Holding The Line

Alan lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “God knows. He majored in American History, apparently. I never saw any evidence of studying of any description, unless you count studying the bottom of beer bottles.”

Beth smiled. “Sounds about right for college.”

“What about your little girl?”

“Alejandra. She is great. Today was her first day of kindergarten.”

Alan sighed. “Already? It passes so quickly. You blink and they are getting their driver’s licence. Too fast.”

Beth’s smile faded. She already knew how right he was. The last four years had been a blur. Luckily her sister had been there to document everything with her camera. At least Beth could look back and pretend to recall everything. A lot of it had been spent in survival mode; first was the shock of Torres leaving and then it had been dealing with her mom. Her Alzheimer’s had progressed quickly over the last few years. Beth pushed thoughts of her mom to the back of her mind. She could only deal with one horrible thing at a time.

“I’m here to formally identify a body.”

One bushy eyebrow shot up above his glasses. “Are you here in a professional or personal capacity?” He asked because formal identifications were usually done by family not Law Enforcement.

Beth glanced at the silver wall of bodies. “Neither…both. He was my agent. I recruited him six years ago. I haven’t seen him in four years but he has no living family.” The answer was longwinded and unnecessary. She could have simply said she was here in a professional capacity. But nothing about her time with Torres was professional. It seemed an insult to his memory to pretend it was. Why she still cared was beyond her, he had been gone for a long time.

“Name?” Alan asked. He sat down his coffee and thumbed through the papers on his clipboard.

“Armando Torres.” The name barely made it past her lips. She never called him by his Christian name. He was always Torres to her, whether she was swearing at him or calling his name in bed, he was always just Torres. Her Torres…her scary, scarred, tattooed man. She bit her lip to keep the memory from hitting her. She had pushed it down for years. She wasn’t about to let it come out now. It shouldn’t hurt as much as it did to think about him. It shouldn’t still sting. She shouldn’t still cry.

Alan’s eyes narrowed. “It is just a torso?”

Beth’s breath caught. For an instant she lost the distance she’d fought so hard to achieve. For a second this was all real. She would let it be real later. She just needed to get through this. She nodded. “That’s fine. I don’t need his head to make an identification.”

Beth closed her eyes. She knew his body as well as she knew her own. She was losing ground again, getting closer again to reality. She bit into her lip again until she tasted the metallic tang of blood.

Alan opened the door and pulled out the body, or what was left of it. Beth closed her eyes again. She sucked in as much air as her lungs would allow, she kept forcing down oxygen until her chest burned. She counted to ten. He is a detail in your life. Just a detail…

She opened her eyes and looked down at the stump. That was all there was left, a stump, no head, no arms, no legs. Everything from the hips down had been removed. Her gaze ran the expanse of his chest, traced the lines of the Santa Muerta tattoo that covered the left side of his body.

Her eyes narrowed. The skin was smooth, too smooth. Before she could think she reached out and ran her hand along the margins of his chest, between his ribs. That is where the scars had been the most pronounced. Torres’ skin was knotted and raised.

This skin was smooth.

She pulled her hand away. Suddenly she realized she was touching a dead body. From the corner of her eye she could see Alan staring at her. She turned to face him.

She considered her words carefully. “The tattoo is consistent with Armando Torres,” she lied. Her eyes lowered again to the body.

It wasn’t Torres.

Someone wanted the world to believe it was. Someone had gone to the trouble of tattooing a dead body to make it look like Torres – at least she hoped the person was already dead before he was chosen – but they could not replicate the burns.

“I need to go,” Beth said. She needed to get out the there. She glanced down at her watch. She needed to speak to Jessop and figure out what in the hell was going on. Shit, she needed to pick up Alejandra. She wouldn’t be able to speak to him today.

Beth threw her purse onto the passenger seat. She needed to speak to Jessop tonight. This wouldn’t wait until tomorrow. She dialed her sister’s number. Maybe Paige could pick up Alejandra. Having her sister in Texas was a godsend, not only for the co-parenting, but also because her baby sister kept her sane like no other.

“Oakdale Veterinary, Yvonne speaking.”

“Hi, Yvonne, this is Beth. Is my sister free to talk?” Beth asked the receptionist.

“Good timing. She just got out of surgery.”

Yvonne transferred her call through to the operating room.

“Hey, what’s up?” her sister’s bright voice answered.

