Alejandro (21 page)

“That you carry a shield, bro.”

Trujillo knew he was a fed. Ale cut his eyes to Trujillo’s glass-enclosed office on the second level. Trujillo stood near the pane closest to Ale and Carlos, his hard, even stare on him. Willing the muscles in his throat not to swallow, Ale focused on Carlos. “What does Alba know?” he whispered, glancing down at the clipboard in his hand, attempting to give off an unconcerned appearance. Even if Trujillo had discovered him, Ale still had to play as if he were completely in the dark about Trujillo. He’d make Trujillo believe
he
had the element of surprise.

“This will all be over the minute Alba steps inside.”

“Alejandro! Carlos!
Vamps
.”

Ale and Carlos exchanged wary glances as Trujillo came down the steps from the office. He waved his hand for them to join him and both men fell into step behind Trujillo.
Where are we going? Isn’t Alba coming here?
If Carlos had betrayed him to Alba, he’d wring his neck. Trujillo uncovering Ale’s identity was one thing; Alba knowing it was something entirely different. If they lost him tonight, Alba would go into hiding and be lost until he decided to resurface.

Hurried voices surrounded them as they walked through the garage. Alba’s name was mentioned more than once.
He’s here.
So why was Trujillo leading them outside?

“Trujillo?
Oyé
, I need to speak to Alba,” Carlos said.

Trujillo continued leading them past curious stares, out the garage and into the scrap metal and broken-down cars that formed the junkyard.

“
Jefe! Alba está aquí.
”

“
Gracias, hombre
.” Trujillo kept his back to his employee and lengthened his stride, forcing Carlos and Ale deeper into the piles of scrap metal.

Mel was right; this is a trap.
With Trujillo still looking in the opposite direction, Ale eased his cell out of his back pocket and opened the screen. He pushed the Send button on a pre-written text ready to go. The kill order, so to speak. Not having eyes on Alba was a risk he had to take, now that he was certain Trujillo planned to murder him and Carlos and leave their bodies in the junkyard.

He’d done it before.

By sending the text, he hoped his gut was right — Alba was on site and would be captured. Now all he needed to do was stay alive long enough for a rescue.

“I don’t have time for this—”

“Shhh, Carlos—”

Carlos silenced Ale’s attempt to interject. “Alba is here, and I need to see him.”

Blast!

The sound of a shot rocketed through the air and Ale instinctively raised his arm when warm liquid splattered on his face. Dropping his arm and his eyes, Carlos’s lifeless eyes gazed up at him from the dirt. Ale stilled. Even if he could draw and get a shot off, Trujillo had a gun on him and clearly an itchy trigger finger.

“You got something to say,
Alejandro
?”

Ale slowly met his enemy’s eyes. The emphasis on his name wasn’t lost on him.

“Is that even your real name?”

“Yes.”

A harsh laugh blew the last of the smoke from the gun — pointed at him — lingering in front of Trujillo into the wind. “How many years have we been working together, Alejandro? You think after all this time I’d know when someone was betraying me — why all of our shipments weren’t reaching their destinations, or the drivers were getting caught.”

“When did you know?”

Hard lines shaped Trujillo’s sinister features, and his dark eyes gleamed in the night light while the nearby halogen lamps cast his shadow into a giant figure threatening to swallow Ale in the darkness. “Not until the last shipment was intercepted. You were clever in not handling every single one, but nearly all of yours fell into this deep crack called the DEA. How did they know about my men? A man on the inside…”

Sirens in the distance accompanied loud shouting nearby. “It’s over, Trujillo.” Trujillo’s gaze shot past Ale, the arm holding the weapon slacking. The garage was in chaos by the sounds of the yelling and the gunfire. “It’s not you that I want — it’s Alba. If you testify against him—”

Trujillo raised his arm and Alejandro dove to the side. Rolling on the ground, he slammed into something hard, and whatever it was, it sliced through his shirt and shredded the skin on his back. Ale cried out in pain, but the pings of metal around him being hit with bullets had him drawing his arms over his head. His left arm was on fire and the burn steadily increased. Tucking his arm close to his body, Ale grunted against the pain and rose to one knee while drawing his weapon.

