Chapter Three
Rose tried to stay calm. All she could think was Oh, no, Mom. Oh, no… What the hell have you gone and done now?
She stood and met his gaze head-on. “That’s crazy,” she said evenly, her turmoil hidden. “What kind of evidence do you have that my mother’s involved with this guy?”
“It’s straight from a source I trust completely.”
Rose stilled, her blue eyes unblinking, her heart beating painfully. “Unlike my mother?”
A flicker of some indefinable emotion crossed his expression before disappearing. It might have been defiance, or it might have been guilt. She told herself she didn’t care what the hell it was. Their relationship was over. She didn’t give him time to respond. “I haven’t seen her since before I left San Antonio, thanks to you. If she was around here, don’t you think I’d know?”
“I’m not sure.” He gave her a level look. “You tell me.”
She pretended a sudden interest in the sleeve of her uniform. She wasn’t as shocked as she should have been by the possibility that her mother might be with a man like Pablo Ortega. Gloria Renwick had lived a life that was very far from perfect, and her history with flawed men had only been one of her problems. But she and Rose had secrets, secrets that ran deeper than the bottomless canyons surrounding Aqua Frio. Santos had no idea—nor would he ever know—what those secrets were.
He spoke, his hand on her arm, bringing her back to the moment. “I know for certain that Gloria was Ortega’s lover a few years back, and that only means one thing—”
“You’re right,” she flared suddenly. “It means she fell for a guy she shouldn’t have. If that’s against the law, then every woman I know—including me—would be in jail.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly. I would think you might, too, since you were there the last time it happened to me.”
He released her, his mouth tightening. “You’re the sheriff, Rose, and you have an obligation to uphold the law. If your mother is involved with him personally, then she’s involved with his business.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Maybe not in a normal relationship, but that’s the way it works with the cartel, and you know it. Either way, we’ll find out when we talk to her. If she’s innocent and knows nothing about this, she’ll be fine.”
“She’ll be fine?” Rose repeated with disbelief. “And just what do you think is going to happen with her when your little conversation is finished? How does that usually work, Santos, with the cartel?”
Uneasiness flickered over his expression.
“If this guy finds out she’s in contact with someone like you, she’ll be dead before any of us could blink. Especially if he finds out I’m her daughter.”
“I’m more aware of that then you realize.”
“You’re asking me to risk my mother’s life for the chance—the chance—she might know something about your CI. Even if I did know where my mother is, and I don’t, asking me for help with this is pretty damn low, even for you.” Turning her back on him, she walked stiffly toward the sink, her knees shaking with anger.
He uncoiled his legs and blocked her movement, his hand snaking out to her shoulder. The kitchen suddenly felt smaller. His body took up a lot of space, but their past took up more.
“Who do you think sent those men who came after you tonight? You and I both know that wasn’t a random crime. Ortega has to be involved. Everything points to him. He’s moving into Rio County, and he won’t stop until I make him stop.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Santos. I told you about this guy named Enrique—”
“Sometimes Ortega uses the local talent.” His eyes turned stony and dark. She shivered because she’d seen this kind of determination in his gaze before, and it didn’t bode well for whomever he was hunting. “I’ve got to find this woman. She was taken on my watch. I’m responsible for what happened, and I can’t rest until I fix this and the bastard is behind bars where he belongs.”
She locked her eyes on his and shook her head. “If I thought you were right about my mother, I’d help you. But I don’t, so we’re finished. You need to leave.”
…
Rose was incredibly busy the following day, but her brain still had time to churn away at Santos’s appearance, his pleas, and the way his touch had felt. In between those troubling considerations, she dealt with a teenager’s joyride, an escaped cow, and a ten a.m. drunk at Ms. Mae’s, the only halfway decent bar in town. On the back burner, King was working to find Rose’s attackers, and she’d checked in with him almost hourly. He’d found nothing so far, and John Ramos had insisted he didn’t even know anyone named Juan Enrique, much less asked the man to instigate a jail breakout for him. He was lying, of course, but Santos had barely listened when she’d told him before he’d left last night that only Enrique sold the kind of meth King had found in his arroyo the night he’d arrested Ramos.
In the silence of the newly repaired SUV, she headed home that evening with a purple dusk falling, her thoughts returning to Santos and what he’d said.
The idea of her mother being involved with a criminal like Ortega was disturbing, but what had surprised Rose more was how she’d responded to Santos. Even though he looked completely different, he still had the same smoldering way about him. His voice deep, his face lean, his stare even more intense than it had been before—she hadn’t been able to stop her automatic deep-down-in-her-gut reaction when he’d grabbed her wrist, her body’s betrayal bitter. Maybe she had more of her mother in her than she’d known. His reckless appearance had ratcheted his already sexy appeal even higher.
