Texas Hold 'Em (12 page)

Juan’s mother made a scoffing sound. “He has plenty of women, just like his father always did. But he likes them young and beautiful. Like her.” She nodded toward Rose.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Santos pressed.

“And you have a lot of those for just a friend.” Enrique’s brother, if that’s who he really was, looked at him through narrowed eyes, his distrust obvious.

Santos’s expression stayed stony. “You would too if you were in my shoes,
amigo
. Let’s just say I owe him money…but he owes me something in return.”

The woman grunted, accepting his answer before continuing.

“I might have seen these women. I couldn’t say for sure.” She suddenly narrowed her gaze and sent it back to Rose, studying her face. Rose held her breath, then the woman seemed to dismiss whatever she’d been thinking, her mind returning to the problem at hand.

“We’ve driven by Juan’s house every day, but his car is never there,” the woman said. “We banged on the door, looked through the windows. I’ve called him on his phone, on his cell phone, I text, no answer. Juan made me promise on the Holy Bible, I would never go inside his home if he wasn’t there, but I don’t care anymore. I told Marco we’re going over there today and breaking down the door if we have to.”

“Where do you think he might be?” Rose spoke for the first time. “You must have a clue.”

“Where do I think he is?” Her voice turned harsh as she looked at Rose. “What do you think I think? He’s in his grave. If he wasn’t, he would have called me.”

“He has dangerous associates.” Santos pulled the mother’s attention back to him. “Maybe he made someone important unhappy.”

She slumped against the sofa cushions, the flash of anger she’d directed at Rose gone as fast as it’d come. “When I told him to be careful, he insisted he was fine. He pointed to his chest and said no one dares to go after the man at the top, but if he was such a big shot, why did he run like a rabbit when the big wolf came?”

“Who’s the big wolf—?”

She waved off Santos’s question, her hand fluttering in a gesture of uselessness. “I told him he was going to get eaten. I told him it was even better to be arrested than dead. He didn’t listen to me. And now he’s gone.”

“Mama…” Marcos switched to Spanish. “That’s enough! You don’t know these people. They could be co—”

“
Silencio
!” Confident they couldn’t understand, she tilted her head to where Santos sat. “Cops don’t look like that. They want to help people. This man has a stone for a heart.”

“Please…anyone can look any way they like these days.”

“I’m not talking about his clothing,
bebo
. Look at his eyes,” she ordered. “Cops don’t have eyes like that.”

Like Rose, Santos gave no indication he understood. “You shouldn’t mess with
El Brujo
—” he started.

“Who said anything about someone named that?” she interrupted sharply. “I didn’t mention that name. You must have dreamed that up.”

She threw her palms up to stop him from answering. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t say another word. I don’t want to know more. Marcos will go to Juan’s house this afternoon, and then I’ll decide what to do.” Her expression told Santos Juan’s mother knew Marcos was going to break into Juan’s house, and she approved. She just wanted to keep her own hands clean in case Juan reappeared.

He lifted his gaze to Juan’s brother. “I can go with you,” he offered. “You might need some help.”

The silent communication they exchanged was one Santos usually shared with other cops. It was an acknowledgement that they both knew something bad was waiting for them.

Still, Marcos looked as though he wanted to refuse, until his mother spoke. “Take him,” she ordered in a voice that brooked no argument. “Don’t wait any longer. Go now.”

As Santos stood, Marcos reached for a jacket hanging over one of the chairs. He stopped and pointed his finger at Rose as she started to rise, too. “Not you. You wait here with my mother.”

“She goes where I go,” Santos said. “I’m not leaving without her, so if you want my help, she comes with us.”

Marcos looked at his mother, and she nodded wearily. “Take her, too,” she said. “And bring me back some answers.”

