Chapter Seven
What the hell? She’d stopped on a dime, and he couldn’t make her move forward. Afraid to loosen his hold—afraid she might drift away in this crowd—he edged in front of her and tugged.
She didn’t move.
“Bella.”
Over his shoulder, he saw Henry approaching fast, head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.
“Santiago’s here.” But she wasn’t looking behind her. She stared straight ahead.
“Yeah, he’s almost here.” Did she think he didn’t see the giant gaining on them? “Go.”
“No, Santiago,” she said, her voice almost a squeak, and she turned then, her eyes huge and round.
His heart kicked and he glanced over his shoulder. Christ. And him without a weapon, without backup. He whipped around to the direction she’d been looking, and saw nothing. An empty private booth.
“You’re imagining it,” he said, but had the creeping suspicion she wasn’t. Still, he couldn’t protect her here. “We’ve got to go.”
Something he said reached her and he propelled her forward, though she kept looking over her shoulder at that alcove. Knowing he was probably bruising the soft skin of her arm, he shoved her toward the door, not looking to see if Henry was on their tail. He maneuvered them across the lot toward his truck, unlocking it with the remote and swinging her up even as he opened the door, then shoved her over and climbed in after her. He jammed the key in the ignition and gunned the engine before he looked up to see Henry charging from the front door, followed by two others, all with guns.
He swore, then shouted, “Get down,” as he shifted into gear and peeled away from the curb, into the street, swerving to avoid hitting an oncoming car before punching the accelerator.
He made two turns before he looked at Isabella, still crouched on the floor. “You can get up now.”
When she did, he could damn near feel her shaking across the cab.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, but her hands trembled as she buckled herself in.
“Does Henry know where you’re staying?”
She shook her head, pushed her hair back from her face. “I told him I was staying with a friend.”
He turned toward her hotel and she slid him a surprised look.
“How long were you following me?” she asked suspiciously.
“I picked up your trail before you rented your Nissan.” A thought occurred to him and he scowled. “If this guy wants to find you bad enough, he could.”
“So I suppose it’s a good thing I registered in a different hotel with my credit card and paid cash for the one I’m staying in.”
He grinned despite himself. But instead of praising her, he said, “Nice place?”
She grinned back. “Oh, yeah.”
Alex whistled low when he entered the luxurious room with the magnificent view of Miami. He headed for the window and opened the door to the balcony, then stepped outside. Isabella latched the door, knowing it wouldn’t do much good against Santiago if he found out where she was and really wanted to come after her.
But Alex was here now, and just knowing that made her feel safer than it should. The idea that he’d followed her to Miami after the way he’d left her in the Honduras hotel room buoyed her spirits. He’d gotten her out of the jungle. He would help her find her son.
She buried the romantic notions that wanted to accompany the realization he’d come for her. Giving into those had gotten her into trouble in the past. Alex was bound to have an ulterior motive.
She loosened the tie of her dress and turned into the marble tiled bathroom. “I’m going to shower,” she called to Alex and closed the door before he could answer.
She didn’t lock it. He could come in if he wanted to. As battered as she was feeling, she would welcome him. He’d saved her from Santiago, though she wasn’t sure he believed that.
She turned the gold fixtures till steaming water poured out, ducked under to wash the sweat and nerves away, the fear and the arousal.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in the plush robe the hotel provided, Alex was stretched out on her king-sized bed, propped against the headboard, watching baseball with his bare feet on the mattress, holding a beer from the minifridge.
“My hero,” she murmured, and he smirked.
So what had all that bluster in the jungle been about? Did the situation then have him scared, stressed, what? Or did he just think he was going to get some tonight?
Her body wouldn’t mind. Her blood hummed even ten feet away from him. Alone in a room, all the privacy they could ask for. But her brain wouldn’t settle down.
“Alex.” She sat on the edge of the bed, making sure she left a safe distance from him. “If Hector isn’t with Santiago’s cousin, where could he be? Where do we look next?”
Alex muted the TV and sat up, serious now.
“What made you think Hector was there?” he asked.
“Santiago said he sent him to his cousin’s.”
“You believed him.”
She drew back. “He was taking my son from me, sending him to a place I had no dream of being able to get to. Why wouldn’t I believe him?”
Some of the tension drained from him. “How did you find the address?”
