by Diana Palmer
She felt his eyes but she didn’t meet them. She was nervous, too. She worried about how he might feel when he learned the truth about her own background. She was still keeping secrets. She hoped he wouldn’t feel differently when he learned them.
But right now, the biggest secret of all was about to be revealed to a man who had no apparent family and seemed to be content with his situation. Gwen wondered how the general would feel when he was introduced to a son he didn’t even know existed.
They pulled up to the small border station, which wasn’t much more than an adobe building beside the road, next to a cross arm that was denoted as the Mexican-American border, with appropriate warning signs.
A tall, sandy-haired man came out to meet them. He introduced himself as the border patrol agent in charge, Don Billings, and indicated a Lincoln town car sitting just a little distance way. He motioned.
The car pulled up, stopped and Rodrigo Ramirez got out, going around to open the door for his sister-in-law, Gracie Pendleton. They came forward and introductions were made.
Gracie was blonde and pretty and very pregnant. She laughed. “The general is going to be surprised when he sees me,” she said with a grin. “I didn’t mention my interesting condition. Jason and I are just over the moon!”
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Gwen wanted to know.
“We didn’t let them tell us,” she said. “We want it to be a surprise, so I bought everything yellow instead of pink or blue.”
Gwen laughed. “I’d like it to be a surprise, too, if I ever had a baby.” Her eyes were dreamy. “I’d love to have a big family.”
Rick was watching her and his heart was pounding. He’d like a big family, too. Her family. He cleared his throat. Memories of last night were causing him some difficulty in intimate places. He thought of sports until he calmed down a little.
“He should be here very soon,” Ramirez said.
Even as he spoke, a pickup truck came along the dusty road from across the border, stopped and was waved through by the border agent.
The truck stopped. Two doors opened. Winslow Grange, wearing one of the very new high-tech camouflage patterned suits with an automatic pistol strapped to his hip, came forward. Right beside him was a tall, elegant-looking Hispanic man with thick, wavy black hair and large black eyes in a square face with chiseled lips and a big grin for Gracie.
“A baby?” he enthused. “How wonderful!”
She laughed, taking his outstretched hands. “Jason and I think so, too. How have you been?”
“Very busy,” he said, indicating Grange. “We’re planning a surprise party.” He wiggled his eyebrows at the border agent. “I’m sorry that I can’t say more.”
“So am I.” The border patrolman chuckled.
Gwen came forward, her eyes curious and welcoming at the same time. “You and I haven’t met, but I think you’ve heard of me,” she said gently. She held out her hand. “I’m Gwendolyn Cassaway. CIA.”
He shook her hand warmly, and then raised it to his lips. He glanced at the man with her, a tall young man with long black hair in a ponytail and an oddly familiar face. “Your boyfriend?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow at the reaction the young man gave when he kissed Gwen’s hand.
“Uh, well, uh, I mean…” She cleared her throat. “This is Detective Sergeant Ricardo Marquez, San Antonio Police Department.”
General Emilio Machado looked at the younger man with narrowed, intent eyes. “Marquez.”
“Yes.”
Machado was curious. “You look familiar, somehow. Do I know you?”
He studied the general quietly. “No. But my birth mother was Dolores Ortíz. She was from Sonora. I look like her.”
Machado stared at him intently. “She lived in Sonora, in a little village called Dolito. I knew her once,” he said. “She married a man named Jackson,” he added coldly.
“My stepfather,” Rick said curtly.
“I have heard about your late stepfather. He was a brutal man.”
Rick liked Machado already. “Yes. I have the scars to prove it,” he added quietly.
Machado drew in a long breath. He looked around him. “This is a very unusual place to meet with federal agents, and I feel that I am being set up.”
“Not at all,” Gwen replied. “But we do have something to tell you. Something that might be upsetting.”
Nobody spoke. There were somber, grim faces all around.
“You brought a firing squad?” Machado mused, looking from one to the other. “Or you lured me here to arrest me for kidnapping Gracie?”
