Traitor, The by Jo Robertson Page B

Rafe. He was probably one of the good
guys. And because they hadn't really ... well, hadn't really had sex, per
se. Per se, lawyer talk. She shook her head. She was an idiot.
    Somehow their encounter seemed unfinished and in the end she
left no note at all. She left Rafe's apartment, pushing the button to latch the
front door. She scarcely had time to make it home to change for her eleven o'clock
meeting with the bull-headed DEA agent.
    The cabbie dropped Bella in front of her mother's modest
three-bedroom house in Riverside. If God were really on Bella's side, Mama
wouldn't even hear her sneak in. Sometimes her mother stayed up so late at
night watching her Spanish soaps that she slept until ten or later the next
morning. No such luck today.
    Orotea Torres sat upright on the floral-covered sofa that
faced the entryway of the small house. Her arms gripped each other tightly
across her ample bosom, and Bella knew without seeing the grim look on Mama's
face that she was mad. Great! Her sisters had wheedled her into going out and
then abandoned her to face their mother's strict Catholic questioning.
    "What? Have I worked so hard to raise a daughter only
to see her sneak into the house like a thief after being out all night?" Mama's
lips were a thin, hard line and her eyebrows were a jagged carving across her
forehead. Her spine was as straight as a rod, her feet barely touched the
carpet, and her plain cotton housedress smoothed modestly over her knees.
    "Mama," Bella began before she was interrupted by
the simultaneous opening and closing of both the front and back doors to the
house.
    Consuelo entered on a rush of words from the front entry. "Bella,
why did you leave without telling me this morning?" she chided. "I
wanted to prepare your breakfast."
    Anita scurried from the kitchen, throwing off her coat and
tossing it over the back of the sofa. "Hey, I thought we were meeting at
the coffee shop for breakfast." She paused and looked from Connie to Bella
and back, her eyes like saucers at the sight of her damp red dress.
    "Nita, if your brain had any more holes in it, I could
use it as a sieve," Connie said. "At my place. We were supposed to
have breakfast at my apartment, not the coffee shop. How could you forget?"
    "Sorry," Anita muttered, for once not putting her
foot in her big mouth.
    Mama eyed the three of them suspiciously. "Humph. And
you don't have decent clothes to lend your baby sister so she has to dress like
this in the light of day?" She paused and shook her head. "Well, I
will prepare breakfast for all of you then."
    She rose heavily from the sofa and gestured toward the
kitchen, herding them like little chicks. "Come, come. You can tell me all
about your big night over huevos y jámon."
    Thank you, Bella mouthed to Consuelo when her mother turned
toward the kitchen sink. She eyed her mother's back as she washed her hands and
dried them on a colorful hand towel. Bella couldn't face Mama's censure. The
facts were awful enough. She'd gone home with a virtual stranger and spent the
night with him. She was too busy kicking herself to take on Mama's disapproval,
too.
    Consuelo lifted her palms in a what's-up gesture as she
reached for the plates to set the table. The look on her sister's face clearly
said, come clean or else, muchacha del bebé. Still a little baby
girl. Bella had no intention of telling her sisters about last night. She'd
give them a sanitized version while she packed to catch her flight back to
Sacramento. Otherwise, they'd hover around her like well-paid bodyguards.
    For now Bella ignored her sisters and checked the clock as
she set out the silverware. Still time to eat, pack, and make her eleven o'clock
appointment.
    She wrinkled her nose. After a week of back and forth
emails, this Hashemi character had flat-out refused to turn over jurisdiction
in the Diego Vargas case. Then he'd gone over her head to her boss, Bigler
County D.A. Charles Barrington who had caved in to the superior power of