Exposed (7 page)

“Then what
is
the point? Because from where I’m standing it feels like you’re doing everything possible to shut me out.” It was making him nuts.

He missed the way she used to look at him. With her heart in her eyes. As if he was her hero.

And okay, it didn’t make any sense considering they hadn’t seen each other in years, but if he was honest, it hurt that she was rejecting him as a friend, as a man, when she was all he’d been able to think about for the past two days.

That cool façade finally cracked. A spark of anger lit her eyes. She pushed to her feet and braced her hands on her desk, leaning toward him. “I’m not a helpless teenager anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m all grown up and able to take care of myself. I appreciate your concern, but I don’t need you to run interference for me.”

What? Where the hell had all that come from? He’d have to be dead not to notice that she was definitely all grown up. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes off her chest, where her blouse was pulled taut over her breasts. And for some unknown reason that show of temper from her lit his blood up. “I never saw you as helpless, and that’s not why I’m here. I’m worried about you, okay?”

She cocked her head, gave him a
get-real
look that said she didn’t believe him. “You and my entire family always saw me that way. That’s why I’ve worked long and hard to earn my independence. I’m not stupid, Ethan, I’ve done all the right things since I got the message this morning. The Fuentes case has the potential to set up the rest of my career and my reputation is riding on my performance. I was given a golden opportunity when I landed this job in the first place and I’m taking it seriously. I’m not backing away or stepping down just because some asshole wants to scare me.”

He held up a hand, stunned by her words. “Whoa, hold it. Nobody’s disputing your dedication to the job, and sure as hell nobody’s calling you stupid.” She was defensive, damn near hostile with him and he didn’t understand why. He needed to diffuse the situation in a hurry, before she closed up on him again. “And I’m sorry I ever made you feel that way. I didn’t know. I always saw it as me looking out for you, not that I was interfering.”

Her expression softened instantly, the anger draining from her eyes as her shoulders relaxed. “No, it’s…” She pushed out a sigh. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I know you’re just trying to help.” She sat back down and leaned her head against the chair. After a moment her gaze lifted to him once more. “I really did appreciate you looking out for me back then. It’s just, I hated that you seemed to see me as weak and helpless all the time.”

She made it sound like he’d pitied her or something, which he hadn’t. The truth was he’d respected the hell out of her and the example she set for those around her. “Not helpless. More like innocent, I guess, at least compared to everyone else in our neighborhood. I didn’t want to see you get taken advantage of.”

Her lips twitched in the barest hint of a smile and her eyes were full of warmth as she looked at him. “Yeah, and you did a damn good job of protecting me. Especially that one night. I didn’t get asked out for months after word got around about that.”

The night when her dipshit of a date had pushed her for more than she’d wanted to give. Ethan remembered it clearly. He’d been twenty-one, full of himself home on leave from the Corps, and Marisol had been just sixteen.

After a date of his own he’d come up the sidewalk to his parents’ driveway and noticed her across the street in the front seat of a car with the guy. Instinct had warned him something was wrong. He’d seen her push the guy away and tried to get out of the car before her date had grabbed her, manhandled her.

Ethan had seen red. He’d run across the street, ripped open the driver’s door and dragged the asshole out of the car by the scruff of his neck. Ethan had ordered Marisol into her house, waited until she’d fled up the front steps before leaning into the guy’s face and telling him through gritted teeth exactly what would happen to him if he ever laid a hand on Marisol again. “My only regret is that I didn’t break at least one bone in his face.”

Marisol grinned, shaking her head a little. “Your white knight complex is showing again.”

Ethan shrugged, not about to apologize for it. “Can’t help it.” Not where she was concerned, anyway. He realized she was going to be exposed to a certain amount of ugly shit in her job. She was just so sweet and good; he didn’t want any of the evil in this world to touch her. But as of that phone call, it had tried to. And that was unacceptable.

“Now, will you tell me about the call?” he asked.

