She saw the reaction in Rojas’s eyes and knew she was right. She wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t already thought. This guy was no idiot. The cartels had a very low tolerance for failure and none whatsoever for betrayal.
“So what are you offering, senora? You give me protection?” He gave a short bark of a laugh.
“Nope,” Erin said. She had a guess what he did want. Oddly, manipulating him to help her actually required telling him the truth. “We got a guy who’s going to come in here tomorrow morning and offer you a pretty sweet deal.”
“Why are you here now, if that is true?” Rojas was definitely confused now.
“He’ll offer you government protection, hell, maybe full immunity. He’ll want information about your bosses. But as long as you cough that up, you can pretty much write your own ticket.”
“I will tell you nothing about my employers. And I will tell him nothing.”
Erin nodded. She’d expected as much. He was a good soldier, loyal, dedicated. “I don’t give a shit about your employers.”
“I do not understand.”
She made eye contact with him, drawing on everything she’d learned from all her time with Carlyle and his associates. “You’re in deep trouble, Rojas. Your only way out is to take care of the guys who screwed you, and to get your product back. That’ll prove your loyalty. But you’ve got two problems. We’ve got you, and you’ve got a bad leg, so you aren’t going to be chasing anybody, even if you get out of the hospital.”
“What are you saying?” Rojas asked.
Erin leaned forward, speaking low and quietly. “These bastards shot up a restaurant. They didn’t just kill your people, they killed innocent bystanders. My boss wants them, as much as you do. I know Liam was one of them. But so do you. Tell me who the others are.”
“You think I know them?”
“I think you know something. Names, faces, something. You knew where Liam lived.”
Rojas was smiling again. “I am good at my job.”
“I know,” she said. “Help me finish it for you.”
“Why? What do I get from you?”
“You? Nothing.” Erin smiled at him, trying to remember the cold, icy way Evan O’Malley smiled, all teeth, no soul. “Except revenge.”
“You are an unusual mujer policía,” he said. “First you shoot at me, then you save my life, now you want to help me?”
She shrugged. “You’ve got a job to do. So do I.”
Rojas lay back, staring at the ceiling. “The policía at home, they belong to the cartels,” he said. “They always want money. You want money? A percentage?”
“Bribing a New York cop is a felony,” she said.
“So you will do this, without money? The Colombian policía are smarter than you, I think.” Rojas chuckled weakly.
“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s easier on your bottom line.”
“He comes to me,” Rojas said. “He knows the hotel I am at. He calls me, tells me to meet him, that he can give good price for an import of… coffee.”
“Right,” Erin said, understanding.
“I know he is the one who stopped the first meeting.”
“How’d you know?”
Rojas gave her a look. “How do you think? He knows where I am. He knows what I have. He knows I have no more buyer.”
Erin nodded.
“I would never go to a meeting like he said,” Rojas said. “They would kill me and take what they wanted. I say okay, I will meet with him. I go to the place, very careful, watching. I see him, and four of his people. I creep out of my car, get close, see their faces. They wait for me, fifteen, thirty minutes past the meeting time. Then they go. I go to follow them, but you know what happens?”
“What?”
Rojas’s smile was bitterly amused. “They steal my car.”
“What?” Erin repeated.
“My car,” he said patiently. “It is not where I put it. He has another man, I think. Stupid of me. I have the same car as before, they know what it looks like, they take it while I wait. The buyer, he takes a call on his phone and then leaves the meeting. The call is from the puta who stole my car.”
“And the product was in the car,” Erin said.
“Si,” Rojas sighed. Then he winced in pain.
“So what did you do?” she pressed.
“I call a taxi,” he said. “I tell him to drive the way the buyer went. I see my car, outside his apartment. I get out and watch the place, very careful. But he goes again, while I watch. I follow him. He goes to a restaurant and goes inside. I think he will be there a little while. But he comes out very fast, only a few minutes, and sees me.”
“So you shot him.”
Rojas wasn’t going to confess straight-up to murder, no matter what Erin said to him. “He sees me, that is the end of it,” he said. “So I go to his apartment, to get my product back.”
“There wasn’t anything in the apartment,” she said. Vic and the two Homicide detectives would’ve certainly noticed bags full of heroin, and the CSU team was going over the place with a fine-toothed comb.
“There is a picture,” Rojas said. He was breathing more rapidly now. Sweat beaded his forehead.
“A picture?” she repeated, not sure she’d heard him correctly.
“In the bedroom,” he said. “A photograph. The men, the other ones, the ones who kill my people, they are in this photograph.”
“Is the picture still there?” Erin asked, excitement surging up in her.
“Si,” he said.
He’d had to drop the photo in order to shoot at her and Vic, Erin thought sourly. But that meant the picture was still in Liam’s bedroom, probably lying on the floor. That might be enough to ID the shooters.
“You’re sure they were the same guys?”
He nodded. “I am sure.” Then he sagged into his pillow with a
