Holding Out for a Fairy Tale (6 page)

“Give me my keys. I’ve got to get inside.”

Ray obliged and followed the FBI agent past a two-car garage and through the front door. Inside, the house had the same open floor plan that California builders had been recreating in tightly packed suburbs for the last twenty years. The living portion of the open space was designated with lush carpet, and an updated corner kitchen was separated from the rest by a granite-topped kitchen island with a long breakfast bar. Vaulted ceilings and gigantic windows made the normal-sized living space feel huge.

“Nice place.” Ray watched Elliot for a moment, but Elliot wasn’t paying attention.

Elliot was bent over a kitchen drawer, pulling out a first aid kit and a mess of white and amber pill bottles. Ray leaned over his shoulder and watched as he fiddled with what looked like an EpiPen.

“Allergies?”

“No.” Elliot took the device and two prescription pill bottles and disappeared through a door on the other side of the kitchen.

Ray stared at the closed door for a moment, then glanced down at the open drawer. He only hesitated because he wasn’t sure how angry Elliot would be if he caught him snooping through his shit. Even if Elliot became furious, Ray figured it would be worthwhile to know what he was dealing with. Inside, he found a dozen more of the devices in a box with a prescription label calling it Imitrex. The amber pill bottles in the drawer ranged from prescription strength ibuprofen, to a full bottle of Vicodin and a full bottle of Percocet. The prescriptions were new, filled by the Naval Medical Center, and Elliot had a hell of a lot of each.

Ray shoved everything back into the drawer and slipped his phone out of his pocket. After a few minutes of research, he had a basic idea of what the injectable migraine medication Imitrex was. It was a drug intended to constrict blood vessels inside the brain, to relieve the pressure of severe migraines. It was typically used with an additional painkiller, and it worked best if taken at the first signs of a migraine. If the caliber of painkillers Elliot had been prescribed were any indication, the man’s migraines were severe.

Ray looked up the symptoms of severe migraines, trying to get a better idea of what Elliot was dealing with and how long he was going to be out of commission. The list of symptoms sounded unpleasant, but there was no solid information about how long they could last. He read a dozen different time frames, ranging from two hours to three days. Even two hours meant that there was no way Elliot would be up for tracking down Luca Garcia today. Enough pain medication might be able to dull the migraine, but it would probably also knock Elliot out for the night. Ray pulled the drawer open again, trying to match the shapes and sizes of the prescription bottles to the two Elliot had taken with him. He hoped Elliot had just taken the ibuprofen along with the Imitrex. If he had, they might stand a chance of getting something done tonight.

Noticing that nausea was one of the most prominent symptoms, and that most of the painkillers in the little drawer also tended to be hard on the stomach, Ray shucked his jacket off, tossed it onto the breakfast bar, and began to dig through Elliot’s fridge and cabinets.

Elliot Belkamp, Ray realized, ate nothing but crap.

“Pop-Tarts?” Ray groaned. “That’s just sad.” Wedged between five boxes of Pop-Tarts and Hamburger Helper, Ray found a few packets of powdered miso soup mix. He glanced into the fridge in hopes of finding some vegetables or chicken to throw into the soup, but came up empty handed. “Plain miso it is….” Ray muttered.

He heated the soup in a small pot on the stove, turned the flame down to low, and then went in search of Elliot. He knocked on the door quietly, waited for an answer that never came, and then cracked the door open. There were no lights on beyond the door, and even though the sun was still up, heavy curtains blocked out most of the light from the windows. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, then blinked until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Elliot was sitting on the end of a queen-sized bed. His jacket was gone and his button down shirt was rumpled and open to the waist. He was hunched over with his head cradled in both hands.

“Don’t start.” Elliot hissed, not looking at him. “Not now.”

Ray wanted to snap over the accusation in those words, but that was precisely what Elliot was asking him not to do. It would only make things worse. “You should eat something.” He made sure to keep his voice low and soothing. “I made some miso soup. Figured it might be easy on your stomach.”

Elliot glanced up at him but didn’t move. “You made me soup?”

“Not much choice. Everything else in your kitchen would probably just upset your stomach. If you don’t like miso, though, it’s your own damn fault for keeping it in your kitchen.”

“Stomach?”

