She nodded, started gathering up her papers and stuffing them into a battered briefcase. The top of her desk remained as cluttered as when he'd walked in, but Torres seemed ready to call it a day.
An impulse he'd no doubt later kick himself for took over his brain and the words tumbled out of his mouth before he had time to reconsider. 'How about we get a late dinner?'
She glanced at the clock before saying, 'Oh, I don't know if that works very well for us, Hashemi.'
'Why's that?' he pressed.
She walked to the door where he trailed her out and watched her lock up. 'Because every time we eat or drink together, we fight.'
'Not every time, Torres.' He grinned and watched the flush creep up her neck to paint her pretty cheeks a dusky rose beneath the golden skin.
Chapter Twenty
The leggy blonde staggered out of the downtown Sacramento bar ahead of the guy, groped in her jacket pocket for her keys, and pressed the unlock button on the brand new, silver Lexus. All riiiight, he thought, this babe has green. Or else Daddy does. Slightly less drunk than the girl, the guy tried to wrestle the keys from her grip.
'Nuthin' doin,' pretty boy,' she laughed and then hiccupped loudly. 'Oops, sorry.' She burst into a series of giggles that both of them found hilarious.
'Hey,' he warned, 'it's your ride.'
'Damn straight. Come on, Shel,' she urged the dark-haired girl just coming out of the bar. The brunette tottered on alarmingly high heels. 'Thas right, girl, get going.'
The second girl – Shelby, the guy thought her name was – climbed into the back of the Lexus and immediately stretched out on the seat. For some reason the blonde – what the hell was her name? – burst into another round of laughter. Come to think of it, the whole situation was pretty hilarious.
The blonde climbed into the driver's seat and fumbled with inserting the key into the ignition. 'Damn key. Whas wrong?'
After a few tries she made it, and by this time, the guy had settled into the passenger seat and hooked up his seat belt. The broad wasn't sober enough to drive and he didn't want to be scraped off the asphalt. This reminded him of the drunk driving video they'd watched in high school –
The blonde looked so adorable trying to figure out what to do next with the car that he reached over and kissed her soundly on the mouth, sticking his tongue hard between her lips. God, he hoped he could get it up with all the booze in his system. Shame to miss doing this one.
The girl in the back seat started to snore softly as they peeled away from the curb on Sixteenth Street. The blonde got a dozen or so blocks from the bar without an accident and approached the onramp.
They'd left the bar before midnight, too early to call it a night. 'Hey, I got an idea,' the guy said. 'Take the next ramp, no, not there, next one.' He directed her south on Interstate 80, and they lurched onto the freeway. 'I just 'membered where we can get some really good smack.'
'Oh yeah, baby, I like that idea,' she said, running her hand up his thigh and lingering over his crotch.
God, he really hoped he could keep a hard-on. Maybe the H would help. After turning east on Highway 50, he directed her to the Folsom turnoff and pointed the way toward a middle-class neighborhood in an older section of Folsom.
When they arrived at the blue-trimmed stucco house shrouded in shrubbery and barely visible from the street, he stumbled from the car and lurched toward the porch. No light on. These people liked to stay under the radar.
A few minutes later, he made the exchange and returned to the Lexus. 'Babe, this is primo H. You'll like it.'
'Where to?' she asked, staring at the white glassine packets.
'Turn right onto Auburn-Folsom. Let's go to the lake.'
'Great plan,' she said, starting up the car. 'Beale's Lake, right?'
Twenty minutes later they pulled up to the barricaded entrance gate at Beale's Lake, and the girl – Joanie was her name, he suddenly remembered – parked the car in the turnabout. They left Shelby in the backseat of the car sleeping off her drunk, and hauling a blanket out of the Lexus' trunk, walked the short distance to the beach.
They spread the blanket on the sand near the water. The lake was closed at this hour and the beach deserted. He used to come here all the time when he was a teenager. The park was closed, but he knew the rangers hardly ever bothered anyone unless they built an unauthorized fire on the beach.
After settling down, the guy produced the packets and prepared the heroin for snorting. Then they both lay back on the blanket and looked at the night sky. In minutes he could feel his heart rate slow down and his blood pressure drop. Euphoria swept over him like a warm blanket, a surge of pleasure that was better than sex.
He glanced at Joanie, but she'd already closed her eyes. God, this was great stuff. He thought he said the words aloud, but wasn't sure.
When he looked over at Joanie again, he saw her lips had turned blue and her body was very pale in the light from the moon. With effort he propped himself on an elbow and opened her lid, looked at the pinpoint pupils. Damn, she probably wasn't used to the good stuff. Was she going into a coma?
Fuck, he thought mildly, but couldn't bring himself to get worked up about it. Why was this his problem? He didn't know how to do CPR, so what the hell could he do?
Anyway, he didn't want anything to interfere with the melting away of all his troubles. He lay back down and stared at the stars, feeling the girl's body begin to tremble next to him.
As she convulsed, he wondered why she was bumming his high.
'Not every time,' Rafe repeated as he followed Isabella to the elevator. He remembered the night she had spent in his apartment, the excitement and thrill of all that soft fullness and warm passion against him. He knew she was thinking the same thing by the way she avoided his eyes.
He shook his head and warned himself off. It was just as well she'd refused his dinner invitation. 'Suit yourself,' he said with as much nonchalance as he could muster when she refused a second time.
She cleared her throat and jabbed at the button. They stepped into the elevator and rode down to the first floor in silence.
The antique old Otis was slow as molasses in January and Rafe couldn't wait to hit the bottom floor and head back to his motel, but after they'd gone through the metal detectors and said goodnight to the on-duty guard, Isabella's voice stopped him.
'I guess I have to eat,' she muttered, sighing theatrically, 'but you'd better not fight with me again.'
He laughed, relief and trepidation mixing together as he wondered what the hell he was getting himself into.
They decided to take her car, but as they walked toward the parking lot, she turned to him. 'You know, I'm not all that hungry.' She looked up at him from beneath impossibly thick lashes. 'How about I fix us something light at my house? Would that work for you?'
He hesitated. That would more than work for him, although he wasn't sure being alone with her was a good idea. She probably wanted to worm more information out of him.
Before he could think better of it, his maverick tongue overrode his brain. 'Sounds good. I'll follow you in my car.'
Isabella pulled her car into an attached garage to the left of a neat, bungalow-style home in Placer Hills, a few miles from the courthouse. Rafe parked his on the street and walked up a long path of flagstones across a deep, beautifully tended lawn to meet her at the porch landing. Riotous with color, rose bushes lined the front of the house and what looked like every space possible.
The front double-doors had impressive stained glass windows from waist high up to the top. Too easy to break