“The agents have my phone to check to see if the caller tampered with it at all, but I’ll tell you what the message said. My assistant’s setting up a replacement phone for me right now.”

He listened carefully, watching her expression. She seemed calm, unafraid, but he was betting it was a front. Anyone with half a brain would have the sense to be scared if someone in Fuentes’s network threatened them. Marisol was far smarter than most.

The implicit threat, made in a computerized voice no less, made his hackles rise. He was glad she’d immediately gone to the authorities, and relieved the FBI was involved. That still didn’t make him feel any less uneasy about her personal security. “Do they have any leads yet?” he asked.

“No, they couldn’t even trace the signal due to encryption on the other phone but they’re already working on it and said they’d let me know if they found anything.”

Whoever had sent the message had access to sophisticated equipment. At this point it could either have been someone trying to look out for her and offer a warning, or an enemy threatening her. Ethan was more worried about the latter.

Uncrossing his arms, he lowered his weight into one of the leather wing-back chairs opposite her desk. “What about personal security? Did the agents talk to you about that?”

“They did. They told me to be aware of my surroundings, avoid being out late at night by myself, basic common sense things like that. They said there’s no need to change my lifestyle for now though.”

“Are you…seeing anyone? Living with someone?” God, he didn’t even know that about her.

“No and no.”

Something inside him breathed easier at her answer. So she was still unattached. The borderline territorial feeling he had toward her might not make sense but he couldn’t deny it was there. “Have you got an alarm system in your place?”

“Of course.”

“Surveillance cameras?”

“No.”

“I can have some installed.” He pulled his phone out. “Let me make a call—”

“Ethan.”

He looked up to find her watching him with a mixed expression of exasperation and fondness on her face. “What?”

“Look, I really appreciate you trying to help, but for right now I’m going to leave things as they are. This office gets threats from time to time, as you can imagine, and ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time they’re just that. Threats and intimidation. Just words, used to try and scare us into stopping our work or dropping a case.” She snorted as though the idea was ludicrous. “For the time being we’re going to keep operating as normal. This case goes to trial in ten days and we’ve got to be ready. I can’t afford to back off my workload and I’m not going to let someone intimidate me with a phone call, no matter what the circumstances.”

Ethan searched her eyes, admiring her conviction and work ethic, but concerned about what she might be getting herself into. “How much do you know about Fuentes?”

She indicated a thick folder on the corner of her desk with a nod. “Enough to know I never want him seeing the outside of a jail cell ever again. That’s my job, to keep him there for the rest of his natural life, or to end it with the death penalty. Either or, but nothing less.”

He rubbed his hands on his thighs, his palms brushing against the soft denim. “What about his lieutenants and enforcers?”

“I’ve got files on seventeen people right now, and my coworkers are compiling more. Law enforcement gave us all their files some time ago on people related to the case.”

Ethan shook his head. Again, that was investigative information. Not the same as seeing it firsthand or knowing the intricate details of their work. Ethan had seen more than enough of it over the past week, and the thought of any one of those bastards setting their sights on Marisol twisted his gut into knots. “These men, Soli, they’re bad news.”

“I know.”

No, she didn’t. Not to the extent he did. He shook his head. “Most of the enforcers are former military. Not all are American, but they’ve all got training. Serious training.” He waited, unable to divulge too much because of the sensitive nature of the intel. She didn’t have security clearance. The upcoming operation to nab Alvarez, one of Fuentes’s higher-ranking lieutenants, hinged on everyone maintaining secrecy, including the informants the agency had paid off.

“I realize that.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “What are you trying to say, Ethan?”

“That you can’t just put your head down and hope this will all go away on its own. If that call came from one of the enforcers or someone in their network, then you need to be careful. Real careful. Promise me you’ll be on the alert.” He couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to her, especially not at the hands of an enforcer like the ones Fuentes’s lieutenants used. The idea made him feel sick.

