Cliff Diver (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1) (31 page)

The waiter glided
by with fresh coffee. After Kurt added cream and stirred, he reached across the
table again and caught up Emilia’s hand. “I don’t want you in the middle of
their mess, either. So take a break. Come to Belize with me for a week. We can
check out this hotel together. Help me decide if I want to manage an eco-lodge
or not.”

“Is it a good
job?” Emilia asked.

Kurt nodded.
“They’re offering me 25 percent above my current salary. An actual house on the
property, not just an apartment. And a new car.”

“Madre de Dios,”
Emilia said, stunned. He was talking about a small fortune, plus a free house
and car. Kurt already made a hundred times what she did, enough to travel
anywhere he liked and buy the latest electronics. He didn’t pay any rent or
utilities for his small apartment on the fifth floor of the Palacio Réal and
ate most of his meals at the hotel for free. The money he made paid for a nice
car and expensive clothes like the perfectly tailored gray suit he had on right
now. Emilia’s entire outfit was worth less than just his silk tie. Tonight’s
dinner would cost him more than she made in a month and he probably wouldn’t
think twice about it. Spend that much tomorrow, too, if he felt like it.

Emilia swallowed
hard. “That’s a lot.”

“It is if money’s the
most important thing,” Kurt said with a shrug.

“Isn’t it?” Emilia
asked. She and her mother had been so poor that Emilia had spent much of her
childhood selling guava candy to tourists and she knew she carried the scars of
too many days spent frightened and hungry in the hot sun.

Kurt leaned
forward, his coffee forgotten and his ocean-colored eyes bright with intensity.
“What should be the most important thing, Em? Let’s talk about that.”

The perfect
evening was sliding away and so was Kurt. She should have known it wouldn’t
last, that their time together, punctuated by the guilty pleasure of half a
dozen episodes of phenomenal sex in his apartment at the Palacio Réal, was
never going to be anything more than something to look back upon with wistful
longing. Kurt was an athletic, exciting lover but more importantly he was a
fully formed adult with a range of life experiences she’d never encountered
before. He opened her mind to new ways of thinking about her job, leadership,
connecting with people.

He was confident
about what he wanted from her and had pushed fast for a level of intimacy that
was new and scary. Faced with the unknown coming at her hard and fast, Emilia
had simply sidestepped, never staying the night or making promises. He knew
what she was doing--she wasn’t that clever--and so he would simply move on.
Find a better life that didn’t include a skittish girlfriend and having to
speak Spanish all the time. He was from New York, a former Marine in his
country’s armed forces who had fought in wars and lived in a dozen other places
before making hotel management his career. There was nothing holding him to
Acapulco and she’d jumped into his arms without thinking about that aspect of
his life at all.

“I can’t help you
make a decision,” Emilia said sadly. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking you to
come to Belize for a couple of days.” Kurt’s voice wasn’t loud but it had lost
its usual ease.

“This isn’t a good
time.” Emilia slumped back in her seat. “All this paperwork from the El Pharaoh
bust. And there’s my mother . . .” She let her voice trail off.

Kurt searched her
face. Emilia looked away. She could just see Obregon’s jacketed elbow. The rest
of the union chief and all of the mayor were hidden by the curved wall of the
alcove where they were sitting. In the far corner, the members of Carlota’s
security detail were engrossed in their own dinners.

“Right,” Kurt
said. He tossed down his napkin, caught the waiter’s eye and mimed writing a
check.

When the financial
transaction was over Kurt stood and pulled out Emilia’s chair for her. They
made their way to the entrance where Serverio again embraced Kurt and kissed
Emilia’s hand. “And how is it, Kurt, that you managed to have this beautiful
woman consent to be seen in public with you?” Serverio asked.

He was charming
and Emilia couldn’t help but smile even as she wondered if his attitude would
have been different if Kurt had introduced her at the beginning of the evening as
Detective Emilia Cruz. Many people had a bad reaction when they found out she
was a police officer.

