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“Maybe her friend knows something about the backpack, but my guess is it’s long gone, down the trail with that Coyote.”
“Her friend?”
“The girl traveling with her. Scared to death. She burrowed down in the sand behind the bushes while they killed this one.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“She’s back in Del Rio, in jail.”
Luke sighed. Ever since he’d gotten involved with these people, it seemed like he was forever springing somebody out of jail. Out at the Light at Five Points he and Justin Kilgore had shared the frustrating similarities in their work. Financial problems. Medical problems. Problems with the law. And lately, even political problems.
“Thanks a lot, Dad,” Justin had muttered as he told Luke about the trouble his father had stirred up. “Dad” to Justin Kilgore was none other than Congressman Kurt Kilgore. For the life of him, Luke couldn’t figure out why the congressman was so dead set against his son’s humanitarian work.
“What’s her name?” Luke dug in his jeans for his little notebook.
“Yolonda Reyes. I can have one of our guys go fetch her.” The guard reached for his shoulder radio and spoke into it.
And then what? Luke thought. Luke wasn’t about to send the child back to jail or to Mexico into the hands of the border judiciales.
An engine whined and the single headlight of a quad runner appeared out of nowhere, hurtling down the path in a cloud of dust, another young agent jostling high up on the narrow seat. The kid gave a two-fingered salute as he flew past. Medina saluted back as he hopped out of the way. Luke stepped back too, twisting his ankle as the heel of his cowboy boot rolled off a soggy diaper.
“Sorry,” Medina hollered as the roar of the quad faded into the darkness. “Joe flies around like a maniac.”
Luke knocked the dust off his sleeves as he regained his footing.
“You been at this awhile?” The guard gave Luke a wary once-over and Luke imagined the kid was noting the threads of gray in his hair and goatee, a certain cynicism around his eyes. But Luke’s weathered looks weren’t the result of age or even too many dangerous scrapes and long hours as a Ranger. If he had a hard-bitten look, it came from brooding too long. From seeing his dead child’s face in all its sweetest, most innocent poses every time he closed his eyes. He was acutely aware that this festering anger wasn’t healthy. He just didn’t know how stop it.
“Long enough.” Four years studying law enforcement, four years as a DPS trooper. A dozen or so as an active Ranger. Too much of it undercover in Mexico. Somewhere in all of that, he and Liana had managed to forge eight years of bliss before those little creeps had killed Liana and Bethany. It struck him that he hadn’t dreamed a good, clear dream about his wife and daughter for a while now. “Let’s get back to Maria’s case,” he said. “The family would like to have her stuff.”
The guard flipped up a palm like a traffic cop. “Since you’ve been at this so long, you ought to know everything from the crime scene is in police custody and staying there. And you know not to get your hopes up about ever getting it back…or catching this creep for that matter.”
“Haven’t let a creep go yet,” Luke stated flatly. Because he hadn’t. Medina still hadn’t figured out who he was. “In the meantime, I’m just trying to help this family obtain what’s rightfully theirs. They don’t even speak English.”
“Nobody does, man.” The agent said it with that sarcastic edge in his voice that was beginning to annoy Luke.
“They need an advocate,” he said calmly. “Right now, that would be me.” He dug a business card from the hip pocket of his Levi’s.
Medina took it and flipped the beam of his flashlight on it, thumbing the embossed seal of the Lone Star State. “Nice. I’m fresh out. Budget cuts.” Again, the guy’s voice was sarcastic.
Luke didn’t respond as Medina stuffed the card away in his flak vest. His silence seemed only to encourage the kid. “What, exactly, do these brothers expect? Last year over a million and a half of these types crawled up into the States.” Apparently Chuck Medina was determined to vent his spleen. “It’s like an invasion, man. This so-called border is a freaking sieve. The narco-militarist types, drug runners, Coyotes run the show down here. And they’re using assault rifles to do it. It’s a war zone.” He fanned an arm over the abandoned desert as they started making their way back to the main path. “Fear keeps the locals locked away, peering out of their houses over the barrels of their shotguns. And that’s just so they can keep the crossers out of their own front yards. They’ve given up on the outlying ranch lands. The few times a rancher had the guts to detain illegals for trespassing, the press crucified him as a racist vigilante. Some have even been sued. See all this crap?” The guard kicked at the trash, raising a plume of moonlit dust.
