With his heart cracking in two, he’d met her accusing stare. It had held equal shares of pain and anger, and he’d felt both just as deeply. “I couldn’t tell you, Lena. Not this time.”
She’d looked as if she wanted to believe him, but a moment later she’d closed her expression. “Then we have nothing more to discuss.” Pulling off the diamond he’d given her, she’d handed him the ring and turned away. “Please leave.”
He’d done what she asked because he hadn’t had another choice. And he still didn’t. To begin with, she would never believe him, and if she did accept his suspicions—by some miracle—it would almost be worse. The news would completely destroy her.
Lena’s father had arranged Mateo Aznar’s death. He’d wanted to kill Andres, as well.
Andres had had his suspicions before the wedding, but for Lena’s sake, he’d kept them to himself. He’d waited and watched, collected the tiny scraps of evidence he could, the main one being a local drug dealer named Pablo Escada, who had kept Phillip McKinney’s law office on retainer. The Panamanian immigrant was in the Union Correctional Institution for the moment, but he hadn’t shut down his business. Andres couldn’t prove the connection but he knew—he knew—Escada was hooked up with the Red Tide. He had to be. The organization funneled all the drugs that came through the area.
And Phillip was connected to Escada.
For months after the murder, Andres had devoted every minute of his time trying to document Phillip’s involvement, but he’d ended up with nothing. He’d been unable to find a shred of data, an iota of validation, to link the wily old attorney with the terrorists.
After a while, Andres had to let it go and accept what appeared to be the truth: things had gone terribly wrong that night and the Red Tide had acted on their own. Mateo had been wrong about the money coming from Phillip’s office.
“I brought everything that was in the folder.” Carmen’s voice held an anxious flutter. “Are you missing something?”
Andres finally heard her apologetic tone. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark at you. I’m a little preoccupied—”
“It’s okay,” she answered in an accommodating way. “I understand. Really, I do. It’s impossible to get anything done when you have to travel all the time.” She reached up and tucked a strand of dark hair behind one ear then her eyes warmed hopefully as Andres’s gaze met hers. “Would you like to work this evening? I could come to your hotel room after dinner tonight and we could finish this then.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll cover the final details right before the meeting in the morning. It’s not necessary to take you away from your kids and make you work overtime, too.”
Andres watched her hide her disappointment by turning away to fuss with some files in her hands. With her shining hair and olive skin, she had the kind of beauty for which Miami’s women were famous. Years before, she’d befriended his aunt Isabel, and the older woman, more of a mother to him than his own had been, had convinced him to hire Carmen when she’d needed a job. She was smart and ambitious, a single mom with two children she was putting through private school.
She’d finally gotten him into bed the month before.
He’d known the minute it started, he was making a big mistake. He’d tried to tell her, to back away and bow out gracefully, but she’d put her fingers across his mouth and stopped him from saying more. When her lips had left his and gone lower, he’d said nothing else, allowing her hot eyes and slow touch to comfort him. But he should never have given in. It’d been unfair to her.
Carmen started toward the front of the plane, then stopped at the bulkhead and turned, as though just remembering something. “Did you get your vest?”
He stared at her blankly. “My vest?”
“The director left a bulletproof vest for you to wear when you get off the plane. He told me he’d have my head if you weren’t wearing it when you arrived.”
Andres dismissed her words with a wave of his hand. It was a very Latin gesture; as a child, he’d seen his Cuban father make the same one a thousand times.
“I promised him,” she said.
“You shouldn’t have. They’re hot and heavy and totally useless. I never wore one when I was a cop and I’m not going to start now.” He went back to the files spread before him.
“And did the Red Tide have money on your head while you were a cop?”
“Drop it, Carmen. I don’t have the time or the patience.”
Ignoring him, she came back down the aisle and rested on the arm of the seat opposite his. “Por favor, Andres, those guys are terrorists. They’re bad—”
“They’re leftover Communists and rejects from the islands who sell drugs. Don’t be confused about this, Carmen.” He narrowed his gaze. “They’re criminals and nothing more. If I let scum like that scare me, then I don’t deserve to be in this job.”
“They’ve threatened to kill you.”
“So what? They’ve done the same before and nothing has happened. We’ve ordered security at the airport. Let the Emerald Coast SWAT team handle this.”
He turned his eyes out the window of the plane. Destin was almost in view. What would Lena say to him? How would she react after all this time?
Carmen started to argue more, but the captain’s voice came over the intercom. “Two minutes to landing, folks. Everyone buckle up.”
“I’ll get the vest for you right now.” She tried one last time. “You can slip it on before we land—”
“No.” He slammed his files shut and pulled on his seat belt. “No one’s going to be shooting at anybody. Not the Red Tide. Not anybody. Not today.”
Carmen shook her head then sat down abruptly in the seat in front of him, the sound of her own seat belt an angry click as she buckled herself in.
But Andres hardly noticed. Once again, he wasn’t thinking about his assistant or the Red Tide or even the man he’d suspected all those years ago of backing them. His thoughts were centered on the only thing he really cared about in Destin.
Lena McKinney.
The woman he’d never stopped loving.
LENA STOOD beneath the overhang of Terminal A, her eyes scanning the buildings around her as the breeze tugged at her hair and pulled on her jacket. The sky was so blue, it almost glowed. Strong winds straight from the Gulf had blown away last week’s storm clouds and now it was clear, the sunshine warming the temperature to a balmy seventy degrees, the quick change typical for Destin’s weather. A salty tang hung over the blackened tarmac, as well. The airport was blocks from the beach, but the sea was always close in Destin. Even if it wasn’t in sight, you could either hear it or smell it.
Her earphone crackled suddenly and Lena put her fingers against the small black piece of plastic all the team members wore in order to communicate with each other. The words sounded faintly in her ear. Andres’s plane would be landing within minutes.