She was almost to the front door when a quick motion down the street caught her eye. Her pulse taking a leap, her fingers closed over her pistol’s grip. Then a coyote trotted out from under her neighbor’s Mexican Poinciana bush. Three pups followed. Releasing her breath, she sent a quick look in either direction and continued up the steps, feeling foolish.
Once inside, she pulled her drapes then switched on the lamp, collapsing on her sofa to lift her eyes to a framed photo on the opposite wall. A neighbor had taken the picture on her first day of school. Her mother was standing beside her, clutching her hand, a proud smile on her face. At the time, she had known nothing about it, but Gloria had taken care of her daughter by whatever means she could, her crimes petty ones that Rose’s father had taught her when the two of them had still been teenagers—before either had finished high school, before Gloria had gotten pregnant, before he had fled town.
She would attempt to do better with some dead-end job, and then something would happen. Rose would get sick, or the car would break down. An unexpected bill might come in. One time her mother had just flat run out of money and food at the very same time, and she’d had to miss work so they could stand in line at the food bank. For whatever reason, the job would evaporate, and she’d go back to doing what she knew best.
Then Mike Slider had come along and offered what Gloria had thought might be refuge from their grinding existence. An awful man who knew nothing but beer and beating, he had hidden his true personality until after they’d married. He’d proceeded to make both Gloria’s and Rose’s lives a nightmare they couldn’t escape.
If anyone deserved to get what he had coming, even in her eyes, especially in her eyes, it had been Mike Slider. She and her mother had taken his abuse until it reached the point of no return.
Gloria had been sentenced to a Texas prison for three years following his death. A kind judge and an understanding jury had been her salvation. Her mom had read Rose’s emotions when she’d walked out of the courtroom and mouthed the words “I love you…” over her shoulder. Rose had sent them back with tears running down her cheeks. She could remember the devastation of that day as if it had happened last week. But Gloria had done her time and paid for the crime. In fact, she’d paid much, much more than anyone, including Santos, could ever appreciate.
Even though he didn’t know the secrets Rose shared with her mother, those very secrets perfectly represented the conflicting philosophy behind their breakup. His job was his job, and it meant everything to him. He simply didn’t care who got hurt, or why people did what they did, nothing mattered but the job.
After she’d left prison, Gloria had drifted in and out of Rose’s life, and they’d both been okay with the arrangement. When Santos began repeatedly to warn her that having Gloria around could hurt her career, she didn’t believe him, and even if he was right, she’d told him, her mother was her mother and they needed to stay in touch, even if it was infrequently.
Then one day Santos told Rose flat out to sever the already tenuous ties she and Gloria shared. He said her mother had gone back to her old ways, and he didn’t want Rose to get hurt. Telling her she was too close to see the situation clearly, he’d insisted she cut Gloria out of her life. Rose had refused.
A month later, Gloria was gone.
At the time, Santos said all he wanted was for Rose to be safe, and that wasn’t possible if she was still seeing Gloria. His insistence and Rose’s refusal had torn them apart. After a final blow up, he’d moved on. She couldn’t deny that, at the time, she’d been relieved. But it had still hurt.
Going home to west Texas, Rose had left San Antonio, coming to Rio County to find her mother. Once there, she’d run for sheriff. She’d been a shoo-in because her grandfather had just retired from the same position. But after two years, she still had no idea where Gloria might be.
And now Santos wanted her to help him find the very woman he’d told her to avoid. She’d give him credit where credit was due.
He had balls.
She threw a salad together, then took a bath and went to bed, but sleep refused to come, no matter how hard she tried to find it. A summer storm’s dry lightning flashed in the distance outside her window while unrelenting images of her past with Santos flashed equally bright behind her eyes: the reflection in the mirror of their naked bodies tangled in the sheets, margaritas on the patio of their favorite Mexican restaurant, the weekend they had spent on Padre watching the waves come in.
She gave up at five a.m. and stumbled out of her bed to the kitchen, leaning against the counter with her eyes closed as the coffee pot gurgled. Carrying a full mug to the tiny porch off the back of her house, she sat down, sipped, and waited, the scent of coffee mingling with the clean, crisp morning air. Silas Renwick showed up right before the sun, just as she’d expected he would. Her grandfather had built-in radar that pinged whenever she was troubled.
He gave her a kiss and walked into the kitchen, reappearing with his own mug a few minutes later. He took a taste before speaking, the rocking chair creaking as he sat down beside her and pushed off.
“Just saw Dan off to the ranch,” he said conversationally. “He’s got a bigwig from Houston looking to bag something he can brag about.”
