Chapter Seven
Santos stormed away, and Rose turned to face King, who’d come to her side. His expression was troubled. “How the hell do you know that guy, Rose? You blew me off the other day, but he’s beginning to bug the crap outta me.”
She cut him off. “This isn’t your concern, King. Wrap it up and get back to the station. We have real work to do.”
She could tell he wanted to argue, then his face closed. “Anything else, boss?”
“That’s it,” she said. “Call me when you’ve got more on that shooter from last night.”
…
Her cruiser hit eighty just outside of town, the landscape speeding by. A clutch of low peaks was barely discernible against the darker horizon, a streak of lightning reaching down to meet them every few minutes. Once the sun went down, the day’s heat often ignited the sky with daggers like that, dangerous and sharp. They matched the desolate landscape, their raw power and unabashed fury a sight she never got tired of seeing. She’d come back to find her mother, and she loved her job and loved being close to her grandfather. But the rugged mountains and endless vistas were the anchors that held her in place. Once upon a time that task had belonged to Santos.
Her thoughts unraveled as the recollections spilled out. She’d loved him more than she had ever loved anyone else, before or since. He’d been someone she’d thought she could stay with for the rest of her life, not just because he made her forget herself in bed, but also because he made everything else so great. She’d felt betrayed when she’d thought he might have cheated on her and even more betrayed at his insistence she shut her mother out of her life.
Now he wanted her help, and it seemed she was facing an impossible choice once again. Damnit to hell, what was she going to do? And why had he put her in such an awful spot? Surely he knew what this was doing to her.
She reached the cutoff to the ranch and bounced over the cattle guard. The road split immediately, one branch going to the old place where he’d said they were staying, and the other one leading to the main ranch house and the pens. The gravel road climbed straight up. Her tires crunching, she turned right, going deeper into the lonely night. As she drove, she opened the windows of the car and let the desert-scented air wash over her. The corral came into view a few minutes later, and she pulled behind it, cutting off the engine and killing her headlights.
The silence filled her ears until a chorus of singing insects and gossiping owls took over. Then she heard the sound of footsteps.
Her hand at her hip, she turned slowly and from the darkness, Santos emerged.
When he stopped close enough for her to see his features in the starlight, he tilted his head and stared at her, his eyes so black they seemed to be part of the sky. She thought he was going to kiss her and, unbelievably, a part of her wanted that so badly, she moved toward him before she could stop herself.
“I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.” His voice was low and quiet.
She wondered if he could hear her heart beating. To her, the sound seemed loud enough to reach Mexico. “I asked you to meet me,” she murmured. “Why wouldn’t I show up?”
Santos took a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers, then he reached for her hand. “I’ve given you plenty of reasons not to meet me. Take your pick—any of them would work.”
His voice was noncommittal, but when she met his gaze, she read the desire that filled it.
“Santos…” She didn’t even know what she was about to say.
He suddenly seemed to understand what she was feeling. Angling his head, he lifted his hands to her neck and slid them underneath her hair. She didn’t resist because she couldn’t. Beneath her fingertips—resting on his chest although she wasn’t conscious of putting them there—a hard wall of muscle tensed. He’d reached for her first, but now he was holding his breath. He exhaled all at once as if unable to fight the same emotions she had, and their lips met a heartbeat later.
His kiss was as powerful as it’d always been, his mouth closing over hers and claiming hers for his own. Another man might have run his hands down her body or dropped them to her waist, but Santos stayed perfectly still. He believed in doing one thing at a time and doing it well. He proceeded to remind her of that, his mouth warm and seductive, his fingers resting lightly on her skin.
The kiss lasted longer than it should have. By the time he raised his head, a part of her had melted in a flood of heat that now suffused her whole body.
His right hand slipped around to her throat, then he rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “I was right.” He spoke as if talking to himself. “Some things never do change.”
Rose stepped back shakily, her good sense returning. “What’s past is past.”
At her words, his eyes flickered with an unspoken thought. Her grandfather had said Santos still loved her, and she found herself once again wondering if that might really be the case. Did he wake up to the same kind of heartache she did on her bad days? Did regrets keep him up late at night as they did her? She didn’t ask, because she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.
“I’m more worried about the here and now than what we did to each other back then.”
“Are you sure about that?” he asked. “No decision is ever made in a vacuum. Every thought we have is based on the ones that came before it.”
He was right. And all at once she made her decision.
