by Linda Howard
While they waited for their food, she played with her napkin, folding and refolding it. She fidgeted with her blouse, because it was tighter than she liked. Then, because she couldn’t ignore him and she knew he was silently watching her, she said, “You’re very at home here.”
“I was born in Mexico.”
“But you said you’re an American citizen. When did you get your citizenship?”
“I was born with it. My mother was American. She just happened to be in Mexico when I was born.”
So he had dual citizenship, just like Justin.
“And your father?”
“Is Mexican.”
She’d noticed he said “was” when talking about his mother, and “is” when it concerned his father. “Your mother is dead?”
“She died a couple of years ago. I’m fairly certain they weren’t married.”
“Do you know your father very well?”
“I lived with him half the time when I was growing up. That was better than living with my mother. What about you?”
Evidently that was all the small talk he was prepared to make about himself. Tit for tat, though, so she told him about her family, and the rift between her and her brother and sister. “It’s hard on Mom and Dad,” she said. “I know it is. But I just can’t be around Ross or Julia now without—” She shook her head, unable to find the right word. She didn’t want to hurt either of them, yet at the same time she wanted to bang their heads against something.
“Do they have children?” he asked.
“Both of them. Ross has three, Julia has two.”
“Then they should be able to understand how you feel.”
“But they don’t. Maybe they can’t. Maybe you have to actually lose a child before you really understand. It’s as if part of me is missing, as if there’s nothing but a great big hole where he used to be.” She bit her lip, refusing to cry in public. “I can no more stop looking for him than I can stop breathing.”
Diaz regarded her with those somber eyes, eyes that saw straight through to the core. Then he leaned over the small table, cupped her chin in his hand, and kissed her.
16
It was just a small kiss, but it was so damnably unfair of him that she just sat there, stunned. Too much had happened in too short a time; she felt dazed, off balance, totally unable to cope. She caught his wrist with both hands, then didn’t know what to do or say when he released her chin and lifted his mouth, leaving her still hanging on to his arm.
That grim mouth was softer than she’d expected, and gentler than she’d ever imagined. The kiss hadn’t been passionate; it had, in fact, been more comforting than anything else. She hated him for that. She shouldn’t want any kiss from him, but if she had to have one, she certainly didn’t want it to be for comfort.
She glared at him. “What was that for?”
One corner of his mouth quirked in his equivalent of a chuckle. “I don’t guess,” he said, “that you’ve ever seen what other people see in your eyes.”
“No, of course not.” When he didn’t say anything else, she waited a minute, then, goaded, said, “What?”
He shrugged, and seemed to be considering the matter, picking his way through various words and discarding them. Finally he said, “Suffering.”
The word punched her, hard. Suffering. God, yes, she had suffered. Only parents who had lost a child could possibly understand. Yet this man, whose contact with emotion seemed tenuous at best, had seen and responded. And she had slipped even further down that blasted slope.
The waiter brought their meals, and she was glad to devote herself to the empanaditas, which were one of her favorite Mexican dishes. The tuna-stuffed pastries suited her taste today, and she plowed through them, not stopping until her plate was clean. Getting her throat sliced seemed to have really revved up her appetite. There was nothing like a brush with death to make you appreciate food.
Diaz made equally short work of his enchiladas, though he drank only half his beer.
“Don’t you like it?” she asked, indicating the bottle.
“Well enough. I just don’t drink much.”
“Do you smoke?”
“Never have.”
“Vote?”
“In every election since I was of age.”
And he wore his seat belt, too. She regarded him with exasperation. Had there ever before been such a sober, civic-minded assassin?
At some point during the day, she had lost her fear of him. She didn’t know exactly when or why, but she couldn’t have found comfort in his arms if she’d still been afraid of him. He hadn’t changed. Had she? The past week and a half had been nothing but an emotional roller coaster, and the strain had to be taking a toll. She had to be losing her mind for her to be attracted to someone like Diaz.
She had at least kept him from realizing what she was feeling, she thought. She hadn’t responded to his light kiss; in fact, her reaction had been perfect, though unplanned.
“Are you finished?” he asked.
She looked at her empty plate. “I am unless I lick it.”
Again that little quirk of his mouth. “I mean, would you like something else?”
“No, nothing else, thank you.”
He paid for their meal, and as they were walking to the truck, she realized how much money he had spent today. “I’ll reimburse you for your expenses,” she said. Let him think Finders was reimbursing him; she intended to pay with her own money.
He didn’t say anything, and she wondered if she had offended him. He was half Mexican, after all, and had spent part of his formative years here. The machismo of the culture had to have affected him at least a little.
“Give me an itemized statement,” she continued, unable to leave it alone.
His expression was blank again. “How should I list the bribe?”
“As a bribe. We pay them all the time. How else would we get information?”
“There are other methods. But sometimes a bribe will work.” He took out his cell phone and called someone, presumably the same boy, to meet him and collect the truck. But it was a different boy who showed up, somewhat younger than the first one, and with an engagingly roguish grin. Diaz gave him the keys and some money, and the kid hopped behind the wheel and roared off.
