Traitor, The (15 page)
Slater gave Bella directions to the safe house, but only
after she called him from a pay phone halfway between the courthouse and the
unknown location. "Are you sure all this secrecy is necessary, Slater?"
Bella complained from the phone kiosk. "It seems like overkill."
His voice sounded tinny over the phone. Poor reception? "After
the hit on the van carrying the girls? What do you think?"
"I guess, but ..." She looked over her shoulder at
the gasoline pump where Rafe stood beside his car, drumming his fingers on the
hood. "Hashemi's pretty steamed about it."
Slater laughed shortly. "He'll get over it."
"Still, he's in charge of the case."
"All the more reason for him to plug the security leak
he's got. Pass the message on," Slater ordered before hanging up on her.
So much for her being able to handle Ben Slater. She settled
into the passenger seat and waited for Rafe to buckle up and start the engine
before passing on the directions to the safe house.
Rafe glanced over at her. "What took so long?" When
she remained silent, he mumbled, "Slater was giving you grief about the
leak, wasn't he?"
"He's got a point. Vargas' people found out about the
girls too fast. They couldn't have used their usual sources."
He rapped the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. "I
know, but I don't see where they could've gotten the information from. Every
damn member of my team has been security cleared dozens of times – background
searches, known affiliates, tax returns, family members – very deep checks."
"You should probably have them all investigated again,
just to be sure," she suggested.
Rafe took his eyes off the road to gaze at her, a thoughtful
expression on his face. "Maybe you're right. There's a breach somewhere,
but it looks deeply buried."
After a thirty-minute, silent drive northeast, they arrived
at the safe house location, an unoccupied summer home at a higher elevation in
Bigler County. Rafe pulled the car onto a gravel driveway behind Slater's truck
and a squad car.
By the way he clicked off the ignition and turned to face
her, Bella knew he'd been planning what to say the whole trip up into the
foothills. He blew heavily through his mouth and scraped his hands over his
heavy beard. Then he reached for her, placing his forefinger over her lips, his
eyes dark with an emotion she couldn't read.
"We should talk about last night." He brushed a
strand of hair off her cheek, trailing his fingers along her jaw line.
She nodded.
"We can't ... we shouldn't let this ... thing between
us get in the way of the case," he murmured.
She leaned her cheek against his hand and closed her eyes. "Maybe
last night was a bad idea."
He dropped his hand, gripped the wheel, and stared straight
ahead as the front door to the house swung open and Slater's large body filled
the frame.
"Hell, yes, it was a bad idea," he finally said,
sounding impatient, his jaw working furiously. "But we can't take it back."
"Are you sorry?" she asked.
Rafe opened his mouth to answer, but by that time Slater was
tapping on the passenger's window and the moment had passed. God, Bella thought
bitterly, was last night just a fling for him? Having a one-night stand – how
pathetic was that?
She swung out of the car and joined Slater. "Where's
the girl?"
Slater looked from her to Rafe and back again, as if he were
sizing up the situation, aware that something was amiss. "She's inside.
Fell asleep on the way down here and I didn't have the heart to wake her up."
He peered into Bella's face again, and she wondered what he
could see written on it. Slater was too astute not to miss the emotions playing
there, and she was too unschooled to hide them.
"Are you okay?" he asked, placing a large hand on
her shoulder.
She shrugged him off and hurried up the small flight of
wooden steps into the house. Snow would cover the grounds this high up in the
winter so the houses were built up off the ground on wooden frames. From the
entry Bella moved into a single, spacious room which contained a kitchen at one
end and a living area at the other.
Waylon Harris and Deputies McKidd and Ruiz from the Bigler
County Sheriff's Office sat at the kitchen end of the room, surrounding a table
where they sipped coffee from mugs. Harris, a tree trunk of a man with skin
like polished ebony, jumped up from his chair to greet her. Bella suspected
that he had a bit of a crush on her because he seemed to fall all over himself
whenever she was around.
