Fearless

She served Rodrigo bacon and eggs and the homemade biscuits she’d made since she was ten, because Consuelo had to go to the store for more canning supplies, including jars and lids. She poured coffee into a cup and put that on the table as well. She’d long since eaten herself, so she went back to peeling a basket of peaches.

RODRIGO WATCHED HER COVERTLY. She had her hair in its usual braid. She was wearing old blue jeans and a green T-shirt that showed very little skin. She wasn’t a pretty woman. He found her uninteresting. Not that it mattered. Now that Sarina was married, and she and Bernadette were no longer part of his life, not much did matter. He’d hoped that the reappearance of Bernadette’s father, Colby Lane, would make no difference to the close ties he had with the woman and child. But in scant weeks, Colby and Sarina were inseparable. They had been married years ago and it seemed that the marriage was never annulled. It was like death to Rodrigo, who’d been part of Sarina’s family for three years. He couldn’t cope. It was why he’d taken on this assignment. It was both covert and dangerous. He was known to the big drug lords, and his cover was paper thin since he’d helped put away Cara Dominguez, successor to famous, and dead, drug lord Manuel Lopez.

Rodrigo was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He and Sarina, a fellow agent, had worked out of the Tucson division for three years. Then they’d been asked to go undercover in Houston to ferret out a smuggling enterprise. They’d been successful. But Colby Lane, who’d helped set up the smugglers, had walked off with Sarina and Bernadette. Rodrigo had been devastated.

Sarina had promised Colby that she’d give up her DEA job and go to work for Police Chief Cash Grier here in Jacobsville. So Rodrigo had asked for this undercover assignment, to be near her. But Sarina had been persuaded by the DEA to work with Alexander Cobb in the Houston office on another case. Colby hadn’t liked it. Rodrigo had liked it less. She was in Houston, and he was here. Colby had remained at Ritter Oil Corporation in Houston as assistant of security for the firm, while Sarina settled back in with the Houston DEA office. Bernadette was back in Houston finishing out the school year in a familiar place.

Sarina had come here to tell him the news. It had been painful, seeing her again. She knew how he felt; she was sorry for him. It didn’t help. His life was in pieces. She was concerned that his cover was too flimsy and he stood to be killed if the drug lords found him out. It didn’t matter. There was a price on his head in almost every other country in the world from his days as a professional mercenary. This country was the only place left where he wasn’t in danger of being assassinated. On the other hand, his line of work was likely to get him killed.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Rodrigo asked the woman peeling peaches beside him.

She smiled. “Not a lot, no,” she replied.

“How do you like the job, so far?” he asked.

“It’s nice,” she replied. “And I like Consuelo.”

“Everyone does. She has a big heart.”

She peeled another peach. He finished his coffee and got up to get a refill for himself. She noticed. “I don’t mind doing that,” she said. “It’s part of my job to work in the kitchen.”

He ignored the comment, added cream to his coffee, and sat back down. “How did you hurt your leg?”

Her face closed up. She didn’t like remembering. “It was when I was a child,” she said, circumventing the question.

He was watching her, very closely. “And you don’t talk about it, do you?”

She looked him in the eye. “No. I don’t.”

He sipped coffee. His eyes narrowed. “Most women your age are married or involved with someone.”

“I like my own company,” she told him.

“You don’t share things,” he replied. “You don’t trust anyone. You keep to yourself, do your job and go home.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Are we doing a psychological profile?”

He laughed coolly. “I like to know something about the people I work with.”

“I’m twenty-six years old, I’ve never been arrested, I hate liver, I pay my bills on time and I’ve never cheated on my income tax. Oh,” she added, “and I wear size nine shoes, in case it ever comes up.”

He chuckled then. His dark eyes were amused, alive, intent on her face. “Do I sound like an interrogator?”

“Something like that,” she said, smiling.

“Consuelo says you speak Spanish.”

“Tengo que hablarlo,” she replied. “Para hacer mi trabajo.”

“¿Y qué es su trabajo, pues, rubia?” he replied.

She smiled gently. “You speak it so beautifully,” she said involuntarily. “I was taught Castilian, although I don’t lisp my‘c’s.”