“None of the above,” Gwen said quietly. She took a deep breath. This was a very unpleasant chore she’d been given. “We were doing a routine background check on you for our files and we came across your relationship with Dolores Ortíz. She gave birth to a child out of wedlock down in Sonora. Thirty-one years ago.”
Machado was doing quick math in his head. He looked at Rick pointedly, with slowly growing comprehension. The man had looked familiar. Was it possible…? He moved a step closer and cocked his head as he studied the somber-faced young man.
Then he laughed coldly. “Ah. Now I see. You know that I have spies in my country who are even now planting the seeds of revolution. You know that I have an army and that I am almost certain to retake the government of Barrera. So you are searching for ways to ingratiate yourself with me…excuse me, with my oil and natural gas reserves as well as my very strategic location in South America.” He gave Rick a hard glance. “You produce a candidate for my son, and think that I will accept your word that he is who he says he is.”
“I haven’t said a damned thing,” Rick snapped back icily.
Machado’s eyebrows shot up. “You deny their conclusion?”
Rick glared at him. “You think I’m thrilled to be lined up as the illegitimate son of some exiled South American dictator?”
Machado just stared at him for a minute. Then he burst out laughing.
“Rick,” Gwen groaned from beside him.
“I was perfectly content to think my real father was in a grave somewhere in Mexico,” Rick continued. “And then she showed up with this story…” He pointed at Gwen.
She raised her hand. “Cash Grier told your mother,” she reminded him quickly. “I had nothing to do with telling you.”
“All right, my mother told me,” he continued.
“Your mother is dead,” Machado said, frowning.
“Barbara Ferguson, in Jacobsville, adopted me when my mother and stepfather were killed in an auto accident,” Rick continued. “She runs the café there.”
Machado didn’t speak. He’d never considered the possibility that Dolores would become pregnant. They’d been very close until her parents discovered them one night in an outbuilding and her father threatened to kill Machado if he ever saw him again. He’d gone to work for a big landowner soon afterward and moved to another village. He hadn’t seen Dolores again.
Could she have been pregnant? They’d done nothing to prevent a child. But he’d only been fourteen. He couldn’t have fathered a son at that age, surely? In fact, he’d never fathered another child in the years since, and he had been coaxed into trying, at least once. The attempt had ended in total failure. It had hurt his pride, hurt his ego, made him uncertain about his manhood. He had thought, since then, that he must be sterile.
But here was, if he could believe the statement, proof of his virility. Could this really be his son?
He moved forward a step. Yes, the man had his eyes. He had Dolores’s perfect teeth, as well. He was tall and powerfully built, as Machado was. His hair was long and black and straight, without the natural waves that were in Machado’s. But, then, Dolores had long black hair that was smooth as silk and thick and straight.
“You think I would take your word for something this important, even with Gracie’s help?” he asked Rick.
“Hey, I didn’t come here to convince you of anything,” Rick said defensively. “She—” he in
dicated Gwen “—got him—” he nodded at Ramirez “—to call her—” he pointed toward Gracie “—to have you meet us here. I got pulled into it because some feds think you’ll listen to me even if you won’t listen to them.” He shrugged. “Of course, they haven’t decided what to have me tell you just yet. I presume that’s in the works and they’ll let me know when they can agree on what day it is.”
Machado listened to him, pursed his lips and laughed. “Sounds exactly like government policy to me. And I should know. I was head of a government once.” His eyes narrowed and glittered. “And I will be, once again.”
“I believe you,” Gwen agreed.
“But for now,” Machado continued, studying Rick. “What evidence exists that you really are my son? And it had better be good.”
Chapter Eight
“Don’t look at me,” Rick said quietly. “I didn’t come here to prove anything.”
Gwen moved forward, removing a paper from her purse. “We were sure that you wouldn’t accept anyone’s word, General,” she said gently. “So we took the liberty of having a DNA profile made from Sergeant Marquez’s last physical when blood was drawn.” She gave Rick an apologetic glance. “Sorry.”