“That’s true,” she said, continuing before she could change her mind. “And that’s exactly why I can’t help you. You’re going to have to find my mother on your own. I’m not helping you.”
He went still in the darkness. “That’s not the decision I was hoping you would make.”
“Sorry for the disappointment,” she said. “But I’m sure you’re not surprised. The surprise is that you even thought I might ever do something like that.”
He narrowed the lips that had just kissed her. At one time she would have thought he was angry. Now she couldn’t tell. Either he’d gotten better at hiding his emotions, or he’d changed. “You need to rethink this, Rose. You don’t understand what’s at stake.”
Her heart still galloping from their kiss, she felt her eyes widen at his words. “I don’t understand?” she paused. “I don’t understand? That’s pretty rich coming from you, Santos. You’re the man who always makes his move without caring who gets hurt. All that ever matters in your book is the outcome of the case. If she was still alive, you’d sacrifice your own mother to find this C.I. and arrest El Brujo, whoever the hell he is, never mind my mother. The job always comes first with you.”
He gritted his teeth, his words coming out despite his clenched jaw. “I’m only going to say this one more time. There are circumstances here of which you are unaware. You’d make a different choice if you knew about them.”
“Then tell me what they are,” she demanded.
“I can’t for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which would be jeopardizing my informant. You should realize that.”
“I don’t care. You haven’t convinced me you need my mother’s help,” she shot back.
“I don’t have to convince you of anything, dammit. We’re in law enforcement. It’s your job to help me, Rose. That should be good enough for you.”
“She’s my mother!” Her voice echoed in the still, dark night. The fury she’d been holding in way too long bubbled up and threatened to spill.
“And it’d be easy for her to fall back into the life. You can’t just ignore the fact that she went to prison for killing your stepfather.”
A wave of anger rolled through her at Santos’s words. He’d never understood the special relationship she shared with her mother. Or the secrets. The irony didn’t escape her that he had his secrets, too. If she hadn’t been so furious she might have cut him some slack. But at the very least, he should have acknowledged her feelings. This was her mother! Why in the hell couldn’t he see this was different?
She tried to hold back, tried to tell herself not to do it, but the words and the memories hurt so much it was impossible to stop them from spilling. Something far greater than she could control took over and shattered the dam she’d tended so carefully for so long.
“I’m not ignoring it because it’s not a fact!” she cried. “My mother didn’t kill Mike Slider—I did!”
…
Santos went perfectly still and told himself he must have misunderstood. “What did you say?” he asked carefully.
Her expression crumbled with regret, and he knew instantly her unhappiness was not because of what she’d done, but because she’d told him about it. She blinked, looked away, then faced him again, her features slowly rearranging themselves into a semblance of some control. Even as shocked as he was, he marveled at her ability to pull herself together.
“I shot him,” she said quietly. “My mother told the police she did it to protect me, but she was lying. And she made me lie, too.”
Santos did the math in his head. “You were only sixteen.”
She nodded, a glimmer that could have been the moon’s reflection in her gaze. She angrily swiped a finger beneath one eye, and the impression disappeared.
“Why?”
“You’ve been around as long as I have. You figure it out.”
The look on her face stole his breath. “Tell me,” he said softly.
“He’d been after me since the day he’d moved in.” Her voice matched his. “Knowing now how people like him operate, I’m pretty sure I was one of the reasons he came to live with us, not some deep abiding love for my mother. I didn’t tell Mom at the time, because she seemed happy. She was so sure he was going to take care of us, I didn’t want to say anything to spoil it. I thought maybe I was misinterpreting things.”
“Did he rape you?” His hands clenched with a rage he kept hidden.
“No. He never got the chance. He grabbed me one day while she was gone. We fell down, and I went for the nearest weapon I could find. It happened to be my grandfather’s shotgun. I was only going to hit him with it, but we fought over it, and I accidently pulled the trigger. Mom came home, found us, and then told me what we were going to do. After she was sure I had the story down, she called the police.”
“And no one ever figured it out?”
“No one cared,” Rose replied. “He’d done this once before and had gone to Huntsville for it. Mom didn’t know he’d been in prison. When he turned up dead, the local cops were fine with it. And she’d been in trouble with the law before, anyway.” Rose looked over his shoulder, staring at a memory he knew would always haunt her. “She gave up three years of her life, and I became a cop who understood things aren’t always what they seem. I can never repay her for protecting me like that.” Rose met his stare. “And I’ll be damned if I help you find her just so you can arrest her.”
