The Traitor

Chapter Thirty

'That bastard!' Anger and grief warred for a place in Isabella's expression. She dashed at the tears that spilled down her cheeks.

Rafe wrapped an arm around her shoulder and walked her toward the hospital exit doors. 'There's nothing we can do about Slater now. He's in good hands.'

She shrugged out of his hold and turned away as he reached for her again. 'I'm not leaving him.'

He stared at her back, thinking Isabella could easily have been at the safe house when the hit went down. She could've been talking to the girl, and right now lying in the operating room, fighting for her life or sprawled on the safe house floor riddled with bullets. He clenched his fists at his sides.

Goddamn it! He should've protected her better, protected them all. But he was too tunnel-visioned to see the rat scurrying around in his own house. And even though he suspected multiple rats were involved, he still had little more than an inkling who the rat in his own department was.

He ran through the list of names in his mind. Contacts Lupe might've revealed accidentally or under torture before he died, men below and above Rafe in rank, even his trusty administrator, Mrs. Roberts.

Five feet away from him, Isabella hunched over, her arms wrapped around herself as if holding in a terrible pain. He ached for her, for Esperanza's death, and for the possible loss of a good man like Ben Slater, but he fell back on rationale to reassure her.

'The surgeon said it would be hours before Slater came out of the operating room,' he said logically, turning her around to face him. 'Be reasonable. You need to get some rest.'

He glanced at the black and white wall clock which hung unattractively over the nursing station – six-thirty in the morning. 'You won't do Slater any good here.'

'What if he…' Fresh tears started down her face and her nose ran.

He wanted to kiss her red cheeks and puffy eyes, but he handed her a handkerchief instead. 'He won't. The man's too stubborn to croak on us.'

Isabella laughed, a sad little attempt that sounded like a dying songbird. 'Yeah, Slater's obstinate as hell.'

He tried to coax a smile from her. 'Must be where you learned it from.'

She rarely swore, and he knew she was under a lot more strain than she admitted. 'He's going to be okay, Isabella.'

She nodded solemnly. 'Yeah, sure.'

He sighed heavily and tried to reason with her again. 'If you don't want to leave the hospital, let's go to the cafeteria and get some coffee.'

When they reached the lower level, the cafeteria's security gates were down over the kitchen area, and they settled for vending machine coffee and stale breakfast rolls. They chose a small table near the back exit doors of the nearly empty room. Several nursing staff sat across from them and a custodian mopped at a corner area to their left.

Isabella ignored her coffee and stared through the glass windows into the dark night where the security lights dotted the walks and parking lot.

'I told her she'd be safe,' she finally whispered. 'I told Esperanza everything was going to be all right.'

'You couldn't have known.'

'No, no, you're wrong. I know what kind of monster Vargas is. I should've anticipated this move.'

She ran her fingers through her dark hair, loosening the knot at her neck until it fell messily around her shoulders. She looked young and vulnerable with her hair down and her face free of makeup.

'Slater's the expert,' Rafe contradicted, blowing on his coffee although it was barely lukewarm. 'He thought she was protected. Hell, I thought she had enough protection too.'

'Poor Esperanza,' she murmured. She looked exhausted, shadows under her eyes and lines around her mouth. 'One minute she was a young schoolgirl, probably on her way to the market place, and the next minute her life was a living nightmare.'

She covered her face with her hands and let the sobs take over.

'Ah, Bella, don't… please don't cry.' He scooted his chair close to hers and pulled her into his arms. 'I hate it when you cry.'

The nurses across the way gave them a strange look, but Rafe supposed they were used to displays of grief in a hospital. Bella sobbed until her tears soaked the front of his shirt and then pulled back to look at him. 'I keep thinking of Maria,' she whispered.

'Ah, baby, don't do this to yourself.'

'I can't help it. Maria left home just like Esperanza did. She kissed us and said goodbye, took a flight to San Diego and a bus across the border with a group of her friends.' She wiped her nose with the heel of her hand.

'And that's the last we heard of her, the last we saw her.' She clutched at his shirt sleeve. 'Just like Esperanza.'

'What did the police do to find Maria?' Rafe knew they wouldn't have done much, couldn't have done much except make official contact with the Mexican police.

And a young Mexican-American girl like Maria – she would've been easy to kidnap, easy to hide down there. The family didn't have a chance in hell of finding what happened to Bella's sister.

She shrugged. 'They made a lot of noise, but in the end we knew that her being Latina was a disadvantage. No one was going to look for a poor immigrant man's daughter.'

She smiled bitterly. 'Maria wasn't even born in this country. They weren't going to search for her too hard.'

'I'm sorry.' Rafe rubbed her shoulders through her thin shirt.

She straightened up, a determined look on her face. 'Vargas had something to do with Maria's disappearance.'

Rafe's arm fell away. 'Bella, be reasonable. You can't know that for sure.'

She clenched her fist against her chest. 'I know it here,' she insisted.

'Even so, even if you're right, Vargas wouldn't remember one girl twenty years ago. And if by some chance he did, he'd never admit it.'

She sighed deeply and slumped against him again. 'You're right, but this thing just… sometimes it consumes me.'

'You can't let what happened to your sister get in the way of nailing Vargas for what we know he's guilty of,' Rafe reminded her.

She'd thrown on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt when they'd left her house, but she now shivered, whether from the cold room or the topic, Rafe couldn't tell. He draped his jacket over her shoulders, picked up their empty coffee containers, and threw them in the trash receptacle across the room.

When he walked back to their table, he sat down and searched her face intently. She seemed calmer now. 'We have to talk about what this attack at the safe house means.'

Nodding, she clasped her fingers together on the table top and leaned forward, all business.

'The hit was bloody and messy,' he said. 'They meant to kill everyone, including Harris and Slater, the other deputies, along with the girl.'

She spoke solemnly. 'No witnesses.'

'Let's start with who had access to the safe house, hell who even knew about it.'

She ticked them off on her fingers. 'You, me, Slater, and the three deputies assigned to guard Esperanza. Six people,' she said bitterly. 'Harris is Slater's right-hand man; McKidd and Ruiz I don't know.'

'What about the Nevada police?'

'They knew she was being transported, that Slater signed her out, but they couldn't have known where.' She bit her bottom lip and clutched his hand. 'Rafe, we didn't even know until an hour before we arrived at the safe house.'

'They could've been followed from Nevada.'

She began shaking her head before he'd finished. 'Not with Harris and Slater riding shotgun. No one gets by