by Diana Palmer
She grimaced. His attitude began to make sense. “I’ll bet the little girl misses you,” she said.
“I miss her, as well.”
“Sometimes,” she began cautiously, “I think there’s a pattern to life. People come into your life when you need them to, my father used to say. He was sure that life was hard-wired, that everything happened as it was planned to happen. He said—” she hesitated, remembering her father’s soft voice, at his trial “—that we have to accept things that we can’t change, and that the harder we fight fate, the more painful it becomes.”
He turned toward her, leaning back against the swing chain with his long legs crossed. “Is he still alive—your father?”
“No.”
“Any sisters, brothers?”
“No,” she replied sadly. “Just me.”
“What about your mother?”
Her teeth clenched. “She’s gone, too.”
“You didn’t mourn her, I think.”
“You’re right. All I ever had from her was hatred. She blamed me for trapping her into a life of poverty on a little farm with a man who could hardly spell his own name.”
“She considered that she married down, I gather.”
“Yes. She never let my father forget how he’d ruined her life.”
“Which of them died first?”
“He did,” she said, not wanting to remember it. “She remarried very soon after the funeral. Her second husband had money. She finally had everything she wanted.”
“You would have benefited, too, surely.”
She drew in a slow breath and shifted her weight. “The judge considered that she was dangerous to me, so, with the best of intentions, she put me into foster care. I went to a family that had five other foster kids.”
“I know a little about foster homes,” he said, recalling some horror stories he’d heard from comrades who’d been in state custody, however briefly. Cord Romero and his wife, Maggie, came immediately to mind.
“I think life with my mother might have been easier, even if it had been more dangerous,” she murmured.
“Were you there a long time?”
“Not too long.” She didn’t dare say any more. He might have heard the Pendletons talk about their stepsister. “What was your childhood like?”
“Euphoric,” he said honestly. “We traveled a lot. My father was, ah, in the military,” he invented quickly.
“I had a friend whose father was, too. They traveled all over the world. She said it was an experience.”
“Yes. One learns a great deal about other cultures, other ways of life. Many problems in politics arise because of cultural misunderstanding.”
She laughed. “Yes, I know. We had a man in an office I worked for who was Middle Eastern. He liked to stand very close to people when he was talking to them. Another guy in the office was a personal space maniac. He backed right out a window one day trying to avoid letting his colleague get close to him. Fortunately it was on the first floor,” she added, laughing.
He smiled. “I have seen similar things. What a mixture of people we are in this country,” he murmured. “So many traditions, so many languages, so many separate belief systems.”
“Things were different when I was little,” she recalled.
“Yes. For me, too. Immersed in our own personal cultures, it is hard to see or understand opposing points of view, is it not?”
“It is,” she agreed.
He rocked the swing back into motion. “You and Consuelo are wearing yourselves thin on this latest picking of fruit,” he pointed out. “If you need help, say so. I can hire more people to help you. I’ve already asked Jason for permission.”
“Oh, we’re doing okay,” she said with a smile. “I like Consuelo. She’s a very interesting person.”
“She is,” he said.
His tone was personable, but there was something puzzling in the way he said it. She wondered for an instant if he, too, had suspicions about his cook.
“What do you think of Marco?” he asked suddenly.
She had to be very careful in answering that question. “He’s very nice-looking,” she said carelessly. “Consuelo dotes on him.”
“Yes.” He rocked the swing again.
“She said his father was in jail.”
He made an odd sound. “Yes. Serving a life sentence.”
“For drug smuggling?” she blurted out incredulously, because she knew how difficult it was to send a smuggler away for life without a lot of additional felony charges.
His head turned toward her. He was very quiet. “Is that what she told you?”
She cleared her throat, hoping she hadn’t given herself away. “Yes. She said he was mistaken for another man.”
“Ah.” He puffed on the cigarette.
“Ah?” she parroted, questioning.
“He was piloting a go-fast boat with about two hundred kilos of cocaine,” he said easily. “He was so confident that he’d paid off the right people that he didn’t bother to conceal the product. The Coast Guard picked him up heading for Houston.”
“In a boat?”
He chuckled. “They have airplanes and helicopters, both with machine guns. They laid down a trail of tracers on both sides of his conveyance and told him to stop or learn to swim very fast. He gave up.”
“Goodness! I never knew the Coast Guard worked smuggling cases,” she added with pretended ignorance.
“Well, they do.”
“But the product still gets through,” she said sadly.
“Supply and demand drive the market. As long as there is a demand, there will certainly be a supply.”
“I suppose so,” she said, her voice very quiet.
He rocked the swing into motion again. It was very pleasant out here with her, he thought. But he would rather have been with Sarina and Bernadette. He was lonely. He’d never thought of himself as a family man, but three years of looking out for two other people had changed his mind. He’d even gone so far as to think about having a child of his own. Pipe dreams. All dead now.
“Is this what you planned to do with your life?” she asked suddenly. “Managing a truck farm, I mean?”
