Renegade with a Badge (15 page)

“No, honestly.” She tried to convince him. “You’ll be safer in jail. You’re obviously not well.”

“Olivia.”

“Let me go, Rafael.”

“No.”

“Let me go, or I will start to scream. That will undoubtedly bring both the police and Ernesto’s goons to the scene in short order. We’ll let everyone just shoot it out here on the street, and whoever wins gets the drug shipment and the Land Cruisers and whatever’s behind door number three!”

Rafe began tugging her in his wake again. “You won’t scream, Olivia. You never scream.” It was one of the many things he’d come to admire. Along with her stubbornness. He knew the little princess would go to the local police and rat them out. She’d think she’d be saving their lives, but all she’d accomplish would be to ruin years’ worth of good DEA undercover work. He wasn’t letting her near a police station, here or anywhere else, until this thing went down.

He’d just have to
really
kidnap her this time.

She twisted her wrist, giving herself a skin burn. “Let me go,” she warned through her teeth. They passed Bobby, who was smiling fatuously. Olivia bared her teeth at him. “I’m screaming, Rafael. I’m screaming.”

He didn’t even turn around. “You’re not stupid, Olivia. You won’t scream.”

Olivia filled her lungs to capacity. The piercing sound that came from that pretty little bow of a mouth shocked all three of them, and made several people on the street jump in surprise.

Rafe jerked her body close to his and clamped his hand roughly over her mouth, cutting off the scream. He put his nose to hers. “You’re going to get us all killed,” he hissed ferociously. “I trust you not to be so stupid, Olivia, and then you do something like this. It’s very disappointing.”

“Very disappointing,” Bobby murmured in agreement from his perpetual place at her back.

“Now, you have two choices,” Rafe continued, while Olivia stared at him from above his hand. “I can clip you on the jaw right now and carry you unconscious in that orange dress through the streets of La Paz, thereby ensuring all three of us end up as shark food. Or I can let go, and you can behave like a sensible adult, and we can try and get out of here in one piece.”

“Clip her on the jaw,” Bobby said helpfully.

Rafe ignored his cousin. “Olivia?”

“Mmnnph,” Olivia replied.

“Sensible adult?”

She nodded.

“She could be lying, Rafe,” Bobby said. “I say you clip her on the jaw, anyway.”

Olivia rolled her eyes, trying to see Bobby so she could glower at him. Rafe glanced over her shoulder at his cousin and swore softly.

“I’m counting on you, Olivia,” he said, and let go of her mouth. He kissed her swiftly, firmly. Then kissed her again, for good measure and because she looked so scared. “It’s okay,
mi’ja,
” he said softly, and he pulled her into a tiny grocery that smelled of fresh fish and sweet bread. “I am not without friends in this town. All I need is a telephone.”

Fifteen minutes after Rafe used the store owner’s phone, a tiny hatchback pulled to the curb in front of the store.

Bobby, at the window, checked out the street. “Okay, let’s go.”

Bobby and Olivia scrambled into the back seat, and Rafe sat next to the driver. Not a word was exchanged as the car threaded through the streets. Olivia didn’t even bother to look out the window. It really didn’t matter where they were going, anyway. Rafe and Bobby were going back to Aldea Viejo for a drug shipment.

After several minutes of silence, the driver looked at Rafe in disgust. “A taxicab?”

Rafe shrugged, glancing in his side mirror to determine if they’d been picked up by either of Cervantes’s drivers. “It was all we had to work with.”

The driver snorted. “And the taco trailer?”

“That was a stroke of genius, I thought,” Bobby offered brightly from the back seat.

“Did you? Then
you
deal with the man who owns it.”

“I gave the guy a hundred dollars American to let me do it,” Bobby said indignantly, leaning forward in his seat. “He even helped me push it over.”

“He is not the owner, idiot,” the driver said.

Olivia stared at the back of his head. She wished she could see him. How in the world had he already found out about all this?

“How’d they know we were in La Paz?” Rafe asked.

The driver sniffed. “I don’t know, for sure.”

“You’ve got a leak,
amigo,
” Bobby said.

“Big news,” the driver said sourly. “Anyway, we found the Land Cruiser yesterday. We didn’t run it, but someone must have recognized it and called Aldea Viejo.”

