CHAPTER FIFTEEN
VIVIAN WOKE UP with the mother of all headaches and a stomach that was far from steady. Her leg was on fire and the rest of her body didn’t feel much better. The events of the previous night rushed by—the shooting, waking up in the back of an ambulance with two paramedics and Rafael hovering over her, the doctors talking about stitches, a bad flesh wound and an overnight stay at the hospital.
Hospital…Her eyes popped open as she realized where she was—and how much time had been wasted. “Diego?” She tried to sit up, but she’d moved too quickly and the whole room began to spin.
“Shh.” Rafael leaned over her, stroking a hand down the side of her face. “You’re fine,” he murmured. “You’re in the hospital.”
“I know where I am,” she croaked, still trying to sit up, but taking it much slower this time.
Rafael pushed her back on the pillow, but when she started to protest he pressed the button to raise the head of the bed. “Do you want some water?” he asked. “They’ve been pumping you full of fluids—” he nodded at the IV attached to her right hand “—but they told me you’d be thirsty when you woke up.”
She nodded, grateful for the chance to get the frog out of her throat, if for no other reason than being able to speak and be heard. He held a small hospital cup out with a straw and she began to drink thirstily.
“Take it easy,” he said. “They gave you morphine and you don’t want to get sick.”
She nodded, but took a couple extra pulls on the straw before she laid her head back against the bed. Then she took a little while just to look at Rafael.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
His bark of laughter was anything but amused. “I think that’s supposed to be my line.” He’d put the cup back on the table and had clasped her hand in both of his while his fingers caressed her wrist.
“You don’t look very good,” she continued, which was pretty much the understatement of the year. He looked as if he’d aged five years overnight. The lines in his face were deeper and his eyes were shadowed. Plus he looked absolutely exhausted.
“I’ve had a rough night.”
Fear clutched at her stomach, and the water she’d just drank threatened to come back up. “Diego—”
“We’re still looking for him. But I was referring to you getting shot.”
“Oh. That.”
“Yes, that.” His mouth was bracketed with pain when he leaned forward and rested his head on the side of her bed.
He still had a grip on her left hand, so she reached over with her right—IV and all—and stroked his hair. It felt as good as ever underneath her fingers—cool and silky and sexier than hair had a right to be.
Although she could remember parts of what happened last night, the details were hazy, as if she was looking at them from far away. She was smart enough to know it was the painkillers that were messing with her memory and gave everything an unreal quality.
Everything, that is, but Rafael. Through it all she’d felt his larger than life presence beside her, not getting in the way, but absolutely refusing to leave her alone to face the fear and pain. She remembered him holding her hand, whispering softly in her ear until the emergency room doctor kicked him out.
Rafael had saved her sanity along with her life, and she was incredibly grateful.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were damp and she felt her heart melt in her chest. “I’m fine,” she told him as she squeezed one big hand between both of hers.
His jaw clenched and he looked away. His thoughts were so heavy she could almost see him beating himself up over something that was not his fault. She’d opened her mouth to tell him that he couldn’t blame himself for what had happened when a familiar voice drifted down the hallway.
“Where is she? Where’s her room?”
Stiffening in shock, she pulled away from Rafael and smoothed an absent hand down her hair. “What is my mother doing here?”
He looked at Vivian as if she was insane. “Once we got you settled up here, I called Richard, who promised to contact your family. They—”
Whatever he was going to say was lost forever as Lillian and Stephen Wentworth swept into the room.
“Oh, my God. Look at you.”
“I’m fine, Mom. It looks worse than it is.”
“You’re patently not fine.” Her mother’s strident voice filled the room as she walked over and brushed a kiss on Vivian’s cheek. “You were shot! I told you that pro bono work was going to get you in trouble one day, didn’t I, Stephen?”
She turned to her husband, but he was too busy staring at Vivian to answer.
“I’m fine, Dad,” she said, hoping to allay the concern she saw in his eyes. He nodded, but the look didn’t change—and he didn’t come any closer to her.
“Well, I hope now you’ll quit your work for that terrible woman’s shelter,” Lillian went on, oblivious as usual to the undercurrents in the room. As the farce continued, Vivian couldn’t help wondering if her mother had broken her own rules and already started on the day’s quota of drinks.
“This had nothing to do with the woman’s shelter, Mom. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Yes, but why were you there?” her mother demanded. “In the Tenderloin, for heaven’s sake? That place is filled with barbarians!”