Deputy Ruiz was a new recruit, a hefty Hispanic man with a
brush of moustache above his lip and eyes that danced with humor. Slater would've
assigned Ruiz to this case because of his Spanish background even though Bella
herself spoke the language fluently. Slater liked covering all his bases.
McKidd, a tall, bony redhead with large freckles in a
ridiculously young face, seemed all arms and legs as he sprawled on the tiny
kitchen chair. He'd just popped a powdered doughnut in his mouth and white dust
sprinkled across his sparse, reddish soul patch.
Rafe and Slater trailed in from the car. After Slater made
introductions all around, everyone poured a first or second cup of coffee.
Rafe, Bella, and Slater took the chairs at the kitchen table, while Ruiz,
Harris, and McKidd returned to their posts guarding the two entrances to the
house.
Rafe checked out the front of the house, noting the wide
window that opened onto the gravel drive. The back door led to a deck from
which a long stretch of stairs wound downward to a dirt embankment and a copse
of slender pines. The entire back wall consisted of floor to ceiling glass
windows and the view through the glassed wall was spectacular, but he wasn't
interested in that.
"What's the girl's name and how old is she?" Isabella
asked as she added sugar and cream to her coffee.
"Esperanza. Says she's thirteen, speaks English very
well," Slater answered. "She's exhausted."
"Was she injured in the fracas?" Rafe asked from
his position by the window.
"Took a bullet to the upper shoulder and she's sore,
but it's not serious," Slater replied.
"What's going to happen to her?" Isabella asked. "When
this is all over, I mean."
"After we get the information, she'll go back to
Mexico," Rafe answered, not meeting her eyes, knowing the girl would go
back where she came from, but there'd be no happy ending for her. "Hopefully,
she has a family still waiting for her."
"Hopefully, she wasn't sold into slavery and
prostitution by that same family," Isabella snapped.
Rafe ignored the anger in her eyes and directed his question
to Slater. "Has she said anything yet?"
Slater nodded towards the behemoth Deputy Harris and tapped
his own chest. "The four of us – you can see we're not dainty men. I was
waiting for Bella. I think a woman will work better with the girl."
Rafe wondered how Slater had managed to find a good safe
house on such short notice. Good location, isolated, gravel to alert vehicle
approach, and only a few trees to hide someone coming up on foot. "Whose
place is this?"
"Friend of a friend of a friend, who's vacationing in
Italy. This is their second home, completely untraceable."
"Good," Rafe grunted. "The girl's in there?"
He gestured towards the hall to his left where he could see several closed
doors.
"Second door on the right," Slater answered,
glancing at his watch. "She should be awake soon."
As if on cue, the door swung open and a young girl, looking
scarcely twelve, barefoot and sleepy-eyed, wandered to the end of the hall. She
was skinny and dirty, but Rafe could tell she'd be a beauty when she was older,
wide round eyes surrounded by long, sooty ashes, skin the color of sun-kissed
copper, and a look of sadness on her face that would break a man's heart.
Isabella approached Esperanza, introduced herself, and asked
if she'd mind talking to her. The girl glanced at the two men first, and
drawing her brows together, finally nodded before turning back to the bedroom.
Isabella followed.
An uncomfortable silence descended as Rafe joined Slater at
the table. Rafe could see Harris positioned by the patio door and assumed the
other two deputies were posted at the front.
"I guess it could be Nevada County," Slater said,
apropos of nothing, after a few minutes of silence.
Rafe looked over in surprise. "The leak? You think?"
Slater shrugged. "Not really.
"But part of it could be," Rafe speculated. "The
Nevada hit was awfully fast."
"That's what I was thinking."
Rafe raised his eyebrows. "Shared responsibility?
Multiple leaks?"
"Something like that."
"So the Nevada hit was a Nevada leak," Rafe
concluded. That sounded right to him. "Law enforcement?"