“It’s like this on practically the whole four-thousand-mile border. In the meantime, we’re caught in the middle. The Coyotes are making a killing off these poor people and nobody’s doing a thing about it. The illegals don’t trust anybody but the Coyotes until it’s too late. Until something like this—” He jerked his head back toward the crime scene. “Even if somebody had called 911, how could we get close enough to protect that young woman when the Coyotes let loose with a spray of bullets at the slightest sound and her rock-chucking compadres are ready to ambush us from behind every mesquite bush? And now we’ve got to worry about terrorists.” He finally stopped long enough to draw a frustrated breath.
Hoping Medina had talked himself out, Luke said, “It’s hard to sort out the good from the bad. I’ve gotten the same treatment.” So had Justin Kilgore. Crossers came in all shapes and sizes, all ages, all nationalities. But they all had one thing in common. Fear. Fear of getting caught. Fear of going to jail. Fear of authority. Fear of the gringo. Luke had worked hard to break through that fear and be one Texas Ranger they trusted. “You can’t blame them for being mistrustful, even when people are trying to help them.”
“I’ll tell you what’s sad,” the young border guard said, calmer now. “It’s the way these people accept their fate. Like they have no hope of anything ever getting better.”
“That’s the problem. They do have hope.” Luke sighed. “Otherwise they wouldn’t even attempt these crossings.”
The quad runner roared back up the rutted path, this time with a tiny young woman hanging on for dear life on the back. The driver got off and helped her dismount. She was so thin it hurt to look at her. Great, Luke thought, now he had a skinny teenager to deal with. “Her name’s Yolonda?” he clarified.
“Yeah. That little chica’s lucky she’s alive.” The guard spat in the dust, then hurried to follow Luke. “You know what she said? She said at least this time the Morales family would have a body.”
Luke stopped, turned, frowned. “This time?”
The guard hitched at his belt, suddenly self-important with information the Ranger didn’t have.
“The Morales’ father disappeared years ago.”
“Their father?” Luke processed this.
“He sent their mother the sign, but they never heard from him again.”
“The sign?” Luke squinted at Medina.
“The Lone Star. They’ll send it on a postcard or a trinket or something back home to Mexico. It shows that they’ve made it as far as a place called Five Points. I do not know why these people bother with such secrecy.” Medina shook his head. “Everybody knows Five Points is a key stopping place for crossers. Five highways going in every direction. Just a hop-skip to I-10.”
“I see,” Luke said. Five Points. He could practically see a puzzle piece locking in place. The Morales boys had failed to inform him of this little detail. Suddenly he knew exactly what he was going to do with this Yolonda girl: offer her asylum if she would tell him everything she knew. He could take her out to the Light at Five Points.
Luke thought of the people there and others he’d met when he’d gone to check out another murder in that small town, and like a rubber band, his mind snapped back to the woman named Frankie.
She’d given her full name, Frankie McBride Hostler, although the last name hadn’t rolled out as evenly as the first two, as if she’d choked on it. He had checked her left hand then, its slender fingers entwined with the other hand around the grip of a heavy revolver. A diamond the size of Dallas had winked at him in the blazing Southwest sun.
He’d never met a woman that way, while she held a gun on him in a firm firing stance. When she shot the head off the copperhead snake coiled less than a yard from his boot, he had decided this particular woman was something else.
Too bad this Frankie McBride…Hostler was married.
Five Points. He was headed back there for sure. Back to the home place of Frankie McBride.
CHAPTER TWO
My birthday. And I cannot believe I am actually writing these words in this journal: I am divorcing Kyle. I signed the papers yesterday. The weird thing is, ever since I made my decision, I’ve felt this enormous sense of…peace. Well, relief at least. And the strangest…euphoria from facing the truth.
My sister Robbie was right about one thing. Writing it down in this journal has clarified the hell out of things. I guess keeping a journal runs in our blood. Great-grandmother McBride started that tradition back in the territory days. I’ve been scribbling the most atrocious stuff in here, mostly about how I’d like to murder Kyle, but I couldn’t believe how seeing what Kyle had done written in black and white helped me face up to what I had to do.
I caught a glimpse of Robbie’s journal once. A cheap thing from Wal-Mart with a picture of a puppy dog on the front. That’s the main difference between me and my younger sister. She takes life as it comes and I manage it to death.
But I doubt I’ll change my ways. I’m turning forty today, and being fastidious and organized is in my blood, too. Like Mother.