“If he didn’t drive those damn conspicuous monsters,” Bobby said, flopping back onto the seat in annoyance. “Everyone knows them.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s been wrong with this whole deal.
You’ve
made every right decision—it’s the Land Cruiser’s fault you’ve almost been caught a dozen times,” the driver said scornfully. “Starting with you,
vato,
” he said to Rafe. “Kidnapping a female American marine biologist was a great plan.”

“I’m not a marine biologist,” Olivia said dully.

“I didn’t kidnap her, she kidnapped me. And she’s an oceanographer,” Rafe added.

The driver shook his head. “Whatever. I got a report from the party, Camayo. Apparently it looked very much like you had a gun to her head.”

“I wouldn’t have shot her,” Rafe said evenly. “Besides, if you guys had been able to find anything out from the inside, I wouldn’t have had to go in.”

The driver glanced over at him. “I can’t believe you got nabbed. What a loser.”

If Olivia didn’t know better, she would have sworn Rafe looked embarrassed. “Mitigating factors,” he mumbled.

“Oh, my God,” Olivia said softly.

They ignored her. “What have you got for us?” Rafe asked.

“You know, you want the damn moon.”

“No. I want a boat. That should be a hell of a lot easier to get.”

“Well, I got you a boat.”

“Good. We can get back to Aldea Viejo by tomorrow afternoon. When’s the shipment scheduled on Tuesday?”

“Who knows? According to our source, the boat’s leaving the mainland today. Barring bad weather, that could put him in at Aldea Viejo any time after sunrise Tuesday.”

Olivia huffed out an astonished breath. Of course, she thought.
Of course.
How could she have been so blind?

“You can hold Dr. Galpas in La Paz until Wednesday?”

“I don’t know why you don’t want her going out on the next plane. Seems it would be a hell of a lot easier on everyone involved if she was back home safe and sound in the States.”

“Not if Cervantes has contacted his people in San Diego,” Rafe argued. This was a point he would not concede under any circumstances. Until Cervantes was actually facedown in the Aldea Viejo sand with handcuffs on his wrists and Rafe’s foot on his neck, Rafe wanted to know exactly where Olivia Galpas was.

“If she makes a fuss, she can cause a lot of problems for us, Rafael,” the driver said quietly, glancing suspiciously back at Olivia. “We’re not technically supposed to hold American women in Baja against their will.”

“Just do it,” Rafe said shortly. “She’s liable to blow this whole thing for us if you don’t.”

Olivia started to nod to herself. She caught Bobby’s eye. He had the audacity to smile knowingly at her. Oh, she was going to murder them both. With her bare hands.

“Fine, but if I get fired, I expect you two to put in a word for me with—”

“Will you shut up?” Rafe snapped. He shook his head. “I swear, no one can keep their mouths shut anymore,” he muttered to himself.

Except you,
Olivia thought, furious, shaken.

She spent the rest of the trip to the Sea of Cortéz—and she knew they were heading in that direction, she could practically feel it in her bones—trying to calm down. It would be easier to kill them, she thought, if she kept a cool head.

The driver pulled into a dirt parking lot that abutted the sea. One dingy dock jutted irresolutely into the calm waters of the gulf. Tied to the dock was a fishing boat Rafe wouldn’t have trusted to take him across the orca tank at Sea World.

He got out of the car and walked down to the boat, carefully avoiding gaps in the disintegrating dock, through which he could see chunks of seawater. Olivia, Bobby and the driver followed.

“Very nice,” he said.

“You called me half an hour ago. If it has fuel and starts on the first try, count yourself lucky,
vato.
”

Olivia looked at the driver for the first time. He was a smaller man than either Bobby or Rafe, with a wildly thick head of hair and an unscrupulous air about him. He looked as though he’d fleece his own mother and laugh while he was doing it.

Just like Rafael. Just like Bobby.

Olivia tipped her head back and took a deep breath of ocean air. It was so obvious. She had been unforgivably obtuse.

“I guess we don’t have much choice,” Rafael was saying. “But I’m going to remember this, Manny.”

“Yeah, and I’m going to remember you dumping the lady marine biologist on me,” Manny replied.

