treat everyone fairly, no matter what.”

  His eyes pierced hers. Cameron didn’t look away until she gave him a nod acknowledging his truth.

  “I was chasing another perp. Patrol officers loaded the wagon. I didn’t see her until she was cuffed,” he explained.

  “What are you going to do?” Let her out was the only acceptable response.

  “We have to process her,” he said. Wrong answer.

  “Cameron, she’ll be in ICE detention before the week is up.” Dolores could be in some anonymous lockup for months or years. On a bus to Tijuana or worse after that.

  “You don’t know that,” he said with equanimity.

  “What was she arrested for?”

  Cameron backed away, striding to the other side of the small room. He looked at the two-way window as if he could see what was on the other side, when she knew he couldn’t. He was avoiding her.

  “I work in vice.” He left the rest unsaid. Prostitution? It couldn’t be. Dolores did a lot of stupid things. But never that. If it had been illegal betting, he would have said that. Dog fighting? Vice was everything decent people liked to sweep under the rug.

  Her stomach formed a hard knot in the middle of her body.

  “Tell me. Is this why you had to rush out this afternoon?”

  “Off the record?” His tone was flat.

  That stung like a wasp. “This is about family, not work.”

  “I made the mistake of believing that before,” he said.

  Weary, she sat in one of the metal chairs. “How is it you think we can get back together, have a future if you don’t trust me?�
�

  Pulling himself from the reflective glass, he sat across from her, clasping his hands together like the nuns had made her as a child in Mexico. “We belong together.”

  “Because we made the mistake of standing together in church before God?”

  “It wasn’t a mistake, Jessie.”

  “Do you even love me? Or is this all part of your big sense of obligation?”

  Cameron stood, paced to the door and back. He’d never been demonstrative out of bed. Now she wondered if all he saw was a big responsibility when he looked at her. He’d married her, and her family. Romance hardly figured into it when you looked at it that way.

  Back and forth, he walked. She knew that posture. He was churning things over in his mind. Making a decision.

  When he sat back down, he covered her hands with his. That simple touch did more to repair the rift between them than words ever could.

  “You know who Mitch Rasmussen is?” It was both a question and statement.

  “The fourth district councilman. Mostly Hancock Park and Hollywood.”

  “He solicits prostitutes.”

  “In public?” The arrogance and stupidity of politicians she would never understand.

  “The tenth district guy is involved as well. We’ve been building a case for a few months. Rasmussen’s been using his city car, city employees, and public money.”

  “How does Dolores fit in?”

  “Raul runs girls and drugs now.”

  “And Dolores helps him. How?”

  “Her…your…car was at the scene.”

  “Let me talk to her.” She knew her request probably broke all rules and regulations. Cameron never flouted them. She put her hands on top, squeezed his. “¿Por favor? Mi familia es mi mundo,” she whispered.

  His chair scraped against the cement floor, shattering intimacy. He stepped out, locking her in.

  All these months and years later, she could finally admit the bare naked truth to herself. She’d made a mistake. Her ambition had been the straw that broke the back of their divorce. A single mistake. Until today, she’d believed Cam had never forgiven her. Maybe all wasn’t lost. That tiny flame of hope flickered again.

  Memories she’d long tucked away into a corner of her mind came back in full force. When they’d been living together as man and wife, she and Cam had always swapped war stories. The ability to speak freely about work had been one of the strongest bricks of the foundation of their marriage.

  “Are you close to arrest?” she had asked him a year before their marriage would end.

  “You know I can’t talk about this, Jessie,” he’d said.

  “I’m not probing,” she’d said. “I want you home at night.” Her tone left no doubt as to the reason she wanted him home. They had been close in this other way. He’d embraced her desire for him, nurtured it, helped it bloom.

  “We’re close. It’s been a crap assignment,” he said.

  Dinner done and dishes washed, she’d come from the kitchen and sat on his lap. “Anything I can do?” She massaged his shoulders, trying to rub some of the tension from the taut muscles.

  “I wish I could scrub it from my head.”

  “What? Tell me.” She’d never thought there was a story there. She’d only wanted to share her husband’s obvious anguish.

  “Cockfighting. Hundreds of people follow these birds fighting around Los Angeles.”

  “Seriously?” she asked. Of course she’d heard about it, but in the same conversation as dog fighting. She ignored it though, despite the early morning crowing of cocks and late night barking pit bulls in the neighborhood where she and Dori had grown up.

  “They add spurs and gaffs.” Cameron went on to describe how the roosters were accessorized to tear each other to pieces. How the ring runners bagged hundreds of dead birds a weekend. She looked away then, trying to cleanse images from her own imagination.

  Their conversation hadn’t been more than those few words. They’d spent the weekend creating new memories. Despite Cameron’s demands for an explanation, she could never pinpoint what had spurred her to mention it at a pitch meeting. Her old boss at KESP had told her to run with the story. Next thing she knew she was assigned to the story. It was a big coup when she’d uncovered a popular sit-com star was a big better in the ring.

