Texas Hold 'Em (Smokin' ACES)

Chapter Sixteen


The Ice House was quieter than normal, Santos realized as he walked inside. Behind the bar, Keeper mimicked the standard pose of every bartender in every movie he had ever watched—polishing a glass and looking out over the customers. Last call had come an hour ago, and his expression made it clear he was anxious for the bikers who remained to leave. His gaze flicked to Santos’s face before it bounced away, and he found himself wondering if the bartender knew what had gone down in Mexico. News traveled fast in this part of the country, especially when it was associated with the cartel. People wanted to know what was happening, and they wanted to know sooner rather than later. They might need to get out of the way.

Santos took one of the barstools and lifted two fingers. Keeper hesitated, weighing his liquor license against Santos’s unhappiness if he didn’t get his drink. Deciding he’d rather risk his business than a black eye, he brought over a shot glass and a beer, then retreated to his spot midpoint down the bar.

Santos made short work of his drinks and nodded in Keeper’s direction. The bartender sighed and repeated his actions, Santos’s voice stopping him in mid-flight. “Where is everybody?” Usually the party was still going strong this late, at least in the parking lot, if not inside.

Keeper pursed his lips as if considering how not to answer the question. Giving up after some consideration, he said, “Making runs, I guess. Or sleeping off last night. We had a bikini contest. It got a little wild.”

He could only imagine what Keeper would think of as “a little wild,” then he decided the bartender’s explanation was probably a lie. He’d definitely heard the news about the raid on Ortega’s villa. Like roaches when the lights come on, everyone had scurried back to wherever they hid when things got uncomfortable.

He downed the second shot, and then sipped his beer and assessed his thoughts. Gloria had been his last, best hope at finding Ortega, and he had failed. He’d failed both her and Rose. If the state of Texas found him as lacking as he found himself, he might be searching for a job pretty soon. Maybe he should just become the biker he pretended to be. Or maybe he could buy The Ice House. Being the owner of a run-down bar made as much sense as anything else.

A distant roar rumbled through the open-air bar. He swiveled toward the sound and watched the ACES team pull into the parking lot, along with a dozen other riders. He recognized their patches. They were Dos Y Tres men. Trying to ward them off, Keeper flapped his arms uselessly as the riders came inside laughing and slapping each other on the back like old friends.

Austin caught Santos’s eye, then claimed the table nearest to the bar. The rest of the team joined him, Keeper reluctantly heading their direction. The ACES members were as angry as he that Ortega had escaped, but they hid it better, saying they’d find him eventually. Santos stayed where he was. He didn’t feel like trying to match their optimism. Jessie broke off from the men and came to his side.

“It’s not your fault.” Reading his expression, Jessie turned around and leaned against the bar facing out, her elbows propped up on either side of the scuffed wood at her back. “If Ortega had still been there, you would have gotten him.”

“Probably so, but he wasn’t, and I didn’t.” He drained his beer and set the bottle on the bar with an angry thud.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I happen to be fresh out of ideas on how to proceed.”

“So you’re just going to sit there, feel sorry for yourself, and get pissed?”

He threw her a cold look. “You’re pushing it, Jessie. Back off. I’m still your boss.”

She gave him a stare that told him exactly what she thought of his warning. “What about Gl—”

“Don’t go there, Jessie. Not now.”

She lifted her hands and held them up, returning to the table where the others sat, brushing off their questions with a shake of her head.

He turned back to glare at the margarita machine whirling away behind the bar. He hated it when he let his anger get the best of him. Especially when it was only masking frustration. He looked down into his empty beer glass, thought about Rose, and everything else he had done, then slid off the stool to walk toward his team. He’d taken two steps when his cell phone rang. The caller ID gave him a 512 area code. That covered central Texas, including the capital, Austin.

“Is this Timothy Santos?” a stranger said.

“Who’s asking?”

“This is Jake McBolton. Thank God I’ve finally found you. I’m with the—”

“I know who you are,” he broke in. “What do you want?”

The man began to stutter, and his nervousness finally registered with him. He sounded as if he were about to hyperventilate. Santos went on full alert. “What’s wrong?”

“I just called Sheriff Renwick to give her a report I did for you, and something happened while we were talking.”

“What do you mean ‘something happened’?”

Santos had reached the picnic table, and everyone looked up as he spoke, the tension in his voice alerting them.