Vivian stiffened and looked at Rafael, but he seemed too bemused by her mother, with her high-end suit, perfectly coiffed hair, pearls and obvious insanity, to be offended.
Lillian followed Vivian’s gaze and for the first time seemed to notice Rafael sitting next to her daughter. “Are you the doctor?” she asked as she took in the scrubs the hospital had given him so he could change out of the bloodstained clothes he’d been wearing.
“No.” He started as if surprised anyone could mistake him for a medical professional. “I’m…” He paused, obviously searching for a way to describe their relationship. He finally settled on one that was only a little bit of the truth. “I’m Rafael Cardoza, a friend of Vivian’s. She was with me when she got shot.”
“Are you telling me that you are responsible for my daughter being in that part of town?” Lillian asked, her mouth curled in a moue of distaste as her eyes lingered on the earring in his ear. Vivian couldn’t help wondering what her reaction would be if she could see the black band tattooed around Rafael’s upper biceps—it really was too bad the scrubs covered it.
“I am, yes.”
“He is not.” Her voice was still weaker than she would have liked, but Vivian worked hard to put as much force behind the statement as she could. “I was there because I wanted to be.”
Stephen shot her a quick look before interrupting in his best doctor voice, “Let’s everyone just calm down, all right?” He extended a hand to Rafael. “I’m Stephen Wentworth and this is my wife, Lillian.”
Rafael smiled warmly, but she could see the unease in his eyes, especially as he glanced at her mother, who was obviously not happy to meet him. But Stephen had already picked up her chart at the end of the bed and was going over it carefully.
“Dad, is that really necessary?”
The look he gave her was surprisingly steely. “You were just shot. As there’s no doctor around to ask at the moment—” he glanced pointedly at Rafael “—then, yes, it is necessary.”
“My father is a doctor,” Vivian explained to Rafael. “He retired three years ago, but he doesn’t seem to remember that.”
“I remember it just fine, young lady. It says here that the bullet tore away a good-size chunk of flesh, nicked an artery.” He looked at the scrubs Rafael was wearing in a whole new way, as if he had suddenly realized just how much blood Rafael must have been covered in.
“Oh, my God!” One beautifully manicured hand flew to Lillian’s mouth. “You really could have died. What will people think?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Dad. Rafael called 911 and took care of me until the paramedics could get there.”
Her mother ignored her. “So, Rafael? What were you and my daughter doing in that area of town in the middle of the night?” Lillian pinned him with a glare so intense that Vivian reconsidered her thoughts about her mother’s sobriety. “It doesn’t seem like a place friends would hang out.”
“Lillian, your daughter has just been shot. Do you think maybe this could wait until later?” Stephen’s authoritative voice cut the room like a knife, shutting her mother down instantly, and Vivian couldn’t help staring at him in surprise. She’d only heard that tone from him a couple of times in her life, and never had it been directed at her mother.
“Of course.” She turned to Vivian with a concerned smile that was so motherly Vivian had a hard time keeping herself from laughing. Or crying. “I’ve just been so worried about you.” She moved to the left side of the bed, effectively shutting Rafael out of the picture.
It must have been the last straw for Rafael because he eased to his feet. “I should probably be going.”
“No, Rafael—”
She started to protest, but he cut her off by leaning down and kissing her cheek. While he was there, he whispered, “I’ll come by later. I think I’m upsetting your mother, and she doesn’t need anything else to worry about right now.” The way he said it made it seem as if he thought Lillian was one step away from a total break with reality, and Vivian barely suppressed a grin. Rafael was a lot better at getting a person’s measure than he thought.
“Call me if you need me,” he said as he pulled away.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Mr. Cardoza,” her mother said in her frostiest tone. “I’ll be here with Vivian until the doctor says we can take her home.”
Vivian had to give Rafael credit when he only nodded sedately at her mother’s pronouncement. She could see the gleam of amusement in his eyes as he noticed the sudden panic in her own.
“It was very nice to meet you, Lillian.” He nodded to her father. “It’s good to know Vivian’s in such good hands.”
Then he ducked out of the room before she could fire the water cup her mother had just handed her at his too-smug head.
* * *
RAFAEL’S AMUSEMENT FADED as soon as he’d slipped out of Vivian’s room. Those were her parents? While it was nice to know Vivian would hold up well with age, if her mother was any indication, he found it hard to believe that a woman like that had raised someone as compassionate and good-hearted as Vivian.