“You make yourself understood,” he told her. “Are you literate?”

She nodded. “I love to read in Spanish.”

“What do you like to read?”

She bit her lower lip and gave him an odd look. “Well…”

“Come on.”

She sighed. “I like to read about Juan Belmonte and Joselito and Manolete.”

His eyebrows arched toward his hairline. “Bullfighters? You like to read about Spanish bullfighters?”

She scowled. “Old bullfighters,” she corrected. “Belmonte and Joselito fought bulls in the early part of the twentieth century, and Manolete died in the ring in 1947.”

“So they did.” He studied her over his coffee mug. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? Soccer and bullfighting.” He shook his head. “I would have taken you for a woman who liked poetry.”

IF HE’D KNOWN HER, and her lifestyle, it would have shocked him that she’d even considered doing manual labor, much less read poetry. She was amused at the thought.

“I do like poetry,” she replied. And she did.

“So do I,” he said surprisingly.

“Which poets?” she fished.

He smiled. “Lorca.”

Her lips parted on a shocked breath. “He wrote about the death of his friend Sánchez Mejías in the bull ring.”

“Yes, and was killed himself in the Spanish Civil War a few years later.”

“How odd,” she said, thinking aloud.

“That I read Lorca?”

“Well, considering what he wrote, yes. It’s something of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“What poets do you read?” he returned.

“I like Rupert Brooke.” In fact, as she looked at Rodrigo she was remembering a special poem, about death finding the poet long before he tired of watching the object of the poem. She thought involuntarily that Rodrigo was good to look at. He was very handsome.

He pursed his lips. “I wonder if we could possibly be thinking of the same poem?” he wondered aloud.

“Which one did you have in mind?” she probed.

“‘Death will find me long before I tire of watching you,’” he began in a slow, sensuous, faintly accented tone.

The peach she was peeling fell out of her hands and rolled across the kitchen floor while she stared at the man across the table from her with wide-eyed shock.

3

RODRIGO STARED AT HER curiously. She was a contradiction. She seemed simple and sweet, but she was educated. He was certain that she wasn’t what she appeared to be, but it was far too soon to start dissecting her personality. She interested him, but he didn’t want her to. He was still mourning Sarina. Anyway, it amused him that she liked the same poems he did.

She got up slowly and picked up her peach, tossing it away because Consuelo had waxed the floor that morning and she was wary of getting even a trace of wax in her fruit. She washed her hands again as well.

“I’m glad to see that you appreciate the danger of contamination,” Rodrigo said.

She smiled. “Consuelo would have whacked me with a broom if she’d caught me putting anything in the pot that had been on her floor, no matter how clean it is.”

“She’s a good woman.”

“She is,” Glory agreed. “She’s been very kind to me.”

He finished his coffee and got up. But he didn’t leave. “One of the workers told me that Castillo made a suggestive remark to you when you went to ask him for replacement baskets for some berries that had molded.”

She gave him a wary look. She’d had words with Castillo over his foul language. He’d only laughed. It had made her very angry. But she didn’t want to get a reputation for tale-telling. There was more to it than that, of course. Her mother hadn’t been the only person who’d been physically abusive to her. The two teenage boys in the foster home had harassed and frightened her for months and then assaulted her. As a result of the violence in her past, she was uneasy and frightened around men. Rodrigo had been away when the new employee had made suggestive remarks, and Glory and Consuelo would have been no match for a man with the muscles Castillo enjoyed displaying, if Glory had antagonized him.

“You’re afraid of him,” Rodrigo said quietly, watching her reaction to the statement.

She swallowed. Her hand contracted on the knife. She didn’t want to admit that, even though it was true. She was afraid of men. It hurt her pride to have to admit it.

“Was it a man, who did that to you?” he asked unexpectedly, indicating her hip.

She was too emotionally torn to choose her words. “My mother did it,” she replied.

Whatever reply he’d expected, that wasn’t it. “God in heaven, your mother?” he exclaimed.

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“She was killing my cat,” she said, feeling the pain all over again. “I tried to stop her.”

“What did she hit you with?”

The memory was still painful. “A baseball bat. My own baseball bat. I played on my school team just briefly.”