Where was Trujillo? Edging to the end of the pile of scrap metal, Ale raised his weapon and glanced around his jagged lump of a shield. Fresh tracks in the dirt moved away from his position. Trujillo had nowhere to go. The junkyard was a dead end. A fence surrounded the property. A lean man like Trujillo wouldn’t have any problem climbing the chain-link fence and hoisting himself over the barbed wire, but he’d be skinned before he dropped to the ground. Weapon raised, Ale raced toward the back end of the junkyard, nearing the painful howl he suspected was Trujillo.

Rounding another scrap car, Ale scanned the fence to its height. Trujillo dangled by his shirt and pants, blood running down his arm and pooling on the ground on the street-side of the fence.

“Police!”

Several men, in tactical gear with weapons at the ready, rushed forward on the freedom side of the fence. With no mercy, they snagged Trujillo from the wired clutches holding him captive, slamming him to the ground. Someone recited the Miranda rights and another clicked on the cuffs. In all of this, the muscles in Ale’s stomach clenched at the sound of Trujillo’s laughter. Bile slowly crept up Ale’s throat.
What’s wrong with me?
Trujillo was down. Lowering his weapon, Ale motioned for one of the officers to meet him at the fence. “Alba?”

“We got him.”

And yet that knowledge didn’t settle the churning acid in his stomach.

“I’m going to get my son.”

Ale swallowed a curse, jamming his weapon into his sheath beneath his waist. He gripped the fence with his good hand, meeting Trujillo’s surprisingly satisfied gaze. “He’s not your son,” he spat. “Carlos was his father.”

Trujillo shrugged as he was hauled away. “Like father, like son.”

What?
Brows colliding in confusion, Ale only watched as the officers draped in DEA-labeled protective vests dragged Trujillo to a waiting van for transportation downtown. Sounds dimmed as time slowed down.
Like father, like son.
Ale’s head snapped in the direction of Carlos’s body. If Trujillo knew he was a fed that meant…

Sprinting back toward the garage, Ale ripped his cell from his back pocket and dialed the number to the extra man posted near the safe house. By the fifth ring, he broke out in a cold sweat, his heart dropping into his gut. “Mel!” Moving rapidly among the officers who had swarmed the garage, he shouted his partner’s name again and again.

He found her in conversation with Agent Brooks on the street in front of the building. “Mel! I’m going to the safe house.” He ran past his startled partner to his vehicle.

“What? Why?”

“It’s been compromised!”

Mel’s look of horror was the last face he saw as he tore out of the parking lot.
God, I pray I’m not too late!

****

Audrey kept her hand over Angel’s mouth and her arm wrapped securely around his waist. Hunched over his small form, she inched her knees closer to her chest to make them as small as possible, even though they were hidden behind the door to a small cubbyhole located in Ale’s closet. He’d shown her this spot on their first night in the house. If danger ever entered the house and he wasn’t there…

It wasn’t as if she were familiar with the sound of gunfire, but when her call to the agent outside went unanswered, she grabbed her nephew at the same time she heard jiggling at the metal door. “We have to play hide and seek now,” she had whispered in Angel’s ear. “But we have to be very, very quiet.”

“Who are we hiding from?”

“Bad men.”

She hadn’t heard a peep out of Angel and that was five minutes ago. His hot breath rapidly fanned her fingers beneath his nose. “Don’t be scared,” she whispered. Angel nodded.

The metal door was the last thing they heard — three minutes ago. Audrey licked her dry lips.
Ale, hurry. God, please send him to us!
In her haste to move Angel to the hiding place, they’d left the living room and ran immediately to Ale’s bedroom. She couldn’t call or text with her phone on the kitchen counter. No time to backtrack to the kitchen.

The creak of floorboards stopped her heart. The person was inside the room. Audrey strained to hear the muffled voice and nearly cried out.

Two people!

In the distance, the metal door ground in its track. It was Ale. She couldn’t accept any other reality. Audrey’s heart responded by hammering in its ribcage. The voices fell silent.

Oh, no, no, no. Please, God, keep him safe!
She bit her lip to stop a cry from revealing their location. She couldn’t help him, but Ale wasn’t alone. Squeezing her nephew tighter, she lauded prayers to Heaven.