He laughed softly. “At one time, I wanted very much to be a commercial airline pilot. I have a pilot’s license, although I rarely make use of it. Flying is expensive,” he added quickly, in case she had some idea of how much private planes cost.
She hesitated about probing further. He was a very private person, and she sensed some irritation in his tone that she’d asked about his goals.
She stared off into the distance. “I wanted to be a ballerina when I was young,” she said quietly. “I took lessons and everything.”
He winced. “That must have been a painful loss.”
“Yes. I’ll never get rid of the limp unless they can find a way to remake muscle and bone.” She laughed shortly. “I enjoy watching ballet productions on educational television,” she added. “And I’d probably have embarrassed myself with any serious dancing. I’m just clumsy. The first recital I was in called for us to hold hands and dance past the orchestra pit. I fell in, right onto a very big fellow playing a big tuba. The audience thought it was all part of the routine.” She grimaced. “My mother got up and walked out of the auditorium,” she recalled. “She never went to another recital. She thought I did it deliberately to embarrass her.”
“A truly paranoid personality,” he commented.
“Yes, she was,” she said quickly. “How did you know?”
“I knew a man who was the same. He thought people were following him all the time. He was certain the CIA had bugged his telephone. He wore a second set of clothing under his suits, so that he could duck into a rest room and change to throw his pursuers off the track.”
“My goodness!” she exclaimed. “Did they lock him up?”
“They couldn’t.” He chuckled. “He headed a very dangerous federal agency at the time.”
She was really curious now
. “How did you find out about it?”
He hesitated, playing for time. He was getting careless. He was supposed to be an uneducated farm laborer. “A cousin of mine played semipro soccer with a cousin of his,” he replied finally.
“Nice to have a pipeline like that,” she said. She laughed. “You could have made a fortune if you’d tipped off the tabloids.”
And gotten himself put on a hit list, he thought silently. The man had been a very dangerous enemy. Rodrigo had taken work in Mexico to avoid being around him until he finally retired. Having dual citizenship with the U. S. and Mexico had come in handy. It was really handy now, since there was a price on his head in almost every other country on earth. He glanced at Glory and wondered what she’d think of him if she knew the truth about his anguished past.
“Did you have pets when you were little?” she asked after a minute, just for something to say.
“Yes,” he replied. “I had a parrot who spoke Danish.”
“How odd,” she replied.
Not really, because his father had been Danish. He didn’t explain. “How about you? Did you have other pets besides the ill-fated cat?”
“Not really. I always wanted a dog, but that never happened.”
“You could have one now, couldn’t you?”
She could, but her work called her out at all hours. She didn’t think it was fair to a dog to have to share her hectic life. Compared to what she normally did, working on this truck farm was a real vacation. She’d gone to deserted parking lots to meet informers, with the police along for protection. She’d ridden in limousines with gang bosses. She’d done a lot of dangerous things in the course of her job, and she’d made enemies. Enemies like Fuentes. If she had a pet, it would become a target, just as a boyfriend or close friend would. The people she prosecuted held life cheap compared to profit. They wouldn’t hesitate to do anything in their power to harm her, including doing damage to a pet.
“I have a very small apartment,” she hedged. “And my last job was working for a temporary agency. I worked odd hours.”
So did he, when he wasn’t pretending to run a truck farm. He’d considered taking overseas work instead of this undercover assignment, but he’d thought that Sarina and Bernadette would be living here in Jacobsville and he might get a glimpse of them from time to time. In retrospect, that had been a stupid idea. Bernadette could have blown his cover sky high without realizing it. His mind hadn’t been working well just after Sarina and Colby Lane had renewed their marriage vows in a small ceremony. His heart had been broken.
“We’ll have some odd hours here, for a while, as well,” he said suddenly, thinking about what was coming up for his assignment.
“Putting up all the new fruit, you mean?” she asked.
He took a last puff on the cigarette and flung it out into the sand of the front yard. “No. I mean that I’ll be in and out. I have some new contacts that I’m meeting. Some of them may come down to overlook the operation before they sign on with us.”
“It’s a very good little farm,” she said absently. “I know it’s hard work to grow fruits and vegetables, because I’ve tried to.” She laughed. “My tomatoes burned up in the drought and I planted things in the wrong season. It’s hard work.”
“It’s hard, but I enjoy it. It’s relaxing work.”
“Relaxing?” she exclaimed, turning slightly toward him. “It’s backbreaking!”
He chuckled. “Not for me,” he reminded her. “I oversee. I don’t hoe or harvest.”
“You have a good crew that does that,” she agreed. “Is Marco going to work here?”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “For a while.”
“Consuelo will be glad.”
He leaned toward her in the dim light coming from the house. “He may bring one or two of his friends with him occasionally. If he does, stay out of their way. Don’t be tempted to walk around outside, even in broad daylight.”
She stared at him, pretending surprise. “Is he dangerous?”
“All men are dangerous, given the right set of circumstances,” he told her flatly. “Don’t ask questions. Just do what I say.”
She saluted him.
He burst out laughing. “For a woman with a ragged upbringing, you cope well.”