“Brothers?” she asked.
“Not mine.”
“I mean, are the two boys brothers?”
“Probably. They live in the same house, but they could be cousins.”
Milla and Diaz walked across the bridge to El Paso and collected his other truck. “Where to?” he asked. “Back to the office, or home?”
“Home.” She wanted to change clothes, because the skirt had become uncomfortably tight after she’d eaten. “Then, if you don’t mind, take me back to the office.” She had to pick up her car. “If you don’t have time, I’ll just call a cab.”
“No problem.”
“By the way, how did you get into my house the other night? I know the doors and windows were locked.”
“They were. I unlocked one. You need a security system.”
She hadn’t before; her neighborhood was very low-crime. “Would that stop you?”
“Not if I wanted in.”
He waited downstairs in the living room while she ran upstairs to change. She didn’t bother looking for anything that would hide the bandage on her neck, because the weather was too hot. Instead she put on crisp yellow slacks and a white sleeveless blouse, and ran back downstairs.
He was examining the rocks scattered around the living room; she had used the prettiest ones as decorations. The rest were in various containers: a big blue bowl on the coffee table, two clear vases, a huge glass piggy bank. “What’s with all the rocks?” he asked, his head tilted to the side like a quizzical dog’s.
“I picked them up for Justin,” she said, going very still. “I thought he’d probably like rocks. Don’t little boys like to throw rocks, and carry them around in their pockets? I guess he’s too old for
that now, though. But sometimes I’ll see an unusual rock and pick it up anyway. Habit.”
“I liked bugs,” he said. “And worms.”
“Gross!” She wrinkled her nose and shuddered, imagining a pocket full of worms. Then she sighed. “I suppose I should get rid of the rocks, but I just haven’t been able to make myself do it. Maybe one day.”
“If nothing else, you could throw them at anyone who breaks in.”
“You’re the only one who has broken in.”
“You probably throw like a girl, anyway.”
Despite herself, Milla found herself smiling at him. “Well, of course. What else?”
What else, indeed? Diaz mused as he walked back across the bridge into Juarez. She was a girly girl. She tried to be tough, and was certainly competent and willing, but her instincts were completely female. Her bedroom was froufrou, with sheets that felt like satin, mounds of pillows, soft rugs underfoot, and crystal things hanging off her lamp shades. Her bathroom smelled sweet and perfumey.
She wouldn’t like knowing that he’d touched her sheets and looked in her closet, but he’d been curious. He’d wanted to know about her, read her in the clothes and scents she preferred. She had jeans and pants and shirts, but for the most part her clothes were dresses and skirts, delicate blouses. Today, when she’d come back downstairs after changing, she’d looked neat and cool in yellow and white, with a couple of white freshwater pearl bracelets on her wrist. She’d somehow managed to make the bandage on her neck look more like an accessory than a necessity.
Because she tried to be tough but was inherently soft, he was going back to Juarez without her. Lola wouldn’t be expecting him back so soon, so now was the perfect time to be there.
He would be surprised if Lola didn’t have at least a couple of kids. Grown, now, of course, but it was possible one or more of them had still been living with her when she was taking care of the stolen babies for her brother and Pavón. Kids were nosy, and they heard things even when you thought they were nowhere around. Hers might well have overheard some conversation between Lorenzo and Pavón, something that would give him another thread to follow.
Very little scared him; he was stoic about pain and death, figuring very few people escaped the first and no one escaped the second. But when Lola had held the knife to Milla’s throat and he’d seen the blood trickling down her neck, for the first time in a very long while he’d been scared. He could have killed Lola right there, had been within a hairsbreadth of pulling the trigger, but the thought of Milla’s reaction if he blew Lola’s brains all over her had stopped him. He’d reined in the impulse, though Lola had been able to see in his eyes how close he was to doing it.
He’d known going in that Lola Guerrero was a stone-cold bitch, with a reputation for meanness and a taste for drugs. But she had information Milla wanted, and he’d known he could get it. Taking Milla, though, had been a mistake, which was why he was going back alone.
He’d had to think very fast, before. If he didn’t kill Lola at that point, he was in a quandary. He couldn’t just walk away, not after she’d cut his woman. He’d called Milla his friend, but no one would believe that. Everyone who had seen them, everyone who would hear about the incident, would think she was his; he couldn’t let anyone cut her and go unpunished. If he did, people would think he was going soft. They would think they could get away with crossing him, get away with the flood of killings and drugs that he was trying to help stem. And because they would think they could get away with it, innocents would die. Then he would have to kill even more people to convince them that they still didn’t want to cross him.
All of that, and more, and had flashed through his mind in a split second. What should he do about Lola, if not kill her? Beat the hell out of her? That would have taken too long, Milla would have been in hysterics, and he had a distaste for such brutality against women, even scum like Lola. Shoot her? With a nine millimeter, there was no such thing as a minor wound. The big slug tore out flesh, ripped nerves and blood vessels. Cut her? Unless he sliced her to pieces, cuts were easily healed, and he hadn’t wanted to remove any body parts, minor or otherwise.