There was a loaded question. Hell if she knew what was up, but she was going to figure is out. Beth pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Can you pick up Alejandra from school? Something has come up at work.”

Paige didn’t hesitate and she didn’t ask any questions. “Yeah sure.”

Beth breathed a sigh of relief. When it really mattered, Paige never asked questions, she just manned up. God she loved her sister for that. She couldn’t do it without her, raise a child, do her job, keep up the appearance of sanity. “I don’t know what time I’ll be home. Kiss Ally for me, if I don’t get there before she goes to sleep.”

A sharp pain stabbed at her conscious. It wouldn’t be the first time Paige put Alejandra to bed, and she did not kid herself that it would be the last.

Chapter Four

Beth’s hands were wet with perspiration by the time she made it to Larry Jessop’s house. Her boss wasn’t at work and he wasn’t returning her phone calls. She had worked under Jessop for over a decade and he had never taken time off work. Something was going on. She stood at Jessop’s door just long enough to rein in her emotions. Too many thoughts were racing through her mind to think clearly. She needed to get to the bottom of this.

Andrea Jessop opened the door. Jessop’s wife was beautiful in the South Texas way Beth had grown to appreciate: big frosted-tip hair that defied humidity, and lips that were never without gloss. “Hi, Beth.” Andrea smiled at her. “What brings you round these parts?” Andrea reached out and embraced Beth, genuinely happy to see her.

When Beth had first moved to Texas, Andrea Jessop had done her best to make her feel comfortable, inviting her over for Sunday dinners and setting her up on blind dates. For a long time, the Jessops were the closest thing Beth had to family in Texas.

“Can I get you some ice tea?”

Beth shook her head. “No thank you. I really need to speak to Larry. Is he here?”

Andrea nodded. “He’s in his office. Go ahead and go in. Holler if you need anything.”

Beth didn’t wait to be shown to his office.

Jessop was sitting behind a large mahogany desk, reading over something. Above his head was a stag, permanently staring into the distance with its glass eyes. Like most offices in Texas, the walls were covered in the busts of animals. The taxidermy business was alive and kicking in the red states.

Jessop was nearing retirement but he still started every morning with an eight-mile run and it showed in his trim physique. There was no middle-age spread for Larry Jessop, the only thing that betrayed his age were the lines that fanned around his eyes and the silver streaks in his hair.

Beth skipped the pleasantries. “This morning’s brief, about a captured agent.” She glossed over the part where she missed the morning meeting because she was running late, it wasn’t pertinent to the conversation and she more than made up her hours. “Where did the intel come from?” she demanded.

Jessop looked up from the pile of papers on his desk. Pale blue eyes stared back at her. “What?” he asked nonchalantly. He had a good poker face, a bit too good. He knew exactly what she was talking about.

Beth’s back straightened. “My agent who infiltrated Los Zetas. There was a report that he was – is dead. Where did it come from?”

For a long moment she held his stare. He knew something. Damn it, she wasn’t going to be sidelined, not again, and not on this. She had been shut out once before when the shit hit the fan in Culiacan, when Alejandra’s family had been ambushed. Five people had been murdered and they needed someone to blame.

Jessop pushed back from his desk and stood up, moving closer to her. Beth shook her head. Next he would gently put his arm on the small of her back and guide her to the door, knowing the conversation would naturally be briefer and less intense at the threshold of a room.

She anticipated his movement and sat down in the chair opposite his desk. He was good, but so was she. She had been in the game long enough to know when she was being played.

“My agent,” she said again. “Where did you get your intel?”

Jessop glanced at the door. He took a deep breath and let it out with an audible sigh. “It’s hard being a single parent.” For the first time she saw a crack in the façade. The muscle in his jaw twitched. It was over in a second, he was probably unaware that he did it, but it was there. “But if you make it to work on time you won’t need replays.”

Beth bit her lip to keep from saying anything. He was trying to hit a nerve to knock her off her stride. Later she would remind him that she still put in more hours than anyone else on the team, motherhood had not changed that. But right now she was going to get answers. “Who wrote the report?”

Jessop looked from her to the door but didn’t say anything.

Beth let out a stream of air. “I need a copy of the report.” She was done playing games.

“Beth. Torres was a good asset and I know you were…friends.”