“I…I think someone grabbed her. We were talking, and I was telling her about this report, you know, the one about Juan Enrique you wanted? The tests were negative. That wasn’t his body you sent me.”

Santos gripped the cell phone, his knuckles going white. “Tell me exactly what happened while you were speaking to her.”

“We were talking, and then she cried out and dropped the phone. I heard her tell someone she was the sheriff and he should turn her loose. I heard something—maybe a table or chair—turn over and hit the wall. I might have heard someone mutter something in Spanish, but it was hard to tell. I tried to call back but the line was busy.”

“When did this happen?”

“Ten—fifteen minutes ago. I called you earlier, but you didn’t answer. Then I called the locals. I got some kind of dispatch service. They said they’d try to track you down.”

He’d been out of range, Santos realized. Somewhere between the hospital and the bar. “Did you phone her at home or on her cell?”

“At home. I called the Rio County station immediately, but all I could do was leave a message with an answering service, so I thought I’d try you again. I hope I did the right thing. I’m not a field agent, but I thought you should know.”

Santos pressed the end button on the phone. He had to get to Rose!



The dirty bag over her head smelled of musk and marijuana, and Rose struggled not to gag as the vehicle she was in bounced over the rough terrain. With every bump they hit, a miniature shower of dust drifted out of the hood to settle on her face and in her hair. Her skin was sticky with sweat. She strained to see past the wrinkled black fabric but failed. She had no idea where she was or who had her. She hadn’t even regained total consciousness until they’d turned off the highway. A jumble of Spanish and English had drifted her way as she’d come to the realization she was moving. Probably in an SUV, she’d decided—carpet instead of upholstery rough beneath her fingers, her legs pressed against what felt like the sides of a cargo hold. The vehicle dipped into a deep rut just as she rolled over to her back, her tied hands jabbing painfully into her spine. She lifted her feet to try and stabilize herself. Her tennis shoes hit the roof, then she was slammed down again.

The men had come into her home fast and without any warning. Believing Ortega had gone underground, and thinking Juan Enrique was dead, she had stupidly let down her guard.

Where had her head been?

As she asked herself the question, the SUV slipped into another rut. This one sent her pitching to one side and then the other. The jarring motion cleared out the final bit of her drug-induced bewilderment, and she suddenly recalled the phone conversation she’d had right before they snatched her.

Ortega probably was gone, but Juan Enrique was definitely not dead. The headless body they’d found in his home had belonged to someone else.

The pieces slowly fell into place. Ortega’s men had been telling the truth when they’d denied sending the boy that night with the knife and leaving the candle in her bedroom. The cartel members had been behind the attack at the Stanleys’ house, but they’d claimed no responsibility for anything else, including the horrendous death of the woman in Mexico. Clearly someone else was involved in this situation.

The SUV bumped over what felt like a cattle guard, gravel pinging under the fenders. Five minutes, later they pulled to a stop. Her body, especially her head, felt as if she was still moving when the cargo door was flung open and she was jerked out of the SUV by a pair of rough hands. She fell to the ground as footsteps crunched her way, and she curled instinctively into a protective ball. From beneath the sack, she caught a glimpse of two pointed cowboy boots with wicked-looking silver tips. The man wearing them shuffled to a stop beside her, deliberately raising a cloud of dust that invaded the bag and settled over her face. She coughed and spit, and her captors laughed.

It went downhill from there.



Santos was worried but in control—until he saw the blood in Rose’s bedroom. There wasn’t a lot of it, he told himself, not enough to be fatal by any means. Fear, like icy water, rippled down his back, regardless.

King was right beside him. “Steady there, amigo,” he said so softly no one else could hear. “She’s a professional. She knows how to take care of herself. We’ll find her.”

The deputy’s unexpected words of encouragement should have helped him. Instead they elicited the same kind of apprehension, anxiety, and downright terror he’d experienced for months over Gloria’s situation, only multiplied by a hundred. He felt sick hearing them applied to Rose. If he had as much success finding her as he’d had so far finding Ortega, he would lose his mind.

Silas stood beside them, Dan Strickland nearby. Despite the broken window in the kitchen, Santos had called Rose’s grandfather, hoping against hope a mistake had been made and she was somehow with him. Dan had been visiting with him, and they’d both rushed over. Silas’s face paled at the sight of the blood, his weathered features crumbling. Dan took his elbow with obvious concern, but the old man pulled away and immediately cleared his expression, replacing it with his ex-sheriff’s hard glare.