She nodded. “I will be, I promise.” Then she folded her arms across her chest, the motion pushing her breasts together. He could just see the top of her cleavage in the open neckline of her blouse, the edge of those tempting mounds teasing his gaze. He jerked his attention back to her face, fighting the guilty flush trying to creep up his neck. “And, by the way, what is it you do for the FBI, exactly? Are you involved in the Fuentes case as well?”

“In a way, yeah,” he allowed with a nod.

She raised her brows questioningly, waited.

He leaned back in his chair, released a breath. Normally he wouldn’t tell anyone what he did, but he trusted Marisol, and if he wanted that trust to extend both ways, then he had to be honest with her now. They’d lost more ground than he’d realized over the past several years. He wanted to bridge that gap. “I’m with the HRT.”

Her eyes widened. “As in, the Hostage Rescue Team?”

He nodded.

She shook her head, a rueful smile curving her mouth. Her eyes traveled over his chest and shoulders, down his arms, a hint of female appreciation in her gaze that he liked way more than he should have. She’d never looked at him like that before, at least not so overtly that she’d let him see. Rivulets of heat rippled along his skin. Yeah, he liked how this new Marisol had just looked at him.

“Of course,” she murmured. “Should have figured that out on my own.”

He shrugged, trying and failing to ignore the effect that long look had on his body. He worked damn hard to stay in this kind of shape and he couldn’t deny he liked Marisol’s eyes on him that way. In fact, he wanted more. Wanted to see desire in her eyes when she looked at him, some of that quiet yearning he used to see there. “It’s not something I like getting around.”

“I won’t say anything to anyone.”

“Thanks.” She’d always been someone he could count on to keep her word.

“So what you’re in town for, it pertains to Fuentes?” she guessed.

He nodded. “Someone involved in his organization.” Several people, actually, if the right intel came in.

“You’re working in conjunction with the DEA?”

He hid a grin. She was quick, but that didn’t surprise him. “Maybe.”

She considered him for a long moment, her eyes locked on his. “Are you going after
el Santo
?”

Ethan’s hands contracted into fists at the mention of the name. “You know about him?”

“I know no one knows who he really is, or where to find him. He’s come up multiple times during our investigation. I’ve got a meeting scheduled Monday morning with an informant willing to share information pertaining to him. The DEA’s involved as well.”

Christ, he didn’t want her within a hundred miles of anyone affiliated with
el Santo
, yet here she was questioning people about him. His concern for her doubled. “He’s a person of interest to us,” he said carefully.

She nodded, apparently accepting his evasive response. “I’ll bet he is.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Stories, mostly. Rumors. And I’ve seen the odd photographic evidence of some of his kills. Nothing to pin him with. So far there’s never been any DNA or other hard evidence to put him at the scene of any of the murders I’ve read about. He’s very good at what he does.”

Ethan held her gaze, wanting to get his point across without scaring her to death. “He’s like a ghost. Likely Spec Ops trained.”

“He’s no ghost,” she scoffed. “And sooner or later, he’ll either be caught, or killed by a rival. No one can escape justice forever.”

He opened his mouth to argue that a man like
el Santo
might be able to do exactly that, but stopped when a brisk knock interrupted him. A middle-aged man appeared in the doorway. He glanced at Ethan, then Marisol. “Is this a bad time?”

“No,” she said. “We were just finishing up.”

Ethan shot her an annoyed look. In other words, this meeting was over? If she thought she could just up and dismiss him again after this, she thought wrong. He realized she had an important job, but so did he, and he refused to let her treat him like he was insignificant to her. Not given their history, and not after the way she’d just looked at him a minute ago. No way.

“What do you need?” she asked the man, who Ethan assumed was her boss.

“Just got the affidavit we were waiting on. Come to my office when you’re done.”

“Be right there.”

When they were alone again Marisol shifted her gaze back to him. “Duty calls.” She pushed back from the desk and stood.

“Yeah.” Ethan stood too, feeling strangely off-center as he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye, not until she gave him her word that she’d come to him if she needed help, and he didn’t want to walk away.