“Quiet,” she whispered. “They might still be in there.”
Huh. Travis frowned at the door, then touched the Glock nestled at the small of his back. He silently followed her inside, first looking toward the door to the kitchen, then toward the office.
“The door wasn’t closed before. And the body? It was lying there in the doorway. Where is it?” she asked, her words so quiet they barely floated on the air. Her gaze slid to his just long enough for him to see the sick dance of nerves in her eyes, then with a sharp breath, she started for the office.
He liked the way she didn’t back down, despite her fear. But Travis still laid his hand on her arm, halting her steps. He drew in a long breath through his nose, noting the faint scent of solvent.
“Wait.”
She stopped and bit her lip, looking at the door, then back at him, then at the door again.
Nobody stormed out with guns blazing, but Travis still had a nasty tingle dancing down his spine.
He didn’t know if they really were standing in a murder scene or not. But his senses told him that something definitely wasn’t right here.
Maybe she felt it, too. Or maybe she simply realized that safer was smarter. But Lila gave him another considering look, then took two steps back and to the side to place his body between her and the door.
“Why aren’t the police here yet?” she whispered.
“They probably don’t see this as a priority.” He didn’t bother to keep his voice down.
“Murder isn’t a priority?”
“We take murder quite seriously, senorita.”
As one, Travis and Lila looked back. A short man stood—posed, was more like it—in the doorway to the kitchen, giving them both enough time to take in his leather pants, waxed mustache and slicked-back hair. Standing behind him was a man so nondescript, Travis was surprised he didn’t simply fade into the background. A handy skill for a cop, he supposed.
Lila gave a relieved sigh, but Travis didn’t figure it was either cop’s looks that had her tension lowering even as his rose. It was more likely the shiny silver badge hanging from the waistband of the man in the lead. The shorter man murmured something they couldn’t hear, but whatever it was sent the other scurrying away.
“Montoya.” Travis grimaced when it was just the three of them.
For a brief second, he considered shifting positions with Lila. The fact they stood at an alleged murder scene where possible killers had been carried less potential threat than the man walking toward them.
“Senor Hawkins. Why would you be involved in this, might I ask?”
“I asked him to come with me,” Lila said, walking forward with her hand outstretched. “I’m Lila Adrian, and I witnessed a murder.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Dismissing her in a single glance, Montoya studied Travis out of dark, beady eyes. “And you, Senor Hawkins? Did you witness this, as well?”
Travis debated. He’d had run-ins with Montoya before. The man had a serious hate-on for members of the US military, considered them all cocky hotshots who should stay in their own country and off his beach. Still, the whole helping a damsel in distress thing was simple enough. But he suspected that the minute he said he hadn’t seen jack, Montoya would toss him out the door, intimidate Lila into recanting anything that’d disturb his comfy existence and maybe grab a drink before heading back to his carefully structured office.
Then Travis could head back to his own carefully unstructured hammock and comfy nonexistence. Which was, after all, priority number one.
He glanced at Lila, noting the way her brow furrowed and the frustration in her eyes at Montoya’s dismissal. He could practically see the smart-ass remarks balanced on the tip of her tongue; she was just waiting for a chance to jump in Montoya’s face. Which was all the excuse he’d need to toss her in a cell and make his point to the town council about the trouble with tourists.
Travis sighed. Looked like his hammock was going to have to wait.
“I’m here with the lady,” he told Montoya. “You want the details of what happened, ask her. She can fill you in.”
* * *
Okay...
Lila’s stomach clenched. Her nerves, already frayed near to breaking with the events of the evening, jangled dangerously. She didn’t know what had caused the tension between the cop and the beach bum, but it felt significant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Lila looked from one man to the other and back again. She couldn’t read either’s expression, but there was enough malice in their words to make her throat dry.
“Senorita?” After a long stare at her companion, the policeman gave her a questioning look. “Why do you claim to have seen a murder?”
“What?” Why? Claim?
Nerves forgotten, Lila scowled. Her fists clenched at her sides. Before she could snap at him to kiss her butt, the beach bum—Hawkins, she had to remember his name was Hawkins—touched her. Just a single finger to the small of her back for barely a second. But it was enough to warn her to reel it in.
So she gritted her teeth and tried to do that.
“Earlier this evening, I saw a man killed in the doorway. That doorway.” She pointed her still clenched fist toward the office. “Someone shot Chef Rodriguez.”
“How do you know Chef Rodriguez?”
“What difference does that make? I saw him fall to the floor covered in blood, right there in that doorway.”
The policeman held her gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment before he stepped around her and Hawkins and walked casually toward the office. Lila cringed, seeing in her head the body fall again, the blood splatter.
Wait.
Her eyes tracked the cop’s steps, not so much to note his progress as to check the walls. The floor. Where was the blood?
Where was the body?
“This is the office where you thought you saw a man fall, senorita?”
The policeman threw open the door and gestured inside. Unwilling to move any closer, Lila craned her neck instead and tried to see the body. But the floor was bare of a body. Nowhere to be seen was a hurricane of scattered papers or broken furniture.
Lila rubbed a hand over her trembling lips.
“There is no dead body. No blood. No evidence of any wrongdoing,” the cop enunciated in careful English. “Perhaps you are used to attention in your country, senorita. But we frown upon such fabrications here in Puerto Viejo.”
He gave the office one last look around, then swaggered over to shift his intimidating stare between Lila and her companion.
“I’m not making it up,” she breathed, shaking her head. Not sure why, since he hadn’t believed her either, Lila shot Hawkins a beseeching look. “I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
“Why don’t you check on Rodriguez? Make sure he’s not floating facedown somewhere.” The suggestion was made to the cop, but Hawkin’s eyes didn’t leave Lila’s.
“Perhaps you should remember that we have no use for hotshots such as yourself here in Puerto Viejo, senor.” His beady eyes shifted between the two of them again before Montoya smiled.
Lila wanted to ask what the hell that meant. She clenched her fists, ready to demand to speak with the chief of police, the mayor. Whoever the hell was in charge.
But between his flat gaze and those small, sharp teeth, the cop reminded her of a shark. The kind of shark that’d chew her up and spit her out without so much as blinking.