Beth’s heart pounced against her ribs at the mention of his name. Everyone in the office knew she and Torres were more than friends. Jessop couldn’t put her off by implying that motherhood made her work suffer so he was throwing her relationship with Torres in her face. But she would throw it right back. “Yeah, Torres and I were close. Really close actually, but you already know that. We were close enough for me to know his body. Even without a head. I would know his body.” Her eyes narrowed on Jessop who was still standing above her.

For a long moment, silence reigned. “Did you identify it as Torres?” There was a hitch of concern in his deep voice.

“Of course I did. I knew someone wanted me to think he was dead. I’ve been in this game a long time.” Too long.

Jessop let go of the breath he was holding. He gave her a hard look as if he was trying to decide what to say. Again he looked from her to the door, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. “He’s alive. No one in Administration knows and we need to keep it that way.”

Beth’s breath caught in her throat. He really was alive. Her heart raced, elation pushing its already frantic pace to a dangerous level. He was alive. Gratitude and relief washed over her. He was alive. Torres was alive.

Her mind swam with questions. Where was he? Where had he been for the last four years? Why did he leave?

As if Jessop was reading her mind he added, “Someone set him up. Four years ago he got a message supposedly from me, ordering him back to Colombia to search Martinez’ apartment. Someone wanted him gone.”

Martinez was a name she hadn’t heard in a while. Javier Martinez was the reason Torres had joined the DEA and infiltrated Los Zetas. Martinez was a member of a rival gang, Los Treintas. He had shot Torres and murdered Torres’ best friend Moses Arcila.

Beth’s throat tightened. “Four years?” she murmured. Four years ago, Torres was meant to meet her. They were going to leave the DEA together and start a new life…but he never turned up. He just left. No calls. No explanation. Nothing.

“No.” Beth shook her head. It didn’t make sense.

Jessop nodded. “He was ambushed in Bogotá and was held somewhere in the jungle. Looks like near Salento but still not certain exactly where. Won’t know for sure unless we get him back down there and even then there is a lot of virgin land. Plenty of places to hide.”

Beth shook her head again. “No. No agents have been captured. There haven’t been any ransoms or negotiations.” She would know. She was the head of the damn task force. If her agent had been captured, she would know.

“No, there were none. He wasn’t ransomed. No one made contact. Not clear if Los Treintas know he is DEA. That’s one of the reasons we need the world to think he is dead.”

“That doesn’t make sense. The Treintas don’t take prisoners. That’s FARC’s MO. Treintas don’t do that.” Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) also known as: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia routinely took prisoners, kidnapping and ransoms helped fund their regime.

“Apparently they do.”

“No,” Beth said. Anger and frustration coiled in her along with emotions she had long ago abandoned like regret and betrayal. Her mouth was suddenly dry. “I don’t believe it. Is this the shit he is spouting to cover where he was for the last four years?” This didn’t make sense, none of it.

Jessop shook his head. “No Beth, I’ve seen him. I went to the consulate in Bogotá myself. I saw him when he was still in the hospital. Some sick sons of bitches held him for the last four years. I’m still amazed he is alive. And Christ that he was able to escape…” Jessop’s voice trailed off.

“No,” Beth said again. She shook her head; too many questions were pounding against her temples for her to be able to think properly. “No,” she said again. “When? How long have you known?” She had seen a corpse that had been tattooed to look like Torres. Some time had been put into this operation. Jessop didn’t just find out today.

“Eight days.”

Beth’s eyes widened. “You have known Torres is alive for eight days and you didn’t tell me. And then you let me think he was dead. You let me identify a corpse.”

“No one can know he is alive until we find out who sent him to Colombia.”

“Eight days,” Beth repeated. She wasn’t going to let this go. “You have known for eight days. Why didn’t you tell me? He was my agent. I trained him.”

Jessop’s watery blue eyes trained on her. “The email came from your computer.”

Beth gasped. She thought she was done being surprised about things where Torres was concerned, but clearly she was wrong. She drummed her fingers along the solid surface of the table while she did her best to push down her anger. “You think I sent the email?” She tried to keep the edge from her voice but she couldn’t.

Jessop took a deep breath and then let is out slowly before he answered. “It was a possibility I couldn’t ignore. I wasn’t going to tell you at all but he was adamant you had nothing to do with it.”

“He? He who?” Beth demanded but she already knew the answer.

“Torres. He insisted on you knowing. He wants to see you.”

Her heart stopped. The room suddenly felt too small, the walls were inching their way in as the ceiling dropped. Oh God, she couldn’t think. She could barely breathe. “Where is he? When will I see him?”

