“No.”
“Then…” She raised her shoulders.
He exhaled a long breath tinged with impatience. “Beth would never have left the house that night, would never have been on the road, speeding, plowing into a light pole, if she hadn’t been frantic to get to me. She didn’t even change Georgia out of her pajamas, just took her from her crib, strapped her in her car seat, and split.”
All that was a matter of record. The court-appointed psychologist’s report had given the facts nuance. She had assessed that the guilt he felt over the death of his wife, as misplaced as it was, had been as profound and debilitating as his grief. In the counselor’s opinion, he had finally forgiven himself.
But evidently he hadn’t. Not completely. The scars of guilt were permanent. He had merely learned to live with them.
“Tell me about Halcon.”
He assumed a thoughtful air and stroked his chin. “Well, let’s see, what would you find interesting about Halcon? Here’s something. Nobody seems to know why the city fathers kept the Spanish pronunciation but dropped the accent mark above the o.”
She frowned at his lame attempt to divert her.
Irritably, he pushed back his chair and carried his empty plate to the sink. “You can read all about the gunfight online.”
“I have.”
He turned around, still surly. “I’ll bet you have. Before or since the hearing?”
“Before. I wanted to know exactly what had happened out there because everything that’s happened since harked back to that showdown between you and Manuel Fuentes.”
He watched her for a moment, then tilted his head to one side. “Why a judge?”
“Pardon?”
Folding his arms, he leaned back against the counter. “I’ll trade you one for one, Your Honor. I’ll answer a question about Halcon in exchange for an answer from you.” When she hesitated, he said, “Until Marilyn gets here, we’ve got nothing better to do.”
Then he turned his head and looked through the door leading into the living room and, beyond it, the bedroom. When he came back to her, he asked roughly, “Do we?”
Although she experienced a rush of heat, she assumed her courtroom voice. “I get to go first.”
“Fine.”
“It was said that Fuentes had become an obsession with you. Is that true? Were you that determined to get him?”
“‘No matter what the cost.’ That’s a direct quote from the Houston Chronicle write-up about the shootout.”
“Which put Halcon on the map.”
“And me in dutch.” He took a moment to collect his thoughts, then began speaking matter-of-factly. “Fuentes had been on the radar for years, pumping drugs into the U.S., pumping weapons into Mexico, and making incalculable profits from both transactions. He was ambitious, audacious, and ruthless, eliminating anyone he perceived as an enemy or competition.
“His methods of execution were more grisly than you can possibly imagine. Medieval. And he circulated graphic photographs of his handiwork to terrorize and intimidate. We’ll never know exactly how many people he and members of his cartel killed. Countless, literally. He had to be put out of business.”
“And you had to be the one to do it?”
“It’s my turn. Why’d you go after the appointment when Judge Waters got sick? Why not remain a highly paid attorney like your dad?”
“You’ve gone online, too, I see.”
He raised his shoulder in a pseudo admission.
“Before or after the hearing?”
“I wanted to know who I was coming up against,” he replied. “Get a sense of the person inside the robe.” After a beat, he added, “But even having formed a basic profile of Judge Holly Spencer, you were a…surprise.”
Their gazes held until she lowered hers. “Dad was a lawyer, yes. A very successful defense attorney in Dallas.”
“A pal of Judge Waters.”
“They had forged a friendship while at Tulane.”
“But you went the way of the judge, not your dad. Why?”
“Actually, it’s my turn,” she said. “Before that day in Halcon, did you ever meet Fuentes face-to-face?”
“No. Nobody knew where he lived, and I’m guessing he was migratory, too smart to stay in one place for any length of time. I figured he was guarded by a veritable army. I studied him, and pegged him as a peacock, an egomaniac. He was a savvy self-promoter who manipulated the Mexican media. He thumbed his nose at law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border. He seemed untouchable. He thought he was.”
He flashed a malicious smile, his gray eyes glinting. “I figured that’s how we’d catch him. He would become overconfident, strut one too many times, and when he did, we’d be there.”
He uncrossed his arms and placed his hands on the counter behind him, bracketing his hips. She tried to avoid looking at the intriguing surface area between, but it was difficult not to look, gauge, recall the feel of him expanding her, filling her.