Page 42 of Hidden Falls

Lei took the key card and stowed it in her pocket.

Cruz came toward her; he caught her eyes on him and his slow, wide smile made her look away. “We’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t go out,” he told Harry, who already had her phone out and was focused on it as she texted. She nodded absently.

Lei followed Cruz out into the hall and shut the hotel room door gently behind her. “Where to next?”

He smiled over his shoulder. “Follow me.”

20

Cruz reached back and took Lei’s hand as they walked through a shadowy alley near the hotel. It was such a casual gesture, clearly meant to help guide her, that she allowed it—though her body hummed with knowledge of him as it had that other time.

She let go as soon as they reached the brightness of an illuminated square lined with cafés and filled with music—a flamenco player on a small dais was performing. People sang along; some clapped, and a couple danced on the rough cobblestones.

Lei stopped, taking in the smells of onions, garlic, peppers, and cooking meat. Small bright, dangling lightbulbs crisscrossed the busy square; the music took up residence in her veins.

“That’s one of my favorite places to eat.” Cruz gestured to an outdoor café whose boundaries were defined by a low wall made of artists’ paintings. Couples leaned in toward each other over round, candlelit tables in an intimate atmosphere.

“I like that one.” Lei pointed to a much quieter establishment across the square. Long shared tables provided seating, and the food was served buffet style. She headed toward it, not giving Cruz a chance to disagree.

Lei greeted the proprietress in her best high school Spanish. The woman instructed her to take a plate, and she did, helping herself to generous portions of beans, fried rice, tortillas, shredded meat, and a mound of sautéed vegetables. She sat down at the end of the long communal table and waited for Cruz to catch up with her.

He smiled as he put down his plate across from her. “An excellent choice, with the additional advantage of being quick.” A server came to see what they wanted to drink; Cruz ordered them bottled water. “Still a good idea not to drink any tap water until you’ve been here a while.”

Lei nodded, already deep into her plate of food. “Everything is delicious.” She bit into a taco, dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “I think I’ll wrap up a taco to take back to Harry. The room service food can’t be as good as this.”

“You’re a good friend.” Cruz seemed hungry too, and for a while, they ate in silence. Finally, he sat back a bit and lifted his water bottle in toast. “To old friends reconnecting.”

Lei tapped her bottle against his.

They drank.

“Harry and I have kept in touch over the years—not much, just a text here and there, but enough to know what’s going on in each other’s lives,” Cruz said. “How did you two find each other again?”

“Harry showed up in my station as a detective. I was pretty surprised.”

Cruz smiled. “I bet.”

They laughed. “Yeah, she wasn’t exactly a rule follower last time we were together.” Lei began putting together another taco. “She’s a good investigator, though. We got to know each other in a hurry on another case involving her daughter.” Lei filled Cruz in on the human trafficking ring Malia had been a part of breaking. “That’s how I got to know Malia. Girl’s a natural-born detective. We figured we’d harness that rather than fight it, since she was running a school gossip blog on the sly. With Harry’s permission, I recruited her as a confidential informant.” Lei’s mouth turned down. “That’s probably how Ramirez found her—her DNA sample and fingerprints were uploaded into the system.”

“A shame, but if he’d been looking for her that hard, he’d have found her sooner or later anyway.”

“Speaking of. Why didn’t you connect with Harry sooner? She might not have freaked out so bad and called in a favor to get me out here.”

Cruz shook his head a little ruefully. “Don’t forget, I know Harry better than you do. She’s a bulldog when it comes to those she sets out to protect, and it can blind her. I was putting off connecting because I was tapping on my confidential informant network. I kept her updated by phone; that’s how she knew what she told you about Ramirez.” He took a few more bites of his meal. “Ramirez is a powerful man with many contacts and business interests in the city. He inherited his empire from his father, and as far as I can tell, has been making an effort to go legitimate, funneling drug money into real estate and investments, gradually easing away from the trade. But the trouble with that is that someone younger, hungrier, and more violent is always nipping at your heels and trying to take over, and that’s the case with Ramirez. He has a foot in both worlds, but it might get him killed.” Cruz sipped his water. “Drug lords seldom make old bones.”

“You sound almost sorry about that.”

Cruz shrugged. “My job as a CIA agent is to gather information that’s useful to the United States’ interests. Hope this doesn’t shock you, but we’re not averse to the drug trade—it’s an economy, a source of money and leverage, and there are ways it benefits us. The ‘war on drugs’ has become more of a truce in the last ten years—we turn a blind eye if they don’t rub it in our faces.”

“I’m not surprised to hear that, but it’s disappointing,” Lei said. “With the ongoing efforts to legalize marijuana in Hawaii, turning a blind eye seems to be the mood of the moment. Time will tell if that’s a good move.” She finished and set aside her plate. “I take it you have a plan, and it doesn’t involve Harry.”

His eyes were black onyx in the dim light. “Yes. Harry’s too close to this for what I have in mind.”

* * *

Lei wrapped her arms around Cruz’s muscular midsection, her face turned sideways and tucked into the wind shadow below his shoulder as the CIA operative drove the motorcycle down a rutted road far from the heart of the city. The helmet she wore helped to muffle some of the noisy engine roar, but the nubby tires rattled her teeth together.

They had already been riding for what seemed like hours. Initial anxiety, both at the mode of transport and physical closeness to Cruz, had faded to a sort of sensory overwhelm. Every thought Lei might have had was blasted away by sheer noise and the inability to do anything but hang on and hope for the journey to end.

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