Operation London (11 page)

"How do you know him so well?" she asked breathless with a panic she couldn't place.

"That's the past and I won't revisit that for anyone. I'm warning you, if I catch you near him, I'll kill him." 

Ava knew there was some kind of history between Miguel and Angel that wasn't anywhere near being resolved
. She also knew that the words Miguel had just uttered had been a vow. If she got into trouble with Angel and Miguel killed him, he would go back to prison, back to the hell of his past.

She couldn't believe that he had been so clearly willing to give up his freedom and his second chance to see her protected.

Wordlessly, she took his hand and led him out of the dance hall, closing the door on the applause and music. They entered the dark night together, silently. The ride to her car was quiet, as was her ride home. Life with Miguel was going to be more complicated than she had ever imagined. She could only pray she was ready for it.

Miguel couldn't go to sleep after he dropped Ava at her house
. He had walked her to her door and wrapped his arms around her tight, as if he could ward off the evil forces that Angel had flooded their night with. Their good-bye kiss had been passionate, long and far too arousing to end the night. Unfortunately for Miguel just seeing Ava in her workout clothes was far more arousing than he could stand.

He groaned with the new complications of his relationship
. Just when his life was getting back on track, just when he was sure that he could close the door on his past, everything sprang up to haunt him. Lying on his back, he reached under the bed and took out a metal lockbox. He always kept the key on a necklace, right next to the St. Jude his mother had given him before he went to prison. Inside the box were mementos of a life he didn't want to remember, but had to force himself to examine. His worst nightmare was that he would one day slip back into the life he had escaped.

Unlocking the box he paused before lifting the lid, his long fingers tensed on the cool metal
. Flipping the lid open, took out a black bandana. Joey. Closing his eyes tight, he tried to keep out images of his best friend from childhood, lying on the ground in a darkening pool of his own blood. Miguel had run away, hid from the cops in the basement of an apartment complex until he could go back to his friend, already dead.

Joey's death had started the chaos, put the entire gang into shock
. For all their swagger and bravado, they were mostly just a bunch of guys with no goals and too much time on their hands. There was always violence, always fistfights and even knife fights, but never full out murder. Until Angel.

Angel had swept down upon their tiny group and taken the reins, displacing Joey and Miguel and forcing the gang into darker and darker territory
. Not that it wouldn't have happened eventually. But it might have taken longer, long enough for Joey to have lived to see eighteen.

Miguel fingered the long blade of his knife, engraved with his name and an etching of the Holy Virgin
. There was the platinum medallion studded with diamonds, a showy piece of jewelry for him to wear once he had established himself as a major heroine dealer, bringing in a good amount of money for his boys. There were also pictures, blurry Polaroids of beer parties and young men and women twisting their fingers into the old signs that had meant so much.

Joey's death had catapulted the gang into full war, and in the midst of everything Miguel had been busted for dealing
. His years in prison, as horrifying as they were, had been his salvation. By the time he got out most of his friends were dead or incarcerated, and he was able to slip out of LA, get the tattoos removed, go back to school. He had looked ahead with clear purpose, and that had let him take his second lease on life.

Then Angel had appeared out of nowhere
. They had never met, Angel had never bothered to seek Miguel out yet. He was waiting, collecting information, gaining power. Miguel could only guess that he was paying his boy back for deserting the gang. Funny that the guy with the money and the protective father was the worst gang banger of them all. Miguel and Joey and all the rest had really wanted a family, a net of security and promised safety. Everything else was secondary to them until Angel came in and changed the score.

Miguel slammed the lid of the box down and locked it, burying it once more under his bed
. Falling back on his mattress, he tried to find sleep before the dawn.

Ava woke up after a night of tossing and turning to a loud banging on her front door
. Her first thought was that Miguel had come by to see her, so she made a quick stop in the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth quickly. She was just in the process of running her fingers through her messy hair when she pulled the door open.

All of her excitement washed away
. It was not Miguel.

"Hello," said a young woman
. She was leaning against the doorframe, chewing gum with careless bravado. "I saw you dance last night and I had to come and find you."

Ava stared into her kittenish face, with its dark upturned eyes and cute bow-like mouth
. "You had to come and find me?" she finally sputtered.

"Yes," the girl said, refusing to react to Ava's obvious annoyance
. "Maybe you saw me?  Maybe you didn't. I danced last night, me and a guy."

"Oh God, you're Lucia Espino!" Ava said, and the girl looked delighted.

"So, you remembered my dance," she grinned. "I'm real good, but not like you. That's why I need lessons."

This was all happening way too fast for Ava's peace of mind
. "Why don't you come on in for a second," she offered, Miguel's warning ringing in the back of her mind with persistence. She pushed it aside for the moment, trying to focus on the girl in front of her.

"You want me to teach you to dance?" Ava asked, after she had poured them both a steaming cup of coffee.

"Not just me. Me and a bunch of my friends."

Immediately an image of Angel burst into Ava's mind.

"I'm sorry, I don't work with any men I don't know. It's a standing rule," Ava insisted, glad she had found an exit tactic.

Lucia just rolled her eyes
. "Hey, I don't know any boys who want lessons. They'll just dance with us on the weekends, like always. But my girlfriends and some cousins want to know all the proper stuff, not just what our mamas showed us at home," she laughed, cracking her pink gum between her teeth.