“I paid for the information. I was so sure.” Despair pushed her voice out in a wail.
“Okay, okay, calm down.” He held out his hands. “I can look into it, see what kind of connections he has in the States. You gave the DEA a list of names, the people who’d left the compound. We can follow any leads from that.”
Everything collapsed inside her. “How long will that take?” She could barely force the words out.
“I can’t promise it will be overnight, but we won’t stop till we find him.”
She looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Why would you do this for me? This isn’t your job.”
She watched him draw back into himself. There was more to this than he was letting on. She’d been right to hold back those rescue fantasies.
“Why did you show up at the club? Why are you following me?”
“We need Saldana.”
She’d thought she couldn’t drop farther. He was here because of Santiago. She’d been so glad to see him, so glad to touch him, to lean on him, and he was here to use her.
Well, she’d use him as well. He would find her son for her.
“Make the calls,” she said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get my son back.” She knew the price he’d ask. It wouldn’t be a hardship.
“I’ll call. But first.” He leaned over her, bracing his arms on either side of her hips. “I’m going to use your shower.” He straightened and headed for the bathroom.
Her heart took a long time to stop pounding.
Alex felt more human as he walked out of the bathroom in his skivvies. He’d taken care of the arousal that plagued him every moment he was with her.
There she was, curled up in bed reading a romance novel with a castle and a knight on the cover, for God’s sake, and she had kittens on her pajamas. Kittens and rainbows.
Pajamas.
Kittens.
Rainbows.
What the hell? Where was the seductress? He needed the seductress, needed the shield. He didn’t know what to do with this innocent girl.
She looked up, blinked to focus.
“How old are you?” he asked suddenly. She was a mother, but that didn’t mean much.
“Twenty-four.”
He relaxed a little, then looked at the bed. She tucked a bookmark into her book, turned toward him and reached for the buttons of her kitten pajamas, her eyes focused on his face.
“What are you doing?” he choked.
“I told you I’d do anything to bring my son home.”
He took a step back. “I won’t screw you in payment for getting to your son. I’m not that big of an asshole.”
She frowned and her hand stilled. “But, the bed.”
“It’s a big bed.” He hoped. “I’m not going to attack you in your sleep.”
“I know.” But she seemed to hold her breath while he walked around to the other side, tugged back the covers and climbed in. When he glanced over, she seemed to have drawn into herself, gotten smaller.
“Are you scared of me?”
“No.”
She almost sounded sure.
“I know you won’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.” She gave a soft laugh, “But I know you can make me want to do things.”
He turned toward her on his side. She wanted him. The knowledge was enough to give him a big…ego. “Really?”
She looked over her shoulder at him, but he could feel her nearly vibrate with nerves. “Just like that.”
“Just like that.” He chuckled. “You going to turn the light out soon?”
“Is it keeping you up?”
No, that wasn’t what was keeping him up. The curve of her body beneath the covers, the warmth of her, the scent of her, that did it. “I can sleep through anything,” he said.
“Okay. If you don’t mind, I’ll read a little more.”
He closed his eyes. It was damned domestic, is what it was. Nice. His eyes popped open at the thought.
“Alex? Are you asleep?”
He hadn’t thought he was, but the room was dark now, and he didn’t remember Isabella turning off the lights.
“Yeah.” He was pretty sure his croaky voice gave him away. “What? Bad dream?”
“I haven’t been to sleep yet.”
“What do you need, Goddess?”
“Do you have kids?”
Her voice in the dark was soft, young, none of the husky tone or crisp banter he was accustomed to hearing. He rolled onto his back.
“No. No kids.”
“Do you wish you did?”
“I’m not home much. Wouldn’t be any good for them.”
“Boys need their daddies,” she said, but her tone was more wistful than truthful.
He wouldn’t know. There’d been no father figure in his life till too late. She hadn’t been looking for a response from him.
“I love being a mom.” Warmth infused her voice, reached across the bed to him, felt like she’d moved closer. “I never had brothers or sisters, so I wasn’t around babies much. I learned everything with Hector. I mean, I wasn’t totally on my own. One of Santiago’s housekeepers had something like six kids, and she helped me, but everything I learned about taking care of him made me stronger.”
Goddamn, he wanted to reach across the bed, to the girl who’d been alone in the compound, away from her family. Where had her family been? Had she wanted them, or had she run away from them? Maybe her parents hadn’t been any better than his own.
