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She’d assumed he’d be asking her questions, corroborating what he’d already been told, fleshing out the bare bones, but he encouraged her to talk, starting from her arrival at the Hotel Rio, while he mostly listened and absorbed. She could have counted the queries he put to her on the fingers of one hand.
“Hold that there,” he said, when she was describing Leandra and her conversation with Eric the first night at the compound.
“You think her name was an alias? You want me to identify her from photos?” she asked, turning to the stack on the table.
“No—I want you to take a break. You need to eat something,” he replied.
Rhianne almost rolled her eyes. She hadn’t ever minded the big brother vibe she’d always gotten from Charlie, but right now, he was coming over as almost paternal.
“We can talk while we eat,” he told her, going into the other room.
The aroma of the food he must have fetched while out with Ian hadn’t registered with her before, but when he returned with grease-stained paper bags, she immediately smelled onions, tomato, and lime.She normally liked the kind of salsa-drenchedtortaCharlie set out on a paper plate but could only pick at the bread of this one and try a little of its pulled pork at his urging.
“So…” Charlie began, and the glance he shot her coupled with the slight change to his tone warned her that “talk while we eat” was going to be about subjects she’d rather not discuss.
“I did keep a sharp lookout at thefincafor any faces I’d seen working as staff at the Zorro and the Mint as well. The club where we met Arturo,” she reminded Charlie. Not that he’d let a detail of the case slip. “I didn’t get much of a look at any employees working at the Café Americano, the rendezvous point, unfortunately. But the cartel has to have hundreds of employees throughout the city, right? Or if not employees as such, then people forced to do their bidding, act as spies, informants, go-betweens, or whatever?”
Charlie put down his torta and dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin.
“What more do you know about the cartel?” she continued, rather than let him speak. “What new info have you learned since we last spoke about it?”
“Some,” he replied. “We have a better sense now about how deep into the States, via San Diego, their reach goes. But I have another question for you…” He cast his eyes over his notes, turning back a page.
“Sure,” Rhianne replied, realizing when his shrewd green gaze lasered in on her that she’d fallen into his trap.
“What’s going on with Eric?” Charlie demanded. “With you and Eric, specifically. You were reluctant to work with him—not just on this, but before. I know his jokes and what have you can rub people the wrong way…but you’re not ‘people,’ Rhianne. You can filter through the bullshit to see realness. And you have to know that I’d never align myself with someone I didn’t respect. Eric is one-of-a-kind.”
His compliment warmed her, and his commendation of Eric pleased her more than she wanted to acknowledge. “Tonight went about as wrong as it possibly could have, short of one of us getting killed. It’s not… Not all his fault,” she settled on. “I, well, I’m as much at fault for what happened tonight as Eric is, I guess.” Now that she had had some time to calm down, she had to admit that Eric’s accusations had held a lot of truth. She did strive to be honest with herself and about herself, even when it hurt to say. “But he does have his own share of the blame,” she added, her lips tightening. “He only gave me half the information to work with, Charlie. If I’d known help was coming, to provide a distraction…”
“What? What would you have done differently?” he asked when she ground to a halt.
“I’d have been able to be more patient,” she muttered. She tucked her legs up into the chair she sat on, needing to ground herself. Charlie didn’t reply, just looked at her with his head tilted to one side. Seemed he’d gone from elder brother to surrogate father to school principal. She finished her tea, keeping her focus on the cup to avoid having to meet his eyes.
“Rhianne,” Charlie said at last, and she knew from the length of the silence preceding it she wouldn’t like what he’d been turning over in his mind. “Why couldn’t you trust that Eric knew what he was doing? He’s a trained SEAL, one who’s been not only on more dangerous missions than you could probably imagine, but dangerous, tricky, against-the-odds rescue missions too. And you know what? Every time he’s come out on top.”
“Yes, but— That’s not what—”
“You’re a former Coast Guard.” Charlie ignored her attempts to interrupt. “You should know—hell, Iknowyou know—how to work with a partner, and how to defer to their areas of expertise. So what went wrong? Why did things play out as they did?”
What went wrong?Rhianne wished she knew, then she might be in with a chance of answering. “I did trust Eric,” she replied at last. “You wouldn’t have assigned him this mission if you’d had doubts, and so…” No, that wasn’t hitting the target. Because shehadstarted the mission with some doubts about Eric, but they’d worked through all of that. They’d been good partners to each other out on the compound. And thenmorethan just partners. Right up until…
“I do trust him,” she whispered. “So I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. Beside my need to get my sister back, that is. This…”Goes deeper, she couldn’t say.Strikes at the roots of who I am. The way I think. What I expect. How I behave as a result.“I’m sorry.”
“I know.” Charlie gave her a nod, but she couldn’t work out if it was one of approval or not. “But it’s not me you should be saying this to, is it? And I get the sense that it’s not the only thing you should be talking to Eric about.”
Rhianne shook her head slowly, sadness in the movement. Looking back now on all that had happened, it was starting to sink in how unfair she’d been to Eric. He did deserve an apology. But beyond that? She didn’t know if what was broken between them could be fixed. Or if she wanted it to be. The idea of trusting him the way he wanted her to was frightening. She’d never been able to trust anyone like that before, and she wasn’t sure if she could now. She’d focus on what she was here for, her little sister, Robyn, and force herself not to think about anything else. Anyone else.
The tap on the connecting door startled her. It opened and Ian’s head peeped in. Eric was visible behind him. “Okay to come in?” Ian asked.
Charlie beckoned them in. Eric was as careful not to catch her eye as she was his.
“Rhianne and I are done for the evening,” Charlie said, glancing at her. “Unless either of you two has anything to tell me that won’t keep until first light, I suggest we try to get what semblance of sleep we can now.”
Rhianne couldn’t argue with that, especially when Charlie added, “Then we’ll figure out how to get Robyn out of the cartel’s hold once and for all.”
19
Rhianne jolted awake again from the latest few minutes’ stretch of sleep she’d managed. Every time she’d forced herself to sleep, scenes of the failed rescue crashed their way in her brain. The gunfire, the bomb blast, the noise and confusion, her terrified sister and the rest of the trafficked girls—it would all play out in her mind, sending adrenaline rushing through her, and she’d lurch awake once more.