Daniel Covington was a hunting guide, and he had been her high school sweetheart. Whenever he came to town, her grandfather’s place was always his first stop. After a tractor had rolled over Dan’s father on the family ranch, Silas had taken it upon himself to mentor the fatherless boy, and they’d been close ever since. Rose suspected she and Dan had dated more as an offshoot of his relationship with Silas than anything else.
He’d followed her to San Antonio and become a cop a year after she did. He was too late. She had already met Santos by then. A risky sting operation and a bullet to the knee had ended Dan’s career.
She tensed, expecting her grandfather to say she needed to reschedule the dinner she’d skipped with Dan when Santos showed up. She’d only agreed to go in the first place to placate her grandfather and possibly put the topic to bed once and for all, but she had no intention of calling Dan now. She’d almost rather face the kid with the gun again.
“How’s he doing?” she forced herself to ask. “Every time I see him, he seems angrier than the time before. If you think I’m rescheduling that dinner I had to cancel, don’t hold your breath.”
“I’d be unhappy if I was him, too,” Silas said mildly. “God knows he’s got plenty of reasons. You broke up with him, you’re a cop, and he can’t be—”
“That’s enough,” she said, holding up her hands in defeat. “I suspect you didn’t come over to chit-chat about Dan.”
“That’s true.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I heard you had some company t’other day. Two different kinds, as a matter of fact.”
Silas knew everything. Sometimes he even knew it before it happened. So much for Santos’s deep cover, she thought ruefully.
“The one who tried to help bothered you more than the one with the gun.” His voice held no uncertainty.
“And just what makes you think that?”
“You can handle a bad guy, but Timothy Santos has always sent you ’round the bend.”
“He’s a bad guy, too. At least in my book.”
“If that’s the case, your book is missing a few pages.”
Her fingers went tight on her coffee mug. Silas had had plenty of unkind words to say about Santos after he’d broken her heart, but basically he liked Santos because they were two of a kind. Her grandfather’s tenure as sheriff of Rio County had lasted for more than twenty years. Quick with his gun and even quicker with his handcuffs, her grandfather had seen it all. Anyone he caught breaking the law found themselves in the county jail, at least for one night. In his opinion, which wasn’t humble at all, arrests came first; the courts handled whatever followed.
“You might change your mind when you hear what he had to say about your daughter,” she retorted. “He thinks Mother might know a drug lord who has something to do with a missing—”
“Informant.”
His information net was extensive, but even she didn’t think it was this wide. “How did you—?”
He waved off her question. “Are you going to help him find your mother?”
“He’s gone undercover as a biker. The setup is crazy insane, and helping him would put the entire department in danger—”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Don’t you care that Mom might get hurt in all this?”
Silas stopped his rocking chair, dropping his boot to the faded boards of the porch with a thunk. “I care about your mother more than you’ll ever understand. And I’m not at all happy about Santos going after her. But what if he’s telling you the truth? You took an oath to uphold the law when they pinned that badge on you, baby girl.”
Her grandfather’s words reached right into her chest and squeezed her heart. He’d always been too hard on Gloria in her opinion. She’d wondered why her mother hadn’t gone to him for help when she and Rose had needed it, but she’d never asked. Most likely Silas and Gloria had as many secrets between them as she and Gloria did. Silas, just like Santos, knew nothing about the past she and her mother had shared, though. And he never would, either. No one would.
Rose looked past him at the light slanting over the mountaintops. At the edge of her dusty yard, a small brown bird flitted through the branches of a cedar tree, hopping and chirping. She spoke without looking at her grandfather.
“I guess I have to make a choice.”
“The law’s the law,” he said flatly. “There are no choices as far as it’s concerned.”
…
Santos woke up with a bad headache and a hoarse voice. Since leaving Rose, he’d been on the telephone or his computer continuously, half the time simultaneously. Austin had been trying to convince the president of a local chapter to have a sit down, and he’d needed advice and information. From the worn out ranch house, he had tried to work out all the details of the meet. To get closer to Ortega, Smokin’ ACES needed to get the real bikers to trust them. Earning that trust meant doing some things they shouldn’t. He tried to stay on the right side of the line as much as he could. Deep down, though, he didn’t really care how they accomplished their goal, as long as they found the SOB and everyone got out alive.
He went to the nearest window and stared into the distance. A braid of blue and peach ribbon cut the nearest mountain in half, the morning sun leaving it dark on one side and light on the other. He felt as if he was being divided, too. He wanted nothing as much as he wanted to find the woman he’d put in harm’s way, but when he and Rose had been sitting in her kitchen, he’d begun to truly realize just how thin the line was he was trying to walk. One wrong slip and so many people would be hurt he couldn’t count them all. He’d realized something else, too. Rose could still affect him in ways he thought he’d put behind him.