“He was talking before he was two, in two languages, and he already knew his alphabet.”
“You were with him all the time.” Probably the only person she had to talk to, the only person she could trust. What had she called him? Her pure?
“Except when Santiago needed me.” Her voice took on a hard edge.
“But Santiago didn’t spend much time with him.” Not exactly the father figure she’d been talking about.
“Hector was afraid of him. It was mostly my fault. I’d get upset when Santiago would send someone to take Hector away. Hector would sense that and cry.”
He’d take the child away so Isabella could whore for him. But the idea, while it still twisted his gut, didn’t disgust him the way it had. Yeah, she’d made some bad decisions, but she’d tried to make the best of it. She’d tried to make a home for her son. Better than his own mom had done. She couldn’t get rid of him fast enough to get to her whoring. Sometimes she hadn’t even bothered.
He tightened his grip on the pillow to keep from reaching for Isabella. She still wasn’t right for him. He wasn’t right for her. But it felt better knowing what she was about.
“Do you think Saldana could be making up for lost time with Hector? Sometimes, once kids reach a certain age, men finally want something to do with them.”
Her soft gasp in the dark told him she’d taken his words wrong.
“Not that. Men just—babies scare them.” Damn, he was trying to make her feel better, and he was rusty. “Not—I didn’t mean—” Though he knew it was reality in too many cases. Saldana was a depraved son of a bitch. “I meant in a fatherly way.”
She snuffled a laugh. “No. Santiago only wanted Hector to prove he had a son. He won’t be having more. He just—having a son made him feel like a man.”
“Like hurting you did.”
“I’m a grown-up. I made the choice. Hector didn’t.” She sounded so lost. His hand slid marginally closer to her.
“How did you end up there?”
She shifted, and he could almost feel her breath on his skin. “I’m not like you, Alex. It was scary for me to be in a strange place. Santiago made me feel safe. At least for a while.”
“Yeah, you said, but how? I mean, you probably had a lot of admirers. Why him?”
“Because I’m shallow. He was wealthy and charming, and that appealed to me.”
Alex was strong and brave, just what she needed now. Good to remind him.
He pulled back. “We better get some sleep.”
He heard the soft intake of breath that told him he’d surprised her, but he deliberately closed his eyes and shut her out.
“Alex?”
“Go to sleep.”
“Did you make that call to the DEA?”
He swore and swung out of bed, reaching for his phone. He walked out into the hall to make the call, and when he slipped back into bed, she whispered, “Thank you.”
Alex got up, trying not to disturb the mattress and the woman sleeping on it. Isabella had managed to stay on her side of the bed and he still had a raging hard-on, just from smelling her, hearing her soft breathing.
Being around her was going to be great for his self-control.
“I can take care of that for you.”
He froze at the end of the bed. “What?”
She sat up, pushing her dark tumbled hair back from her face. In the dim light through the crack in the curtains, she looked like a wet dream, even in the kitten pajamas.
She was looking at his tented boxers.
“Christ.” He shifted his weight to hide his erection.
“Come here.” She gave him her seductress smile.
“No.”
“Are you afraid of me?” She tossed back his question from last night. “I’m very good at it. It might get rid of some of the tension between us.”
Were they talking about the same thing? “You think us having sex again is going to get rid of the tension? It’s only going to add to it.”
She smiled slowly. “I was talking about a blow job and yes, if you let go of your ideas about sex, it will release the tension.”
He turned to face her, leaning one shoulder on the wall. “So it really doesn’t mean anything more than that? A physical release?” She was trying too hard to convince him.
She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees, cocking her head and smiling. “I can’t afford for it to be anything else.”
“That’s sad as hell,” he said, and pushed away from the wall to go into the bathroom. Christ, what a sad life she’d had if that was her perspective. Sure, he was no virgin, and he’d hooked up out of desire more than love most times, but there had to be something more to sex than just getting off.
He was in the shower when the door opened. He shoved open the shower curtain and glared. “Damn it, Goddess, I told you—”
She held out his cell. “You have a call. I thought it might be about Hector.”
She’d answered the phone. Christ. He was going to catch hell.
He took the phone from her and closed his eyes to avoid her hopeful gaze.
“You’re in her hotel room?” was the first question from Captain Winters, his tone disbelieving. “In her shower?”
