Texas Hold 'Em (6 page)

“That’s exactly what’s going to happen.” She smiled sweetly. “It’s just going to happen a little sooner than you thought. Like right now.” Her amusement disappeared. “Let’s go.”

They all grumbled appropriately, then scooted off the cracked vinyl cushions. The customers relaxed noticeably when Rose said hello to one or two of them as she escorted the bikers out.

“What did April mean about you being popular?” she asked Santos under her breath when they reached the sidewalk outside.

“King was in there a few minutes ago. He’s not happy you let me go.”

“I’ll deal with him later.” A deep frown crossed her forehead, her blue eyes troubled. “We need to talk.”

“Not here.”

“I agree. Where are you staying?”

“We’re out at the ranch. Not in the big house—we’re bunking in the old place on the back ridge. But everyone’s staying there—and we need some privacy. Meet me by the horse pens on the south side.”

They agreed on a time, then Rose spoke again. “I’ll be there—unless you’re planning on having some other company.” She lifted an eyebrow toward the diner where the waitress waved from the window.

“She’s a little young for me.” He let his stare slide over Rose’s face. It lingered on her lips before he raised it to her eyes. “I’ll wait for you instead.”

…

The crew was lounging on the other side of the street where the Harleys actually were illegally parked. Santos started toward them, then slowed his stride when a stealthy rustling sound in the darkness behind him drew his attention. Edging his hand underneath his cut, he ducked into the shadows of a nearby storefront. A fragment of murmured conversation reached him, the dry wind making it sound closer than it probably was. Two voices, he thought, off to his right. A low brick wall leaned haphazardly next to the building. Whoever was speaking was behind it.

“Make sure you aim good,” one said. “We ain’t gonna get two chances at this one.”

“Are they still in the diner?”

A short pause followed, then a curse. “They’re gone, damnit. I don’t see ’em nowhere. Do it fast.”

He wrapped his fingers around the grip of his pistol just as a brick sailed over his head, through the air, and directly into his Harley. His agents reacted identically, a variety of weapons suddenly appearing in their hands as the bike’s alarm shrieked. Leaping over the wall, he turned the corner in time to see two shadows dart away. Austin and Bent ran after them while Joachim and Jess froze in place, their eyes sweeping the darkness, their pistols following. Down the street, Bent scrambled over another fence, this one at least six feet tall, and Austin did the same, but they were back ten minutes later, shaking their heads.

They gathered around his bike where a puddle of oil was spreading beneath it.

Stepping off the curb, he leaned over and looked at the destruction. The missile had hit his filler cap, knocking out the plug and releasing all the liquid. The guy’s pitch had been perfect—unless he’d been aiming for one of the agents and had hit the bike instead.

He started to straighten, then saw a scrawled message on the back of the brick. The words, written in thick black marker, were ragged and misspelled. He read the Spanish message out loud, translating as he went.

“There’s room in the desert for more skeletons.”

…

Santos was still staring at the damaged motorcycle when Rose’s cruiser came back down the street it’d just left.

He lifted an eyebrow as she exited the vehicle and came toward him. “April called,” she explained, nodding toward the diner. “She saw all the excitement. We don’t get much of that around here.”

He glanced back toward the diner where the young waitress was standing in the window. He lifted a thumb and mouthed “thanks,” and she waved back enthusiastically.

Rose read the note. “I’d like to chalk this up to vandals, but I don’t guess that’s possible, is it?”

“Probably not.”

“Bag it and write up a report,” she wearily ordered King who had arrived just before her. “And be sure to get some photos.” She turned back to Santos. “A description would really help.”

“I’d give you one if I had it.”

He didn’t mention one of the men had an athletic form that had looked vaguely familiar…maybe like the deputy standing nearby? As if she could read his mind, Rose gave him a funny look, then stepped over to King who was already talking to the others and making notes.

Santos turned his back and punched a number into his cell phone.

“You shouldn’t be calling me on this line.” His boss, Taylor Greenberg spoke before Santos could. “This better be important,” she said.

“Where do you stand on that autopsy? I just got a visit from some folks I think might be associates of the deceased. They weren’t real friendly.”

“You want it done right, or you want it done fast?

“Yes,” he answered. “For now, just tell me what you do know. You’ve run his prints, surely.”

A child giggled in the background and a dog’s feverish barking followed. “Damn it, Santos. Why do you always cause me so much trouble?” The question didn’t require an answer, and she didn’t expect it. The sound of clicking computer keys came over the phone then she spoke again.

“His name is Carlos Hernandez, and he’s from El Salvador. The cartel connected to his tatts is where he started, but basically he’s hired help now. Roams around doing odd jobs, if you know what I mean. No loyalty to any specific group. He was wanted for questioning in the deaths of two store clerks down in McAllen. A liquor store robbery that went wrong.”

“Next of kin?”

“Sister outside Ojinaga.” She paused, and the child laughed again, this time louder. “I gotta go. Stay safe.”

Santos moved to stand next to Rose, his fists at his side, anger lacing his voice as he told her his boss’s news. “Forget tomorrow night. We need to talk now. Meet me at the horse pens as soon as you can get there.”

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.