“I tried to convince her otherwise, but you should have told us.” Rae’s pissy, narrowed look was nothing compared to the heat coming off Gabrielle’s glare.
“I intended to as soon as I had a chance.” Like once Carlos finished this mission and Gabrielle was somewhere safe.
Rae scoffed. “This one’s going to be a problem for you.”
“Too late to do anything about that.”
“How’d you come out tonight?” Korbin asked. “Do we need to cover that front any longer?”
“No.” Carlos shook his head. “Everything is handled. He won’t bother us again.”
Korbin nodded and moved through the doorway, turning to wait on Rae. She paused in front of Carlos and glanced over her shoulder at Gabrielle, who now stood tapping her foot. “Looks like a long night on the floor for you, but I did spare you one headache right now.”
Carlos almost hated to ask. “What?”
“I didn’t tell Gabrielle why Babette’s name hit our radar. She’s on a list of teens listed as not checked in as of tonight’s meal.”
His stomach sank. Not Babette. Carlos took in Gabrielle’s angry gaze, wondering how much to tell her. He whispered to Rae, “Maybe Babette is off the reservation playing. If we don’t find her by morning, I’ll have Gabrielle try to reach her.”
“Call us,” Korbin said, then ushered Rae on out the door.
When the door shut, the silence was like a vacuum sucking the walls in close.
“You think I’m a cold-blooded killer that took out Roberto while he slept?” Carlos would deal with one problem at a time.
Gabrielle flinched, but the frown lines didn’t leave her forehead. “No…but what did you do?”
“I convinced Roberto it would be a bad idea to ever bother you again.”
He could feel each second tick slowly as she passed judgment, trying to decide if he was lying. Carlos took one careful step at a time forward, needing to hold her. He had wanted to kill that bastard for almost killing Gabrielle.
But Roberto still breathed, for now.
“Stop.” She held up a hand, palm out when he was six feet away. “Why should I believe you after exposing Babette to all this.”
“I didn’t tell them about your sister.”
The fight to choose between believing him or not deepened the lines of anxiety across her worried face.
Carlos took another step. “I can’t prove it until tomorrow, but I didn’t tell them. The last thing I want is for anyone to involve her or use her against you.”
Gabrielle’s lip trembled. “Are you telling me the truth?”
“Yes. I’m not using you.” There. He laid the real issue out on the table. She wanted to know he wasn’t sleeping with her to manipulate her.
Another reason he shouldn’t have broken that rule, but now was a little late to be concerned about that.
“Do you know how worried I’ve been?” she asked in complete conflict with everything else she’d said.
But that was enough to tell him he hadn’t destroyed the fragile trust between them.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving. I didn’t want you to worry.” Carlos opened his arms, and that’s all it took for her to rush into them.
His heart started pumping again at the feel of her against his chest. He cupped her head and rubbed his cheek along her hair.
A minute ago, he’d been ready to convince himself keeping away from her was the best thing he could do.
Not now. He couldn’t let go of Gabrielle even if doing so would save his life.
She hugged him hard, her hands gripping his back.
Nothing in his world had felt so right in so long. Somewhere his feeling for Gabrielle had crossed from one of protection to one of possession he shouldn’t be feeling.
But he was just realizing how much he could care for a woman. For this woman.
And that freaked him out at the same time since this could go nowhere but bad.
She lifted her head and held his gaze for a long moment. “I believe you and I trust you. Don’t make me regret that.”
Not much to ask of a man with a normal life, but he lived miles outside the realm of normal. Still, he meant it with all his heart and soul when he said, “I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want you to ever think I made love to you for any reason other than the simple fact that I wanted you.”
She lifted up, touching her lips to his. He kissed her back with care, then pulled away.
“I don’t regret what we’ve done,” he said. “But I’ll understand if you don’t want to sleep together…anymore.”
“Really?” She lifted a hand to his cheek, but he couldn’t read what churned behind that intense gaze.