Ray shrugged. “Painkiller… Headache… Nausea… Look, do you want the soup or not?”

Despite the way his features were contorted in pain, Elliot smirked. “You recognized the symptoms?”

“No. I looked up the medication.”

Elliot started to shake his head and grimaced. “You’re not even going to make up some kind of excuse? Apologize?”

“For making you soup? No.”

“You really are a sociopath, you know that?”

“No, I am not,” said Ray. “Having some sociopathic tendencies isn’t enough for the diagnosis. You’ve got to nail all of them.”

“Which criteria don’t you satisfy?”

“I don’t engage in criminal conduct, and I do not have a personality disorder.”

“Could have fooled me. You definitely don’t seem to see others as real people, with a basic right to privacy.”

“I wanted to help. And I wanted to know if I was dealing with a junkie going into withdrawals or something legitimate. So is that a ‘no’ to the soup?”

Elliot sighed and tipped over, his entire body curling into a ball. “Soup sounds great.”

Ray felt like shouting, declaring victory. Instead, he sighed too. “Okay. I’ll bring it in. You need anything else?”

“Water?”

“Sure.”

Ray poured the soup into a bowl, grabbed a glass of water, and returned to the room just as Elliot was slipping out of his undershirt. He stopped near the foot of the bed, letting himself stare. He told himself there wasn’t any harm in staring. Since Ray already knew he was gay, the worst that could happen would be making Elliot angry.

Elliot Belkamp was worth staring at, even if it spiked his temper. With his tightly compacted muscles and smooth skin, he was one of the few men Ray had ever thought of as beautiful. He’d tried to tell himself that was illogical, because no part of him was technically beautiful, even for a man. His features were angular. He had a narrow face that was handsome, but not striking. His body was densely muscled, but he wasn’t stacked like the bodybuilders Ray occasionally ogled at in the gym. But somehow, the slender body, sharp features, and blunt personality clicked some switch deep inside Ray’s head and turned him on every time he looked at him. He didn’t remember if it had been that way from the start, but it had become so ingrained in his mind that he couldn’t even look at Elliot without thinking about sex.

Ray left the soup on the nightstand and helped Elliot recline against a pile of pillows. He set the soup in his lap and put the glass of water on the nightstand. He hesitated for a moment and sat down on the bed beside Elliot’s legs.

Elliot took a sip of the soup and glared at him. “Delgado, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but why are you doing this?”

“Sophie Munoz… Boyfriend… Case file…” Ray shrugged and kept his gaze away from Elliot’s topless chest.

“I’m going to need a couple hours, at least, and it’s already six o’clock. Interviewing Luca Garcia isn’t going to happen tonight. Don’t you have work or something?”

Ray tried not to smile, but he couldn’t help it. “Uh, no. Two weeks of paid administrative leave. You Feds really can’t take a joke.” He shook his head seriously.

“Huh?”

“I still hear stuff from my family every now and then, although most of them know better than to come anywhere near me. What I do hear, I report to a collaborative gang task force. I don’t work gang enforcement anymore, but I keep up on what’s going on. With the Tijuana leadership all arrested, it’s not like it’s that big of a deal anymore, but…. Someone’s started a rumor that a member of the Munoz family stole a whole lot of money from the cartel and was planning to break from them. I reported it, and some uptight little twerp named Hathaway seemed to think he could treat me like an informant rather than a colleague.”

“Hathaway?” Elliot’s eyes bulged. “He’s huge….”

“Size isn’t a determining factor in being a little twerp.”

A huge grin spread across Elliot’s face, despite the pain he was in. “You were the informant he couldn’t press charges against? The one who refused protective custody a week ago? He’s been whining about that nonstop.”

“I am not an
informant
. I might not say no to short-term protection in a hotel, but I’m not going into full-blown protective custody. I’m not going to jail, and I see no point in going to go hide in some shitty east-side hotel with an FBI babysitter when there’s no risk. It’s a rumor, not solid information, and I’m not the only one who could have brought it to the task force’s attention.”

“Do you have any idea why he wanted to put you in protective custody?” Elliot gaped at him.