Chapter Thirteen

Santos had a bad feeling the minute they pulled into Juan Enrique’s driveway. Something strange was going on, and he was afraid he might be about to learn what that something was. Maybe Enrique’s mother had been expecting him and Rose, and the whole missing-my-son drama show had been a setup. The look Juan’s mother had sent Rose had clearly been a suspicious one. Had she seen a resemblance between Rose and someone else, someone like Gloria?

He turned to Marcos as they approached the front door. “You haven’t been in the house since your brother’s been gone?”

“I’ve been inside,” Marcos said. “I just didn’t tell
mamá
, because there was nothing to tell. But now, I feel different. I don’t know why, but I do.”

Reaching the front door, Santos put his hand on Marcos’s chest and stopped him from putting the key in the lock. “Maybe you killed him yourself. And maybe you feel different now, because you know he’s been lying inside, dead, for a week. That might make you not want to open the door.”

He’d already told Rose on the bike’s intercom he’d been planning to provoke Marcos to see what he’d do. She stiffened at the sudden tension in the air despite the advanced notice.

“Juan’s my big brother.” Marcos reached up and knocked his hand away. “We don’t do things like that on this side of the border.”

His glare intact, Santos stepped back and let him unlock the house. The heavy wooden door swung open, and the smell hit him like a hammer pounding a nail.

Rose followed the two men inside until Marcos turned around and jabbed his fingers in her direction then at the door. “You. Outside. Right now.”

Rose’s eyes met Santos. She obviously understood that she had to act like the biker chick she was supposed to be, and not the sheriff she really was. She pivoted to return outside where she could act as Santos’s lookout.

He and Marcos found the body in one of the bedrooms at the rear of the house. Turning away with a howl, Marcos punched his fist through the nearest wall, his grief-filled cry filling the bloody room. With his hand over his mouth, Santos backed away, acting as if he was about to be sick. In reality, his stomach did flip over. If he’d thought the Concepción DeLeon murder scene was bad, this one was ten times worse.

He figured he had two minutes, maybe three tops, so he searched the house as quickly as possible. He didn’t find anything until he entered a second bedroom with a small, windowless bathroom attached. There was a lock—on the outside of the doorframe. He pushed the door open and cursed quietly, standing on the threshold. The mirror had been stripped off the wall over the tiny cabinet, leaving behind holes in the drywall and globs of black adhesive. The shower had no door, and the toilet had no cover. A turned-over waste can rested in one corner, a bag of plastic zip ties sat in the other. The remnants of a roll of silver duct tape sat on the edge of the sink, two long blond hairs attached to a piece of it that’d been torn off. He walked inside and hooked his boot around the bottom of the door so he could see the back of it. It swung lazily toward the doorframe. He stared until the door drifted open again.

Slipping past the room where Marcos was now crying as he talked to someone on his cell phone, Santos reached the sidewalk, then grabbed his helmet from Rose’s outstretched hand. “Get on the bike,” he ordered. “We’re getting out of here while we still can.”

They didn’t stop or speak until they’d gone at least five miles. He pulled into the first gas station he saw and went straight to the men’s room where he called his contact inside the Mexican federal police. He told the man about the scene he’d just left, then hung up and started washing his hands. But the stink of death would take more than soap and water to remove. Only time would do that.

He found Rose waiting for him in the sandwich shop attached to the side of the convenience store. She was cradling a paper cup of coffee with a black sheen of oil floating on top. Another one sat by her hand. She pushed it toward him as he slid into the booth beside her. She lifted one eyebrow. “Well?”

He drank half of the foul brew before he spoke. “It was bad,” was all he would say.

“Ortega?”

“It had to be. Too messy for anyone else.” He drained his cup then got another one before sitting back down. “There was one body but a dozen parts, half of them unrecognizable. A note was pinned to the torso. “This is what happens to people who betray me.” Sounds like something you’d hear in a bad movie, but it was pretty effective, I have to admit. No one butchers a body like Ortega.”

“So the two men are connected?”

“Could be. That body was definitely left as a warning.” He stared out the window beside them. The empty highway that ran in front of the convenience store stretched into a distance that seemed to go on forever. “One way or the other, we can’t ask Enrique. That ship has sailed.”