Alex couldn’t think of anything to say.
“You were supposed to follow her, not move in.”
“She got into some trouble last night. I stepped in.”
“You’re there to find Saldana, not to protect her.”
“If she gets hurt, she’s not going to do us any good,” he said, choking back his frustration. Hadn’t the captain put him in this position, told him to do whatever was necessary?
“You don’t know if you can trust her to lead you to Saldana.”
He looked at Isabella, who watched him, lips pressed together anxiously. “You think she’s working with him?” He had a suspicious mind, but even he could see she never would do that. Of course, he knew her better than the captain.
He motioned for her to leave but she folded her arms under her breasts and shook her head. He widened his eyes at her to assert his point and gestured toward the door. She unfolded her hands and moved toward him. Jumping back, he tugged the shower curtain across his hips and scowled. With a chiding look, she reached around to shut off the water. Then she leaned one hip against the sink and waited for him to resume his conversation.
“We’re looking for the kid,” he told his captain. “We think Saldana might be where the kid is.”
“What kid?”
“What kid?” he repeated. “Her kid. Saldana’s kid. He took him away from her to punish her.”
“We don’t have any information on a kid.”
Chills rose up over his skin that had nothing to do with being wet in the draft from the open door. Had she lied to him? He didn’t want to believe she would lie about something like that, so he pressed.
“His name is Hector. He’s three years old. Born at the compound.” He looked to Isabella for confirmation. “He was born…” He waited for Isabella to supply the info.
“September 12, 2006,” she said.
He repeated it into the phone.
“We don’t have any intel on a kid,” Captain Winters repeated.
Alex scrambled for an explanation. “So Saldana hid the info, didn’t let him go near windows or anything so you couldn’t get pictures.”
“Except he had to order his supplies from the outside world. There were no diaper deliveries, bottles, none of the stuff you need for a baby. There was no baby.”
Alex’s stomach heaved and he barely registered the info he was given as he looked at Isabella’s stricken face.
“Yeah, okay,” he said to acknowledge the list of names and places Saldana might be.
“We’ve got people on these men already. We need you to stick with the girl, get her to trust you.”
Trust. What did she know about trust? But the minute he flipped the phone closed, he took two steps toward Isabella. He yanked the waistband of her pajamas down and pushed her shirt up.
“What—?” She shoved at his hands and he lowered his head. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for stretch marks.” And not finding any. He traced his fingertips across her smooth—very smooth—skin. Watched it jump under his touch. Backed away and glared. “You didn’t have a baby.”
“What?” She tugged her clothes back in place, her movements shaky as she stared at him as though he’d lost his mind.
“You never had a baby.” He snatched up a towel and whipped open the door.
Isabella stood frozen for a moment. What had they said to him to make him think she was lying? Not that it took much for him to think badly about her. She dragged her hair back from her face, pushed away from the sink and followed him.
He was pulling on jeans even though droplets of water still glistened on his back and chest. She strode past him to her suitcase, popped it open and pawed through it, her eyes blurry.
“What are you looking for?”
She tucked her hair behind her ears and battled the tears. “Do you think I would come all this way and not have proof he’s my son?” She found the bag she was looking for, turned with it in her fist.
A bag of camera film, undeveloped.
He looked at them. “What’s this?”
“Pictures of me and Hector.”
“Pictures.” He paused in the middle of pulling on his shirt, with the T-shirt caught at his elbows. “Not even developed. You don’t have like a birth certificate or something?”
“I looked.” Her voice rose in desperation. “I couldn’t find it. Santiago must have hidden it so I would never claim my boy.”
He pulled his shirt on the rest of the way. “My people said there were never any diapers delivered, no baby food, none of the stuff babies need.”
His words staggered her and she pressed her palm to her middle in shock. “You know what was delivered to our house?”
“Sweetheart, I know what kind of tampons you used.”
Embarrassment threatened to swamp her. She fought back against it and lifted her chin. “Then you know that for nine months I didn’t get any tampons.”
He blinked at that. “I’ll check into it. Do you have any other proof?”
She set the packet of film down and went back through her bag. Santiago had sent most of Hector’s things away with him, hadn’t allowed her to keep any of Hector’s belongings in her room in case his clients saw them—mothers weren’t sexy—but she’d smuggled some keepsakes, kept them buried beneath her silks. She found the locket, squeezed her fingers over it before turning to hold it out to Alex.
