The leggy blonde staggered out of the downtown Sacramento bar ahead of the guy, groped in her jacket pocket for her keys, and pressed the unlock button on the brand new, silver Lexus. All riiiight, he thought, this babe has green. Or else Daddy does. Slightly less drunk than the girl, the guy tried to wrestle the keys from her grip.
"Nuthin' doin,' pretty boy," she laughed and then hiccupped loudly. "Oops, sorry." She burst into a series of giggles that both of them found hilarious.
"Hey," he warned, "it's your ride."
"Damn straight. Come on, Shel," she urged the dark-haired girl just coming out of the bar. The brunette tottered on alarmingly high heels. "Thas right, girl, get going."
The second girl – Shelby, the guy thought her name was – climbed into the back of the Lexus and immediately stretched out on the seat. For some reason the blonde – what the hell was her name? – burst into another round of laughter. Come to think of it, the whole situation was pretty hilarious.
The blonde climbed into the driver's seat and fumbled with inserting the key into the ignition. "Damn key. Whas wrong?"
After a few tries she made it, and by this time, the guy had settled into the passenger seat and hooked up his seat belt. The broad wasn't sober enough to drive and he didn't want to be scraped off the asphalt. This reminded him of the drunk driving video they'd watched in high school – Red Asphalt – which he'd found unbelievably comical, and he started laughing again.
The blonde looked so adorable trying to figure out what to do next with the car that he reached over and kissed her soundly on the mouth, sticking his tongue hard between her lips. God, he hoped he could get it up with all the booze in his system. Shame to miss doing this one.
The girl in the back seat started to snore softly as they peeled away from the curb on Sixteenth Street. The blonde got a dozen or so blocks from the bar without an accident and approached the onramp.
They'd left the bar before midnight, too early to call it a night. "Hey, I got an idea," the guy said. "Take the next ramp, no, not there, next one." He directed her south on Interstate 80, and they lurched onto the freeway. "I just 'membered where we can get some really good smack."
"Oh yeah, baby, I like that idea," she said, running her hand up his thigh and lingering over his crotch.
God, he really hoped he could keep a hard-on. Maybe the H would help. After turning east on Highway 50, he directed her to the Folsom turnoff and pointed the way toward a middle-class neighborhood in an older section of Folsom.
When they arrived at the blue-trimmed stucco house shrouded in shrubbery and barely visible from the street, he stumbled from the car and lurched toward the porch. No light on. These people liked to stay under the radar.
A few minutes later, he made the exchange and returned to the Lexus. "Babe, this is primo H. You'll like it."
"Where to?" she asked, staring at the white glassine packets.
"Turn right onto Auburn-Folsom. Let's go to the lake."
"Great plan," she said, starting up the car. "Beale's Lake, right?"
Twenty minutes later they pulled up to the barricaded entrance gate at Beale's Lake, and the girl – Joanie was her name, he suddenly remembered – parked the car in the turnabout. They left Shelby in the backseat of the car sleeping off her drunk, and hauling a blanket out of the Lexus' trunk, walked the short distance to the beach.
They spread the blanket on the sand near the water. The lake was closed at this hour and the beach deserted. He used to come here all the time when he was a teenager. The park was closed, but he knew the rangers hardly ever bothered anyone unless they built an unauthorized fire on the beach.
After settling down, the guy produced the packets and prepared the heroin for snorting. Then they both lay back on the blanket and looked at the night sky. In minutes he could feel his heart rate slow down and his blood pressure drop. Euphoria swept over him like a warm blanket, a surge of pleasure that was better than sex.
He glanced at Joanie, but she'd already closed her eyes. God, this was great stuff. He thought he said the words aloud, but wasn't sure.
When he looked over at Joanie again, he saw her lips had turned blue and her body was very pale in the light from the moon. With effort he propped himself on an elbow and opened her lid, looked at the pinpoint pupils. Damn, she probably wasn't used to the good stuff. Was she going into a coma?
Fuck, he thought mildly, but couldn't bring himself to get worked up about it. Why was this his problem? He didn't know how to do CPR, so what the hell could he do?
Anyway, he didn't want anything to interfere with the melting away of all his troubles. He lay back down and stared at the stars, feeling the girl's body begin to tremble next to him.
As she convulsed, he wondered why she was bumming his high.
"Not every time," Rafe repeated as he followed Isabella to the elevator. He remembered the night she had spent in his apartment, the excitement and thrill of all that soft fullness and warm passion against him. He knew she was thinking the same thing by the way she avoided his eyes.
He shook his head and warned himself off. It was just as well she'd refused his dinner invitation. "Suit yourself," he said with as much nonchalance as he could muster when she refused a second time.
She cleared her throat and jabbed at the button. They stepped into the elevator and rode down to the first floor in silence.
The antique old Otis was slow as molasses in January and Rafe couldn't wait to hit the bottom floor and head back to his motel, but after they'd gone through the metal detectors and said goodnight to the on-duty guard, Isabella's voice stopped him.
"I guess I have to eat," she muttered, sighing theatrically, "but you'd better not fight with me again."
He laughed, relief and trepidation mixing together as he wondered what the hell he was getting himself into.
They decided to take her car, but as they walked toward the parking lot, she turned to him. "You know, I'm not all that hungry." She looked up at him from beneath impossibly thick lashes. "How about I fix us something light at my house? Would that work for you?"
He hesitated. That would more than work for him, although he wasn't sure being alone with her was a good idea. She probably wanted to worm more information out of him.