“Coping isn’t a choice,” she replied lightly. “We can’t live in the past.”
“I know,” he replied, and he sounded torn.
She wanted to say something comforting, but nothing came to mind. It was too late, anyway. He got to his feet with that lazy elegance that was so much a part of him.
“I have to make an early start tomorrow. Remember, if you and Consuelo need more hands in the kitchen, we can manage one or two more people.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But we’re doing okay.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
She watched him go, aware of the faint spice of his cologne, the clean smell of his body and his clothing. He was immaculate. Certainly he didn’t smell like a man who worked with his hands at hard labor.
She got up from the swing and moved slowly toward the front door. She was tired. It had been a very long day.
Sometime before morning, she woke suddenly. She didn’t know why. There was a sound, a mixture of sounds, human and insistent.
She lay on her back staring up at the ceiling. A man was arguing with someone. Yelling. She didn’t recognize the voice, but it wasn’t Rodrigo’s. She bit her lower lip. She didn’t like loud voices.
After a minute, there was the sound of a car door slamming, and then an engine revving up. Gravel went flying audibly as the vehicle took off down the driveway. She’d have to ask Consuelo what was going on. It sounded as if there had been a serious quarrel.
5
WHEN GLORY DRESSED AND went to the kitchen for breakfast, she found Consuelo sitting at the table crying.
“What’s wrong?” she asked gently.
Consuelo dried her face on her apron. “Nothing,” she choked. “It’s okay.”
“I heard someone, a man, shouting.”
The older woman looked up at her with red, swollen eyes. She looked miserable. “Marco was furious because I wouldn’t loan him some money. He thinks I was lying when I said I didn’t have it, but I wasn’t.”
Glory laid a gentle hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “He’ll get over it. Families argue. Then they make up.”
A watery smile was her reward for all that optimism. “You think he’ll come back?”
“Of course,” Glory assured her. She grinned. “How can he stay away from all this wonderful fruit?”
Consuelo burst out laughing. “Oh, you’re good for me,” she said. “What a lucky day I had when Señor Ramirez hired you!”
Glory smiled. “I like you, too. Now could we have coffee? Coffee and toast would be better, but especially coffee. I have to have my morning jolt of caffeine or I can’t get both eyes to work at the same time, to say nothing of my brain.”
“I was just about to make coffee,” Consuelo said, jumping up. “I was waiting for the cinnamon rolls to bake.”
Glory’s eyes lit up. “Cinnamon rolls? Real ones? Homemade ones?”
Consuelo laughed. “Yes.”
Glory slid into a chair. “What a lucky day for me, when Señor Ramirez hired you!” she said. “The closest I can come to cinnamon rolls is to buy frozen ones at the store and heat them up. You’ll spoil me.”
The older woman wiped her eyes and smiled. She got busy with the coffee.
LATER, IT OCCURRED TO Glory that there might have been a dark motive for Marco’s need of immediate cash. She noticed that both he and Castillo spent a lot of their free time talking to each other. She wished she had some decent way to find out what they were saying. But what really bothered her was that Rodrigo was frequently involved in those conversations.
She wished she could call Marquez and talk to him confidentially about what she was learning, but she was wary of using any sort o
f communication around the house. Consuelo had said weeks ago that Rodrigo kept an arsenal of electronic devices in his room. He might have the ability to monitor conversations. It wouldn’t do for him to get too curious about why a wage earner in his employ was having clandestine conversations with a San Antonio police detective.
MOST OF THE WORKERS spent their weekends at their own homes in a local trailer park. But on Saturday afternoon she and Consuelo were pressed into labor helping put up lanterns and streamers for a small fiesta on the farm. A mariachi band had been hired and the men had thrown together a large wooden platform for dancing.
It had been years since Glory had been to any sort of party. She got caught up in the excitement. She remembered how desperately she’d wanted to go to her junior and senior prom, but by then she was too shy and nervous around boys to feel comfortable with one. Which was just as well, because not one boy asked her out during the whole time she was in high school, thanks to the malicious Internet gossip about her.
In college, things had been a little bit different. She tried, she really tried, to make friends and be outgoing. But she learned on her first date that the world outside Jacobsville, Texas, was very different. Her date took her to have a meal in a nice restaurant, and then he tried to take her into a motel room. When persuasion and ridicule didn’t work, he tried force. By then, she was living with the Pendletons. She fought her way out of the car, pulled out her cell phone and dialed Jason Pendleton’s number. By the time she hung up, her erstwhile date had escaped in a spray of gravel. Shortly thereafter he transferred to another school. Jason never told Glory what he’d done to the boy. She never asked, either.
Rodrigo came out of the house just as it started getting dark. He was wearing black slacks with a white cotton shirt. He looked elegant and dangerously sensuous. Glory, in a simple white peasant dress full of handmade embroidery, had let her long blond hair down and even put on a tiny amount of makeup. She knew she’d never be able to compete with other women in any physical way, but she hoped she looked nice enough not to spoil the party.