Читать книгу Undercover Protector - Molly O'Keefe - Страница 7

“JEFE!”

The door to Benny Delgado’s office crashed open and ricocheted off the cheap wood paneling on the wall behind it.

Benny’s semiautomatic was in his hand, safety off and aimed at the intruder’s heart before the walls stopped trembling.

“Jesus,” Benny sighed when he realized whom he nearly killed.

His younger brother, Miguel, stood in the doorway like a dog waiting to come in. “Sorry, jefe, but—”

“The door was shut, Miguel,” Benny said, laying the gun back on the desk.

“I know, but you need—”

“The door was shut.” He folded the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle he’d been doing and arched an eyebrow at his little brother.

Miguel twitched and cracked the knuckles on his right hand, clearly worked up about something, which was odd for Miguel. He was usually too high to get agitated about anything. But whatever was wrong, there was no reason to break the one damn rule Benny insisted on.

When the door was shut, Miguel was supposed to knock.

The rule was put into effect during a particularly nasty period when one of his soldiers was suspected of cooperating with federal agents.

Benny tried to protect his brother from the bloodier aspects of the business.

Finally, Miguel sighed heavily, stepped back and knocked on the open door. “There’s something on the news you gotta see.”

It was their mother’s fault, Benny thought. She’d babied Miguel, allowed too many weaknesses to grow underneath the profile that was so much like her long-dead husband’s.

Benny, she always said, looked like a mongrel. Bits and pieces of no one in particular—a fact that had never inspired much maternal devotion.

In the end he was better for it. Stronger than his beautiful brother.

“This better not be an excuse to get the Lakers’ score on my TV.” Benny reached over to the remote control at his elbow and turned on the giant flat-screen monitor on the other side of the room.

“It’s not.” Miguel came to stand beside Benny’s desk.

“What are you doing watching the news, anyway?” Benny asked, looking at his brother from the corner of his eye. Miguel wore the white tank top and oversize khaki work pants that were the uniform for Chicano street thugs in Los Angeles.

Benny had stopped dressing the part of a petty criminal years ago; looking like a thug raised too many red flags for the cops. And once he stopped being a petty criminal, he could no longer afford the attention.

“Lita was watching it. Turn up the volume, jefe. Jesus, you got enough stereo equipment to blow the roof off.” Miguel pointed to the flat-screen TV and high-tech stereo equipment that stood out like a shiny technological thumb in the dumpy room. “You could at least listen to it.”

Benny could afford better than this crappy house—with its water-stained ceilings and fraying carpet—in Long Beach where his mother grew up, but he liked it here. He had grown up here, was safe here.

“Channel twenty-four,” Miguel said. He crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands into his armpits. “They been talkin’ about it every fifteen minutes.”

Benny changed the channel and turned up the volume so he could hear the special report, wondering what it was that inspired Miguel to watch the news.

“—the American journalist who was held hostage in Baghdad then rescued in a daring prison break that cost the lives of three American soldiers, is being released from the hospital today,” the blond anchorwoman with the great tits said. “Caleb Gomez—”

A photo of a good-looking man with dark skin and blue eyes flashed on the screen and Benny’s body went cold.

“See? Isn’t that—?”

Benny held up his hand and his brother quieted. Transfixed by the image of the Hispanic man on the screen, Benny stood and walked around his desk.

“Gomez was in a coma for three months following his rescue from the Iraqi prison,” the blonde said as pictures of a single-story building the color of sand and surrounded by Iraqi soldiers replaced those of the handsome man. “The tape of his captors holding a knife to his neck demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq circulated the world last spring—”

The picture of the prison was replaced by a far more grainy shot of a soldier holding a long knife to the throat of a bearded, blindfolded man.

Benny had seen the picture a million times, just like the rest of the world. But now, even without seeing the man’s eyes, the prisoner seemed familiar. The way he sat, so proud, his lips twisted in what Benny knew was anger. It was so like the man he had befriended a little more than three years ago. The man who, shortly thereafter, had disappeared off the face of the earth.