"How could it be anything else?"
"And Lupe?"
"Your confidential informant in L.A.?" Slater
asked. "That one had to be a DEA leak, don't you think?"
Rafe hated the idea, sure no one in L.A. could've tied Lupe
to him. They'd been rigidly cautious. Still ... "Shit, looks like it."
"We can't take any chances with Esperanza's life,"
Slater warned.
Rafe glanced down the hall to the closed door behind which
Isabella was getting details on the hit from the girl. "No, no risks."
Another few minutes passed while Rafe alternated between
looking out the large glass window that filled the entire southeastern wall and
the closed bedroom door down the hall.
Suddenly another comment, completely out of the blue, came
from Slater. This one floored Rafe. "Are you sleeping with her?"
Rafe choked on his coffee. "What the hell?"
He guessed that Slater hadn't missed the careful avoidance
Rafe and Isabella had maintained – the tension between them, not touching, eyes
sliding off the other's – so he wasn't as completely surprised by the question
as he should've been.
Shit!
They'd really complicated the case by what
they'd done last night. "None of your goddamn business!" he growled
in warning.
"Oh, but it is," Slater said in a matter-of-fact
voice, "my business, that is. See, Bella's like a little sister to me. I
don't want to see her hurt."
At least that cleared up the relationship between the two of
them. "Are you so certain I'll hurt her?"
Slater leveled him a hard look. "Maybe, maybe not. I'm
here to make sure you don't."
"All she needs is another brother."
"Yeah," Slater laughed. "And it's not like
Bella can't handle herself."
"She's pretty tough." Rafe smiled in memory,
mopping up the spilled coffee with a paper towel.
"Still ... she's not so tough in her heart."
Slater was referring to Isabella's lost and probably dead
sister Maria.
"Yeah," he conceded.
#
The microfiche records were surprisingly easy to access in
the state archives. Twenty years ago the story caused quite a media blitz.
Young Mexican immigrant family. The father a migrant worker, the mother
domestic help, but they managed to educate their seven children. The girl Maria
was her class valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar, and the first family
member to go to college.
Then she'd disappeared on a graduation trip to Mexico with
three of her best friends. The three remaining girls were no help in providing
the police with details about how Maria had vanished. But Santos was fairly
certain he knew exactly what had happened to her.
After a few months the newspaper coverage waned and
eventually dwindled to nothing. By the time the girl was really dead, there
wasn't even an anniversary article in the local paper.
Five years.
Maria Anna Torres had lasted five years at the cruel hands
of Diego Vargas.
Santos pulled the worn photograph out of his jacket pocket
and held it up beside the grainy newspaper photograph on the microfiche screen.
The resemblance was unremarkable, although both girls had long, dark hair and
wide black eyes. Both were Latina, but the girl in the newspaper photo wore a
white graduation cap and gown. In Santos' picture, she was thinner, bare
shouldered, and heavily made up.
But he had no doubt the two pictures revealed the same girl.
The resemblance to Isabella Torres was uncanny, and the details of the
disappearance and presumed kidnapping of Maria Torres matched what Santos
remembered from twenty years ago.
He shut off the machine and placed the photo back in his pocket.
Every moment of the transport of the cargo was etched in his memory more
vividly than the long, slow death of his own father in the village plaza in
Real
de Cantorce.
Santos was not a man to indulge in regrets. A man must do
whatever is required to survive – and to thrive. But, by God, he wished he had
slit the girl's throat instead of handing her over to Diego Vargas. He told
himself that if he had known what would happen to her, how the few nights would
become months and the months become five long years, he would never had brought
her to Reno.
Never left her in the hands of such a man.
But Santos was a young man then, voraciously hungry for the many
things that Diego Vargas could offer him.
In the bedroom Bella sat in a corner in a wicker chair while
the girl Esperanza crouched on the bed, her slender legs drawn up to her chest,
her arms folded around them. Bella had never seen anyone look so hopeless in
her life, and her heart wrenched with sympathy at the thought of what the girl
had gone through.
