Marisela Morales 03 - Dirty Little Christmas - Julie Leto Read online

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  Marisela’s Dictionary of Dirty (and not-so dirty) Spanish

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  One

  Marisela Morales had a secret.

  To keep the information under wraps, she’d lied to everyone from her sainted mother to her best friend, Lia Santorini, who, up until now, had been privy to Marisela’s every misdeed. From the time in the third grade when she’d planted a brown recluse spider in Sister Graciela’s habit to the incident six months ago when she’d shot a man because he’d manipulated a woman she admired into committing cold-blooded murder, Lia knew every sordid detail of Marisela’s crimes and misdemeanors.

  And since Marisela hadn’t gotten caught for either offense, this proved that if there was one person she could trust, it was Lia. But tonight, she wouldn’t take any chances. To pull off this Christmas surprise, she had to rely on the only person who could expertly lie, even to the people she loved most—herself.

  Since Lia was working late on the second floor of the old cigar factory her bosses at Titan International had converted to a satellite office, Marisela had to use the covert skills the security firm had taught her to escape her third floor apartment unseen. She trick-wired her alarm system, slipped out of her window, slid to the second floor fire escape and then vaulted, feet first, to the patch of thick grass below.

  She swallowed a guttural umph and remained crouched while scooting out of the pink glow from the security light. Spying no movement inside, she blended into the thick hedge, avoiding the concealed trip-wires that would signal the office to an intruder, dug the toe of her boot into a break in the mortar of the ten-foot high brick fence and bounded over. This time, she landed with a loud thud, but from this point, she was free and clear. Hours ago, she’d moved her car to the parking lot of the Puerto Rican barbeque joint around the corner. She was just about to press the button on the fob of her keychain when a voice snapped through the pork-flesh scented air.

  “And just where do you think you’re going?”

  Marisela had her gun out and leveled before she connected the wryly-pitched tone to the unyielding, but familiar face.

  “Coño su madre, Lia. One of these days, I’m going to shoot you.” Marisela re-engaged the safety and then holstered her gun beneath her jacket.

  “Don’t you dare curse my mother, you dirty, lying thief.”

  “Thief? I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

  Lia arched a perfectly sculpted brow. “Care to discuss Michael D’Angelo’s virginity again?”

  Marisela snorted. “I didn’t steal his virginity. He was offering it to whatever chica he lured into his backseat. Besides, the comemierda had a prick the size of a snausage. Is that what you wanted for your first time?”

  Lia tried to maintain her scowl, but her lips twitched.

  Marisela pointed and said, “Ha!” at her friend’s inability to stay mad. Marisela’s brief betrayal back in high school, shortly after her gut-wrenching break-up with her first, and so far, only love, had cost her a week’s worth of talking to her best friend, but in the end, she’d saved Lia from having her first sexual experience with a guy who couldn’t adequately fuck a Barbie doll.

  What were friends for?

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Lia pressed.

  “Ever think there might be a reason for that?”

  “That you’re trying to avoid telling me where you’re going? I know you’re not on a case. I got an email from Brynn and Ian as their yacht crossed into Lamaire Channel. Titan is officially closed for the holidays. You have no open cases and no reason to sneak out of your apartment when you were supposed to have left three hours ago to drive your parents to Orlando for that food expo to meet Aarón Sanchez.”

  Marisela groaned. Whenever Lia talked in long sentences peppered with undisputable facts, she was unstoppable. If she started using big words, Marisela could kiss her Christmas present good-bye.

  “They made it there in time to sample his ceviche,” Marisela replied, struck for a moment by how dirty that sounded when said out loud.

  “I know. They called to ask if they needed to tip the driver you hired.”

  “Why did they call you?”

  “Because you weren’t answering your phone.”

  Marisela didn’t bother to check her phone. Her parents constantly called her old number, no matter how many times she programmed her new one into their phones. “I tipped the driver. I told my father three times.”

  “And how many times did you tell me that you were going with them?”

  “Just the once.”

  “Excuse me? I helped you order the tickets. We talked about this a dozen times.”

  “You talked about it,” Marisela reminded her. “I just nodded and hummed.”

  Lia’s frown returned. Then she started tapping her foot.

  Shit.

  “Look, I didn’t let you in on my surprise because it’s a surprise for you, too.”

  This was not entirely true, but it wasn’t so far off that Marisela had to employ any special skills to make it believable.

  “Now you’re just bullshitting me.”

  “Would I bullshit a bullshitter?”

  “You do it every day,” Lia countered. “And I don’t bullshit except when I’m paid to. And right now, we’re both off the clock. Brynn and Ian are floating somewhere off the southern coast of Argentina. Max is, well…Max is somewhere he won’t reveal and will be incommunicado until after the first of the year. You should be in Orlando with your family, not asking for trouble that if you get, you’ll have no one to save your ass.”

  Marisela nearly choked. “Since when do I need someone else to save my ass?”