“No sign of Lilith?” she asked.

He dropped his head and rubbed his hands over his face. Rose reached over and touched his arm. “Santos?”

“I found a room with a lock on the outside. There was a piece of used duct tape on the counter. It had some long blond hair attached to it. I can have it tested, but I’m pretty sure…” Breaking off, he raised his face. “There were fresh scratch marks on the back of the door. Someone had tried to claw their way out.”

…

Rose heard Santos’s cell phone ring behind her as she drew near the Harley, but it barely registered. To accept that her mother, who’d done so much to protect her, could possibly be involved with men this horrible broke her heart.

Santos’s voice made its way into her thoughts, and she turned. An expression she couldn’t name had come over his face, transforming his expression. Relief, anxiety, even anger—every emotion she could name seemed to cross his features. As if he could squeeze out more information, he gripped the phone with both hands. “What in the hell’s going on? My God, we’ve been searching for you—”

He stopped speaking abruptly and listened, then said, “Are you safe right now? Let us come get you—”

She strained to hear as the speaker at the other end of the call, a tinny voice she couldn’t identify, obviously interrupted him. Was it Lilith? It had to be her, the way he was reacting. He wouldn’t have looked like that if it’d been Gloria on the other end of the call. Excitement raced over her, as much for the possibility of locating Santos’s informant as for freeing her mother from involvement in this ghastly case.

“I know where that is,” he answered. “How long do I have before he comes back?” He waited. “Three hours sounds too long. I don’t want to cut it that close. You stay where you are, and let my men pick you up first. After we’ve got you, we’ll go in. I’ll call the team as soon as we hang up.” He took a deep breath. This time it was his turn to interrupt. “Before you go, I have to tell you something. Rose is here. Yes, Rose. You should talk to her, Gloria.”

Rose stared at Santos, confusion sweeping over her. He was talking to Gloria? She thought he’d been speaking to Lilith. She frowned, then blinked as his conversation continued.

“I swore that’s the way this would go down,” he was saying. “And that’s how it’s happening, whether or not either one of us likes it.”

It almost sounded as if he’d been in touch with her mother all along. Could that be possible? If he had, why had he needed her? That didn’t make any sense. Surely, she was mistaken.

He stared at her as he spoke to Gloria. “You’re right. I made too many promises, Gloria. But I’m not breaking the one I made Rose. She deserves better than that. She deserves the truth.”

There weren’t too many times in her life when Rose had wanted to turn around and run from whatever was coming, but that’s exactly how she felt at that moment. She hesitated for a breath then held her hand out for the phone, her eyes zeroing in on Santos’s face.

“Rose? What are you doing there?” Gloria was upset, the tone of her voice rising and falling. You’re not supposed to be—”

She couldn’t speak until finally she choked out, “Mother… For God’s sake, what’s going on?”

“It’s okay…it’s okay. Just give Santos the phone, baby. We’ll talk later.”

“I…I thought… We’ve been looking for you. I don’t understand.”

“And I don’t have time to explain. If he finds out I’ve called Santos, I’m a dead woman.”

“He? Who’s he?”

“
El Brujo
—Pablo Ortega. Now hand the phone—”

Horror swamped Rose as her mother’s words registered. She was with the cartel leader. “Oh, Mother…what have you done?”

“I only have a few minutes left, Rose, and I’ve got to talk to Santos!”

“He’s going to arrest you,” she cried. “Santos is going to arrest you, because you know this man and you know about his missing informant. Santos made me help him so we could find you.”

Gloria’s urgency took a back step, sympathy filling her voice instead. “Oh, sweetheart…Santos has known all along where I am. He didn’t need your help to locate me. We’ve been trying to protect you. Now hand him the damn phone, or I’m going to die.”