At the risk of losing everything he’d worked so hard to achieve, he opened his mouth to argue with her and give her all the reasons she was wrong, then he stopped. His words would only sound hollow. He considered everything she’d said and what he needed to do, and he decided there might be more than one way to still make this work.
“What if I make you a deal?” he asked slowly.
She didn’t need to say a word; her closed expression said it all. He continued anyway.
“You’ve told me you haven’t seen or heard from your mother since you left San Antonio. That was one of the main reasons you came to Rio County.”
“I haven’t found her so far.”
“It’s been two years, Rose. Two years. And right now, you shouldn’t even be looking for her by yourself. It’s too dangerous.”
“West Texas is a dangerous place.”
“You’re right…so let’s work together. We can watch each other’s back,” he proposed. “You help me, I’ll help you, and she can help both of us.”
She was shaking her head before he could finish. “You’ll just arrest her—”
“I’ll take her in if she’s done something wrong. If not, she’s free to go. Either way, you stick close to me and help me find her, and you can talk to her first. Before I even say a word.”
Her blue eyes turned speculative. “Why would you offer me something like that? I just blurted out a secret I’ve been keeping for fifteen years,” she said. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder. At the least, you could take away my badge. At the worst, you could arrest me, too. I think you’ve got the better hand in this game. Why bargain?”
Somewhere out in the distance, he heard the soft snuffling of a deer herd, their hooves pawing at the corn he’d scattered for them to eat. “Maybe I see a lot of things more clearly now you’ve shared your secret.”
“And maybe you’re ready for the easy way out. Spin me a story, get my cooperation, then do what you want to anyway.”
“You don’t think much of me, do you? Do you really think I would do something like that?”
“You care about the mission and nothing else. If I can help you, you’ll look the other way. If I chose not to, you’ll do whatever you like. That’s how it’s always been.” She followed his stare into the darkness then faced him again. “If I agree to this, then I want to explain to her what’s going on. Your Wild West technique of guns-blazing, no-holds-barred, slap-the-cuffs-on-’em-first, is not the way this is going to go down.”
“I said I’d let you talk to her.” Irritation inched into his voice. “That’s not a guarantee I won’t arrest her if she’s done something wrong.”
“You haven’t given me much to go on, Santos. How do I know you won’t go back on your word?”
This time he let his anger show. “Listen, Rose, I’m not as big a bastard as you’re making me out to be. This is an undercover operation for a reason. There are details about it I can’t reveal right now, even to you.”
“Secrets?” she said with wide eyes that mocked him. “You have secrets, too?”
He cursed silently. It was time for this conversation to end. “Do we have an arrangement or not?”
After dragging out the torture a little longer, she finally held out her hand.
He seriously considered yanking her to him and sealing the deal a different way, but he shook her hand. All at once, he knew how a lion tamer felt. One wrong step and he’d be history.
“Where’s your county map? My GPS doesn’t show the back roads and short cuts.” He covered his anxiousness with brusqueness.
Turning away, she opened her car door and reached inside to pull out a folder of creased paper. She spread the map over the hood of the cruiser, took a tiny flashlight out of her pocket, and flipped it on.
“Your mother was spotted around here a few months back, selling guns to a Mexican ‘businessman.’” He pointed to an empty area over the border, west of Aqua Frio. “We need to check that out first.”
“It’s crazy along the border in that area. It’s illegal for us to be there and too dangerous for everyone else.” She raised her face, and he caught a whiff of the soap he’d used in her bathroom that first night. He swallowed.
“Maybe so, but it’s neither for bikers.”
She gave him a begrudging nod. “You have a point.”
“Anyone we talk to will assume we’re there to raise hell or buy dope. We’ve already done both. We’ve also put out the word we want some work from Ortega.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“The guy in the trailer park had a sister in Ojinaga. We go there first and talk to her, maybe manage to hook up with some of Ortega’s men. Then we’ll play connect the dots—your mother, Ortega, the sister, maybe this guy you mentioned, too—Enrique? Anyone else we can get to talk to us. One of those people—or maybe all of them—can help us.”
“You realize this could be a wild goose chase, don’t you?” she asked. “None of these people could know anything about your informant, much less where my mother might be.”
“We have to start somewhere. It might as well be there.”
After another twenty minutes of discussion, Santos folded the map and handed it back to her. “Why don’t we meet here tomorrow night? You can hide your car in the barn.” He paused. “Does anyone on the other side of the border know you well enough to recognize you?”