“A lock of hair from his first haircut.”
Alex took the locket, opened it, touched the fine dark hair inside with his fingertip. She could sense something softening in him.
“You could get a DNA sample from it, couldn’t you?”
He looked up, considering. “Maybe.”
“I don’t have stretch marks because Santiago insisted I take care of myself. His housekeeper, Senora Gamez, made a cream for me, and she helped me apply it twice a day. Santiago wouldn’t pay for diapers, and we’d have too much trouble disposing them anyway, so we used cloth diapers. I had a wet nurse, a girl from nearby. Santiago didn’t want any more wear and tear on my body than need be, and besides, a lactating woman is not sexy.” She couldn’t hide the bitterness in her voice. Her hand hovered near the locket. “So, do you need the hair for DNA?”
He snicked the locket shut. “No, we don’t need to do that.”
The tension that had been humming through her since the phone rang eased a bit. “You believe me?” she asked, not wanting to hope.
“Yeah.” He held the locket by its chain. “Yeah.” He stepped back, not looking at her. “Look, stay here. I’ve got a meeting to get to.”
“I’ll go with you.” The last thing she wanted was to be prisoner again, no matter how luxurious the room.
He shook his head and dropped to the edge of the bed to put on his boots. “You draw too much attention. You need to lay low.”
“I thought you wanted me to draw him out.”
“We don’t even know if he’s here. You’ll be safer waiting for me.”
“I can’t. I need to find my son. Every day he’s away from me is another day he’ll have the chance to forget me.”
“I don’t have any leads on the kid.” He sounded like he regretted it.
“So what do we do?”
“We wait. We think. We reason it out. But I want you to stay here.” He picked up his jacket and strode toward the door.
“Shepard.” Captain Winters greeted Alex at the doorway of the DEA office.
The man was in full uniform, and Alex only had a shirt to throw over his tank top and cargo pants from the previous night. He hated being out of uniform when the situation called for it, and it seemed the situation called for it.
But the captain didn’t say anything about his state of dress, only turned smartly on his heel and started down the hall. Alex stayed in step.
“You connected with the girl last night.”
“Yes, sir. I found her at a nightclub. She’s determined to find someone who knows where her child is.”
Captain Winters made a sound in his throat.
“Sir?”
“We were able to decode some of the files she smuggled out.”
Alex was unprepared for the slap of emotion that accompanied the news. Would he be free of Isabella then? Did he want to be?
Hell, yes, he did, before he made a damn fool of himself again. “Anything useful?”
“We know what happened with the girl and Agent Cortez.”
A ball of ice dropped into his belly. “Sir?” he managed.
The captain looked at him with something like sympathy. “Come see for yourself.”
He led Alex into a darkened room with a large computer monitor on the desk. The captain introduced Alex to the agent in charge, Agent O’Malley, and the two techs at the table. Alex nodded greetings to them but his attention was already on the screen. What would he see, and why was it important that he see it?
“The first file we were able to open is Cortez.”
At the captain’s nod, the tech started the video. Alex took a step closer.
“Why was this encoded?” Alex asked, hiding a wince as Cortez’s battered face appeared on the plasma screen.
“Because it’s proof they had a US agent,” O’Malley said.
Alex distanced himself from the man being tortured on the screen. He let himself think of it as a TV program as the man silently suffered random blows to the face from a guy with fists the size of a Mack truck.
A door opened on screen, and Isabella stumbled in. After a moment, Alex could see someone had his fist wrapped in her hair, holding her head at a painful angle. She made a choked sound when she saw Cortez, and he went stiff at the sight of her. Too late, he’d given himself away. The agent was in love with her.
“What is he to you?” the man holding her demanded.
“Nothing,” she gasped.
“Liar! What is he to you?” the man screamed.
She flinched from the sound and cried out when he twisted her hair. Cortez said her name, very softly, and Isabella opened her eyes to look at him, her expression sorrowful.
The ham-fisted man moved in front of Cortez, but not blocking his face from the camera. He lifted a knife to Cortez’s cheek.
“Do you want this to be the last thing you see?” the man—Saldana? Alex couldn’t tell, his face was obscured—asked, leaning close to Cortez, dragging Isabella with him.
Cortez’s gaze flicked to Isabella’s. She was sobbing.
