The Traitor

you'd better contact Charlie.'

Even though Bella was technically Slater's superior, she didn't mind taking orders from him. She'd never trusted anyone more, even her own brothers. He was smart, cool-headed, and would step in front of a bus for her. And she knew he hated the family notifications.

'I'll go with you,' she offered.

Slater nodded once. 'We have to know where they got the heroin,' he said to Rafe. 'What can your sources tell you? Maybe we should move on it tonight.'

Rafe shook his head. 'We'd better get a couple hours of sleep. It'll take that long for my contacts to find the dealer, and it's going to be one long day.' He knew he wouldn't sleep tonight, not by a long shot.

Isabella's face was pale and drawn. He bet she wouldn't sleep either. They'd both be remembering what had happened on her sofa, what would've happened if they hadn't been interrupted by a gruesome death. Neither would find sleep for a very long time.

An hour later he parked the car in front of the motel unit he occupied. He hadn't spoken to Isabella when they left the lake, but he'd raised his hand in a farewell gesture as she drove away.

Christ, he thought, as he climbed the stairs to his room, he was tired of eating fast-food and living out of his suitcase.

Chapter Twenty-two

The call came in on Rafe's cell phone shortly after he'd finally evaded thoughts of Isabella and just drifted off into a dreamless sleep. 'This had better be important,' he muttered, rousing himself.

'Hashemi?'

'Yeah.' He didn't recognize the voice and few people contacted him on this line. 'Who's this and how the hell did you get this number?'

'Banadoora.' Arabic for tomato. That would be McNally, the red-faced Homeland Security agent who crawled up Rafe's ass so far he wanted to fart the bastard out like a giant turd. Rafe waited for the password question.

'Ma ismak?' What is your name? McNally loved the cloak and dagger pretense.

'Khiyar,' Rafe responded, using the Arabic word for cucumber, a little Homeland Security cornball humor. The DHS boys thought that was hilarious because they said Rafe was always as cool as a cucumber. 'What do you want, McNally?'

The agent rattled off the name and address of the contact. Homeland Security was already on this. That meant only one thing – they'd made the connections between the new drug routes and distributions to terrorist activities.

'The China White profits are being funneled right back into Thailand,' McNally continued, 'and then into an organization called Mohandis in the Golden Crescent.'

That meant Afghanistan and Al Qaeda.

'Winters wants you to run a parallel investigation with the county D.A.'s office. Don't make waves, just get along with that woman ADA until we have the background intel we need. Then we'll assume jurisdiction over the investigation.'

So it's begun, Rafe thought, snapping the cell phone shut. From their overseas intelligence, they'd expected this, but hearing the reality of it was like taking an icy bath. Torres would be royally pissed when the takeover happened, and he felt bad about that, but it couldn't be helped; he had no choice. National security trumped local charges, no matter how ugly the bad guys were.

*

The raid on the drug house lasted less than fifteen minutes.

Slater accompanied Rafe and four federal agents. The sun had barely begun to peek in the eastern sky, a hazy purplish-pink that indicated a high pollution day. Most people on the quiet, residential street were still asleep before beginning their workday.

Slater positioned himself at the rear, a motion Rafe appreciated, so that his team of agents could take the lead, approaching the front and back entries of the house with weapons drawn. His federal warrant didn't require an announcement, and Rafe had no intention of alerting possibly armed drug dealers of their imminent arrest.

With a nod to the agent opposite him, Rafe indicated the man should kick in the door. Then Rafe went in first, low and to the right. Complete, eerie silence filled the interior. No dogs, unusual for a drug house.

They crept in stealthily, clearing each room as they went. The three agents who'd taken the back found the animals, two Doberman pinchers and a giant black lab. Gunshot wounds. In a small rear bedroom, they found the home's occupant, a small, dark man, possibly Latino, though it was hard to tell because his face and the upper half of his body were saturated with blood.

Rafe crouched down by the body. 'Knife?' he asked Slater.

'My best guess. Any body parts missing?'

'Torres told you, huh?'

'About your informant? Yeah. Sorry, man.'

'Well, it looks like this scumbag has all his parts,' Rafe answered, thinking of how Lupe had suffered while this piece of shit got a quick death.

Slater knelt beside him. 'Looks like a swift, single slice to the carotid. That's why all the blood.' He looked around the dirty carpet. 'And the arterial spray blood spatter.'

'Get the crime techs in here,' Rafe shouted at the agent standing by the door. 'See if you can find any trace of the drugs.' He jammed his fist into his pocket. 'How the hell did they get to him so soon?'

Slater stood, pulled on latex gloves, and walked around the bedroom, searching but not touching anything. 'How good is your intelligence, Hashemi? Are you sure this is the drug dealer?'

'I'm sure,' Rafe said shortly. 'The guy would be alive otherwise.'

Slater stepped close to Rafe and spoke low in his ear. 'Looks like you've got a serious leak somewhere, Hashemi.'

'Not necessarily.' He waved a hand over the dead body. 'Mr. Drug Dealer here could've told someone higher up.'

Slater shrugged noncommittally and meandered around the room, poking here and there, curious like any good detective.

Rafe punched a number into his cell phone. When the person on the other end of the line answered, he asked the question. 'What's the name?' A few minutes later he snapped the phone shut. He looked over at Slater, who was lifting up an edge of the mattress and bending to look underneath.

'His name's Enrique Salazar. Ties to the Nortenos.'

Slater looked up. 'Which means Diego Vargas.'

Rafe nodded, suddenly tired of the confining room, needing fresh air. He could hear the coroner and crime scene techs arrive. They'd be hours and he and Slater had better things to do than hang around. He knew the sheriff was right about an inside job, and it was what Max Jensen had suggested. But he'd thought it was a C.I., possibly Lupe or another informant. This looked like a serious breach in security at a much higher level.

Christ, this looked like one of their own had betrayed them.

*

Bella had been with the girl ten minutes when Slater and Rafe entered the hospital room. The girl's dark eyes widened to the size of saucers when she saw the two men, one dressed in a dark suit, the other a uniform, both wearing sunglasses, and looking like bad-ass criminal types.

'It's okay, Shelby,' Bella said. 'These men are here to help. They need to hear your answers to the questions