Diego Vargas stepped back from the dead body and wiped his feet on the short grassy patch at the water's edge. "Fuck!" He leaned over to peer at his shoes. "These loafers just came last week from Italy. You want to know how much they cost me?"
Gabriel Santos glanced up in carefully controlled irritation from where he crouched over the man's body. The question was rhetorical, he knew, but still a ridiculous comment when compared to the more serious problem he knelt over – the bluish body lying on a black tarp.
He eyed his boss's scowl and erased all emotion from his own face. Santos had been an actor in the old days. Well, a stunt man at any rate. But perhaps that was not the same thing. Perhaps he was no actor at all, but had only the credentials to take and give a serious beating.
The dead man lying naked before them had been an actor too, an up-and-coming young star full of bright promise. At least, according to the tabloids. He lay on his back, his lips a darker blue than the pale tinge of his flesh, his muscled body glowing in the light from Santos' flashlight. Fresh needle tracks marred his right arm, and his open eyes showed wide dilations of black that nearly eclipsed the blue of the irises.
Santos knew if the actor's so-called friends had called 911 at the onset of overdose, the naloxone cocktail the EMTs administered might have saved his life. But paramedics and emergency room doctors asked too many questions whose answers could not safely be scrutinized. So the young actor had died with fatally low blood pressure, rattling respirations, and convulsion.
It was an ugly death to behold.
Apparently the dead actor was too estúpido to realize the smack he'd just purchased at the Blue Mango Cocktail Lounge in Bakersfield should be used sparingly. The China White was much purer than the black tar heroin the gang-bangers schlepped over the border from México. A fraction of the drug was enough to kill someone.
As evidenced by the body before them.
"¡Idiota de mierda! Fucking idiot. Such pure smack is wasted on someone like this." Diego shook his head and spat toward the body.
Santos sighed inwardly and shuttered his eyes. "DNA," he reminded, referring to the spit, although of course, the warning was too late. Ay, sometimes he believed that Diego was the idiot. Spitting near a dead body? Now Santos would have to dump the young actor's body somewhere else to avoid any chance of El Vaquero's DNA being connected to the overdose victim.
Santos sighed again as he reached for the edges of the tarp he'd used to transport the body. He wrapped it around the stiffening corpse, hefted the slight weight onto his shoulders, and trudged toward the black sedan parked in the breakdown lane at the top of the promontory. Diego strolled ahead of him, fishing in the breast pocket of his jacket for a cigarette and whistling a tuneless melody.
Santos wondered yet again why he worked for such a man.
On the drive to another dump site, Santos thought of the beautiful face of Magdalena Vargas and knew exactly why he put up with a pig of a man like Diego Vargas. He smiled to himself. It was true that El Vaquero paid very well for the kind of services only Santos could deliver.
But it was also true that the wife of Señor Vargas was worth more than gold. What was it the Bible said? Her price was far above rubies.
"Why do you grin like a jackass?" Diego complained from the back seat. "A man's death is a funny event?"
"Vaquero, I deal in death every day." Santos shrugged philosophically. "If I did not find humor at such a time, when would I laugh?"
"Verdad." Vargas barked out a harsh laugh. "And the loss of such a man is not so significant."
He leaned over the seat to tap his bodyguard on the shoulder. "There must be no more of these foolish deaths, Gabriel. No more." He punctuated each word with a sharp jab to Santos' shoulder and then blew cigarette smoke into the side of his face. "Our distributors must let their customers know how pure the China White heroin is."
"Yes."
Vargas sat back and gazed at the glowing tip of his cigarette. Through the rearview mirror, Santos watched him. Ay, did El Vaquero expect the distributors to hold a seminar in safe drug usage of illegal substances?
Santos smiled again, but this time discreetly.
Humpty dumpty, indeed, Bella thought, pushing away. Rafe, no-last-name, was trouble with a large dose of sex appeal, and while she'd thought that's what she wanted, she now realized with the Vargas case on her plate a distraction was the last thing she needed. "I should call a cab," she decided.
"Nuh uh," he insisted, "You've had a shock and you're not going anywhere until you rest."
"But my clothes… my sisters… " She stared at her sister's dress smudged with dirt, oil, and God knew what else. The ruined clothes against her skin made her feel vulnerable. She heard the rising panic in her voice, the shakes taking over again. "I don't want to wear these anymore."
"Okay, I'll find something for you to put on." He headed down a short hallway off the main room, and she heard the opening and closing of drawers and closets. Returning a few moments later, he handed her a stack of clothing. "Try these. You might have to roll up the sleeves and legs." He examined her face. "Maybe you should get washed up first. You'll feel better when you've showered."