Mack Truck dug the knife in.
“Do not close your eyes,” Saldana growled to Isabella, “or you will be next.”
So she didn’t. She watched. Because she didn’t look away as they carved out Cortez’s eyes, neither did Alex. Winters let the video play out until Isabella’s keening died away and Cortez slumped in his chair.
“The next video,” Winters said crisply, as if they hadn’t just watched a man die, “is her punishment.”
“Why would they—? Jesus.”
Saldana shoved Isabella into the room on the screen, and Alex’s heart lurched before he reminded himself this was months ago, that she was safe in a Miami hotel room now. Mack Truck followed. Saldana stepped aside and Mack Truck spun Isabella toward him, tore her dress from her body with hands still stained with Cortez’s blood.
She didn’t fight as the man pushed her to the bed and lowered his big body over her. Of all things to help him distance himself from what he was watching, that helped the most. The woman he knew would fight. This broken woman was not her.
“Turn it off,” Alex said softly, lowering his head.
Winters gave him an unreadable look, then nodded to the tech, and the room was silent.
“The kid appears later in the video. She was telling the truth. But the boy’s probably dead now. Saldana probably told her he sent the kid back and just dumped his body in the jungle somewhere.”
“It’s his kid.” Even as he said it, Alex knew it didn’t mean anything. He of all people knew parentage didn’t make someone human.
“You need to prepare her.”
Alex shook his head. “I can’t do it. It’s all she’s got to hold on to now.”
“Shepard. You’re too involved.”
Panic hit him hard in the gut. He’d never been accused of that before. “Don’t pull me.”
“I’m not. Just watch yourself. Be aware you may never find the kid.”
“Do you have any leads at all? Where Saldana might be?”
Agent O’Malley led the way out of the media room. Not that it mattered. Isabella’s screams still echoed in his ears.
“A team went back to the compound, but it was burned to the ground,” O’Malley said. “They salvaged what they could, but we haven’t been able to get any information. Now the list of people Isabella gave us in Honduras was more helpful. We were able to track two of the people on that list into the US. We might have been able to track more if she’d known their full names.”
“I don’t think they were people she really wanted to know,” Alex said, wondering how many times Mack Truck had been her punishment.
And wondering if she’d been thinking about that when he’d come to her room in Honduras. Christ.
“So where are these people? Here?”
“One, the woman, Carmen Ferdin, came through Florida. I don’t know if she’s still here. We’re looking. But we’re more interested in the man, Pablo Massiatte. We tracked him to Texas.”
“Why are you more interested in him?”
O’Malley hooked a thumb back at the media room. “That was the guy who cut out Cortez’s eyes.”
Alex swore. “Isabella swore she saw Santiago at The O last night.”
“So you said. We got the surveillance tapes. We weren’t able to see him.”
“It was crowded as hell.”
“We saw the two of you.”
“Nothing around us? What about in those little corners? The private tables?”
“The O has cameras at all the entrances. We didn’t see him. She must have been imagining it.”
“Maybe.” She’d been scared and thinking about running into him. She could have imagined it. “What about me? What can I do to help find Saldana and the kid?”
“Nothing yet,” Winters said, slapping him on the back. “Keep a close rein on her. We’re still not sure she’s trustworthy.”
After what Alex had just seen, he was certain she was. If the army wouldn’t help him help her, he’d find someone else who would.
Retired Sergeant Major Lionel Danes was a big man, broad, tall and heavy. He rose from the tiny table at the coffee house. His added weight didn’t decrease his threatening presence, though, because all the tables surrounding him were empty. Lionel embraced Alex enthusiastically, swallowing him in those beefy arms. Hell, for all the weight the guy had put on since the last Ranger reunion Alex had attended with his father, Danes wasn’t soft. He hammered Alex on the back a couple of times with the flat of his palm before releasing him to sit down again and offer Alex a seat.
“How’s your old man? Haven’t heard from him in a while.”
“Yeah, he didn’t make the reunion this year. Doctors are worried about his heart. The diabetes doesn’t help.”
Lionel’s high forehead creased in concern. “We’re getting old.”
Alex smiled. “No, sir, Sergeant Major.”
“Why don’t you go get yourself a cup of coffee and come back here and tell me what you need from me.”
“Yes, sir, Sergeant Major.”