He didn’t understand why, either. They had opposite philosophies, opposite goals, opposite everything. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering how they’d ever fallen in love, much less lived together. Now they faced this dilemma.
The songs were dead wrong—love wasn’t all you needed.
…
Midnight came and went the following day before Rose finally fell into bed. She hadn’t seen Santos since he’d come to her house, but she doubted he had left Aqua Frio. He never gave up. Everything was always instantly clear for him, too. She examined every little detail and even after she had all the facts, she would continue to wonder. All he cared about was the assignment. He’d been that way when they’d both been cops, and things obviously hadn’t changed.
The lights in her bedroom had only been dark for a short time when her phone shrilled. She had the receiver in her hand before the first ring finished. “Renwick.”
“You’ve got a domestic situation at the Royal Trailer Park.” An independent service in Presidio took over their 911s when Lydia’s shift ended, and the bored voice grated on Rose’s sensibilities. She had argued against the idea, but the county commissioners wanted to save every dollar they could. She wondered how long ago the call had actually come in.
“Address is 2405 Crown Circle. Caller states strange noises were heard in the yard, possible peeping tom, not sure. See the woman at number two-thirty-two.”
Rose hung up and reached for her pants. She’d been to that particular address before and warned the man and woman living there to tone down their arguments. It sounded as if they’d done just the opposite. The couple, young and poor, had three little kids. The children had watched from the trailer’s window with scared brown eyes as Rose had counseled their mother and father on the previous call.
Her threat to call Child Protective Services had seemed to work; both of them had looked stricken at the possibility of losing their children. She really hadn’t expected to hear from their neighbor again, but now here she was, heading toward the trailer park.
Seven minutes later, she turned off the street and drove slowly down the gravel road lined with mobile homes. A few sparse cedar trees claimed spots along the rutted drive, but most of the landscaping involved faded plastic toys, rusted out trash cans, and cars that looked like nothing but a prayer would make them start. Usually the west Texas night smoothed out the rough edges, but that wasn’t the case here. The thick darkness that surrounded the place felt heavy and foreboding, like a blanket she couldn’t throw off.
Rose could sense a bad situation as well as the next cop, and something definitely felt wrong. Her nerves jumping, she moved her right hand to her holster and checked her weapon before gripping the steering wheel again. The residents in places like this were faded, rusted, and worn out, too. Just like the boy with the gun, when folks felt trapped, they reacted as instinctively as an animal did.
A chorus of crickets fell silent as the car rolled to a stop. The home was dark and quiet, like the ones on either side. Glancing at the notes she’d jotted down, she checked the number to make sure she had the right place. There were no street lights—since there was no real street—and she had to turn on the small flashlight she carried.
As soon as the light came on, her rear windshield exploded.
She ducked with a curse, a shower of glass pellets raining down on her back and shoulders as the gunshot echoed in the silence. Reaching for her weapon as she went down, she had the pistol out and in her hand before the sound could even stop. A moment later, she was sliding into the floor well of the vehicle, yelling into the radio she’d snatched going down. “This is Sheriff Renwick. Officer needs assistance! Send someone to Crown Circle. I’m under fire.”
She twisted onto her back and tried to think it out. The shooter had to have been behind her to make the shot—the glass had flown into the vehicle—but was he still there or had he moved?
Her answer came without any warning, the front windshield blowing out next.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she covered her head with her arms as the shattered glass peppered her. This time she felt something sharp slice into her cheek. Something wet followed. If the next shot hit her gas tank….
She didn’t want to die by herself on an unpaved street in a down-and-out trailer park.
She didn’t want to die, period.
She crouched down as far as she could, then jumped out the passenger side door and rolled toward the shallow drainage ditch that ran beside the road.
The next bullet split the air right above her head.
Her gaze flew to a nearby water tank as lights started to come on all around her. She might find better cover behind the heavy cistern, covered in rusting aluminum. A door squeaked open, and she heard someone say, “What the hell—?”
She lifted her head and yelled, “Close your door and stay inside. Call 911 and tell them to hurry up. An officer needs assistance.”
Another shot sounded, and Rose whipped her head in the direction it had come. Lifting her gun, she steadied the barrel with her wrist and squinted into the darkness. The lamplight spilling out of the homes did little to help.
She couldn’t shoot blind—there were too many people inside their trailers, too many kids. The thin metal covering the houses offered nothing in the way of protection, and a wild shot would pierce the walls like an ice pick going through butter. If an innocent civilian got hurt, it wouldn’t matter a damn if the bullet was hers or the shooter’s.
Another shot flew past her right ear, its hot breath coming closer than the time before. She dropped her face into the ground and tasted dirt. She’d been ambushed twice in a little more than twenty-four hours. What in the hell was going on in Rio County?