“Thank you.”
The door closed and Sophia was left sweating on the doorstep, wondering whether she’d just made a huge mistake—or saved Rod’s life. Maybe she’d done neither. If Rod was already dead, she wouldn’t have much chance of walking away, either. Whoever killed him couldn’t let her leave knowing 2944 Dugan Drive was the last place he’d been seen alive. And there was another possibility. If Rod was actually making inroads toward getting the information they needed, her interruption might cut that short….
But she could only act on instinct, and her instincts told her Rod had been inside too long.
After an extended wait, she worked up her nerve and knocked again. Twice. The same man answered, but this time when he opened the door, she also caught sight of Rod. What lighting there was came from a back room. It was too dim to see much, but when Rod stepped closer, the glare of the porch light revealed marks on his face that hadn’t been there before.
“You wanted to talk to me?” He acted sullen, belligerent, like a complete stranger.
Sophia played along. “Yes.”
“What for?”
Drawing her gun, she assumed a defensive stance. “I need you to come with me. You’re under arrest.”
“What’d I do?”
He should’ve been an actor. He was that convincing. Sophia only hoped she could hold up her end. “You were seen fleeing the scene of a robbery. With a weapon.”
She wasn’t sure the man sporting all the tattoos would let them walk off, but once she flicked the barrel of the gun toward the cruiser, indicating that Rod should precede her, he made no move to intercede.
“What about my Hummer?” Rod asked as he stalked past her.
“The towing company will pick it up within the hour.”
Sophia was afraid to turn away for fear the man at the door would pull out a pistol and shoot them both, or rush them from behind. But she had no alternative. If she didn’t keep up the charade, they’d have no chance of getting out of here.
Training her Glock on Rod as if he might make a break for it, she followed him to the cruiser, where she slapped him in handcuffs and helped him into the backseat. As far as she knew, the man in the doorway didn’t move. She imagined his eyes boring holes in her back as she loaded her “prisoner.” But once she got behind the wheel and glanced at the house, she could see that the door was already shut.
“You okay?” she breathed.
“I’ll live,” Rod said. “But, God, am I glad to see you.”
Resting his head on the back of the seat, Rod closed his eyes and listened as Sophia called Grant, the officer who’d dusted for prints at the motel earlier, to say she was fine and he could go back to bed. His jaw ached, he had a wicked cut on the inside of his cheek, and he’d been kicked in the stomach so hard he couldn’t draw a breath without pain. But if Sophia hadn’t interrupted when she did, he would’ve sustained a lot more injuries—maybe even a fatal one.
“What happened in there?” Sophia asked as she pulled out of the neighborhood.
He didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to recover.
“Rod?”
Opening his eyes, he met her concerned gaze in the rearview mirror. “Those guys weren’t happy to have a stranger show up.”
“What guys?”
“The six who beat the shit out of me.”
The car lurched as she punched the gas pedal. “Why were there so many? And what were they doing when you got there? Cooking meth?”
“No. I smelled that, too, but it must’ve come from a different house. There was no evidence of drugs I could see.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. It’s not the best neighborhood in town.”
“The guys in 2944 were feeding a group of illegals who’d just arrived.”
He couldn’t see her face—only her eyes—but he could hear a frown in her voice. “Why’d they start hitting you?”
“The man in charge decided that I needed some incentive to give them the answers they wanted.”
“What were the questions?”
He explored the depth of the cut in his mouth with his tongue before responding. “Mostly they wanted to know how I learned about the safe house.”
“Why didn’t you say you heard about it from a friend of José and Benita Sanchez? What could that hurt?”
“I tried. But they didn’t seem to know José and Benita, so that didn’t help.”
“You didn’t tell them you’re a cop?”
“Are you kidding? I’d already represented myself as a two-bit hood hoping to get a piece of their action. Suddenly changing my profession would’ve gotten me killed for sure.” He stretched his jaw to check that it still worked. “I shouldn’t have shown up without an introduction or a sponsor of some sort. In the interests of time, I tried to take a shortcut, thought I could lie my way around it, and that turned out to be a mistake.” He’d been so successful in past operations that he’d gotten cocky, hadn’t taken this one seriously enough. “A mistake?” she repeated. “You could’ve died back there.”
There were several minutes when he’d thought that was exactly what the outcome would be. “It was a distinct possibility.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be good at your job?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’m going to have to get you back for that one. When my head stops feeling like it might explode.”
“I almost didn’t follow you, almost didn’t go to the door,” she said. “What if I’d listened to you and stayed away?”
Her nerves were causing her to revisit the same thought over and over again.
“Like I said, I’m glad you didn’t. I owe you. If you have to say ‘I told you so,’ do it and get it over with.”
“I’m not saying ‘I told you so.’”
“Then what are you saying? That you should’ve gone instead of me? Do you really wish you had?”
“No. Of course not. It’s just… I don’t know. I’m upset that you’re hurt, and it makes me want to yell or hit something, even though that isn’t logical.”
“We’re both freaked out.” He’d done a dozen undercover jobs in which he could’ve been killed at any moment. Yet he’d survived them all relatively unscathed only to come close to goodbye forever doing pro bono work in Bordertown? What were the chances?