Careful not to touch her, Bella moved to the edge of the bed
and lowered her voice into a soothing tone. "Can you tell me what
happened, Esperanza?"
The girl hunched her shoulders and stared at her feet.
"Sheriff Slater tells me you speak English. ¿
Puede
usted hablar inglés?"
Can you speak English?
"Si,"
the girl mumbled.
"Bueno."
Bella smiled reassuringly. "Can
you tell me how you came to be in the van with the other girls?"
"Son todas muertas,"
Esperanza whispered
instead of answering the question.
They're all dead.
"Lo siento mucho. I'm very sorry."
Bella
scooted her chair closer to the bed. "Where are you from?"
"Toluca."
So far south in Mexico. How did
she end up here in northern California, Bella wondered?
"Were you kidnapped?"
The girl wet her dry lips.
"Sí,
some men came to
my village near
Toluca
and took four of us. Several girls were already
in the van. When we arrived in
Tijuana,
the rest of the girls were
there."
"How did you get across the border?"
"No sé."
She shrugged and picked at the
threads on the bedspread. "But it was night and the roads were very bumpy,
like dirt roads. Perhaps the
ladrones
found a place that was not
patrolled carefully."
"Did you see the faces of any of the men who took you?"
She shook her head and looked embarrassed that she couldn't
give better information.
"Solamente los conductores."
Only
the drivers.
"What about when you stopped. Did you see anyone else?"
Esperanza scrunched her face and concentrated. "In
Tijuana,
there were two other men.
Muy grandes.
They spoke English most of the
time."
Bella pulled a photo six-pack from her briefcase and spread
the pictures on the bed. "Do you recognize any of these men?"
"¡Mí Dios, sí!
I will never forget his face."
She pointed to the picture of Diego Vargas. "He was in
Tijuana.
He
forced the girls into the van."
Bella felt a shiver of excitement run through her. She'd
made a clear identification of Vargas. "What else can you tell me about
him?"
"He is a very bad man."
"What happened?"
"Once we had crossed into the United States, we stopped
somewhere, I do not know where. One of the girls was very young, perhaps ten or
younger." Esperanza began crying and swiping at the tears with dirty
fingers, leaving long smudges on her smooth cheeks. "He took her away for
a very long time."
Bella felt a chill begin at the bottom of her spine and
travel upwards to her neck.
"When they brought her back," Esperanza whispered,
"she was bleeding very badly. She died shortly after."
Bella tapped the photo of Santos. "What about this man?
Do you recognize him?"
Esperanza took the picture and held it close to her face.
"No, I have never seen this man."
Bella clenched her fists and tried to command her rational
mind to control her emotions, but she couldn't stop thinking about Diego Vargas
and his unspeakable brutality. This girl's testimony would be enough to put the
monster away for a very long time. And Bella intended to see that happen.
#
Santos made the flight from Sacramento International Airport
to LAX in a little over an hour. Two Norteños picked him up at the airport and
left him with a Ford Explorer rental.
Forty minutes later he waited impatiently for the inside man
to make the prearranged appointment on the Terminal Island side of the Vincent
Thomas Bridge. Santos remained in the Explorer even when he saw the contact
pull up to the parking area in an unmarked squad car, and he remained there
until the man slipped into the passenger seat of the Explorer.
Santos looked at the tip of his cigarillo as he blew the
smoke slowly out his nostrils. "You are late," he said after a few
moments.
"Couldn't be helped." The man kept his wraparound
sunglasses fixed on his face so his eyes could not be seen, but Santos
recognized the edginess, the restless legs, and the wandering hands – all signs
of discomfort. What did the man have to be nervous about?
"El Árabe
thinks there is a leak from the Los
Angeles area," Santos said.
"Don't call him that," the man snapped. "He's
as American as me. More than you, my south-of-the-border friend."