Two loud pops and Angel moaned beneath her hand. Ominous boot steps vibrated the floor underneath her bottom and stopped just beyond the door. The gunman was in the closet and in a second, the door providing their only cover was wrenched open. Light streamed in along with the muzzle of a gun. Angel wiggled furiously in her arms, his moans increasing.

“
Vamos!
”

A hand reached in and caught hold of Audrey’s arm. She cried out and shoved Angel to the back of the cubbyhole. “I’ll come, I’ll come, just leave him alone,” she pleaded with her captor, unsure if he actually understood. Pulled from the hole and shoved against the back wall of the closet, Audrey kept her eyes on the gun pointing at her as the man grabbed Angel and pulled him out by the leg.

Screaming, Angel’s small hands latched onto the edge of the open hole and he held on with all his might. The gunman muttered something unintelligible, but Audrey guessed it was vile, and the gun wavered as he struggled to yank Angel free.

I can do this.

Angling to the opposite side of the gun and moving forward, Audrey caught the man’s arm and shoved it high in the air. A shot rang out, causing her to flinch as her eardrums hummed in pain, but she held fast to the man as his other hand grabbed one of her arms. “Run, Angel!”

His little legs scampered away.

Forced into the wall again, Audrey gasped as the pain in her shoulder blades wrenched the breath from her lungs.

“Marshal!”

Why was Angel’s voice still so near? “Run, Angel!” she called out before a fist slammed into her jaw, causing her to see stars. Her fingers loosened on his arm, but something wasn’t right. The man was stepping away. Putting her hands to the wall to stop herself from slumping to the floor, she ignored her weak knees and forced her eyes to come into focus.

The intruder wasn’t stepping away. He was grappled by Ale and jerked back. The man tried to take a swing at Ale, who deftly ducked and landed a solid blow to the stomach before kneeing the man’s face. Head snapping back, the invader fell on his back, knocking his head on the floor. Ale aimed his weapon at the unmoving body. After a few seconds, he holstered his weapon and with one arm, flipped the unconscious man onto his stomach and cuffed him.

“Alejandro,” she called to him weakly.

“Auntie Audrey!” Angel came rushing into the closet, just as Audrey had the strength to propel herself forward. The boy wrapped his arms tightly around her right leg, halting her progress toward their rescuer. Ale covered the remaining distance between them, a single arm wrapping around her and Angel.

“You okay?” he asked into her hair, his lips finding her cheek in a sweet, lingering kiss.

“Yes!” she forced out, overwhelmed by emotion. Her eyes found the body of the second intruder near the entrance to the room.
Thank you, God!
They survived and it was over — it was all over.

Why do my fingers feel wet?
Audrey pulled back to look at her right hand and her breath caught. Blood! “Ale? Ale, your arm… you’re hurt!”

He cupped the side of her face with the hand of his opposite arm. “I was shot, no big deal.”

“No big deal?” she shouted.

“You were shot, Marshal?” Angel released Audrey’s leg and peered up at Ale’s bloody arm. “Cool! Does it hurt?”

Before answering, Ale pulled Audrey close, his lips taking hers swiftly. “Not anymore,” he whispered, his warm eyes locked with hers.

“Whoa… blood.”

Ale chuckled and knelt until his eyes were level with Angel’s. He ruffled the boy’s hair before scooping him into a one-armed bear hug. “Yes, that’s blood and no, it’s not cool.” His attempt to be firm was negated by his laughter at Angel’s disbelieving scowl.

“What do we do now?” Angel asked.

“Now?” Ale returned his gaze to Audrey, his slow half grin causing goose bumps to mark her flesh. “Now, we get you to your new home.”

Chapter Twelve

“THE only one missing is Ricardo.”

Rafa was right — it’d been too long since they’d seen their baby brother. Homecoming had been better for Ale than he’d ever allowed himself to dream before. His mother welcomed him with open arms, and ever since he eyed his younger brother, Rafael, Ale knew the truth behind the words “there’s no place like home.”

Audrey and Genie sat on the opposite couch, chatting about something girly while Angel played with an old train set Ale hadn’t seen in years. Thanks to Rafa’s connections with the US Marshals in Virginia, Ale was able to get an assignment change approved, and in a few months, after he had completed his investigative work for Trujillo and Alba’s trial, he settled in Virginia to be near the woman he planned to marry. Ale’s gaze strayed to Audrey’s empty left hand.
I got to get her a ring.