Alex returned to the table with his coffee in the tall paper cup and worked through how to broach the subject. He figured the old man was like himself and would appreciate the direct approach.
“Coin check,” Danes said abruptly. Alex set down his coffee on the tiny table and dug his Ranger coin out of his hip pocket, slapped it down on the table in time with the old man.
The old guy grinned and tucked his back in his breast pocket. “Good man, Shepard.”
Alex sat across from him. “I need to find a bad guy.”
The sergeant major snorted. “Why would you want to do that?”
“He’s a really bad guy.”
“What makes you think I can help you?”
“You know this city. You have connections.”
“You think I have those kinds of connections?”
“Sir, with all due respect, I know you do. You were a detective in this city for twenty years.”
“Yeah, but son, it’s not like the Old West. There aren’t just a handful of bad guys. More come in and more leave every day.”
“How would I find out who’s coming and who’s leaving?”
The old man tilted his head, as if seeing for the first time that Alex was serious. “Who are you looking for?”
“Santiago Saldana.”
Danes blew a breath out through his nose. “When you say bad, you mean bad.”
“He’s pretty much scum of the earth.”
“Why are you looking for him?”
“He killed a DEA agent.”
“Son, when did you become DEA?” Danes asked, sitting back in the frail chair, making it creak.
“I’m not. I was on the mission in Honduras, he slipped through our fingers. We think he might have a kid with him.”
Danes raised his eyebrows. “Why the hell would Saldana have a kid? He’s no Santa Claus.”
“It’s his kid.”
Danes’s eyes sharpened. “What do you care about his kid?”
“The kid’s mom wants him back. I’m thinking we find the kid, we find Saldana. But I don’t know where to look.”
“That’s where you need my help.”
“Yes, sir.”
Danes leaned forward again. “Well, let me see what I can do. How can I get hold of you?”
Frustrated that Danes didn’t tell him what he could do right now, Alex scrawled his cell number on a napkin and passed it to the old man. “Whatever you can do, I’d appreciate,” he made himself say before he shoved back his chair and strode out.
He hadn’t even touched his coffee.
Alex returned to the hotel frustrated and empty handed. He knew it wouldn’t be easy to find Saldana in the city when they hadn’t been able to corner him in his own place in the jungle. Still he wasn’t accustomed to trying and failing.
He got up to the room before he remembered he didn’t have a key card. He knocked, but no answer. What was she doing in there? Sleeping? Showering? Damn, he was going to have to go get a key card. He headed back down to the lobby, slowed when he saw her stagger in through the glass doors, her face white, her body bent nearly double.
He raced toward her, grabbed her arms and crouched to look into her face. The pained expression, the parted lips, the glazed eyes, the shallow breaths. The video he’d just seen played through his head—what had she been through now? She gripped his arms and dug her nails into his arms, and he inspected the rest of her.
“Bella, are you hurt? Is it Saldana?”
She sucked in a breath and shook her head. “No. No.”
“Bella.” He gripped her wrists and guided her toward a chair in the lobby before he knelt before her.
“They’re empty.”
“What?” He’d barely heard her voice—it was all breath, indrawn breath.
“The rolls of film—they were empty. No pictures.”
Only then did he realize she clutched a bag from a one-hour photo lab.
Pictures. This was about pictures. Irritation chased away a relief so sharp it was painful. He sat back on his heels. “You took the film in? That’s what this is about?”
“There was nothing on any of the rolls,” she said, tears streaming, her nose dripping. “No pictures.”
“Christ, Bella, I thought you were hurt. It’s just pictures.”
Her head snapped up. “Just pictures? It’s all I have.” Her breath wheezed. “I have nothing. No first smile, no first step, no first tooth, nothing. If he’s gone, if I never see him again, it will be like he never existed. I will have nothing of him.”
Alex realized people were staring, but her pain reached out and wrapped around him.
“Come on, let’s go upstairs,” he said softly, taking the bag from her. She’d paid for them. Paid for blank photos. “Bella.”
“He’s gone, Alex. I’m not getting my baby back.” Her voice had lost its shrillness, descended into hollow hopelessness that hurt to hear.
“You will. We will. I promise.” He stroked a hand down her back to soothe her, heard the promise come out of his mouth, tried not to wince at the hope in her eyes. How the hell could he make that happen? Why did he want to ensure it did?