He had to give her space to figure out what she wanted to do. Right now wasn’t the best time to touch her anyhow since he still had to shake off his fury from dealing with Roberto. He’d take her like a wild man if he didn’t move back.
“I need a shower.” Carlos disengaged from her arms and she let him. When he stepped away, she crossed her arms and looked down.
He’d survived almost getting blown to pieces earlier, the gut-wrenching fear he might not have gotten Gabrielle away in time, and fighting a goon half again his size tonight with little thought.
But the picture of Gabrielle’s dejected face pummeled him with steel fists. He’d had no idea until now how much it was going to hurt to lose her.
Carlos crossed the room to pick up the paper bag with a box of condoms that had been a waste of money and tossed the bag next to his duffel on the way to the bathroom. He stripped out of his clothes and climbed into the shower, cranking the water temperature up so high he couldn’t see through the steam.
The scalding water badgered his muscles, but images of Gabrielle’s terror-filled face after the explosion kept breathing life into his dark thoughts. He didn’t realize he was squeezing the bar of soap until it snapped in half.
If anyone else harmed Gabrielle, he’d…
Carlos took a breath and rolled his shoulders, trying to not think about what he’d do.
He already missed her desperately. How was he going to let her go when all this was over? Music filtered into the bathroom from the bedroom. The shower curtain had a clear strip across the top where he saw the door open all the way just before the lights clicked off.
A puff of candlelight glowed on the other side of the shower around the sink. His vision adjusted just as he guessed what might be happening. What he hoped like hell was happening.
The shower curtain slid open a foot and Gabrielle stepped in. Gloriously nak*d.
His heart pumped hard with hope.
“I got a little candle off the food cart that probably won’t last long,” she said just loud enough for him to hear over the water battering his back. “Is this okay?”
Carlos studied her, wished he could see her eyes that televised her emotions. “Does this mean you made a decision?”
She chuckled. “No, I took my clothes off and came in here to tell you I wasn’t going to make love with you. To use your words, ‘for someone so intelligent, you can be pretty dense.’ I’m angry, not stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“We both know my future is up in the air. I’m not giving up a minute with you.”
The smile warming his chest reached up to touch his lips. “What do you plan to do with your minutes?”
She moved forward until he could see the glow of white around her irises through the steam.
Her fingers closed around his erection.
Carlos drew in a breath. “Careful, woman, or we won’t need those condoms I picked up while I was out.”
“Really?”
The enthusiasm in that one word pinged a tender spot inside him.
“And here I thought”-she paused and sheathed him-“I had the only one left.”
He sucked in sharply at the jolt of pleasure from her touch. Water poured across his shoulders and sluiced between their bodies. He wrapped her in his arms. “You’re incredible.”
“The funny thing is, I feel like I am when I’m with you,” she whispered.
“Never doubt it.” He wanted to be careful with her tonight, not let the beast still roaming inside him loose. He dipped his mouth down to kiss her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, loving him with each nip of her sweet lips.
She tasted like wicked honey. When he roamed his fingers over her slick body and slowed to toy with her br**sts, she moaned her appreciation.
He reached down and scooped her up. Her legs went around his waist.
His heavy groin ached from the strain of waiting, holding back from driving into her until all he could feel was Gabrielle. No rage at the hand he’d been dealt, no fury over how close she’d come to dying today.
He wanted to feel just her.
With his hands underneath her, he pressed a finger inside. She clenched against him.
“Carlos?”
“What, sweetheart?”
She rubbed against him. “I am so ready. Now.”
He lifted her, gently positioning the tip of his erection to ease inside, slowly, carefully. The need to drive into her clawed at him.
She wiggled her bottom, forcing him close to the frayed edge of his control.
“Carlos, stop being so careful. I’m not crystal. I don’t want slow and easy. Don’t hold back on me tonight.”
Merde. The buried fury roared to life.