Santos let the offense slip by. After all, he did not intend
for this American to be around very much longer. When his usefulness ended, he
would disappear. Already the man's value to Vargas' organization was questionable.
"So why the all-fired hurry for a meet?" the
contact asked.
"El Vaquero
is not happy that the information
you have been sending us is tardy."
"Like I give a fuck how Vargas feels."
"Caution,
mi amigo impetuoso,
you should take great
care about what Diego thinks."
The man cracked his neck, twisting it one way, then the
other. "Tell him I've got it covered."
"He will want to know the details."
"I'm going up north to Sacramento."
Santos raised both eyebrows. "Oh?"
"Yeah, I've got a connection there."
"Bueno."
Santos placed a large paw on the
man's shoulder. "Diego will be very happy, and when the boss is pleased,
he rewards handsomely."
#
The attack on the safe house occurred shortly after three o'clock
in the morning.
While Bella had gone to her office to prepare her case
against Vargas, Rafe had driven north to investigate the possible leak in the
Nevada County Sheriff's Department. He also made some confidential calls regarding
his own department.
At the safe house, Slater assigned the first shift – Ruiz to
the front door, McKidd and Harris to the back, while he stretched out on a cot
in the hall by Esperanza's bedroom door. He could hear the girl moving around
in the room, the squeaking of the bed springs and then the flushing of the
toilet.
He imagined she wasn't going to sleep very well tonight. He'd
have to make long-range plans to protect her. Moving her around seemed the best
security until the trial ended. And with Vargas' long reach, who knew how long
that could take?
Slater must've dosed off because a foreign sound, the dull
clank of metal on wood flickered through his subconscious and brought him
springing to full alert. He reached for his handgun lying on the floor, and
slipped it out of the holster as he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of
the cot. As he stood, he quietly turned the knob on the girl's bedroom.
She lay quietly under a pile of blankets, black strands of
hair the only thing he could see from his angle. He eased the door shut, and
clinging to the wall, traced his steps back through the great room to the patio
window. He saw Harris' broad frame silhouetted against the pale glow of the
moon, but McKidd wasn't in sight.
Soundlessly Harris hunched over, weapon in hand. Slater
still couldn't see anything, but obviously something had drawn the deputy's
attention. Slater strained to see what had alerted Harris, holding his breath,
tightening his grip on his weapon.
Where the hell was McKidd?
Focused on the scene in the back entry, Slater didn't hear
the front door open until a floorboard suddenly creaked behind him. He swung
around, raised his weapon to fire, and aimed at a large, dark shadow lurching
toward him. But he wasn't fast enough and all hell broke loose.
Slater took the first bullet high in the chest, the pain of
it searing through his muscle and shattering his clavicle. He got a round off
before he was spun around from the impact, but it went astray. The second
bullet caught him low in the back and he wondered briefly if it would paralyze
him. The third one sank deep into his thigh.
At the sound of the first report, Harris flew through the
back patio door, crouching low, aiming his weapon, and firing like a madman.
The first intruder went down with a shot to the head and one to the chest, but
the second one managed to hit Harris in his upper thigh, close to the groin. He
went crashing down like a felled buffalo, his handgun skittering across the
floor.
A third intruder entered from the front landing and ran down
the hallway.
No, Slater screamed silently, feeling his blood drain
steadily onto the hardwood floor, knowing he was helpless to keep the attacker
from reaching the girl. Shivers started to rack his body, his skin felt clammy,
and his mouth was parched. He recognized his body going into shock.
As the second shooter advanced on the defenseless Harris,
Slater panted shallowly and tried to scrabble out of the way, reaching for his
backup weapon. But he was too weak and his arm flopped uselessly at his ankle.
He clamped his chattering teeth together and made a
last-ditch effort. He hardly felt the weapon leave its holster, but suddenly
the grip was solid and warm against his clammy palm.