“One of my luckier
days,” Kurt said to Serverio.

“And your dinner
was satisfactory?”

“Dinner was
exceptional, Jorge,” Kurt said. “Both the service and the food.”

“Good, good,”
Serverio said. “So now you are in need of some entertainment, no? The Hotel
Soledad has a very nice evening show. I know because they take business away
from me.” He checked his watch and smiled. “If you hurry you can catch it now. Or
join me at the Polo Lounge. I always split my evenings between my two
restaurants.”

“What do you say,
Em?” Kurt asked. “A little music? Or drinks at the Polo Lounge?”

“Maybe just a
stroll,” Emilia said.

The two men shook
hands again and Kurt and Emilia walked out.

They were in the
old part of Acapulco, a few streets south of the modern downtown area where a
white ring of hotels and condos encircled the most picturesque bay in the
world. The El Tigre restaurant fronted a small street near the famous Plaza las
Glorietas in which tourists gathered several times a day to watch the famous
divers hurl themselves off the cliffs at La Quebrada and plunge into the
rock-strewn water below. The building which housed El Tigre had been renovated
to accommodate the restaurant. The result was a blend of traditional Spanish
architecture and modern glass panels that allowed for a stunning view of the
cliffs.

Emilia clutched
her Sunday purse with both hands as they slowly walked through El Tigre’s front
courtyard. The space was set up as an outdoor bar, the décor leaning heavily on
bamboo, fairy lights and potted palms in giant talavera pots. A soundtrack of
popular guitar music was a pleasant accompaniment to the happy chatter of the
dozen or so people sitting at the bar. They crossed the courtyard but once down
the stone steps that led to the street, Emilia could take the tension no
longer. She stopped walking and stood her ground on the uneven sidewalk. “Are
we over?” she asked.

“Over?” Kurt
echoed. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re restless.
You want to get out of Acapulco,” Emilia said. “You said so yourself.”

“I said I’ve been
in Acapulco longer than anyplace else.”

The lights of El
Tigre’s courtyard were behind them and Kurt’s face was lost in shadow. The
evening traffic was light. A car sped through the intersection half a block
away. The growl of its engine faded quickly.

“You also told the
manager that the food was excellent,” Emilia said.

“It was
excellent,” Kurt said. The quiet confidence that always surrounded him, and
which Emilia so admired, was accentuated by the deliberate way he said the
three words. “There just wasn’t enough of it. What are you getting at?”

“I live here,”
Emilia blurted, like an idiot who didn’t have any experience waiting out
witnesses or interrogating a suspect or tricking someone into an admission of
guilt. “I’m not going anywhere. So if you’re heading off to Belize, let me know
now. I’m an adult, not some
estupida
chica who needs you to string
her--.”

A noise like a
freight train crashed through her words and an invisible wave walloped the air.
Emilia instinctively threw out her hands to break her fall as the sidewalk
heaved beneath her feet. Suddenly Kurt’s arm was across her shoulders, pushing
her head down and curling her against the pavement. His body shielded hers as
heat raged around them and debris rained down. Emilia choked as the air filled
with smoke and dust. Bile surged into her throat, tasting unpleasantly of
overpriced caviar.

One last thing
. . .

When you move to
the next page, Kindle will give you the opportunity to rate the book and share
your thoughts through an automatic feed to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
If you enjoyed CLIFF DIVER and think others will, too, your input would be
greatly appreciated.

If you would like
to recommend this book to other readers looking for a new mystery series,
please consider posting a review on Amazon. Just click
here
to go directly to my author
page where you can follow the links to post a review of CLIFF DIVER.

To keep updated with exclusive excerpts, sales alerts,
and book release news, plus get a free copy of THE EMILIA CRUZ COOKBOOK: 7
Mexican Recipes from the Mystery Series,
please
click here to go to my website and subscribe
. Once you confirm your
email, you’ll be directed to the cookbook download page. Enjoy!

Thank you and
happy reading.

All the best,
Carmen