"I just don't think so, Lucia
. I don't even know of anywhere that would take us."

"I already asked Piper
. She said she knows you, and it's all cool with her. Also my girls and I will make it worth your time. We'll cover the rental fee and I'll give you what my dance tutor in New York wanted. And he was a real dancer. He's even got a video out," Lucia said.

Ava took a long drink of coffee
. The girl had worked out every angle. It wouldn't hurt to bring in some extra cash. Ava was well aware of the wages private instructors demanded, having lived with dance all around her since her youth, and it would put a fair chunk of change directly into her pocket. And being closer to Lucia would clear up a lot of her more pressing questions concerning Marie. All in all it seemed like Ava was going to have to buckle down and hear Lucia out.

"When would you like to meet?" Ava asked in what she imagined was her most casual voice.

A grin spread over Lucia's very pretty face. "How about Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights?  So we don't get into the weekend," she added when she noticed Ava's surprise.

"All right, that's fine with me
. What time from?" Ava asked.

"That's your call, boss," Lucia said, sipping her coffee daintily.

"I'd say five to seven should be fine."

Lucia stood up and stuck out her small, manicured hand
. Ava couldn't help but notice a substantial display of gold and gems on her tiny fingers. Up close it was also obvious that the girl's clothing was tailored, designer labeled and the newest style. They shook and Lucia handed Ava a check.

"A down payment, so you know we keep our word," the girl said before she gave a small wave and walked outside
.

Ava followed her to the door, glancing at the check in stunned silence
. They were certainly serious about the dance lessons. The check would cover rent and utilities for at least two months. Lucia's long, wavy hair swished back and forth as she walked down Ava's driveway in her red platform sandals. She put a pair of very Hollywood sunglasses before slipping into her silver Spider and peeling onto the road.

Once she was gone, Ava got into the shower and thought about her most recent entanglement with the Espino clan
. There was something not quite right about them, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Stepping out of the hot torrent, Ava decided to conduct a little research from home to get a better idea about what exactly she was up against.

Working for Division Lynx had equipped her with techniques and skills that could never be taken away, and she treasured them
. But it had also left her with the more tangible gift of some very high-class equipment. In the world of secret agents and deep government secrets, the computers and gadgets Ava had held on to were mere child's play, older dinosaurs of an industry that remade itself every few days. Even so, what she had on her desk was superior to anything civilians would see for at least five years and tens of thousands of dollars.

Sitting in her towel, she kept her back to the sun so she could let her long hair dry while she worked
. She knew it would be ludicrous to keep this private investigation going on her own. Her best bet would be to gather just enough information so that she could entice Marie Deltore's parents to hire her privately. If she could crack this case maybe she could make enough of a name for herself to go into private investigative work full time.

The thought was strangely titillating
. She had always been a good agent in her own way, but rules and authority were never her thing. Once she had been dropped from Lynx she had felt like her world was gone. But she had gravitated back to the game just as naturally as if she had always been cut out for it. How odd that the thought had never really crossed her mind.

The more she thought about it, the more excited she became
. She would need some new gear and maybe a small team of intimates for anything she couldn't handle, but all in all she could have the whole thing off the ground in days.

In all the excitement over plotting out her fresh new future, she had forgotten to pay attention to her present
. On the screen before her blinked the log in screen for the Houston PD.

Plugging in a dummy code she was able to buy herself enough time to hack into the mainframe and open up the selective files
. The first one she went for was the missing persons' file.

It would have been easy enough to have activated the public web page, but the information she was looking for was a little more delicate than what the police would want the public to know
. Like little Miss Deltore's criminal history. It seemed that sixteen years had been enough time for Marie to rack up two DWI's, one reckless driving, five speeding tickets and four months on SLAP every weekend for possession and intent to sell. All the public was allowed to see was the sunny photograph of the pretty, smiling girl. Ava felt mixed emotions when she noted that the girl in the pictures was wearing wire-rimmed glasses. Based on the photograph alone, anyone would have thought they were looking at an innocent young girl. But Jackson had alluded to her underside, and that was what interested Ava.

Strangely enough Ava found nothing about a private reward from the parents
. In almost every missing persons case involving a minor the family came up with a sum of money to offer as a reward for information. Maybe there were money problems within the family?

Ava looked into Marie's background information and found that her mother was a Josephine Deltore, no father listed
. Josephine had remarried and was currently Mrs. Wesley Conway, local Houston oil tycoon. So they were far from having money problems. On the contrary, they had more than enough to have hired out the National Guard to search for their precious daughter. Unless she wasn't so precious. Ava noticed right away that the girl did not have her step-father's last name. She wondered if that was Marie's call or Wesley's.  

In any case, Ava would need more information before she approached either parent
. Marie had been attending Lincoln Academy when she turned up missing. That would be the first place to look.

Ava was about to turn off her computer when something stopped her
. Biting her lip, she typed in the code to the LAPD records department and searched under Angel Espino. Again, all she could think of was Miguel, warning her that she was treading on thin ice. But she was already in over her head. And she always followed the ancient advice, "Know your enemy." 

The computer flickered through hundreds of mug shots before settling on a grimy black and white of Angel Espino
. Unlike so many of the other criminals, he was smiling cockily. Reading his record Ava realized why.