Chapter Fourteen

Numb with confusion, Rose pressed her body against Santos’s back, her arms around his waist in a death grip as the cold west Texas wind rushed past them. Santos bore down on the bike for all it was worth, and the twin pipes responded with their familiar breath-taking roar. The Harley seemed to feed on the sound, the motorcycle lifting itself off the pavement as it flew down the highway at a breakneck speed. Santos’s body reflected the bike’s urgency, his knuckles so tight on the handles she wondered which might break first—his fingers or the grips.

After calling the ACES team, he’d told her where they were headed, but the rest of her questions had gone unanswered. “They’ll have to wait,” he’d said. “I’ve got to drive, and you have to ride. Nothing else matters right now.”

It was probably just as well, she thought blankly. If someone had told her the sun would be rising at midnight, she might have believed it. The idea made as much sense as anything in the past thirty minutes. Santos had known where her mother was all this time. The world was upside down.

He slowed the Harley and took a hard left off the highway. Following his lead and leaning the same direction, she clung to him tightly, believing for a second they were going over. Her mouth went dry as he straightened and added even more speed, the bike accelerating so quickly she wondered just how much faster they could go. The first village they passed through was little more than an impression, and the second one was a blur. Santos didn’t let up on the throttle until they took another left, turning into a road she didn’t see until the very last second. This time the bike fishtailed, but he got it under control so swiftly they were out of slide before she could scream. Five minutes later, he brought them to stop in a spiral of dust, jumped off the bike, and threw down his helmet. Grabbing the .45 from the back of his waistband, he was running before she got off the motorcycle. She quickly followed, their dash over the rugged landscape reminding her of their first encounter outside her headquarters.

Dodging cacti and scrambling over rocky terrain, Santos threw up his right fist in a signal as they neared the top of a gradual incline. He fell to the dirt behind a narrow cedar, and she did the same, the tree’s slender branches giving them scant cover as they crept to the highest point.

They were a half mile away, maybe less, but even if they’d been right on top of it, she wasn’t sure she would have seen the compound. The house blended so well with the landscape, it was invisible unless you knew where it sat. High walls surrounded a large square of land, which were the same color as the desert. Even the darker roof tiles of the buildings they spied within the walls seemed to have been chosen to blend in. They melded perfectly into the shadows of the mountains in the background.

A second line of defense, another walled enclosure, had been built behind a rust-colored gate. The double barrier added extra security, forcing whoever drove in to lower their speed to a crawl then turn their vehicle left. The walls also kept out curious eyes. From the elevated spot where they waited, they had a bird’s eye view into both courtyards. The first one was a parking area, and through an arched opening a larger open area was ringed by a quadrangle of buildings, just like Reina’s house. The similarities ended there. Her courtyard had been an oasis of peace; these were staging areas for violent raids.

Rose’s gaze backtracked to the road outside the walls. It was as indiscernible as the rest of the place. Only when she looked closer did she see the underlying smoothness that gave testimony to its use. The native trees and grasses that bordered it had been carefully manipulated, their ragged limbs and seemingly random planting were a clever ruse that hid the cameras in their branches. Someone had spent a boatload of money making sure the place was invisible and defendable.

Santos jerked his head over his shoulder. They squirmed their way backward until they couldn’t be spotted or heard by anyone at the house.

“That’s Ortega’s compound,” he said quietly. “We’ll wait here until the rest of the team arrives.”

“Is my mother there?” Her jaw was so taut with anger and concern she could barely speak. “If she is, we need to go right now. Who knows how long your team could take—” She started to stand, then suddenly she was sprawled in the dirt.

She blinked in disbelief and looked down. His hand was wrapped around her ankle. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m not letting you go down there, Rose. We’re waiting for the team. You know better than I do what might happen if we screw this up.”

“If we don’t get down there, she might die—”

“And if we go down there without backup, we might all die.”

She bit the inside of her mouth, refusing to let her tears of frustration escape. Her brain knew he was right, but her heart didn’t want to accept it. She slumped into the dirt.