Rick sighed. “Accepted.”
The general read the papers, frowned, read some more and finally handed them back. “That’s pretty convincing.”
Gwen nodded.
He glanced at Rick, who was standing apart from the others, hard-faced, with his hands deep in the pockets of his slacks.
The general studied him from under thick black eyelashes, with some consternation. His whole life had just been turned upside-down. He had a son. The man was a law enforcement officer. He was not bad-looking, seemed intelligent, too. Of course, there was that severe attitude problem…
“I don’t like baseball,” Rick said curtly when he noticed how the general was eyeing him.
Machado’s thick eyebrows levered up. “You don’t like baseball…?”
“In case you were thinking of father-son activities,” Rick remarked drolly. “I don’t like baseball. I like soccer.”
Machado’s dark eyes twinkled. “So do I.”
“See?” Gwen said, grasping at straws, because this was becoming awkward. “Already, something in common…”
“Get down!”
While she was trying to understand the quick command from the general, Rick responded by tackling her. Rodrigo had Gracie in the limo, which had bulletproof glass, and Machado hit the ground with his pistol drawn at the same time Grange opened up with an army-issue repeating rifle.
“What the hell…!” Rick exclaimed as he leveled his own automatic, along with Gwen, at an unseen adversary, tracking his direction from the bullets hitting the dust a few yards away.
“Carver, IED, now!” Grange called into a walkie-talkie.
Seconds later, there was a huge explosion, a muffled cry, and a minute later, the sound of an engine starting and roaring, a dust cloud becoming visible as a person or persons unknown took off in the distance.
Grange grinned. “I always have a backup plan,” he remarked.
“Good thing,” Gwen exclaimed. “I didn’t even consider an ambush!”
“Your father would have,” Grange began.
She held up her hand and gave a curt shake of her head.
“You know her father?” Rick asked curiously.
“We were poker buddies, a few years back,” Grange said. “Good man.”
“Thanks,” Gwen said, and she wasn’t referring totally to the compliment. Grange would keep her secret; she saw it in his eyes.
Rick was brushing thick dust off his jacket and slacks. “Damn. They just came back from the dry cleaner.”
“You should wear cotton. It cleans better,” Machado suggested, indicating his own jeans and cotton shirt.
“Who was that, do you think?” Gwen asked somberly.
“Fuentes.” Machado spat. “He and I have parted company. He amuses himself by sniping at me and my men.”
“The drug lord? I thought his family was dead!” Gwen exclaimed.
“Most of it is. This is the last one of the Fuentes brothers, the stupid one, and he’s clinging to power by his fingernails,” the general told her. “He spies on me for a federal agency. Not yours,” he told Gwen with a smile.
Ramirez left Gracie in the car and came back. “I don’t think she should risk coming out here in the open,” he said.
“I agree. She is all right?” Machado asked with some concern.
“Yes. Gracie really has guts,” he replied. He frowned. “Which agency is Fuentes spying for?”
“Yours, I think, my friend,” Machado told the DEA agent.
Ramirez let out a sigh. “We know there’s a mole in our agency, someone very high level. We’ve never found out who it is.”
“You should set Kilraven on him,” Gwen mused dryly.
“I probably should,” Ramirez agreed. “But we have our hands full right now with Mexican military coming over the border to protect drug shipments.” He glanced toward the border patrol agent, who was talking to Gracie through a cracked window. “Our men on the border are in peril, always. We almost lost one some months ago, an agent named Kirk. He was very nearly killed. He left the agency and went back to his brothers on their Wyoming ranch. A great loss. He was good at his job, and he had contacts that we now lack.”
“I can get you all the contacts you need,” Machado promised. He glanced toward the distant hill where the sniper had been emplaced. “First I must deal with Fuentes.”
“I didn’t hear you say that,” Gwen said firmly.
“Nor I,” Ramirez echoed.