“Don’t just stand there, dammit,” he told Santos. “Get yourself in gear and start working this scene.”

His gruff words broke Santos’s thoughts. He turned to the team surrounding him. “Jessie, check around and see if you can find her cell phone or her purse, then call highway patrol and tell them to get some men down here.”

The Department of Public Safety troopers were as tough as they came. Everyone in Texas was familiar with the black and white cars and the hard-faced officers. They ruled the state, and took care of everything from terrorism to speeding. If he needed help, Santos could depend on them.

“Austin, you go look outside around the house, there might be something near the broken window. And make sure her car’s still in the garage. Joaquim, you and Bentley start searching the house. They came in here and got her. Hopefully they left prints, at the very least.”

The ACES spread out, and he and King knelt beside the bloody smears painted across the bedroom wall. In the struggle, the bedspread had been pulled halfway off the bed, and the nightstand had been tipped over on top of it. The broken lamp was off to one side. King reached over and lifted up the quilted cover using a pen he pulled from his pocket. That’s when they saw Rose’s service revolver. It’d been kicked under the bed, just out of reach.

“Damn.” Santos pointed toward the weapon, and King nodded with a grim expression. “She’d never leave that behind if she could help it,” Santos said.

“She’s got a .45 in the kitchen,” Silas said. “I’ll check and see if it’s there.”

He hurried out of the room and down the hall as Santos picked up the pillow that had fallen to the floor along with the spread. He tossed it to the bed, and the sweet scent of Rose’s soap drifted up. He held back a worried groan as Silas hurried back into the room.

“The .45’s still there,” he said.

Just then, heavy footsteps pounded down the corridor toward the bedroom. Austin stuck his head around the doorframe. “A neighbor came over while I was checking the perimeter,” he said breathlessly. “His wife heard glass shatter. He said there’d been some break-ins lately, so she kept pestering him, and he finally got up to see what was going on. He spotted a black Escalade leaving, heading north up the side street. He got a partial on the plate.”

“Run it,” Santos ordered.

“I’ve already got the state guys looking, said they’ll call back ASAP.”

Austin’s phone rang ten minutes later. He listened, ended the call, and looked up. “The plates belong to a guy named Marcos Enrique. He’s Juan Enrique’s—”

“—brother,” Santos supplied with a curse. “Is there an address with the info?”

“No.” Austin shook his head. “But someone checked the tax records. They found a ranch off Highway 76 they think might be his. It’s called Las Lomas.”

“I know exactly where that is,” Dan said with sudden excitement. “It borders a place I’ve got leased for the season.”

“Lead the way,” Santos ordered. “We’re right behind you.”



The cloth hood was ripped from Rose’s head, and she blinked, looking blindly into a circle of light. She was lying down in the dirt, and someone was shining a flashlight directly into her eyes. She couldn’t see past it. Turning her head to the side, she tried to avoid the beam. Three sets of boots surrounded her. The two men who’d grabbed her, she guessed, and one other. She might have had half a chance getting away from two guys but not three. Closing her eyes, she sent a mental SOS. She and Santos had never had that kind of connection, but it didn’t hurt to try.

“Sheriff Renwick… Welcome to my home. I’m so happy that you dropped in.” The speaker’s deep voice was polite, soft even. And somehow vaguely familiar.

Caught in the blinding light, she tried to wring out every detail she could. Whoever he was, he had the barest hint of a Spanish accent. From the size of his boot, she guessed he was not a small man. The leather was hand-tooled, and the silver tips couldn’t have been cheap. Was it Ortega? Or some stranger she’d never even seen? Her mouth felt as if she’d suddenly stuffed it with cotton balls.

“You’re committing a serious crime,” she choked out. “Murder during the commission of a specific crime such as kidnapping can result in a death penalty sentence. The same penalty—” She had to stop and cough, the filth from the bag halting her rote recitation. “The s-same penalty exists for attempted murder of a public safety officer.” Squinting against the flashlight’s harsh glare, she suddenly lost her composure and, with it, her professional distance. “You’re making a terrible mistake. When you’re caught, you’re gonna fry.”

Nervous laughter filled the darkness beyond the light. The sounds died when the man stuck the silver tip of his boot beneath her chin and lifted her head until it was out of the beam.