“I am not a marine biologist,” Olivia said evenly. The three men looked over at her in surprise, as though they had forgotten for a moment that she was there. She pinned Rafael with a look. She hoped she hid the hurt she felt, but didn’t have much confidence. It didn’t matter, she supposed. “In fact, I’m no more a marine biologist than you are all drug runners.”

The driver of the little hatchback rolled his eyes dramatically. “Wonderful. Now she’s pissed. That’ll make this whole thing easier.”

“Shut up, Manny,” Rafe said sharply.

Bobby, for once, did not smile at her, and Olivia was grateful. She didn’t think she would have been able to combat both Rafe’s furious scowl and Bobby’s silly grin at the same time. She ignored Manny completely as he paced the dock in short bursts, swearing and wondering aloud how much trouble she was going to give him.

“How could you?” she whispered.

She might as well have screamed it, Rafe thought. The accusation went through him like a knife.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, his face expressionless.

She stared at him, her eyes dry, her heart pounding a hole through her chest. “You can stand there, after everything, and ask me that?”

Rafe resisted the urge to drop his gaze. “I’m just trying to establish what it is you’re saying, Olivia,” he said calmly.

She watched him for a moment, then smiled thinly. “You have no soul,
señor.
At least, I was right about that.”

Bobby grabbed Manny as he paced. “Come on.”

“What? I’m not getting on that boat.”

“Neither am I until you prove it seaworthy, Manuel, my friend,” Bobby said, and practically tossed the smaller man on board.

Rafe and Olivia never broke eye contact. “You’re a cop,” she said, her voice flat, her eyes flat.

Rafe didn’t acknowledge the statement. “You were better off not knowing,” he said.

“No, you were better off with me not knowing.”

“It would have put the entire operation in jeopardy.”

Olivia squeezed her eyes shut. “And you couldn’t have that.”

“I couldn’t have that,” he insisted. “Bobby and I have been planning this sting on Cervantes for over a year. We’ve been in Baja since before Christmas. There are eight other DEA guys down here, as well as Manuel and a dozen Mexican
federales
working with the agency. You don’t know how important this is.”

“How would I have jeopardized all that?”

“Come on, Olivia. Have you forgotten all those evening walks you and Cervantes took together? How the hell did I know how close you were getting?”

“Were you watching me at my camp?” She thought she might be sick.

“No.”

“Then how did you know about the walks?”

“We have four guys inside his organization. When he started hanging around your camp at the beach, they let us know.”

“That’s how you knew my name,” she breathed. Oh, so many things made sense now.

Rafe nodded tersely. “I had you checked out.”

“Lovely.” She gritted her teeth. “If you had me checked out, you knew who I was. You knew I would never have been involved in whatever it is that Ernesto does.”

“Did I? The first time I saw you two together, he was announcing your engagement, for crying out loud!”

She didn’t flinch when he shouted at her. She could not imagine he was any angrier than she was. “That was Friday. This is Sunday. A lot of things have happened since Friday, Rafael,” she said, her meaning clear. “A lot of things.”

Rafe kept his distance, when what he really wanted to do was go to her. He breathed fire and spoke harshly, when what he really wanted to do was beg her forgiveness.

“I was going to tell you at the airport.”

“When you thought I was leaving Baja,” she said.

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “Because you didn’t trust me not to tell Ernesto.”

Rafe swallowed thickly. “I could not endanger the operation,” he repeated. “Or you. If Cervantes got to you, you would talk, whether you wanted to or not, Olivia. There are too many lives at stake here in Mexico, back in the States. It’s a complex, covert operation. If it all fell through now, when we’re so close—”

“Would you have let Ernesto get to me?”

“No.” He would have done anything to keep her safe. Anything but give up his revenge for Cervantes, he thought. And maybe even that. “He would have had to kill me to get to you, Olivia.”

“I know.” Olivia laughed roughly. “Isn’t that funny? I think I knew from the minute I stepped in front of you in that bedroom at Ernesto’s house that you would keep me safe.”

Rafe didn’t say anything, just watched her try to blink back tears, steady her breathing. The struggle nearly broke his heart.

“But you did not have that same faith in me,” she continued after a moment, her voice cracking slightly. “Even though you actually knew who I was, Rafael. Even though I never told you a single lie, or hid who I was. I trusted you in spite of everything you did, in spite of everything you made me believe about you. And you didn’t trust me at all.”