“Well, I did,” Rick replied coldly. “And you’re still wanted on kidnapping charges in my country, even though Mrs. Pendleton refuses to press them.”
Machado’s large eyes widened. “You would turn your own father in to the authorities?”
Rick’s eyes narrowed. “The law is the law.”
“You keep a book of statutes on your person?” the general asked.
Rick glared at him. “I’ve been a cop for a long time.”
“Amazing. I have spent my life breaking most of the laws that exist, and here I find a son, a stranger, who goes by the book.” His eyes narrowed. “I think perhaps they rigged the DNA evidence.” He gave the detective a disparaging look. “I would never wear a suit like that, or grow my hair long. You look like a—what is the expression?—a hippie!”
Rick glared at him.
The general glared back.
“Uh, the sniper?” Ramirez reminded them. “He may have gone for reinforcements.”
“True.” Machado turned to Grange. “Perhaps you should order a sweep on the surrounding hills.”
Grange smiled. “I already have.”
“Good man. We will soon have a proper government in my country and you will be the commander of the forces in my country.”
Ramirez choked. Gwen colored. Rick looked at them, trying to figure out why the hell they were so disturbed.
“We should go,” Ramirez said, indicating the car. “I promised her husband that I would have her home very quickly. He might send a search party for us. Not a man to make an enemy of.”
“Absolutely,” Grange agreed.
“Thank you for making this meeting possible,” Machado said, extending his hand to Ramirez.
Ramirez shook it, and then grinned. “It wasn’t my idea. I’m related to the president of Mexico. He thought it would be a good idea.”
Machado was impressed. “When I retake my country, perhaps you can speak to him for me about a trade agreement.”
Ramirez admired the confidence in the other man’s voice. “Yes, perhaps I can. Keep well.”
“And you.”
Gwen and Marquez waved them off before turning back to Machado.
“We should be going, too,” Marquez said stiffly. “I have to get back to work.”
Machado nodded. He studied his son with curious, str
ange eyes. “Perhaps, later, we can meet again.”
“Perhaps,” Rick replied.
“In a place where we do not have to fear an attack from my enemies,” Machado said, shaking his head.
“I don’t think we can get to Mars yet,” Rick quipped.
Machado laughed. “Grange, we should go.”
“Yes, sir.”
Machado took Gwen’s hand and kissed the back of it tenderly. “It has been a pleasure to meet you, señorita,” he said with pure velvet in his deep voice.
Rick stepped in, took Gwen’s hand and pulled her back. He glared at Machado, which made Gwen almost giddy with delight.
Machado’s dark eyes twinkled. “So it is like that, huh?”
“Like what?” Rick asked innocently. He dropped Gwen’s hand and looked uncomfortable.
“Never mind. I will be in touch.”
“Thank you for coming,” Gwen told the general.
“It was truly a pleasure.” He winked at her, gave Rick a droll look and climbed back into the truck with Grange. They disappeared over the border. Rick stood staring after the truck with mixed feelings. Then he turned, said goodbye to the border agent and walked back to his truck with Gwen.
Rick kept to himself for the next couple of days. Gwen didn’t intrude. She knew that he was dealing with some emotional issues that he had to resolve in his own mind.
Meanwhile, she went on interviews with neighbors of the murdered college freshman, the case she’d been assigned to as lead detective.
“Did she have any close friends that you know of?” she asked the third neighbor, an elderly woman who seemed to have a whole roomful of cats. They were clean, brushed, well fed and there was no odor, so she must be taking excellent care of them.
“Oh, you’ve noticed the cats?” the woman asked her with a grin that made her seem years younger. “I’m babysitting.”
Gwen blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Babysitting. I have four neighbors with cats, and we’ve had a problem with animals disappearing around here. So they leave their cats with me while they’re at work, and I feed them. It’s a nice little windfall for me, since I’m disabled, and the owners have emotional security since they don’t have to worry about their furry ‘families’ going missing.”