He felt guilty ducking out and leaving her at her mother’s tender mercies, but he was sick of being looked at as if he were something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of her shoe. It was hard enough for him to accept the fact that he’d fallen for Vivian—a woman whose background and money made him sweat—but to have to deal with her mother, who was so much like Jacquelyn she might have been her clone, was too much.
Especially when his nerves were so rattled. Digging his cell phone out of his pocket, he hit Jose’s number.
“Where have you been?” Jose’s voice came across loud and clear, despite the static on the line.
“With Vivian. Did you pick up Nacho?”
“Yeah, and he’s not talking.”
“Well, that’s a big surprise. The kid’s smarter than he looks.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the weird part.”
“So what is?”
“He’s lawyered up, tight as a drum. And not your typical scumbag lawyer, but one from a firm as fancy as your girl’s.”
“How’s that possible? Where would he get that kind of money?”
“Exactly. Even stranger—I went round to pick up Danny and Ric, just to see if I could shake anything loose, and their mother hasn’t seen them in two days.”
“You know, Vivian and I think they’re involved in what happened to their sister.”
“I know. But I’ve been talking to Nacho’s friends, and none of them are willing to admit that he even knows Esme’s brothers. They say they’ve never seen them together, he’s never talked to them, nothing.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know that, but I don’t think they’re lying. I talked to Esme’s friends, too—same story. Nacho and his crew don’t run with them.”
“They’re involved in this, Jose. I went to their house. I talked to them. Danny knows exactly what happened to his sister, though I’m not so sure about Ric.”
“Well, can you come down to the station for a lineup? The lawyer’s making noises about us not having any evidence to hold his client on, and I don’t want to let him go. With the kind of money someone’s shelling out for this lawyer, the second Nacho hits the street—”
“He’ll be gone.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m on my way.” Rafael punched the end call button harder than necessary as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. He knew that in tying Nacho in with Ric and Danny, he had most of the pieces to the puzzle, but he couldn’t seem to get them arranged to show the bigger picture. Maybe because the most important pieces were still missing.
It wasn’t until he got down to the street that he realized he didn’t have a ride. He stood there for a minute, shivering in the cold as he tried to decide what to do. He could call Gabriel to pick him up, but he wasn’t in the mood for more rehashing.
Looking up and down the streets, he spotted the sign of a major hotel a couple blocks away. Remembering that there was a BART station near there, he headed toward it at a fast clip. The train would probably get him home faster than a cab, anyway, and at the rate things were unraveling around him, he didn’t have time to waste.
Diego was still missing. Vivian had been shot. Nacho was in custody, with a rich lawyer who wouldn’t let him say a damn thing. And Rafael was seeing another suspect, one he was sure he’d seen before but whom he couldn’t place to save his life, in his head. Oh, and he was crazy about a woman whose family left much to be desired. Things just didn’t get much better than this.
He was half a block away from the BART station when he spotted one of Nacho’s good friends coming up the station steps. The kid paused for a second as if trying to get his bearings, and then headed east.
For a second the sight of him in this neighborhood seemed so incongruous that Rafael just stopped in his tracks and stared, trying to decide if it was really Greg or if he was so tired and stressed out and furious that he was seeing things that weren’t there. But he recognized the red backpack the kid carried as the same one he used to bring to the center. Add that to the fact that he was one of the boys who’d been hassling Vivian all those days ago when she’d tried to find her way to the community center, and Rafael wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass by.
Maybe it was just a strange coincidence that Greg was here, maybe it wasn’t. Either way, Rafael wanted to talk to him and find out what the hell Nacho was involved in. Picking up his pace, Rafael headed after the kid, making sure to keep his distance, as he was too tall to blend in well with the crowd.
He needn’t have worried. The kid walked with his head down, looking neither left nor right. He was paying attention only to his destination, and Rafael had the feeling he could walk right up to him and the kid wouldn’t even notice.
A couple of minutes later, Greg stopped at a local restaurant, and Rafael sped up so he could see if he was meeting someone. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw when he ducked into the restaurant. Ignoring the hostess, he watched as Greg walked straight up to a table where Richard Stanley was sitting.
What the hell were Greg and Richard doing together? There was no legitimate reason they should be sitting at a table halfway between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill, in neutral territory where nobody should have recognized either of them.
Yet there they were. And when a third person joined the table—coming from what Rafael assumed was the restroom—the puzzle pieces finally fell into place. The second person he’d seen in the car, the same one he’d seen with Nacho in the taco shop last week, the one who was doing the gangster version of a handshake with Greg right now, was Richard’s son. Rafael had met him at Richard’s annual Christmas party last year, the same party he was supposed to be going to tonight.