  She unlocked the door to her Camaro ZL1, an early Christmas present to herself, and cursed when Lia positioned herself so that she couldn’t back up unless she was willing to turn her best friend into road kill.

  “Tell me where you’re going,” Lia insisted.

  This is what Marisela got for convincing Titan to hire her once the mayor hit his term limit and Lia was out of a job. Her conscience, personified, watching her every move, twenty-four-seven.

  “To pick up my parent’s real Christmas present.”

  “Which is?”

  Marisela didn’t have time to deal with the fireworks that were going to go off when she told Lia the truth. Not unless she did it in transit. Resigned, she opened the passenger door.

  Once they were darting west down Columbus Drive, Lia twisted in her seat.

  “What’s the present and why the secrecy?”

  “Because you’re not going to like it.”

  “They’re your parents.”

  “They’re also Belinda’s parents, which is why we’re going to the airport to pick her up.”

  L
ia’s expression morphed from shocked to furious in the span of a heartbeat. Though Marisela could only spare sidelong glances as she maneuvered her car past the International Plaza and onto the airport exit, the temperature in the car rose as Lia’s temper boiled. She turned up the air conditioner to full blast, but Lia slapped it off.

  “Your sister’s coming to town?” she asked.

  “According to her email.”

  “Belinda, who hasn’t been home in five years just decided out of nowhere to leave her cushy job in London and bless the rest of us peasants with her presence in time for the holidays? How truly generous of her.”

  Sarcasm dripped off Lia’s words like caramel from a flan, but Marisela kept her focus on the road signs, making sure she followed the right color to British Airways. She’d long ago given up trying to understand why Lia, normally the most generous-hearted person she knew, couldn’t accept Belinda for what she was—and what she had. Belinda had gouged through the hearts of family and friends much as Marisela had with her various misdeeds, but because Belinda had a doctor’s note, she got away with it.

  With everyone except Lia.

  “Here I thought we were going to have a nice, calm, warm holiday season,” Lia muttered.

  Marisela sighed, thrilled for a change in subject. “App says it’ll be 79 on Christmas Day. We’ll go to the beach after church, like we always do.”

  “Don’t let your phone fool you. An icy chill is descending on the season and her name is Belinda Morales.”

  Again, Marisela pressed her lips together until her jaw ached. Belinda coming to town for Christmas knocked some of the shine off the tinsel for her, too, but her parents were going to shit bricks of happiness.

  She took the curves to the top level of the parking garage with accelerated speed, ignoring Lia’s muffled squeal. Marisela had been driving up the spiral entrance to TIA this way since the first time she jacked her father’s Buick and took Belinda on a joy ride.

  Her sister had been eighteen. Marisela had been shy of her sixteenth birthday and had lost her learner’s permit because of failing grades. She’d coaxed Belinda into riding shotgun by promising she could count the planes as they landed over Tampa Bay for as long as she wanted to. She might have thrown in an extra-large bag of peanut M&Ms, too.

  That was what Marisela loved best about her sister. Belinda might be cold as ice and incapable of tolerating even the gentlest hug, but she listened to reason. It was all she listened to. Muchos gracias, Señor Asperger.

  She parked on the open top level. The shriek of a landing 747 rent the air, covering the sound of Lia slamming her car door shut with more force than was necessary on a brand-fucking-new car. Even with the holiday rush of travelers, the rooftop lot wasn’t crowded. As they waited for the elevator, Marisela scanned the area. They were alone.

  “What are you doing?” Lia asked, clearly still pissed and itching for a fight, judging by her snappy tone.

  “I’m just standing here.”

  “You were counting cars.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “God, she’s not even here yet and you’re already acting like her.”

  “Lia, esta es loca? I don’t act like my sister. It’s not even possible.”

  “Isn’t it? You don’t see how you change when she’s around. I do.”

  “Luckily, she’d not around very often, okay?”

  The scowl Lia wore as the elevator doors swooshed open told Marisela that once every few years was more than often enough, as far as Lia was concerned. She marched inside and wedged herself into the corner. Marisela followed, jabbing the button for the third floor arrivals just as a dark SUV pulled into the lot and parked directly next to her Camaro.

  Before she could jump out and determine why the driver hadn’t used any of the other multiple open spaces, the doors closed. Working for Titan was making her paranoid.

  Or was it?

  During her decent, she checked her messages. No alerts. No warnings. She hadn’t worked on a dangerous case in over a month, when her handler, Max, had called her out of the Tampa satellite office to assist with a money laundering case in Miami. Since then, she’d wrapped up two cheating spouse investigations and did some follow up work on a twenty-year-old missing child case, in which she’d discovered a couple of new leads to pass on to police.

  In other words, nothing that should have been tingling her spidey-senses.

  And yet, tingle they did.

  Two

  “Wait, you’re wearing your gun?” Lia grabbed Marisela’s arm so that her manicured nails dug through her worn leather sleeve.