He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and his forefinger as if he didn’t believe what he’d seen and needed to clear his vision. “We’ve been trying to find this place for two years. It would have taken us twenty more without your mother’s help.”

“You knew all along where she was.” Her throat went so tight, she could hardly get the words out. “How in the hell could you lie to me like that?”

Above them, a layer of clouds shifted over the sun, harbingers of rain. In their growing shadows, he turned and stared at her. “I’ve had your mother inside Ortega’s camp for two years, Rose. She’s done more for this operation than any of my agents.”

Thunder broke the thick silence but neither of them blinked.
Agents
, she repeated to herself.
Done more for this operation than any of my agents
…

A cold comprehension slowly spread outward from Rose’s core. Her legs froze, her breath turned to ice; even her heart,
especially her heart
, hardened into a lump of glacial disbelief. “You son-of-a-
bitch
.” The curse came out in a whisper of shock. “My mother is your confidential informant.
My mother
is Lilith.”

He didn’t even try to deny it. “Your mother was Ortega’s lover. When her circumstances…changed, she came to work for me.”

Rose raised her voice, then realized what she’d done, dropping it again. “Why on earth did you tell me you needed my help finding her if you knew all along where she was?”

“I didn’t know where she was. I was hoping like hell that you did.”

“I would have helped you without all the lies—”

He interrupted her. “Have you forgotten you tried to throw me out when you saw me that first night? If I hadn’t told you I was working undercover, you would have run me out of town. And if I’d told you your mother was involved, you would have done just what you tried to do—go off half-cocked and try to rescue her on your own.”

She shifted her gaze away then brought it back. He knew her too damn well.

“I did the only thing I knew—to go after Ortega and still protect her.” He bit off the words then added, “And you.”

“I should have been told.”

“Maybe so, but I wasn’t willing to take that risk. And even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t. As part of her agreement, your mother insisted I not tell you what was going on, and I made a commitment to her that you would never find out.”

He was still talking as she began shaking her head. “I don’t care. You shouldn’t have done that—”

“What should I have done? Just ignore it and leave her hanging?” Santos’s own voice rose and then fell. “When she disappeared, I had a choice—honor that promise or break it. Either way, I still had to hunt for Ortega. I tried to do it all. Obviously I failed.”

“Why would she even go undercover in the first place?” Rose spoke as if to herself, then suspicion suddenly flooded her. She tilted closer to him. An hour ago—
a lifetime ago
—she would have drawn this near only to kiss him. She spoke with a deceptively soft voice. “What did you do to her, Santos?”

“I didn’t blackmail her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“She just called you out of the blue one day and said, ‘Hey, Santos, I want to go undercover and find out all I can about this big bad cartel leader so you can arrest him? Oh, and while you’re at it, you can arrest me, too.’”

“I didn’t do anything to her.” His breath washed her cheek. “She did it to herself.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not. I suspected she’d been involved with Ortega for several months. That’s why I tried to get you to distance yourself from her right before we broke up. And then one night, I found her running guns two counties over from Rio. Their affair had ended, and Ortega was blackmailing her. She was terrified of him, and rightly so. The night before I saw her, he’d blindfolded her and taken her to the border, where he proceeded to have his men pick up an illegal crossing the river. Ortega grabbed a knife, wrapped her fingers around the handle, and slit the poor SOB’s throat while he made her hold the blade.” He paused as if he couldn’t quite believe his own explanation. “The bastard told her she’d be next if she ever left him, and even if she managed to get away, he’d still have the knife. He’d turn her in, and she’d be arrested for murder. She was trapped.”

Rose’s breath caught until her lungs forced her to breathe again.

“Your mother’s been protecting you, Rose, just as she did when you were sixteen—no matter the cost. And she insisted I not tell you.”

“There had to be other options.”

“Not with this. She could go undercover or go to jail. And I didn’t make the offer. My boss did.”

“But I’m sure you ‘advised’ her to become your informant.”