DURAND OPENED THE solid-metal door and entered the outbuilding on his property within sight of his home. He called it a granero, the shed, back when he brought his sons here to discipline them. When he’d had sons to be proud of. But this was not like most sheds. Constructed to match the house right down to the stucco finish, this building was eighty feet long and fifty feet wide, with rooms for extracting the truth.
No one was allowed inside without him or Julio. Durand’s right-hand man stood next to a bloated body dangling from chains hooked to the ceiling.
Julio had gotten a man unknown in the region inside a group of local antidrug zealots over the past year. On Durand’s behalf, Julio offered the man a great deal of money to convince the secret group to create a special team that would bear arms against the Anguis. He gave the man a bag full of money to prove to his followers he had financial support.
Men showed up slowly until an Anguis soldier appeared the night the leader called for a show of arms from everyone.
Durand walked over to take a look at what his trap had caught. “Dios, Julio. He smells dead. Is he?”
“No.” Julio prodded the body with a sharp stick.
“Por favor.” The plea floated from the body as if spoken by a ghost. For a man closing in on fifty-eight, Ferdinand was a strapping guy, still fit and strong. Or he had been until spending the last twenty hours with Julio.
Now his eyelids were shut and puffy red lumps. His swollen and yellow skin looked like that of an obese alien.
Durand breathed through his mouth and stepped up to the body. “Ferdinand, spare your son this. Tell me all you know of Mirage.”
“I…told…him.” Ferdinand’s words fluttered.
Julio shook his head. “He gave us nada.”
Why were some men fools? Durand shrugged. “Bring his son.”
“Nooo,” the old guy cried.
Julio reached for a chain running to a hoist mounted to the ceiling and pulled the hook on the end over to a metal box eight feet square and four feet tall. When he opened the box, Julio pushed the hook inside, fitting it into a metal loop, then walked over to the wall and pressed a button.
A wail spewed from the box harboring Ferdinand’s twenty-nine-year-old son.
“What a waste,” Durand told Ferdinand. “I could have used a boy like yours with my men. You work for me, what, fifteen years? Why would you betray me like this?”
Durand shook his head, disgusted.
Raised from the box, Ferdinand’s son howled in pain from the moment the chain tightened until Julio dropped him just close enough to let the pads of his bare feet touch the concrete floor. The son was turned away from his father. He wore only a pair of filthy shorts now soiled from his having been in the box over twenty hours. Dried streaks of sweat and grime fingered across his dirty body, but he no longer had enough water in his system to perspire.
Durand stepped in front of the young man and wrinkled his nose at the acrid smell. He made a mental note to give Julio a raise.
“Agua,” the young man pleaded in a hoarse voice.
“Julio controls your water,” Durand explained. “First, tell me what you and your father have told Mirage about me.”
“I no know…what you mean.” The voice was rough as nails scraped over rusted metal.
“Julio, turn him around so he will see we are busy men and have no time to play games.”
Julio spun Ferdinand’s son, who squinted at his father. His eyes bulged. “Papa, Papa. Wh-what you do to him?”
“Your father’s eyelids and every orifice are glued shut. Except the mouth, which he has failed to make good use of,” Durand patiently answered. “Maybe we glue your eyelids open so you can watch yourself change if you no tell us the truth.”
Ferdinand hung like a silent slab.
His son screamed and jerked against his bindings.
Julio walked over to the table and brought back a syringe he jabbed into the boy’s hip. When he withdrew it, he turned to Durand. “This will last about a half hour. Long enough to prepare his body for interrogation.”
“Take photos. I want my men to know what it means to betray me.”
“Sí.”
Durand walked out of the building, where dark clouds swarmed from the north. Wind stirred leaves on the trees lining the walkway to the hacienda.
Maria headed toward him pushing her useless son through the gardens. She stopped when they met.
“How is my favorite nephew today?” Durand asked, hiding his revulsion. His sister should have let the boy go when he was in the hospital after being injured years ago.