Renegade With A Badge

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“I don’t have to go with you.”

He put his chin on his chest to check her bandage. Good field dressing. “Yes,” he said. “You do.” He moved experimentally. His ribs did feel slightly better. They’d be able to move much faster now. Before she could think to run, he clasped his hand over her wrist.

“No, you’ll be safe now,” she insisted. “I’ll go back down the mountain, divert their attention, tell them you went in the opposite direction.”

It made perfect sense, Rafe knew. And he wouldn’t have let her do it in a million years. She was not going back to Cervantes. Not only did the thought of the bastard touching her again make Rafe nuts—for some ungodly, Neanderthal reason that he’d need a psychiatrist and an anthropologist to explain to him—but Cervantes was one slip-up away from being taken down by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency and a half-dozen cooperating Mexican law enforcement organizations. No way was Rafe letting any woman, willing accomplice or not, rush back into a situation as volatile as that. His mother would murder him.

Olivia Galpas had saved his life tonight. And she was an American. A spoiled and wealthy American who had an obvious knack for getting herself into trouble, but an American nonetheless. She deserved some consideration from a DEA agent such as him.

“You’re coming with me, Doctor,” he said.

Olivia put her foot down, such as it was. “No,” she said quite firmly—even barked the word, she might have said. “I am not.”

Rafe leaned forward. “Once again, princesa, you’re wrong.”

Suddenly, his head whipped up like that of a wolf scenting prey, and she heard the sound of men coming through the desert.

“Come on,” he said, and began to run.

Olivia had no idea when the bottoms of her feet began to bleed, or when the blisters on her heels popped. Or when the moon came up. Or when the wind died down and left the desert quiet enough to hear the small animals scurrying home at their approach. Her world had winnowed down to the hand in hers and the mountain in front of her.

He let her stop for a while once during the night. But just for a few minutes, and even then he did not let her take off her sandals.

“I’m beginning to be very sorry I didn’t let them kill you,” she muttered at him in English, while he stared off into the distance, obviously trying to pinpoint any men who might be following them up this godforsaken hill.

She thought she saw him smile, but decided that was impossible. He had never spoken a word of English. His clothes, his speech, his Spanish dialect all told her he was a peasant; she was sure he did not speak English. Which was good, because she’d been muttering at him in English for most of the hellish trip up the mountain, and she fully intended to mutter at him until he let her go or until one of them died of heat exhaustion or pursuing lawmen or bloody feet.

He made her get up after a short rest and follow him again up some indistinct trail to some obscure place only he knew about and only he could imagine. All Olivia could see was rock formations and low brush, the silhouettes of barrel cactus and dusty, endless sand. And behind her, far in the distance now, the Sea of Cortеz shining in the moonlight.

She cursed at him in English all the way up the mountainside. If his chest hadn’t been so sore and his mood worse, Rafe would have laughed at her. The esteemed doctor knew some good, dirty American swear words. His mother would be shocked. He imagined her mother would faint dead away.

They reached the predetermined meeting place just as the sky lightened. They’d left any pursuers far behind, but Rafe knew it was only a matter of time before Cervantes and his goons picked up their trail in the bright light of a Baja California day. He turned just as the sun seemed to break the surface of the gulf. In spite of everything, the sight took his breath away.

Olivia sat on a rock and watched him. She hated to admit it, but he was sort of…beautiful, actually. His eyes were tired, and seemed to her to be tinged with some vague…regret. His gorgeous mouth was relaxed as he breathed in the morning air, his edgy face showed shadows, softening the angles into something almost artistic. Her mother would kill to paint that face, Olivia knew.

“Why do you do it, Rafael?” she asked.

He turned to her. “What?”

“What you do.” She saw his eyes narrow, but kept hers steady on him. “Run drugs.”

His face went expressionless. “Is this what your lover told you?”

“He told me there were two men in the area, bringing drugs from the mainland through Aldea Viejo. From his reaction to you in that bedroom back there, I’m just assuming you’re one of them.”

“I’m one of them,” Rafe said.

“Why?”

Rafe ran a hand down his face. Working undercover meant lying. Lying to everyone. Telling the good doctor he was a common bandit. He could not take a chance that this extraordinary lovely woman would reveal his secret. She could easily return to the arms of Cervantes, tell him the DEA, not common thieves, were trying to catch him red-handed in his own crimes. Cervantes would surely pull back then, lay low, become impossible to prosecute.

Rafe watched the sun rise another minute, trying to come up with a convincing reply. With thoughts of her lifetime of privileged status, he asked, “Have you ever been poor, Doctor?”

Olivia shook her head.

“Then don’t question why my people do what they do to put food in their mouths.” He turned back toward the gulf, scanning the hillside for any sign of Bobby.

“What your people do hurt my people,” she said.

“Americans?” he scoffed. “Americans can’t get enough of what Mexico has to sell them.”

“It doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it legal.”

He ground his teeth together. He wanted to end the lie, to tell her of his obsession to stop the real drug runner. To agree with her in every way. To make her see him as a man of honor.

Choking back the truth, he shrugged, knowing his cover had to remain top priority. “A man like me,” he said slowly, carefully, “is nothing but the smallest fish. A small fish does little harm.” He gazed across the morning haze to the spot where he knew Cervantes’s house sat. He couldn’t see it, but every sumptuous carpet and ornate piece of furniture and thin crystal glass stood out in sharp relief in his mind’s eye. “You should worry about the sharks, Olivia. Sharks prey on the poor and the addicted, and they grow wealthier and wealthier with each passing year. They are not struggling to feed their families. They are killing your high school kids to make themselves rich. You, of all people, should know how much damage a shark can do.”

“You try to excuse your actions by telling me you’re only a small dealer, insignificant in the wave of drugs that comes across the border.” It made her angry that he would dig for any excuse at all. “But you are a part of it—you and whoever your partner is. You are still in the wrong.”

Her tone infuriated him. She was right, of course. He’d spent his entire adult life dedicating himself to stopping the flow of drugs between the two countries—but to hear her condemn him made him crazy.

“What do you know about right and wrong, princesa?” he said, putting every ounce of disdain he could manage into his words. “I don’t imagine you have had to make any real decisions about right and wrong since the day you were born.”

“Are you kidding me?” Olivia jumped up, her aching, oozing feet forgotten. “Do you think because you were born poor and I wasn’t that you have had all the moral decisions to make?”

He nodded slowly, enraging her further. She poked him in the chest, ignored his wince of pain. “Well, I have news for you, amigo,” she said. “I make moral decisions at every turn. Do I marry to please my parents and give them the grandchildren my culture and my hormones demand, or do I make my own way in a man’s world? Do I work myself to death, or let my father’s money help me slide through? Do I hold onto my cultural heritage with both hands, or bleed into the Anglo life to make things easier on myself? At every turn I have chosen the right path. How dare you accuse me of not knowing the difference between right and wrong simply because you have chosen poorly.”