“I told her to go to jail,” he said bluntly, shocking her into silence. “It would have been a helluva lot safer, in my opinion. She’s the one who made the decision to go under, Rose. I didn’t send her there.”

“But why would she make that kind of choice?”

“She’d been in prison once, and she didn’t want to go back. But she had a more important reason, too.”

“And that was?”

“You.”

Rose shook her head. She knew what he was going to say, and she didn’t want to hear it.

“She knew if she disappeared, Ortega wouldn’t stop looking for her. He’d keep digging and digging until he uncovered everything about her, including you. She decided she’d have more control over the situation if she stayed on the outside. And she made me promise not to tell you. I knew Ortega had figured out she was working for us. When you said she hadn’t contacted you, I was praying he hadn’t killed her.”

“Reina wondered if Ortega knew I was Gloria’s daughter,” she said slowly. “I guess this answers that question.”

“I’m assuming Ortega was trying to intimidate you simply because you’re the sheriff. If he knew you were Gloria’s daughter, you’d already be dead.”

She blew out a breath and looked up. In the distance, a bolt of heat lightening crackled through the darkening clouds. The long streak reached out to the nearest peak, then pulled back. “I should have known,” she said quietly.

“You couldn’t have possibly figured out the details. And even if you had, it wouldn’t have made any difference. She protected you once. She wanted to protect you again.”

“I wasn’t talking about my mother.” She turned toward Santos. “I was talking about you. The only thing that matters to you is the end result. The circumstances—and the people—mean nothing. All you wanted was Ortega, and you didn’t care who you had to use to get him.”

“If that’s the case, you would have known the truth. I wouldn’t have bothered to keep her role silent.”

She made a dismissive sound.

“Ortega’s a risk to your mother, to you, and to everyone else in this part of Texas,” Santos said. “He sells death and destruction. He’s the one you need to condemn, not me.”

“Maybe so,” she said, turning away from him. “But he’s not the man I thought I loved.”

…

Santos had no reply, so all he did was stay silent, and Rose did the same. When his phone vibrated, he thrust a hand inside his vest and pulled it out. Jessie answered his terse hello, a country and western band playing in the background, liquor-fueled laughter accompanying it.

“I’m ten minutes out,” she said. “Do you want us to come in now?”

“Is everyone there?”

“No, just me. I was the closest when you called. I’m at a bar just down from your location in San Rosa.” He heard the sound of breaking glass, and Jessie cursed. “It’s getting nuts in here,” she said unnecessarily. “What should I do?”

“Give it another ten minutes, then come in. Bring our friends, too.” He punched the end button and stuck the phone back into his vest pocket.

Rose sat beside him with a stony face.

He crawled back to the edge of the crest, his binoculars in hand. Rose trailed him, the clouds now overhead and building into taller peaks. The eastern sky had turned into a dark purple, the day turning dim.

As he stared at the compound, the inside of the courtyard lit up like a football field getting ready for a game, a series of floodlights abruptly coming on one by one. The image was reinforced when a team of men straggled out and ringed the balconies. They were spectators.

Two more men emerged, this time into the center of the interior courtyard. A woman was struggling in their grip and fighting them both, lashing out with her feet and screaming. She was the entertainment, he realized sickly. Her blond hair glistened as the rain began to fall.

Beside him, Rose gasped, and he responded without thinking, his fingers going to her arm. Gloria couldn’t have possibly heard her, but she looked up at the same time.

“Oh, dear Lord,” Rose whispered. “Tell me that’s not my mother.”

“Try not to panic.” He tightened his grip then released her. Training his binoculars on the courtyard, he pulled out his phone, dialing without looking at the keypad and praying at the same time that they weren’t about to witness an execution.

Jessie answered instantly. “The guys just arrived,” she said. “We’ll be there in ten.”

“Make it five,” he ordered. “Full throttle.”

Rose turned, and this time she was the one who gripped his arm. “We can’t wait for them, Santos. We’ve got to help her now. We can’t let this happen.”