His indrawn breath was audible in the silence that followed.

“And the cat?”

The memory hurt. “My daddy buried it for me while I was in the hospital,” she managed huskily.

“Niña,” he whispered huskily. “Lo siento.”

She’d never had comfort. It had been offered, and refused, several times during traumatic periods of her life. Sympathy was weakening. It was the enemy. She tried valiantly to stem the tears, but she couldn’t stop them. The tenderness in Rodrigo’s deep voice made her hungry for comfort. Her wet eyes betrayed that need to him.

He took the knife and the peaches from her, set them aside and pulled her up tight into his arms. He held her, rocked her, while years of sorrow and grief poured out of her in a blinding tide.

“What a witch she must have been,” he murmured into her soft hair.

“Yes,” she said simply, remembering what came after her accident. The arrest of her father and his conviction, the foster homes, the assault…

She should have been afraid of him. The memory of the boys overpowering her in her foster home haunted her. But she wasn’t afraid. She clung to him, burying her wet face in his broad chest. His arms were strong and warm, and he held her in a gentle but tight nonsexual way. It was a landmark in her life, that comfort. Jason had held her when she cried, of course, but Jason was like a loving big brother. This man was something entirely different.

He smoothed her hair, thinking how it helped to feel another human body close against his. He grieved for the loss of Sarina and Bernadette, and deep inside he remembered his anguish when the drug lord, Manuel Lopez, had killed his only sister. He knew grief. He began to understand this woman a little. She was strong. She must be, to have survived such an ordeal. He suspected there were more traumatic things in her past, things she’d never told another living soul.

After a minute, she moved away from him. She was embarrassed. She dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her apron and turned to pick up the peaches and the knife.

“We all have tragedies,” he said quietly. “We live with them in silence. Sometimes the pain breaks free and becomes visible. It should not embarrass you to realize that you are human.”

She looked up at him with red eyes. She nodded.

He smiled and glanced at his watch. “I have to get the men started. Breakfast was very nice. Your biscuits are better than Consuelo’s, but don’t tell her.”

She managed a watery smile. “I won’t.”

He started out the door.

“Señor Ramirez,” she called.

He turned, his eyebrows arched.

“Thank you,” she managed.

“You’re welcome.”

She watched him go, twisting inside with unfamiliar emotions. She couldn’t remember any man, except for Jason, holding her like that in her adult life. It had been wonderful. Now she had to put it right out of her mind. She didn’t want anyone close to her emotionally. Not even Rodrigo.

THE NEXT WEEK, SHE was surprised to find a police car in the front yard. She went to the front porch and paused as the town’s police chief, Cash Grier, bounded up the steps.

She hadn’t seen him before, and she was surprised by the long ponytail he wore. She’d heard that he was unconventional, and there were some interesting rumors about his past that were spoken in whispers. Even up in San Antonio, he was something of a legend in law enforcement circles.

“You’re Chief Grier,” she said as he approached her.

He grinned. “What gave me away?” he asked.

“The badge that says ‘Police Chief,’” she replied, tongue-in-cheek. “What can I do for you?”

He chuckled. “I came to see Rodrigo. Is he around?”

“He was,” she replied. “But he hasn’t come in for lunch, or called.” She turned and opened the screen door, leaning heavily on the cane. “Consuelo, do you know where Mr. Ramirez is?”

“He said he was going to the hardware store to pick up the extra buckets he ordered,” she called.

Glory turned back to the chief, and found him eyeing her cane. She became defensive. “Something bothering you?” she asked pertly.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stare. You’re young to be walking with a cane.”

She nodded, her green eyes meeting his dark ones. “I’ve been using it for a long time.”

He cocked his head, and he wasn’t smiling. “Your mother was Beverly Barnes, wasn’t she?” he asked coldly.

She drew in her breath.

“Marquez’s mother runs the local eatery,” he replied. “I know about you from her. She and Rick don’t have any secrets.”

“Nobody is supposed to know why I’m here,” she began worriedly.

He held up a hand. “I haven’t said anything, and I won’t. I gather you include Rodrigo in those people who aren’t supposed to know why you’re here?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Especially Rodrigo.”