Before he could think better of it, his maverick tongue overrode his brain. "Sounds good. I'll follow you in my car."
Isabella pulled her car into an attached garage to the left of a neat, bungalow-style home in Placer Hills, a few miles from the courthouse. Rafe parked his on the street and walked up a long path of flagstones across a deep, beautifully tended lawn to meet her at the porch landing. Riotous with color, rose bushes lined the front of the house and what looked like every space possible.
The front double-doors had impressive stained glass windows from waist high up to the top. Too easy to break into, Rafe thought, but inside the foyer, Torres coded numbers into what looked like a sophisticated alarm system.
The front entry opened into a long hall, a huge great room to the right and the kitchen to the left where she headed after hanging their jackets in the entry closet. He wandered down the hall, examining the small, one-story house, two bedrooms and a bath angling off to the right and what looked like a master bedroom and bath, along with a small utility room, to the left.
The kitchen was small and cozy, a recessed window over the sink looking out over all the crazy colors of her front landscaping. She would enjoy standing there and looking out at the mass of flowers, and he briefly imagined her dressed in skimpy night clothes, her hair mussed up and drinking her morning coffee.
While Isabella prepared several turkey and cheese sandwiches, Rafe leaned against the stove beside her and admired the taut stretch of her breasts beneath the filmy blouse. When she bent over to retrieve potato chips from a lower shelf, he watched the play of her ass beneath her slacks and thought of gripping the firm flesh with his hands.
A sharp image of his hands and mouth on her, his fingers deep inside her slapped him back to reality. He shifted uncomfortably and moved to sit at the table in the small kitchen alcove while she brought the sandwiches on plain white plates which she set on floral placemats.
"Why don't you get the drinks?" she asked as she reached for glasses in a high cupboard.
He looked inside the refrigerator. "Beer or soda?"
"I'll take soda." She filled the glasses with ice from the ice-maker and smiled at him. "Anything wrong?" Her voice sounded too innocent for her not to be aware of how his damn body reacted to her.
He shook his head and plopped down the cans on the table. They ate quickly and discussed the case for a while in the kitchen.
Afterward they moved to the great room where several deep sofas in a natty fabric and a wide-screen television decorated the high-beamed room. "Wow, look at that puppy."
She grinned. "My single indulgence."
"Funny," he said as they took their seats on the sofa facing the screen, "you don't seem like much of a TV watcher."
"Oh, I'm an avid sports fan – the Forty-Niners, the Lakers." She laughed. "A gift from my dad and three older brothers."
"Who'd have thought?"
He turned to face her and placed his arm along the sofa back. She kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet underneath her. Music she had turned on earlier wafted from the stereo system on the far wall.
In the dim light, she looked soft and vulnerable. They listened to the sounds of Ella and Louie on the stereo. Obviously her tastes ran to jazz.
Later, they watched the news and then Letterman. Rafe found he enjoyed just sitting quietly with her, a sharp contrast to the physicality of their initial meeting. Finally he dared bring up the sensitive issue between them. Why was her stance on the human trafficking charges so much stronger than on the drug trafficking? Hell, what did it matter what they got him on as long as they put that scum Diego Vargas away?
Her voice muted and quiet, she made the usual moral argument about the destruction of innocent young girls. The degradation of woman and the heinous reality of abuse, rape, and sodomy. But Rafe intuited that there was much more that she wasn't saying. "What else," he murmured, "what else drives you like this, Isabella?"
At first he was sure she wouldn't answer him, but then her voice hitched in her throat and she spoke so low he had to tilt his head forward to hear. "I had a sister once – Maria."
When she didn't go on, Rafe asked, "What about Maria?"
Long moments followed in which Bella stared across the room, tension in every line of her face and body. "She disappeared. Maria went on a trip to Mexico for her high-school graduation, and she never came back."
"And you think – "
She interrupted him, angry tears in her eyes which she tried to dash away with trembling fingers. "I don't know what I think, Hashemi. All right? I just don't know."
Fat tears rolled silently down her cheeks, her beautiful mouth trembled so that the only thing he could do was cover it with his own. He swore his only intention was to comfort her, nothing more, but she groaned as his lips touched hers and answered his kiss with a responding hunger that flamed the fire.
He ground his mouth into hers, ran his fingers through her thick hair, pulling out the pins that held it up, and tangled his fingers in the soft thick curls. He kissed her neck, pressing his mouth down her flesh until he got to the top of her blouse.
He undid the first two buttons to run his fingers along the swell of her breasts at the top of her brassiere. When he followed with his mouth, he felt her shudder in his arms and wondered if she'd climax from just this much. He felt the painful, hard thrust of his erection against his slacks and pulled her onto his lap, continuing his assault on her mouth and neck. God, she felt so good, tasted so delicious.
Bella squirmed in his lap and he knew she could feel the hard, hot thrust of him against her ass. He reached inside her bra and caressed one breast, lightly pinching the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She moaned and began her own assault of his jaw and neck.
He flipped her on her back and quickly ripped off his shirt and undershirt before he stretched out on the sofa, half covering her body with his own. He framed her face with his hands, holding himself off her body with his elbows. His breathing was labored and unsteady.
"What are we doing here, Torres?" he muttered.
"I don't know. I don't care," she answered, eyes closed as she kissed him hard, her tongue smooth and urgent in his mouth.
God, she was like a drug. He couldn't keep his hands off her, couldn't leave her alone. He wouldn't be satisfied until he was deep inside that sweet, soft body, until he pounded away at her like -
An annoying buzz sounded in his pants pocket.