  Marisela yanked away. Thanks to Titan, her license to carry a concealed weapon had been reinstated. She hadn’t gone without her piece since. Not that she’d stopped packing when her permit was pulled, but now, she was less careful about hiding the fact that she was armed and dangerous.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “This is an airport,” Lia said.

  Marisela shrugged. “We’re not going through security.”

  Lia huffed. She was still pissed about Belinda and she was going to make Marisela pay in a million little ways until she felt sufficiently satisfied. That might happen in, oh, a hundred years.

  When the elevator doors sprung open on the third floor, Marisela ignored Lia’s continued mutterings of doom at the hands of Homeland Security and concentrated on finding the arrival area for international passengers. She double-checked Belinda’s flight on the monitor, which was listed as “arrived,” causing her heartbeat to accelerate. Not only did her sister have to make it from the plane to the main terminal without getting lost or distracted—a task Marisela still had trouble believing she could do—she had to fully accept that for the next few days at least, Belinda would be her constant companion.

  Her big sister had always been part-shadow and part-mirror, reflecting back every one of Marisela’s imperfections. Unless she was checking the bootyliciousness of her own ass in a new pair of jeans, Marisela hated mirrors.

  The crowd lingering near the tram to and from airside F was sparse, so by hanging back near the escalators, Marisela had a clear view of both monorail exits. She checked her phone. No texts. She watched, silently, noting the timing between the dual trains sliding back and forth to the main terminal, spewing out passengers who’d barely hooked up with the people collecting them from the airport before they started tearing off their heavy coats and scarves. The main building of Tampa International was festooned with the requisite sparkly lights and ornamented trees, but in Florida, the Christmas spirit never had and never would include cold weather.

  But the moment Marisela laid eyes on her sister, wrapped in an oversized Burberry plaid wool coat and standing as tall as a runway model, her blood chilled.

  Then her heart squeezed tight, compressing her uneasy feelings and icy memories into a tight ball she tucked away. A smile broke on her face, unbidden and unplanned, but as real as the holster strapped across her chest or the genuine half-carat diamond she’d glued to the nail of her trigger finger. No matter how much sadness her sister had caused in the past, she was here. Home for Christmas. Even Lia’s lips twitched up on the sides.

  “Belinda!”

  Her sister’s head instantly cocked in her direction. She didn’t smile when Marisela hurried over, but instead, braced herself, hands fisted, for the inevitable sisterly hug.

  Her grimace stopped Marisela dead in her tracks. Though the urge to force her sister into her arms was powerful, she resisted. Marisela hated bowing to other people’s boundaries, but in this case, she knew the price she’d pay.

  “Wow, Belinda. Mija, you look…” Marisela tried to pick the right word. Her sister looked nearly exactly the same as always—taller than anyone else in their family by two inches, with fair skin and bright, turquoise eyes that she inherited from their paternal grandmother.

  “Tired, I expect.” Belinda did not talk much, but once a sentence was started, she was compelled to finish it, even if it wasn’t
hers to begin with.

  “But in a good way,” Marisela replied.

  Belinda’s mouth curled into what only a sister who’d shared a bedroom with her for seven years would recognize as a smile. To anyone else, she was merely staring, waiting for someone to say something more important than commenting on her looks. She took no pride in them, since—how had she put it?—she had no control over the genetics that had given her dark hair like Marisela’s but skin just one shade pinker than china and eyes that rivaled the Florida sky.

  “Is there a good way to look tired?” she asked.

  “Apparently so,” Marisela reassured, even though she knew her sister really didn’t need to be reassured as much as she needed a logical answer to the question. “Good flight?”

  “Efficient. Shorter than I remember. Eight hours and forty-eight minutes flight time, plus one hour and fifty-eight minutes from arrival at Heathrow. I’ve been on the ground here for precisely twenty-two minutes. So that’s—”

  “Twelve hours and eight minutes,” Lia supplied, a tad more superior than Marisela liked to hear.

  Belinda, on the other hand, widened her eyes—not in surprise, but with a hint of pleasure.

  Typical Belinda. She wouldn’t get excited to see Marisela after five years, but she’d practically lose her shit over someone who could do math?

  “Lia, I’m pleased to see you.”

  “Pleased?” Lia asked.

  But whatever pleasure she might have felt disappeared the minute Belinda’s gaze snapped back to Marisela.

  “I didn’t know you were bringing Lia. You said my arrival was to be a surprise. You told me not to tell Mami or Papi that I was coming. I did not tell them, despite the fact that this choice will result in at least six complaints in the first fifteen minutes of our reunion.”

  Marisela took a deep breath, though Belinda was so used to chattering she clearly didn’t need one. Marisela had forgotten what it was like to have Lia talking one ear off while Belinda stood on the other side, spewing strings upon strings of sentences bloated with numbers and statistics and useless information.

  She was going to need a shot of rum in her eggnog the minute they got home.