“Her killer doesn’t know that.”
A tremor went through her, but her eyes took on a look of determination. Against his will he found his respect for her bumping up a notch.
“What kind of person could be so cold-blooded?” she asked.
“The kind of person ruthless enough to deal in human cargo.”
“You mean smuggling?”
He lifted a shoulder, let it drop. “It’s my best guess.”
She absently rubbed her hand over the bandage. “We can’t let them get away with what they’ve done.”
“I don’t plan on it,” he said.
“What if they run?”
“If there’s a container ship sitting somewhere in the United States with human cargo on board, they’ve already got too much invested.” He gave her a hard look. “You can bet they’re not going to leave two loose ends dangling.”
Realization darkened her eyes. “You mean Nicolas and me.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Shaking her head, she motioned toward the door where the little boy slept. “He’s already been through so much. He’s an innocent kid who’s just lost his mom. He doesn’t deserve this.”
Madrid felt something go soft in his chest. Sympathy, he realized. For a little boy who would never know his mother. For a mother who would never see her child grow up. “Do you think he’ll be able to tell us anything?”
“I don’t know. Angela and I were talking about it one day. She told me communication problems are common with autistic children. They tend to go inside themselves, into their own world, and Nicolas is no different.”
“Can he draw? Or if we showed him photos, could he identify a killer?”
“I don’t know him well enough to say.” She shrugged. “All I know is that Angela loved him more than anything in the world. She worked with him daily. She’d enrolled him in a special school. She even took him to equine therapy twice a week. She was a great mom.”
“Did she tell you Nicolas is gifted?” Madrid asked.
“I knew.” She turned questioning eyes on him. “How do you know that? Angela didn’t talk about that much.”
He didn’t answer. Angela had told him the last time he’d talked to her. That had been almost a year ago. Madrid wished he’d done a better job of keeping in touch.
“He plays the piano like a little fiend,” she said fondly. “From chopsticks to Chopin.”
“He also does high-school level math.”
She turned a surprised gaze on him. “How do you know so much about Nicolas?”
“I knew Angela once,” he said. “A long time ago.”
“She never mentioned you.”
“I’m not the kind of guy you talk about.”
She contemplated him. “How did you know her?”
Because he wasn’t quite sure how to answer, Madrid steered the conversation back to the topic at hand. “In any case, I think Nicolas saw something that night.”
“The murder,” she murmured.
“We have to find a way to reach him without traumatizing him further. The question is how.”
She jumped when a gust of wind rattled a loose shutter. Madrid stared at her. Even sleep-rumpled and recovering from a fever she was pretty. Her face was as smooth and pale as porcelain, her mouth as wet and soft as some exotic tropical fruit. He wondered what she would taste like if he leaned close and brushed his mouth against hers.
Pulling himself back from a place he didn’t want to go, he stood abruptly and started to walk away. “Get some sleep,” he growled.
“Madrid.”
He stopped, but didn’t turn to her.
“Why haven’t you turned me in?” she asked. “Taken me back?”
He thought about the exchange with Cutter and knew at some point he was going to have to fix things. “I like to know who the good guys are first.”
“The good guys don’t shoot at an unarmed woman and innocent child.”
He didn’t need to be reminded of that. “An innocent woman doesn’t run when the police tell her to stop.”
“They would have shot me on the spot. I didn’t want to end up like Angela.”
He turned and gave her a hard look, searching for a lie, finding none. “Get some sleep. I’ve got some calls to make.”
Unclipping his cell phone from his belt, he turned and walked away.
MADRID LISTENED to the bedroom door close, then dialed the number from memory. Even though it was going on one o’clock in the morning in D.C., fellow MIDNIGHT operative Jake Vanderpol answered on the second ring.
“I thought it might be you,” Jake growled.
“That’s because I’m the only person you know who’s in enough trouble to warrant a call at this hour.”
“Cutter told me what happened.”
“Grapevine must be busy.”
He sighed. “Madrid, you screwed up big-time.”
“Not the first time.”
“Might be the last. Cutter is royally ticked.”
“He ought to be more ticked at Angela’s murderer than me.”
“You know Cutter will do right by her.”
“Cutter thinks this is business as usual. It’s not, damn it.”
“He thinks you’re a loose cannon.”