  She’d had a special seat at the anchor desk, reporting the five minute long package. Animal rights activists made the story viral. The nation had been rightly horrified by the actor’s extracurricular activities, and the sit-com had promptly been cancelled after viewers boycotted it. The night after her story had aired, Cameron had come home early and furious.

  “You’re home early,” she’d broached tentatively.

  “My investigation’s done.”

  “That’s good,” she’d started.

  “No, Jessie. Not good. Rivera and I got pulled from the investigation. The cock fighting sting is over. We’re the subject now.”

  Yesenia didn’t think she’d done anything wrong, exactly. But her stomach started sinking, nonetheless. “I don’t understand.”

  He came closer, his size intimidating. “What don’t you get? You reported on the ring. The organization guys disappeared. There’s no one to arrest.”

  “What about the actor?”

  “That guy? He’ll never be arrested. The LAPD doesn’t go after celebrities unless it’s drunk driving or murder. It’s the top guys we needed to shut it down.”

  Her voice went quiet. “Don’t you still know who they are?”

  Cam whistled. “They’re long gone. Evidence has been destroyed. Three months of work down the drain.”

  He’d stormed off. Never a big talker, Cameron had shut her out after that. For six months, their conversations had been monosyllabic exchanges. Seeing the writing on the wall, she’d acted on her family’s advice and had filed for separation.

  All their differences about her family and his had crowded out whatever love had been there. That single breach of trust had been the reason their marriage had failed. She quelled the urge to call Ernesto. She would not breach his trust again, even if their marriage was on the verge of extinction.

  Nearly thirty minutes later, Yesenia was starting to consider whether claustrophobia was something else to add to her list of irrational fears, when a uniformed officer brought Dori in.

  Though the officer locked the door, she didn’t think for one minute she and her sister were alone. But she didn’t care who was listening. As far as Yesenia could tell, Dolores didn’t have a damned thing to lose.

  “Are you selling yourself now?” She asked in English. Dori always took her more seriously when Yesenia spoke their second language.

  “I can’t believe you’d think that.” Dolores at once looked defeated and offended.

  “Where were you?”

  “On Hollywood Boulevard. I was walking La Brea to Sunset.” The pause was longer than the quake they’d recently suffered, and nearly as scary. “With Raul.”

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Raul had a big TV, a big car, big dreams, but no honest means of income she’d ever been able to decipher. When they’d finally found a house they could afford, she’d almost backed out of the deal when Raul Vega had sauntered between the adjoining yards. Like God’s gift to women, he’d hit on all three of them. Only Dolores had taken the bait.

  “Can you get Cameron to let me out?”

  Yesenia didn’t know if she could ask that, again. Cameron didn’t violate his principals. It’s one of the things she’d loved about him. He could always be counted on to do the right thing. She shook her head, making a decision not to ask him to do that. If he did anything on Dolores’ behalf, it would have to be of his own volition.

  “But he loves you.” Dori’s voice was a plea. “He always has. You know that. This is only one little favor.”

  “This is not little, Dolores. What will it take for you to leave Raul alone?”

  “He’s all I have.”

  “Are you serious? You h
ave Mama. And you have me.”

  “No one has you but you. You left for Cameron, for KESP. Sure, you see Mama once a week. But you’ve forgotten what it’s like living there. To be the embodiment of Dad’s memory. I don’t even remember Papa. But I look like him and speak like him. And have done nothing with all the opportunities you and Mama have given me.”

  “Oh, Dori—”

  “Don’t ‘Oh, Dori’ me. You got to leave, but I can’t. I live in the house you pay for. I drive the car you handed down.”

  “Life in America has been hard. Maybe Mexico would have been worse. I don’t know. But why Raul?”

  “He’s all the things you think he is. He sells weed and crystal.”

  “Girls?”

  “I…” Dolores looked away. “Someone high up asked Raul to work with a few girls, supplying them with drugs, giving them protection. I was helping with the business end of things.”

  “Raul is legal, you’re not. Didn’t you think about what could happen?”

  “I thought you’d be glad I was using my degree.”

  If she’d stayed home that day with her mother and Dori. If they’d taken the earlier elevator. None of this would have happened. There was no going back, but forward had caused nothing but misery.

  She looked at her sister. Yesenia pulled the phone from her purse and set it on the table between them. “We’re going to have to call Mama.”

  But they didn’t. Neither of them reached for that phone, lying between them like nuclear waste. That gave them a few minutes to plot out the next few days. While Dori sulked, Yesenia was contemplating just what she could get Cam to do for her within the bounds of the law. The doorknob jiggled, and the object of her thoughts appeared as if she’d made him materialize.

  “She’s free to go,” he said to them. “Take your sister home. Get her a lawyer.”

  “How?” she asked, grateful not to have had to put his loyalty to the test.

  “Dolores is not a threat to national security.”

  “But—”

  “I have to go process the real criminals, and get ready for—” He turned red, a mean feat for the man. “Nothing. Take her home.”

  Was he embarrassed he’d done them a favor? She wanted to know more about that face, but couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.