“Yes….” Ray drew out the word. “Didn’t I just say that? You get a bit loopy with those drugs, huh? Anyway, the rumor is that millions have gone missing from accounts used to launder money between the cartel and Alejandro Munoz’s dealers. To me, that means that one of the bankers they’re working with is really, really stupid. No one inside the family would do it, but I know a lot of people who wouldn’t mind framing Alejandro for it to get him out of the way. Apparently Agent Hathaway’s vast experience with the Munoz family leads him to think they’re going to use me telling other law enforcement agencies about it as an excuse to kill me. If that moron knew a damn thing about the Munoz family, he’d know they have all the excuses they need to kill me already.”

“What did you do to Hathaway, anyway? No one in the office who knows will talk about it, and the report is still sealed. The bomb squad submitted part of the report, though.”

Ray squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to laugh. “I did not blow anything up! This time. It’s gotten to the point where if they hear my badge number on the radio, they just show up.” He glanced up when he felt Elliot flinch, caught himself, and lowered his voice. “Sorry. Seriously, though, you play with a dry-ice bomb one time, and fuckers on the bomb squad stalk you for the rest of your career. Special Agent Hathaway tried to handcuff me and throw me into the back of an SUV. So I threw him off me. I couldn’t get leverage to throw him into the car. I had to turn to get any leverage, so he ended up spinning too. I had no idea that food cart was sitting right there. Right where it’s been every weekday afternoon between eleven and three for the last six years. He kind of knocked it over when he ran into it.”

Elliot took a long sip of soup and leaned back, shutting his eyes. “I thought he was exaggerating about the informant in this case being a pain in the ass.”

Ray let his palm slip over Elliot’s knee and studied his face, trying to gauge his reaction. If the pained grimace on Elliot’s face was any kind of hint, he didn’t even notice. “
This
case?” Ray whispered. “It’s the same case. You think there’s a connection between Sophie disappearing and the rumor about the money.”

“Do I?” Elliot chuckled.

Ray watched the way his head rolled to the side, then slowly righted itself. “Loopy. You’re adorable when you’re loopy.”

Elliot’s gaze seemed to lose focus for a moment, then locked on to his eyes. “I don’t know.” His tone dropped low. “Is there a connection between Sophie Munoz vanishing and millions of dollars vanishing from illicit accounts controlled by her big brother?”

“So you think she stole the money, and she’s trying to disappear.” As much as Ray hated saying that out loud, it made sense. Sophie hadn’t been taken from her dorm room, she had packed her things and left. And Alejandro wanted to find her badly enough to risk looking for her right under an FBI investigation—or rather, he wanted to find her badly enough to con Ray into looking for her. He’d been wondering why Alejandro was suddenly so worried over the fate of a sibling he openly detested.

Ray couldn’t assume Alejandro’s motives were normal, because they never were. If the rumors were true, he’d lost a lot of money, and the Tijuana drug cartel was going to expect him to get it back. If he had that much at stake, he might be inclined to forget about flesh and blood ties altogether. If Alejandro suspected his sister stole that money from him, Ray had no choice but to assume that if Alejandro found her first, he’d kill her.

“I really hope you’re wrong,” said Ray.

Elliot shook his head, the motion exaggerated and slow, as the painkiller made him groggy. “Been following the money, tracing electronic funds transfers since your report came through the system last week. None of the funds have stopped moving yet, and our guys haven’t even said how much money is involved. But they traced it back to an IP address at the UCSD campus. You really think it’s a coincidence?”

“I….” Ray didn’t think it was a coincidence. “I’m a cynical bastard. I want it to be a coincidence, but it’s a bit much. She told me she wanted to go into federal law enforcement. She’d throw away her chance if she got involved with something like this.”

“She got turned down. Her brothers, and father, and uncles came up on a standard background check. It was about six months ago. Right before she hooked up with this Luca Garcia, if her professor’s account of things is right.”

“Two months before the rumors about someone draining those accounts started running around.” Ray nodded to himself. “Well, fuck. He played me.”

“Who?”

Ray plastered a reassuring smile on his face, and since Elliot seemed to be too high to object, squeezed his knee a little. “Don’t worry about it.” Ray waited to see if Elliot was going to shove his hand away. Ray swallowed hard when Elliot didn’t get angry. “Hey, since you’re stoned, can I ask you a question?”