“He’s here. He’s in the guest house at the back of the property. You can’t see it from here. No one can know he is alive,” Jessop stressed.

Beth’s breath caught in her throat. She expected Jessop to say he was in a safe house, not say he was staying with him. Her heart raced. She tried taking deep breaths to slow its frantic pace but it pounded against her ribs like it was trying to break free.

“Do you want to see him?”

Beth opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out; her lungs burned, her lips were too dry. Did she want to see him? Oh God, did she?

Yes.

No.

She couldn’t breathe. Four years was a lifetime ago. She was a different person then. What would she say to him? In the weeks after he left, she thought about it a lot. It was all she thought about. She even wrote letters to him because it was easier to remember everything when she wrote it down. There was so much she wanted to say to him then.

But now? What was there to say? She used to want answers but now all she wanted was to be able to breathe again. For too long she had pushed the feelings down and now they were pushing back and threatening to strangle her in the process.

Her legs were leaden, holding her down in place, making it hard for her to move. Undoubtedly it was her body’s way of protecting her. Jessop led her outside, down a steep hill, past a barn and a field with three horses, to a tiny cottage. It was far enough away from the main house to provide complete seclusion. She doubted Andrea even knew they were hosting an undercover agent on their property.

Beth couldn’t hear what Jessop was saying. She saw his mouth moving but all she could hear was the pounding of blood in her ears. She ran a hand over her hair. Suddenly she felt self-conscious, about the way she looked, about her life since Torres, about the choices she had made since he left. She stopped just short of the door.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Jessop said putting himself between her and the black lacquered door. “Unless you want me to come in.” A paternal concern laced to his tone. Like most relationships in her life, the dynamic was complicated. As her boss, Jessop was ruthless, but there were times like now when his guard slipped, and he acted more like a protective father.

Mindlessly Beth shook her head. “No. Its fine.”

“Are you sure? I can wait outside. Take your time. I don’t mind.” Concern knitted his dark brows.

She shook her head again. She needed to do this alone. She watched as Jessop walked away, returning to the main house, before she turned again and stared at the door.

Torres was here. Every molecule in her body vibrated. She wanted to run. Her muscles contracted, ready to sprint, as soon as she chose the direction. That was the question. Did she want to run towards Torres or away? Her heart screamed at her to leave and never look back. She would be an idiot to invite that level of pain back into her life.

But her head needed answers. She had a million questions. Where were you? What happened? What was it like? How did they treat you? How did you get out?

Why did you leave me?

Would she go with her head or her heart? That was always the question when it came to Torres. She made the wrong choice last time and paid the price. She was still paying the price.

She closed her eyes and thought about the consequence. Her hands balled into tight fists.

Slowly she reached out and turned the handle.

She held her breath. Time slowed down until she was suspended in it like an ant caught in amber.

“Beth.” Torres’ deep voice surrounded her; she could physically feel it on her skin, warm and potent, reaching into every pore. She fought the temptation to close her eyes and give herself over to the sensation.

Torres stood up from the bench where he was sitting.

She forced herself to look at him and really see him, the man who had shattered her dreams. He looked different. His hair was long now. He always had short hair. When they first met he had a military cut but later when he joined Los Zetas he shaved his head. But now his hair was thick and long, tied at the base of his neck.

Even his clothes were different. He always wore T-shirts and jeans but now he was wearing a button-up shirt. He looked like he was on his way to a funeral or about to be arraigned. It wasn’t him. He was different. No doubt she looked different too. Older maybe, sadder…

Her gaze lowered to his broad shoulders: still strong and heavily muscled. That part was him. It was Torres, only different.

Tentatively she took a step forward. There was a raw and brutal beauty to him that inhabited a place where masculinity became intimidating. His features were too harsh to be handsome but too overpowering to be anything but. Quite simply he was the most attractive man she had ever met but she would never have the words to describe why.

She reached up and traced the scar that slashed the left side of his face from below his eye to the corner of his mouth. The skin was raised in two parallel lines. This was the face she loved. This was the face she tried to forget. The memories of the night he got the scar flooded back, the blood-soaked sheets: the way his presence had filled her bedroom. He had stepped between two gang members to prevent an attack and had been wounded in the process.

She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat.

“I cant…I just can’t…” Her knees threatened to buckle. It was too much.

Beth turned and ran.

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