Chapter Thirteen
Santos had a bad feeling the minute they pulled into Juan Enrique’s driveway. Something strange was going on, and he was afraid he might be about to learn what that something was. Maybe Enrique’s mother had been expecting him and Rose, and the whole missing-my-son drama show had been a setup. The look Juan’s mother had sent Rose had clearly been a suspicious one. Had she seen a resemblance between Rose and someone else, someone like Gloria?
He turned to Marcos as they approached the front door. “You haven’t been in the house since your brother’s been gone?”
“I’ve been inside,” Marcos said. “I just didn’t tell mamá, because there was nothing to tell. But now, I feel different. I don’t know why, but I do.”
Reaching the front door, Santos put his hand on Marcos’s chest and stopped him from putting the key in the lock. “Maybe you killed him yourself. And maybe you feel different now, because you know he’s been lying inside, dead, for a week. That might make you not want to open the door.”
He’d already told Rose on the bike’s intercom he’d been planning to provoke Marcos to see what he’d do. She stiffened at the sudden tension in the air despite the advanced notice.
“Juan’s my big brother.” Marcos reached up and knocked his hand away. “We don’t do things like that on this side of the border.”
His glare intact, Santos stepped back and let him unlock the house. The heavy wooden door swung open, and the smell hit him like a hammer pounding a nail.
Rose followed the two men inside until Marcos turned around and jabbed his fingers in her direction then at the door. “You. Outside. Right now.”
Rose’s eyes met Santos. She obviously understood that she had to act like the biker chick she was supposed to be, and not the sheriff she really was. She pivoted to return outside where she could act as Santos’s lookout.
He and Marcos found the body in one of the bedrooms at the rear of the house. Turning away with a howl, Marcos punched his fist through the nearest wall, his grief-filled cry filling the bloody room. With his hand over his mouth, Santos backed away, acting as if he was about to be sick. In reality, his stomach did flip over. If he’d thought the Concepción DeLeon murder scene was bad, this one was ten times worse.
He figured he had two minutes, maybe three tops, so he searched the house as quickly as possible. He didn’t find anything until he entered a second bedroom with a small, windowless bathroom attached. There was a lock—on the outside of the doorframe. He pushed the door open and cursed quietly, standing on the threshold. The mirror had been stripped off the wall over the tiny cabinet, leaving behind holes in the drywall and globs of black adhesive. The shower had no door, and the toilet had no cover. A turned-over waste can rested in one corner, a bag of plastic zip ties sat in the other. The remnants of a roll of silver duct tape sat on the edge of the sink, two long blond hairs attached to a piece of it that’d been torn off. He walked inside and hooked his boot around the bottom of the door so he could see the back of it. It swung lazily toward the doorframe. He stared until the door drifted open again.
Slipping past the room where Marcos was now crying as he talked to someone on his cell phone, Santos reached the sidewalk, then grabbed his helmet from Rose’s outstretched hand. “Get on the bike,” he ordered. “We’re getting out of here while we still can.”
They didn’t stop or speak until they’d gone at least five miles. He pulled into the first gas station he saw and went straight to the men’s room where he called his contact inside the Mexican federal police. He told the man about the scene he’d just left, then hung up and started washing his hands. But the stink of death would take more than soap and water to remove. Only time would do that.
He found Rose waiting for him in the sandwich shop attached to the side of the convenience store. She was cradling a paper cup of coffee with a black sheen of oil floating on top. Another one sat by her hand. She pushed it toward him as he slid into the booth beside her. She lifted one eyebrow. “Well?”
He drank half of the foul brew before he spoke. “It was bad,” was all he would say.
“Ortega?”
“It had to be. Too messy for anyone else.” He drained his cup then got another one before sitting back down. “There was one body but a dozen parts, half of them unrecognizable. A note was pinned to the torso. “This is what happens to people who betray me.” Sounds like something you’d hear in a bad movie, but it was pretty effective, I have to admit. No one butchers a body like Ortega.”