She opened her mouth to protest, but clamped down on her jaw, then snatched the clothes from his hands and marched down the hall to the room he'd just exited. At the entry, she paused, eyeing him suspiciously. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing," she said as she reached the door. Did he think she was a complete fool?
She glanced around the luxurious bedroom suite. To the left rose a bank of four narrow windows that stretched from floor to ceiling with white wooden shutters opened wide so she could see the clear, dark sky through the slats. All three doors to the right of the bed were closed. Maybe she was an idiot. She didn't know which was the bathroom.
Amused, Rafe listened to the slamming of the bedroom door. He'd let her keep her pride. The first tremors of panic after an assault were all too familiar to him, the vulnerability that hung on long after the attack was over.
He hadn't felt these emotions for years, but he remembered them vividly. Right now showing her claws was healthier than giving way to hysteria. When he heard the sound of running water minutes later, he figured she'd found her way around his bathroom. He used the time to make a call about the suspicious evidence he'd examined in the alley.
Max Jensen, a local homicide detective, was catching tonight. "Blood, huh?" Max said after listening to the account of the attack in the alley. "Why'd you call me, Rafe? Why not your field office?"
"Just reporting an assault."
"But you didn't go to the hospital, right? No one sustained injuries?"
Rafe ran his fingers over his temple. "The lump over my eye might argue with you, but no, neither of us got seriously hurt."
Max laughed. "Shit, I figure your head's too hard."
"Check that alley, Max. I'm pretty sure that was blood I found. Recent."
"I'll send a crime scene unit out."
"And check out the bartender, would you? I have a feeling about him. Hold him overnight if you can."
Max snorted. "Sure, old buddy. LAPD lives to serve the DEA's needs."
By the time Isabella walked back into the living room, Rafe had tended to his own wounds, showered in the guest bathroom, and dressed in sweats and a long-sleeved police academy tee-shirt.
"Feeling better?" he asked when she curled up in the wide armchair across from where he sat nursing a brandy.
She nodded. "Thanks for the clothes."
The oversized tee-shirt was a remnant from his college days at Stanford. The hardened peaks of her breasts told him she wore nothing underneath it. She'd turned up the sweatpants several times so that her red painted toes stuck out beneath the rolled hem.
The unexpected image of a pair of red panties popped into his maverick brain. Tonight was stacking up to be a long night, and his self-control was ebbing fast. Maybe calling that cab wasn't a bad idea after all.
But instead, he strode toward the bedroom, calling over his shoulder. "I've got fresh sheets for the bed. You should get some sleep."
She followed him into the bedroom and stood in the door frame. "Where will you sleep?"
"Couch," he said shortly, ripping off the used sheets and replacing them with fresh ones from the linen closet.
She watched him silently. He wondered what was going on in that pretty little head of hers. Was she thinking about their earlier flirtation? Their interrupted passion in the alley? His fingers had touched her and found her wet right before the attack. Had she even been aware that he'd felt the moist heat of her… there?
"There," he said aloud. He pulled an extra blanket from the closet and laid it at the foot of the bed. From the bathroom, he retrieved his toothbrush and shaving gear, and a clean change of underwear from the dresser.
He paused at the door to the hall and looked back at her as she sat on the edge of the bed. "There's an extra toothbrush in the medicine cabinet." He waited for her to respond. "Well then, goodnight." He shifted awkwardly before adding, "Are you going to be all right?"
She stared at the black maw of the windows. "He won't come here, will he?" Her voice sounded small.
He knew instantly what she meant. "Of course not. He doesn't know where I live."
She nodded slowly as if contemplating how valid his claim was. "But he knew who you were when he attacked us in the alley."
He hesitated. "Don't worry. I have a friend in the LAPD. He's taking care of everything."
"I'll call my sister," she answered by way of consent to remaining for the night.
After she'd made the phone call, she sat down on the edge of the bed and eyed him tentatively. "Rafe?"
"Yes?"
"I don't want to be alone." She flushed and he thought the admission embarrassed her.
He stood beside the bed while Bella crept beneath the sheets and pulled the covers up to her neck. Then he lay down on the top of the bedspread beside her.
Damn, if he'd known she'd end up wanting him to comfort her, but not… well, sleep with her, he'd never have made that first invitation for her to sit down in the booth opposite him. A chaste night in bed with a gorgeous woman was not what he imagined when he'd first noticed her across the room at Stuckey's Bar.