Blurring the Line by Kierney Scott Read Free Book Online

could not look away. In addition to the tight ropes of muscles that encased his body, his torso was also covered in the scars of an old burn. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw it. She shouldn’t have been surprised, she knew about the injury, but she wasn’t fully prepared for the degree his skin had been ravaged. And she wasn’t prepared for the large Santa Muerte tattoo that covered the entire left side of his chest. It reached from his shoulder down below his ribs. The artist had incorporated the worst of his scar into the design. Santa Muerte: Saint Death. Many gang members, especially Los Zetas, gave homage to the saint. She was thought to protect them and keep them safe while they inflicted misery on others. If there were a patron of drugs and murder it would be Santa Muerte.
    Beth flinched. Why did Torres have this tattoo? He didn’t have it when she recruited him. She knew for certain because there was a detailed description of every scar and mark on his body in his file. The DEA had collected the information in case he was killed in the line of duty. Los Treintas had a nasty habit of decapitating their victims and sending the heads to their families as a warning. Two years was a long time. Long enough for him to become fully immersed, long enough for him to become sympathetic to the Zeta cause? If he had, Torres was a threat, to her, to finding El Escoprion, even to himself.
    Beth opened her mouth to speak but shut it again. She needed to pull him in. She bit her lip until she tasted blood. Her conscience screamed that this was her fault. She was his handler. She was supposed to support him and debrief him, make sure he was handling everything. And shit if she had not messed that one up. She accepted his grunts and nods as communication and assumed he was doing fine because nothing ever bothered him. Shit, why hadn’t she noticed this before? She had let herself get so focused on El Escorpion and now they were paying the price. Not all details should be overlooked.
    She tried to take a deep breath to fill her lungs but a stronger force was squeezing out all the air, making her breath come in small pathetic pants. Beth closed her eyes and counted slowly to ten. “How long has it been since you talked to Frazer?” She tried to sound relaxed but her voice sounded strangled.
    Torres’ dark eyes were impossible to read past the cold anger that roiled behind them. He had changed again, going from the smiling teasing man she had seen glimpses of last night, to the terrifyingly emotionless man she knew. The change was so sudden and fluid, like a switch being tripped. Everything about his appearance changed, even the soft lines that fanned his eyes when he smiled, turned cold.
    “Why do you think I need to see the psychologist, Beth? Do you think I have gone native? Think I get off on watching the boys make
el guiso
? Am I thinking about it right now? Stuffing a body into a nice 55-gallon drum, adding just enough diesel so it burns slow. I know you love details. Ask me, Beth. Ask me how long it would take to burn you down to nothing.”
    Beth tried to look away but Torres grabbed her chin and held her firmly in place, his dark eyes burning into her with venom only matched by the ugliness of his words. He scared her. There was no shame in admitting that. She would be a fool not to be scared of him. By choice, she only knew the beginning of what he was capable of, and that was enough.
    “Ask me, Beth!” he demanded.
    “No,” she whispered. She forced herself to look at him.
    “What do you weigh? 140 lbs? Five hours. I would add a little iron, keep it burning nice and hot, and that’s it, in five hours it would be like you never existed. Your life, your identity gone.”
    Beth’s joints went slack. She fought the urge to scream and tell Torres to shut up. She didn’t because she knew he was talking about Archila. He had never spoken about it with her before. She only knew the details through the police