“So the two men are connected?”
“Could be. That body was definitely left as a warning.” He stared out the window beside them. The empty highway that ran in front of the convenience store stretched into a distance that seemed to go on forever. “One way or the other, we can’t ask Enrique. That ship has sailed.”
“No sign of Lilith?” she asked.
He dropped his head and rubbed his hands over his face. Rose reached over and touched his arm. “Santos?”
“I found a room with a lock on the outside. There was a piece of used duct tape on the counter. It had some long blond hair attached to it. I can have it tested, but I’m pretty sure…” Breaking off, he raised his face. “There were fresh scratch marks on the back of the door. Someone had tried to claw their way out.”
…
Rose heard Santos’s cell phone ring behind her as she drew near the Harley, but it barely registered. To accept that her mother, who’d done so much to protect her, could possibly be involved with men this horrible broke her heart.
Santos’s voice made its way into her thoughts, and she turned. An expression she couldn’t name had come over his face, transforming his expression. Relief, anxiety, even anger—every emotion she could name seemed to cross his features. As if he could squeeze out more information, he gripped the phone with both hands. “What in the hell’s going on? My God, we’ve been searching for you—”
He stopped speaking abruptly and listened, then said, “Are you safe right now? Let us come get you—”
She strained to hear as the speaker at the other end of the call, a tinny voice she couldn’t identify, obviously interrupted him. Was it Lilith? It had to be her, the way he was reacting. He wouldn’t have looked like that if it’d been Gloria on the other end of the call. Excitement raced over her, as much for the possibility of locating Santos’s informant as for freeing her mother from involvement in this ghastly case.
“I know where that is,” he answered. “How long do I have before he comes back?” He waited. “Three hours sounds too long. I don’t want to cut it that close. You stay where you are, and let my men pick you up first. After we’ve got you, we’ll go in. I’ll call the team as soon as we hang up.” He took a deep breath. This time it was his turn to interrupt. “Before you go, I have to tell you something. Rose is here. Yes, Rose. You should talk to her, Gloria.”
Rose stared at Santos, confusion sweeping over her. He was talking to Gloria? She thought he’d been speaking to Lilith. She frowned, then blinked as his conversation continued.
“I swore that’s the way this would go down,” he was saying. “And that’s how it’s happening, whether or not either one of us likes it.”
It almost sounded as if he’d been in touch with her mother all along. Could that be possible? If he had, why had he needed her? That didn’t make any sense. Surely, she was mistaken.
He stared at her as he spoke to Gloria. “You’re right. I made too many promises, Gloria. But I’m not breaking the one I made Rose. She deserves better than that. She deserves the truth.”
There weren’t too many times in her life when Rose had wanted to turn around and run from whatever was coming, but that’s exactly how she felt at that moment. She hesitated for a breath then held her hand out for the phone, her eyes zeroing in on Santos’s face.
“Rose? What are you doing there?” Gloria was upset, the tone of her voice rising and falling. You’re not supposed to be—”
She couldn’t speak until finally she choked out, “Mother… For God’s sake, what’s going on?”
“It’s okay…it’s okay. Just give Santos the phone, baby. We’ll talk later.”
“I…I thought… We’ve been looking for you. I don’t understand.”
“And I don’t have time to explain. If he finds out I’ve called Santos, I’m a dead woman.”
“He? Who’s he?”
“El Brujo—Pablo Ortega. Now hand the phone—”
Horror swamped Rose as her mother’s words registered. She was with the cartel leader. “Oh, Mother…what have you done?”
“I only have a few minutes left, Rose, and I’ve got to talk to Santos!”
“He’s going to arrest you,” she cried. “Santos is going to arrest you, because you know this man and you know about his missing informant. Santos made me help him so we could find you.”
Gloria’s urgency took a back step, sympathy filling her voice instead. “Oh, sweetheart…Santos has known all along where I am. He didn’t need your help to locate me. We’ve been trying to protect you. Now hand him the damn phone, or I’m going to die.”