She laughed. “They don’t even recognize me on this side of the border. All they see is a uniform.”
“I thought so, but I needed to ask. I don’t want someone else disappearing on me.”
She opened her car door and threw the map inside. As she started to get in the car after it, he put his hand on her arm and stopped her. “Why didn’t you tell me—?” he made a motion with his hand “—all this before now?”
“Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t want to get my mother in any more trouble,” she said slowly. “She’s had a hard row to hoe, and I didn’t want to add to it. I thought if you knew you’d somehow make her life even harder, which, come to think of it, is exactly what you’re doing.”
“I wish you’d been honest with me.” He found himself lifting her chin once again, their eyes meeting in the darkness before he dropped his hand. “Things might have gone differently.”
Her eyelashes swept down to shadow her cheeks then back up. “I started to tell you once or twice,” she admitted, “but it always seemed like the wrong time. How do you tell someone you killed a guy when you were sixteen? It’s not like it just pops up in the conversation.”
“I would have understood.”
“Maybe.” She smiled sadly. “And maybe not. I’m not even sure I ever will.”
…
A last minute phone call from his boss made Santos late getting to the meet Austin Wells had set up with Dos y Tres, and when he finally arrived, the bar’s parking lot was packed. After a few minutes of searching, he found a spot in the rear of the building and backed the Harley into it, nose out. As Joaquim Guillermo came out of the shadows toward him, he thought about The Conversation and The Kiss. That’s how he referenced what had happened between him and Rose, with capital letters. He wanted to imprint The Kiss in his mind because he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen again. Despite their agreement, once she realized what was going on, she wouldn’t care about anything except getting his head on a platter, not his lips on her skin. As far as The Conversation went, he’d never forget it, period. It answered so many questions about Rose and her mother that he almost wondered why he’d never before considered the possibility of something like this, as unexpected as it was. She wasn’t the first woman who’d had to defend herself against a predator, and sadly, she wouldn’t be the last.
Joaquim had a bottle of Dos Equis in his right hand and a cigarette in the other. As Santos watched, the ACES sniper dropped the cigarette beneath his boot and crushed it, then poured the beer into a puddle beside it. Joaquim didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and didn’t talk unless he had to. Those traits set him apart from the other ACES officers, but his primary virtue—and the envy of the team members, including Santos—was his patience. If there was any waiting to be done, Joaquim did it.
“Sorry I’m late,” Santos said. “Got a call at the last minute.”
“No problem.”
“Looks like Dos y Tres brought everyone in the chapter.” Santos peeled off his gloves and Joaquim nodded.
“How many?”
“Thirty, maybe forty.”
“Everybody already drunk?”
An expression of distaste crossed Joaquim’s patrician features. A second nod was his only answer.
Without another word, the sniper turned and headed back for the open-air dive. The cool, dry air was filled with the kind of tension only a bar full of testosterone-heavy men could produce. Santos wasn’t sure what he would have to handle inside. Despite Austin Wells’s assertion that his contact from a rival gang was interested in a joint protection run, cooperation between different clubs could be as tricky as Middle East negotiations. The Welcome Wagon ladies hadn’t damaged his bike; another gang had done that.
A blast of music assaulted his ears as he walked under the cover of the patio and headed for the bar. Austin was in the middle of what looked like a hot game of Texas Hold’em. When he saw Santos, he lifted his chin in acknowledgement. A man with a three-patch vest sat facing Austin, his back to Santos. At the same table, Bentley was playing, but he was paying more attention to the woman sitting on his lap than his cards. She must have been the blonde Austin had mentioned earlier. Bentley’s admiration for her was almost as obvious as the young lady’s charms. Santos turned to comment on it, but Joaquim had vanished. He did that frequently.
“A beer and a bump,” Santos called out to the man behind the bar as he walked up. The bartender’s name was Marion Langley, but no one wanted to risk his life by using his first name. He preferred Keeper, and that’s what they called him. Keeper brought him the two glasses, but didn’t linger; he was too busy to do anything but pour.
Santos surveyed the crowded room. All the ACES agents were present, as well as members from various other clubs. On one of the wooden picnic tables, five men stood around a pile of grease-covered engine parts that looked like they’d come straight from the bone yard. A lot of riders brought salvage parts to the bar hoping to trade for another piece of equipment they needed for their bikes but couldn’t find. A table with five women waited nearby, bored expressions on all their faces as they sipped their beer.
