Free Operation: Midnight Rendezvous by Linda Castillo Page A

emanating from his body into hers, and at that moment the sensation comforted her in a way nothing else could have.
    “Shhh…easy.”
    His mouth was less than an inch from her ear, so close she could feel the warm brush of his breath against her skin. The moment shouldn’t have been anything but terrifying. It certainly shouldn’t have beenintimate. But even frightened for her life, Jess couldn’t deny the slice of heat low in her belly.
    After several minutes the front door opened and closed. The faint sound of an engine starting sounded from outside. Madrid moved out from behind the desk first. Jess straightened, but her legs were too weak to move.
    He crossed to the window and peered out. “He’s gone.”
    She pressed a hand to her stomach, the reality of what they’d narrowly avoided making her feel sick. “How did he know we were here?”
    “He didn’t.” Madrid’s eyes cut to hers. “If he’d known he would have looked harder. He would have found us.”
    “But why was he here?”
    He glanced out the window again. “I don’t know. Maybe a neighbor saw our flashlight. Thought we were burglarizing the place.” His gaze flicked to the folder she was clutching to her chest. “What’s that?”
    Jess had nearly forgotten about the file. “I think I found something.”
    He reached for it, tucked it into his waistband. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
     
    M ADRID WASN’T EASILY shaken; he’d been through too many life-and-death situations to let the incident at Angela’s house shake him. Only, this one had. And the response troubled him. He knew it wasn’t because he feared for his own safety, but for Jess’s.
    He couldn’t let himself get too close to her. He sureas hell couldn’t let himself care. Bad things happened to the people who got close to him. Too bad he was failing miserably on both counts.
    “Where are we going?”
    He glanced at Jess, felt the knot in his gut loosen at the sight of her. She was lovely, and for an instant he wanted to reach out and touch her just to make sure she was real.
    “In case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got one more stop to make,” he said.
    She looked a little green around the gills. “The police station.”
    “You got a better idea?”
    “No.”
    She was trying to be brave about it, but he could tell the thought terrified her. To be perfectly honest it terrified him, too. But for all the wrong reasons.
    “Look,” he said, “I’m going to pull over so I can take a look at this file. Maybe there’s something here that will tell us what to look for at the station.” He knew it was wishful thinking, but he was hoping there was something inside the file that would clear up the mystery so they didn’t have to venture into the police station at all. Not bloody likely.
    “There’s a dirt road up ahead,” she said.
    Heavy fog had moved in from the bay, giving the forest that ran along the coastal highway an ethereal appearance. Madrid turned onto a narrow dirt road. He stopped out of sight from the highway and shut down the engine. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”
    Jess handed him the file. “There are notes and photographs.”

    Turning on the dome light, he opened the file. A smile touched his mouth at the sight of Angela’s neat handwriting. She’d always been meticulous. How ironic that he would appreciate that most after her death.
    He read the notes twice, trying to decipher the abbreviations and read between the lines.
    “Looks like she was spying on the Lighthouse Point PD,” Jess said.
    Madrid read the notes again, his focus lingering on the names. “She seems suspicious of Finks.”
    “The officer?”
    He flipped to the photographs. They were similar to the one Angela had given Jess. Young women, most of Asian descent, being held against their will. The questions were where? and why?
    “I still think we could be dealing with a human smuggling ring,” he said after a moment.
    Jess blinked at him. “It’s difficult to