“Gomez was kidnapped by Iraqi soldiers while covering the war for the Los Angeles Times—”

“Benny? That’s him…that’s Ruben, isn’t it?” Miguel asked. “He’s been in Iraq? What’s this mean?”

Journalist? Benny’s brain screamed. He’s a freaking journalist? All of those conversations. The things Benny had told Ruben, believing he had finally found a thinking man amongst all of the thugs and butchers of his world. The man Benny had trusted with secrets was a journalist?

When Ruben had disappeared, Benny had thought for a while that Ruben had been an undercover cop. Or a Fed. But when no harassment or raids had followed he figured him for one of those nameless dead spics found in the mountains.

He’d been wrong.

His hands spasmed into fists, the edges of the remote cut into his palm.

“Gomez won a Pulitzer four years ago for his exposé of the meat-packing industry,” the blonde continued. “Many experts say his work from Iraq would have garnered him another award. Gomez was released from the naval hospital in San Diego today. He plans to recover in privacy in New York City.”

Benny’s brain went cold then hot.

Everything was at stake. All he’d done. It could all be taken away from him if that journalist opened his mouth.

“That’s Ruben, isn’t it?” Miguel asked. “That journalist. Did you know he was a reporter?”

Benny shook his head. Rage caught fire in his gut—blind and hot and merciless. His chest heaved and he fisted his hands in his hair. He paced between the couch and his desk. He’d been fooled. Him. Benny Delgado.

Benny knew this journalist—this Caleb Gomez—as Ruben Villalobos. Three years ago his sister, Lita, had started bringing her latest boyfriend, Ruben, around the house. Benny had liked Ruben. Respected him. He’d tried to recruit him, but Ruben had resisted and Benny kind of respected that. They’d smoked joints in the backyard and talked about their dead mothers.

“Damn it!” he screamed and shoved over one of the folding chairs in front of his desk. He picked up the other one and hurled it across the room at the TV screen.

Sparks crackled in the dead air.

Gomez knew things about him. Things he had been keeping secret. Things that kept him safe. If that hibrido were to write a story about him now…

“The news said he’d be in New York City.” Miguel stepped forward and Benny started shaking his head, knowing by the wild hot look in his brother’s eyes what he wanted.

“No, Miguel.” Benny put up his hand, stopping Miguel’s advance.

“Why not?” Miguel asked. “You need to send someone, why can’t I go?”

“You want to go do what has to be done?” Benny asked, anger churning hard through his body. “You want to be the man to slit that reporter’s throat?”

Miguel’s chin went up. “Yes, jefe.”

Benny looked at his brother and saw only the mistakes. The drug use. The gambling. The soft heart and softer head.

“No way.”

“Benny, this guy could screw up the meeting with that ambassador. That Reyes guy. I know—”

Benny worked hard to control his expression, to smother the surprise and outrage. Everyone in his organization knew they were not supposed to tell Miguel these things. Miguel ran some drugs. Kept track of some books. He was not supposed to know about Reyes or the meeting.

“You don’t know anything.” Benny shook his head.

“I’m your brother, but you don’t trust me.” Miguel’s dark eyes turned liquid, a trick that used to work on Benny the way it worked on their mother.

Not with this. Not ever with this.

“You’re my brother,” he said instead, clapping a hand on Miguel’s neck and squeezing. “I can’t risk you. The cops. The Feds. You get caught and it’s me who goes to jail.”

“Sooner or later, brother, you are going to have to treat me like a man,” Miguel said, shrugging away from Benny’s hand, like a sullen teenager rather than the man he wanted to be.

Not until you act like one.

“You are a man,” he pacified his brother. “But you are my brother first.”

“What are you going to do?” Miguel asked. “What if this guy talks? What if—”

“I can fix this,” Benny said. The way he fixed that female witness and the cop six months ago.

He had to deal with Ruben—He shook his head. There was no Ruben, never had been. There was only a reporter named Caleb Gomez who had to die, fast, before he had a chance to open his mouth. Before the meeting with Reyes in a month.

First Benny would have a little talk with his sister and then he would send some men to New York.