Juan Enrique. The boy he’d once been still lingered in his eyes, but the promise of a better future had been erased by the drugs he’d taken and those he’d sold. Despite her threat, suddenly all she could think about was who he could have been, given the chance.

He pointed to a ramshackle cabin behind him, her intimidation ignored. “I’ve been preparing for your visit for quite some time. I think we need to talk about that instead.”

Her eyes flicked toward the house then came back to him. “My men will figure out you took me. And then they’ll come after you.” As she spoke, she realized the truth of what she’d just said; Santos would never stop looking for her. Never. She’d meant her warning to frighten Enrique, but instead it gave her strength. “They’ll find you,” she said with absolute conviction.

“Like they found Pablo Ortega?” His words mocked her. He obviously already knew what had happened.

Reina’s theory flashed through Rose’s mind, Enrique’s contempt for the cartel leader’s name surprising but not totally unexpected. “They’ll find you,” she repeated. “And then they’ll find him. He’s too big to miss.”

Enrique’s lips lifted in a sly smile. He almost looked proud of himself. “El Brujo only seems big because that’s what I wanted. You thought he sent asasinos to kill you and put men inside your home, you thought he murdered Concepción, you thought he had all the power. You’re wrong. Pablo Ortega isn’t the fierce cabron you think he is.”

“Your ego has control of your mouth. You’re a tiny fish in his very large pond.”

Instead of the anger she expected, Enrique grinned even larger and held out his hands. “If I’m such a minnow, then no one will look for me. The shark is the fish everyone wants to catch.”

She released a slow breath as his meaning became clear. She’d never even considered this possibility, nor had Reina or Santos. Ortega’s men hadn’t been lying; Enrique had manipulated the situation like a talented puppet master.

“You set him up,” she said almost to herself.

“El Brujo’s a very bad man, and he has done many bad things, including the kidnapping of a Texas sheriff. Even when my men screwed up and didn’t get you the first time, I was able to turn that to my advantage. People will think he kept trying to grab you until he was successful. When your body is found, no stone will go unturned to find The Sorcerer. No one else will care what’s going on beneath their noses.”

“You thought we’d arrest him for everything that’s been happening. That would get him out of your way. Then you could take things back to how they’d been before.” It wasn’t a question.

He smiled.

Any sign of fear on her part would only make him more confident. She tried a different tack. “What happened to you, Juan?” she asked quietly. “I thought you were smarter than to end up like this.”

He narrowed his eyes at her unexpected question before recovering quickly. “I’m a wealthy man. A powerful man. I wouldn’t call that stupid.”

“Your abeula didn’t work two jobs so you could end up here.”

“Leave my grandmother out of this.”

“Do you think she’d be proud of you right now?” Rose pressed. “Do you think she’d like seeing you stand over a helpless woman, kicking dirt in her face?”

“You haven’t walked in my shoes. Keep your lectures to yourself.”

She changed the topic again. “If you don’t want to talk about her, then think about your mother. And your brother. They were both devastated by your ‘death.’ Did you think about that detail when you killed the man you left in your house?”

“They know the truth now.”

“But they didn’t then. I was there when we found that hacked up body. Your brother was shattered. He’ll never forgive you for that.”

Enrique’s eyes darkened, and Rose thought about one of Silas’s favorite maxims. The truth hurts.

She didn’t stop. “If you don’t care about them, that’s your business, but Ortega disappeared tonight. Did your plan take that possibility into consideration?”

“Then I accomplished my goal and proved my point. He didn’t have the cojones to stay here. I’ll be in charge, and he will not be returning.”

“Your goal is going to end up with you in prison. I knew you were involved in this from the very beginning, and my guys will figure out I was right. You’ll be very, very sorry when that happens.” She shook her head as if to correct herself, her voice hardening. “Actually, you’ll probably be very, very dead. They get carried away sometimes.”

His fists balled, his body growing tight and still. Had she gone too far? Would she die in this lonely, forgotten spot and be buried in the desert, never to be seen again? She decided it didn’t matter. Santos had been right. Someone had to stop the men who were drenching the border in violence.

“Rio County is mine,” Enrique spat out. “Ortega is the one who will be sorry. If you fail to find him, then I will. He’s the one who should watch his back.”

In the silence of the desert, her voice was quiet and steady. “When the danger is past, the coward gives his warning.”

Enrique made a sound like a hiss and took a step toward her. She ignored it. “Pablo Ortega will face judgment, Enrique. And so will you.”





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