He emptied the shot glass first, then turned to the beer and took a long swallow, draining almost half. He’d been drinking enough on this assignment to make up for Joaquim’s abstinence, and then some. But when the job was over, the drinking had to be, too. The alcohol was going down way too smooth, and every time he thought for too long, he found himself thirsty. Rose’s confession hadn’t made things any easier. He was buried up to his neck in lies, half-truths, and dark secrets that wouldn’t stay dead.
His second round was sitting in front of him when Austin sidled up, the stranger in tow. “Hey, boss, I want you to meet Tony Barra,” he said. “This is the brother I’ve been telling you about.”
He’d seen the rider’s colors, the patches on the back of his vest, from across the room. Dos Y Tres, the top rocker had read, Refugio, the bottom one explained. The center pie showed three candles with two flames, each pillar held upright by a bony finger. Wings shaped like knives made up the background. As patches went, it was pretty tame unless you realized the image was actually a devil’s trident. Like the other men in the room, he was clearly a hardcore biker, one of the “one percenters” who supposedly gave the other 99 percent riders the bad reputation they didn’t deserve.
Santos greeted the man, then curled three fingers at Keeper with a nod. The drinks came, and they made their way to a quickly vacated table near the back of the room. Rank did indeed have its privileges.
They sniffed around the main topic until he sensed a subtle change in the man. He’d decided to buy the ACES story. Santos leaned closer to speak over the noise of the bar. “Flush tells me you might have some work for us.” Austin hated the nickname they’d come up for him and explained every time he could that it stood for the gambler’s term, and not the toilets. The clarification didn’t help; everyone still laughed.
“I may have,” Barra said. Beneath his vest, he wore a white pressed shirt, so clean he must have changed into it once he’d gotten to the bar. Santos was willing to bet no one teased him about his wardrobe. He could have been a salesman in an appliance store, except for his colors and the aura of pointless violence that hovered around him. “Dos y Tres has a job coming up, and we may need someone to get our six.”
As he stared into the man’s mud-colored eyes, Santos thought once again about the brick that had damaged his bike.
“Everybody in your chapter agree?” he asked casually.
“Don’t matter if they do or not. I’m the president. I make the rules.”
“That’s true. You’re in charge.” Santos took a drink of his beer. “So we’ll make sure you’re happy. Hell, we’re just like UPS. We deliver. Whatever you got to get somewhere, we’ll ride with it, and I personally guarantee it’ll get there safe, and so will your driver.”
“That’s a pretty big promise. That bitch of a sheriff here has made our life hell. We take the long way around Rio County, or she sics the dogs on us.”
“Leave her to me. I can handle that.” If only, he thought. If only her lips weren’t so soft, and her body didn’t curve just to fit his, and the dip right below her collarbone didn’t make him go weak with hunger for her touch.
Tony Ballas’s eyebrows met in the middle as he frowned. “If something goes wrong, you gotta answer to people besides me.”
Beside him, Austin stilled. Santos leaned back in his chair with a casual movement that hid his unwavering determination. This was what they’d come for, and he wasn’t about to show it. “You’re doing the hiring. Seems to me like you ought to do the firing.”
Ballas clearly agreed. His lips narrowed in the bar’s flickering lights, and Santos was sure he was going to talk about the people above him. Then he seemed to think better of his reaction, and his jaw loosened. “There’s new money coming in. I want a piece of it, and that’s why I’m talking to you. I don’t trust the lone wolves I’ve seen around here lately.”
He wondered if Ballas meant Carlos Hernandez, the man he’d run over at the trailer park. He’d been a paid hand with no affiliations to a cartel. He’d been a biker with no chapter as well.
“Maybe the wolves aren’t so lonely.”
“Maybe they belong to the big money,” Santos said. “I might have some info on that. We could trade names.”
“Trade names?” The other biker made a sound in the back of his throat. “Dead’s still dead, no matter what kind of trade you’re talking about.” He shook his head. “All I need is help. You interested or not?”
“No problem.” Santos held up his hands. “That works for us, too.” Now it was anger at himself that he hid. He should have been able to weasel out more info from the man. He’d just have to hope he might learn more on the run. He smiled grimly. “You know our rep, or you wouldn’t be here. We’ll cut our rate for the first run as a sign of goodwill, how’s that sound?”
This time it was Ballas who leaned forward, and thirty minutes later, the three men returned to the bar for fresh drinks to seal the deal.
He was one step closer to Ortega. It might take a million more. But Santos was prepared to take them—and more.