The second hitter loomed over Harris, lifting his gun for
the head shot, when Slater's bullet took out the back of the man's skull. Harris
lay sprawled on his back, bleeding profusely from his leg.
An artery?
Even knowing there was nothing he could do, Slater tried to crawl toward his
deputy.
The girl's screaming penetrated the roar in his head. She raced
out of the bedroom into the hall and ran smack into the third hitter. Slater
saw Harris' fingers jerk faintly in an attempt to reach his discarded weapon.
At that moment, another figure entered through the glass
patio door behind Harris. Slater opened his mouth in warning, but no sound came
out. A hard blow to the back of Harris' head with the butt of a semi-automatic
rifle and all movement stopped.
God, Slater thought, they were all going to die here. Now.
Right before he passed out, he glimpsed the round sweating
face of Manuel Ruiz as it twisted into something vicious with satisfaction while
he loomed over the fallen Harris.
God, Manuel Ruiz, a traitor in his own house!
Ruiz placed his heel on Harris' chest, aimed the barrel at
his skull as Slater's eyes fluttered shut. From a distance he heard the faint
jumble of words:
"¡No! Qué – haciendo – "
and a muffled
response
"El Jefe dice – "
followed by a final blast of
gunfire.
His last thought before he lost consciousness was,
Thank
God Bella wasn't here.
#
"Slater, Slater, can you hear me?"
Bella's pretty face, worried and damp with tears, floated in
front of Slater's eyes as he opened them.
"Esperanza?" he moaned. "Is she alive?" His
voice petered off into the creaky sound of an old man and he tried again. "Did
they get her?"
Bella shook her head. "Let's just worry about you right
now."
He felt the motion of the gurney beneath him as she placed
her hand on his cheek. "What happened? Christ, is everyone dead?"
"They're taking you into surgery." She gripped his
hand. "Don't worry. Rafe and I will handle everything." He saw the
sheen of tears in her eyes and felt the soft press of her lips on his before
his lids became so heavy he couldn't hold them open.
He heard Hashemi's voice at his feet. "You'll be okay,
man. They'll fix you up."
That must mean the girl was dead, Slater thought, as an
anvil of grief and guilt pressed on his chest. And he must be dying because
Bella would never kiss him on the mouth, and Hashemi hated his guts after the
little talk they'd had about her at the safe house.
Suddenly, the memory of the slaughter that'd happened there
panicked him and he struggled to sit up. "Ruiz," he muttered weakly.
"He's – "
Heavy hands held him down. Hashemi's voice. "Take it
easy, man. Calm down."
A moment later a mask descended over his mouth and he
floated off to a blessed, undulating oblivion.
#
Santos knew the text message that came through as he boarded
a plane from LAX to Sacramento was meant for Vargas and had somehow been sent to
his phone by mistake:
Se acaba.
It is done. What next?
Santos settled back into his first-class passenger seat and
fumbled with the seat belt before responding. Even though he hadn't ordered any
moves against the witness, he was afraid he knew what the message meant.
He was a cautious man, after all, and many things could
happen between arrest, arraignment and trial that could extricate Vargas from the
charges ADA Torres brought against him. Hasty action was not Santos' style, but
rushing in headlong without thinking about the consequences was exactly the kind
of action that Diego would take.
He texted back. ¿
Quién? Who?
A few moments later the answer in English:
prime + 3.
That meant the girl plus three others were dead.
¡Mierda!
Santos swiped a hand over his face as the flight attendant warned over the intercom
that all cell phones were to be turned off.
Theirs?
he texted.
Sí. 2 + M.R.
Fuck! M.R. stood for Manuel Ruiz, their deep-cover informant
in Bigler County. The girl was surely dead, along with three deputies or
agents, whoever had been guarding her, probably the sheriff included. Ruiz had
become a casualty, too, either by accident during the attack or eliminated by
the assassination team under Vargas' direction.