He nodded. “I’ll watch your back,” he told her. “But it would be wise to have Rodrigo in on it.”

She couldn’t imagine why. The manager of a truck farm wouldn’t know what to do against a drug lord. “The fewer people who know, the better,” she told him. “Fuentes would love to hang me out to dry before the trial. I know too much.”

“Marquez told me. He said he had to fight you to get you to come down here in the first place. The thing is, Fuentes probably has confederates that we don’t know about.”

“Here?” she asked.

“Very likely. I have a few contacts on the wrong side of the law. Word is that he’s hiring teenagers for his more potent areas of vengeance. They go to juvenile hall, you see, not prison. I understand that he’s recruiting in a Houston gang—Los Serpientes. If you see any suspicious activity here, or any new young faces hiring on, I want to know about it. Night or day. Especially if you feel threatened at all. I don’t care if it’s after midnight, either.”

“That’s generous of you,” she said, and she smiled.

“Not really,” he sighed. “Tris, our baby girl, keeps us awake all hours just lately. She’s teething, so you probably wouldn’t even have to wake us up.”

“Your wife is very famous,” she replied shyly.

He chuckled with pride. “Yes, but you’d never know it to see her pushing baby Tris in a cart in the Sav-A-Lot Grocery Store,” he assured her.

Grocery store. The store had a van. Something niggled in the back of her mind. She remembered something. “There was a van,” she said suddenly. “This man Castillo that Mr. Ramirez just hired to be his assistant was talking to some man in a battered old white van. Something changed hands—money or drugs, maybe. It was suspicious, so I wrote down the license plate number.”

“Smart girl,” he said, impressed.

“I put it on a pad in the kitchen. Would you like to come in and have coffee? Consuelo’s made a nice peach pie for supper.”

“I love coffee and pie,” he assured her.

“Come in, then.”

He followed her into the kitchen, where Consuelo greeted him, but with obvious suspicion. He got the number from Glory while Consuelo was out of the room.

“Consuelo doesn’t like policemen,” she confided. “I don’t know why. I mentioned something about the extra patrols that were coming past the house, and she was belligerent.”

“Could be the immigration investigations,” Cash murmured. “They’ve stepped up in the new political climate.”

“What about the extra patrols?” she asked suddenly.

He glanced toward the doorway to make sure Consuelo wasn’t around. “One of Ramirez’s employees has a rap sheet. We’ve been keeping a low profile, but we’re keeping an eye on him.” He grinned. “Nice work, getting that tag number.”

She chuckled. “I feel like an undercover narc or something,” she murmured as he got up to leave.

He laughed. “I can’t tell you why that’s amusing, but one day you’ll see. Thanks for the coffee and pie.”

“You’re very welcome.” She hesitated. “Can you tell me which employee you’ve got your eye on?”

He sighed. “You’ve probably guessed that already.”

She nodded. “Castillo has tats and muscles like a wrestler. It doesn’t take much guesswork. I’ve seen his type come through my office for years.”

“So have I,” he said.

“Do you know Mr. Ramirez well?” she asked suddenly.

“Not really,” he said deliberately. “I’ve seen him around. But I actually came today to check with him about one of your employees who may be in the country illegally.”

She wondered which employee. “Should I ask him to phone you when he comes in?” she asked.

“Do that, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll be glad to.” She leaned on her cane, frowning. Another thought provoked her next question. “That illegal,” she said slowly. “You don’t think it’s Angel Martinez, do you?” she added, recalling the sweet little man who was always so courteous to her when he came into the house with Rodrigo. She was fond of him.

His eyebrows arched. “Why do you say that?”

She shifted her weight. Her hip was hurting. “It’s just that he and his wife, Carla, have three children. They’re so nice, and they’re happy here. They come from a village in Central America where there was a paramilitary group. Somebody in the village identified one of the rebels to the government authorities. The next day, Angel took Carla and the children to a healer in another village because one of the children had a sore eye. When they got back, everybody in the village was dead, laid out like firewood on the ground.”

He moved closer. “I know what life in those villages is like,” he said with surprising sympathy. “And I know what good people the Martinezes are. Sometimes enforcing the law is painful even for professionals.”