The only option that had been left was breaking a bone, which would cause her trouble for a good length of time. He’d chosen the thumb because of the knife, because he was so enraged that she’d cut Milla. With a broken thumb, she wouldn’t be holding that knife for quite a while. And there was something cold about the chosen punishment that fit the crime, and that let people know he hadn’t gone soft. As soon as he’d thought it, the deed was done.
He realized the absurdity of trying to choose a punishment that was bad enough to make a statement on the street but wouldn’t permanently cripple the woman. He didn’t want to hit her, so he’d just break her thumb. Having been beaten himself on more than one occasion, he knew how long the pain lasted, how utterly debilitating it was. Lola’s thumb would pain her, but she wouldn’t be seriously handicapped—except for knife handling, of course. He wanted her mobile, able to get around; she couldn’t find out anything for him if she was half dead from a beating.
He could have killed her without the faintest twinge of remorse; breaking her thumb had made his stomach knot with nausea, even though he hadn’t shown a flicker of hesitation. If he had, Milla might now be dead, or at least seriously hurt.
Milla had been upset, but she had understood immediately why he’d had to do something.
He needed to get his hands on Pavón. Wasn’t it interesting that the same person was connected to smuggling babies ten years ago and smuggling involuntary organ donors now? Maybe Pavón was just a man who got around, but maybe he was still working for the same boss.
Diaz got a nice warm feeling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of tying up both problems with the same bow.
Milla’s son was gone. Only fools would keep a paper trail, and since adoption files were, for the most part, private, he didn’t see how she would ever be able to track him down even if they did crack the ring and discover the fake birth certificate that had been issued for him. But it had meant a lot to her to find out that at least he hadn’t been in that plane crash, or smothered in a car trunk. He’d seen the look in her eyes, the joy that had temporarily banished the sadness.
The plane crash was another avenue he could investigate. The FAA would have a record of things like that. He didn’t remember anything in the news about a plane crash killing six babies, and he was certain a story like that would have stuck with him. So either the crash site had been sanitized and the little bodies removed before rescuers and investigators arrived, leaving only the pilot, or the site had never been discovered by authorities. New Mexico was a big, mostly empty state. There were thousands of square miles in which a small plane could go down without being seen.
The owner of the plane would have known it was missing, though, and mounted a search for it. If he’d found it, what then? Completely disposing of a plane, even a small one, would take quite a bit of effort. The best bet would have been to remove the bodies, strip the plane, remove all markings and serial numbers, and set fire to it. There were a number of accelerants that would produce a very hot fire.
That’s how he would have done it, anyway.
He had a pretty good instinct for how the bad guys worked. All he had to do was figure out how he would do something, and most of the time he was right on the money. That didn’t say much for his personality, but it said a lot for his effectiveness.
He had to be more careful now, because Milla softened him. He didn’t know why, but he knew it happened. He found himself doing things he shouldn’t be wasting his time with, because of her. Conversation didn’t come easily to him, but he could talk to her, tell her things about himself. It amazed him that she told him about herself in return. At first she had been afraid of him, but he was used to that. Now she wasn’t, and he was pleased.
She wouldn’t sleep with him if she was afraid of him.
Maybe she didn’t know yet how he felt.
He held himself back, not wanting to push too hard and make her run. When he’d kissed her, he had wanted to deepen the contact, taste her with his tongue, but he’d felt the way she’d gone still and she hadn’t returned the kiss, so he’d kept it gentle and light.
She might not know yet how she felt, either, but he could read people and he knew she reacted to him. She too easily accepted his touch, had too easily leaned against him today, buried her head on his shoulder. As a woman she totally responded to him.
It had been a long time since he’d had a woman, but he intended to have Milla. He’d be patient, give her time to get used to him, but he had no doubt of the outcome. She was his.
He didn’t call for his truck this time, but took a cab and had it let him out while he was still a fair distance from Lola’s place. Then he walked, moving quietly, easily, approaching from a different direction, aware that his only weapon this time was the knife in his boot. She’d had time by now to have her thumb taken care of. She should be back at home, cradling her hand, popping pain pills, and cursing him. He was the last person she would want to see, which was why she would be so eager to get rid of him by telling him what he wanted to know. She would give up her own kids to him without even a protest.
He didn’t knock on the sorry door this time. He tried to open it and found it was secured from the inside, so he simply kicked it in.
Lola was lying on her cot, her hand bandaged with her thumb stuck rigidly outward. She was dressed in only a dingy nightgown; evidently she had taken her pain medication and decided to turn in for the night, even though it wasn’t dark yet. She gasped when she saw him, her face going slack with terror.
“I thought of another question,” he said softly.
True wasn’t in a good mood, so when his phone rang for about the thousandth time that day, he snatched it up with a snarl. “What?”