If he remembered correctly, the kid’s name was Thomas, and he was a chem major at Stanford. Rafael hadn’t liked him the one time he met him—he’d been too spoiled, too insolent to impress him. He remembered thinking at the time that Richard needed to watch him. Wealthy and bored was not a good combination, especially when a youth had the sense of entitlement that this one had.
He recalled Thomas had reminded him too much of Jacquelyn and as he watched the three together, he couldn’t help thinking that his instincts had been right on. This kid was trouble with a capital T, and it was obvious his father had finally figured that out.
Richard was uncomfortable, based on the stiff set of his body and the deep lines of his face. Thomas, however, seemed perfectly at home. He sprawled out in the booth, taking up more room than the other two men combined, and acting completely unconcerned. He was the only one who didn’t look worried and Rafael hazarded a guess that his father had bought him out of more trouble in his life than any three people deserved.
Trouble like drugs.
Trouble like…murder?
Not wanting to let them out of his sight, but also not wanting to risk spooking them, Rafael ducked into a chair in the restaurant’s waiting area that was out of Richard’s line of sight, but still provided him a decent view of the table. Taking out his cell phone, he snapped a couple shots of Thomas, and then dialed Jose back.
“I thought you were on the way?” Jose barked into the phone.
“Yeah, well, I think I just stumbled on something a whole lot bigger than Nacho.” Then he told Jose what he was looking at. The cop and his partner were out the door and on their way before Rafael had finished speaking.
That son of a bitch, was all Rafael could think as he stared at Richard. He’d been the one to stick Diego with a divorce attorney for a lawyer. Vivian had done a great job, but Richard couldn’t have known that at the time. Rafael had called him for help and the bastard had been sabotaging him all along.
When Rafael had read the article the paper had run about Vivian a few days before, it had never occurred to him that Richard had had a personal agenda in assigning her to the case. That he’d been expecting her to fail.
But she hadn’t, and the better she did with the case, the more dangerous Richard became. Getting Diego’s case sent to juvenile court had obviously been the last blow. Richard had panicked at the thought of Diego getting off—which might force the cops to look for another suspect—and had Vivian shot.
Hell, yeah, the puzzle pieces were fitting together left and right, and the picture they made wasn’t a pretty one. Rafael’s best guess was that Thomas had a nice little side business going on—one that included supplying drugs. Whether he or his friends cooked them up in their chemistry lab he didn’t know—and honestly didn’t care.
But it was obvious, even from across the room, that the kid was a user. His eyes were so bloodshot Rafael could see them from where he was sitting. The way he kept wiping his nose and the weird little facial tic he had going on had him guessing that Thomas’s trip to the bathroom had been to do a line or two of the hard stuff. Not enough to get high, but just enough to take the edge off.
But drug use wasn’t enough. The million-dollar question was had he killed Esme? That his dad had worked to make sure Diego went down for the murder seemed to indicate that he had.
Why? Had her brothers gotten greedy on their portion of the profits? Maybe, but that just didn’t ring true for Rafael. Rich kids like Thomas dabbled in this stuff because they thought it made them look cool, because they liked the adrenaline and the risk. Rafael hadn’t met very many who had the guts to do murder because they were gypped a few dollars, especially since it was so rarely about the money to begin with.
Then why? Why kill Esme? Why—
“Rafa!” Jose and his partner, Sam, came through the door in an authoritative whirl. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” he told them honestly. “But the blond kid over there was in the car with Nacho when he shot Vivian.”
“Are you positive?”
“I am. His name is Thomas Stanley and his father sits on my board. It’s why the kid looked so familiar to me when I saw him in the taco shop.”
Jose muttered something under his breath, and though Rafael didn’t catch the whole thing he was pretty sure it was something about rich kids and the mess they liked to make. It was nice to know he wasn’t the only one feeling that way today.
But Thomas was more observant than they’d given him credit for, and the second Jose started across the restaurant’s dining room, the kid bolted. Someone screamed, but it was over in a second, when Jose’s partner, Sam, tackled the kid. Soon Thomas was being hauled out in handcuffs, while Richard and Greg got a police escort out of the restaurant. Richard was screaming to everyone who would listen about police brutality and who he was going to sue, and not even the five hundred bucks’ worth of crank they pulled out of his son’s pocket shut him up.
Rafael watched the whole scene with a kind of horrified bemusement. Then turned and walked toward the BART station as he wondered where they all were supposed to go from here.