His sympathy made her bold. “I know an attorney in San Antonio who specializes in immigration cases,” she began.

He sighed, noting her expression. “And I know one of the federal attorneys,” he replied with resignation. “Okay. I’ll go make some phone calls.”

She beamed up at him. “I knew you were a nice man the minute I saw you.”

“Did you? How?” he asked with real curiosity.

“The ponytail,” she told him. “It has to be a sign of personal courage.” It was overt flattery.

He laughed. “Well! I’ll have to go home and tell Tippy that the secret’s out.”

She grinned.

His expression became solemn. “Castillo is dangerous. Don’t get brave when you’re on your own here.”

“I realized that early on,” she assured him. “He has no respect for women.”

“Or men,” he added. “Watch your back.”

“I will.”

He waved on his way down the steps.

RODRIGO WAS CURIOUS ABOUT the conversation Glory had with Chief Grier. Too curious.

“Did he say anything about the illegal immigrant he’s looking for?” he asked over bowls of soup at the supper table with Consuelo.

Glory hesitated. She didn’t quite know Rodrigo enough to trust him with information of a potentially tragic case.

Consuelo grinned at him. “She’s afraid you might blow the whistle on Angel,” she said in a stage whisper.

Glory flushed and Rodrigo burst out laughing.

“I would never have suspected you of having anarchist leanings,” he chided Glory.

She finished a spoonful of soup before she answered him. “I’m not an anarchist. I just think people make snap decisions without all the facts. I know that immigrants put a strain on our economy.” She put the spoon down and looked at him. “But aren’t we all Americans? I mean, the continent is North America, isn’t it? If you’re from north, central or south America, you’re still an American.”

Rodrigo looked at Consuelo. “She’s a socialist,” he said.

“I am not classifiable,” she argued. “I just think that helping people in desperate need is supposed to be what freedom and democracy are all about. It isn’t as if they want to come here and sit down and let us all support them. They’re some of the hardest working people in the world. You know yourself that you have to force your hired hands to come out of the fields. Hard work is all they know. They’re just happy to live someplace where they don’t have to worry about being shot or run out of their villages by multinational corporations looking for land.”

He hadn’t interrupted her. He was watching her with narrow, intent eyes, unaware that his soup spoon was frozen in midair.

She raised her eyebrows. “Is my mustache on crooked?” she asked mischievously.

He laughed and put the spoon down. “No. I’m impressed by your knowledge of third world communities.”

She wanted so badly to ask about his own knowledge of them, but she was shy of him. The memory of the fervent embrace she’d shared with him made her tingle all over every time she pictured it. He was very strong, and very attractive.

He finished his coffee, glancing at her. “You’re dying to know, aren’t you?” he asked with a bland expression.

“Know what?”

“Where I come from.”

Her cheeks went pink. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry…”

“I was born in Sonora, in northern Mexico,” he told her. He skipped the part about his family and their illustrious connections, including their wealth. He had to remember his concocted history. “My parents worked for a man who ran cattle. I learned the business from the ground up, and eventually managed a ranch.”

She felt strongly that he wasn’t telling the whole story, but she wasn’t going to dig too deeply. It was too soon. “Did you get tired of the ranch?”

He laughed. “The owner did. He sold his holdings to a politician who thought he knew all about cattle ranching from watching reruns of High Chapparel, that old television Western.”

“Did he really know all about it?” she fished.

“He lost the cattle in the first six months to disease because he didn’t believe in preventative medicine, and he lost the land two months after that in a poker game with two supposed friends. No ranch, no job, so I came north looking for work.”

She frowned. Jason Pendleton wasn’t the sort of man who socialized with day laborers, she thought, even though he wasn’t a snob. “How did you meet Jason…I mean, Mr. Pendleton?” she corrected.

He caught the slip, but let it pass. “We were both acquainted with a man who was opening a new restaurant in San Antonio. He introduced us. Jason said that he needed someone to ramrod a truck farm in a little Texas town, and I was looking for work.”

Actually he’d approached Jason, with the help of a mutual friend, and explained that he needed the job temporarily to provide his cover while he tried to shut down Fuentes and his operation. Jason had agreed to go along with it.