I am terrified that I’ll end up like her someday. I seem to be well on my way. Fussing over another woman’s children, starting up another woman’s business, living in another woman’s house, a nineteenth-century rattletrap that would be condemned if not for the improvements Zack Trueblood has made to it.
Soon Robbie and Zack will be getting married and they’ll move the children out to the farm. The Tellchick-Trueblood Farm, Zack renamed it.
Then what? Will I become a boring little drudge? Fussing with the displays in the shop, lunching with lady friends, buying extravagant gifts for my niece and nephews? Will I fall into a sad little rut, a childless divorcée piecing together a half-life around her extended family, but in reality, so alone.
But even with all my fears, I can’t shake this feeling that I’m alive again for the first time in years. As if I’m breaking free. As if I could conquer the world.
And speaking of the world, time to get out in it. The sun’s up, and I want to get down to the store early. We’re putting up wallpaper today. Robbie’s coming in right after she drops the boys at school.
FRANKIE MCBRIDE inhaled a bracing dose of icy January air as her numb fingers worked the key in the lock of her sister’s craft shop. It was cold enough in the Hill Country to freeze a Yankee’s behind this morning, but Frankie felt full of unaccountable excitement and purpose. The littlest things seemed to make her happy lately. Her baby niece. This store. Fresh coffee in the morning. It all seemed so vital, so far removed from the sterile life she’d left behind.
She glanced up and down Main Street. Except for a half dozen antique stores, a handful of upscale art galleries and a general spiffing up for the ever-increasing tourist trade, the main street of Five Points, Texas, had not changed since Frankie’s high school days.
The store sat nestled where the narrow brick avenue made a gentle S half-way through town, visible to tourists who left the beaten path where five highways converged. Frankie’s dad and Zack Trueblood had done an excellent job of making the shop stand out, with its turned posts and gingerbread trim, painted in authentic Victorian shades of pumpkin, teal and cream. Robbie had insisted that the front door be painted true Texas red, and had carried the signature color over in a stenciled Lone Star design high on the front window and again on the doors of the antique display cabinets.
Frankie loved this place. She took a second to delight in the familiar—the lavender curves of the Texas Hill Country touched by a golden sunrise, the aroma of Parson’s pancakes wafting from the Hungry Aggie, where a cluster of pickups gathered like cattle at a trough, the whine of the school bus engine, the firefighters raising the single door on the old limestone firehouse that sat in the other curve of the S.
She jiggled the key as she wondered if Zack was on duty today. Ah. Here he was now, headed for the tiny bakery where the fluorescent lights were glaring and the pastries were hot.
Zack waved. He was a handsome man, virile and fit. And genuinely kind. Her sister Robbie was so lucky.
Which reminded Frankie that she was…not so lucky.
Right on the heels of that deflating thought came guilt. How could she envy her sisters for the love they’d found? Her problems were nothing compared to theirs. Robbie’s husband had been killed in a tragic barn fire only a year earlier. Markie had endured the pain of giving a child up for adoption when she was a mere teenager. She admired the way her sisters had triumphed, had found happiness despite their setbacks.
Still, Frankie couldn’t help but think that at least Robbie had her children, whereas Frankie had lost all her babies, one after another. Four wrenching miscarriages. She studied Zack’s back and decided it was easier to think about the contrast between solid, generous-hearted firefighter and her own tightly wound, bone-selfish husband. Immediately on the heels of that thought came the memory of meeting that other man, the Texas Ranger, the one with the broad shoulders and piercing eyes. This memory had been deviling her, off and on, for weeks. Her attraction to the man had been immediate, electric, and, to Frankie, thoroughly shocking.
At first she’d thought it was some kind of rebound thing, being drawn to an attractive man out of sheer loneliness. But her preoccupation with him persisted, and she began to wonder if there had been something special about him after all. Mercifully, the memory faded over the weeks, as if the whole meeting had been some kind of fantasy, and ultimately she was back to her sad reality—divorcing herself from an unfaithful husband.
Tears stung her eyes, as they did every time she thought about Kyle’s betrayal, but Frankie was quickly learning to shake off self-pity. Work, she had decided, was the answer to her woes. Her sister needed her help, and even with a substantial settlement in the offing, Frankie knew she couldn’t live on Kyle’s money forever. Getting this store up and running was going to solve both of their problems.
The lock finally clicked open and she bent to pick up the plastic storage tub she’d carried from the trunk of her Mercedes.
“The Rising Star is looking real good,” a chiming female voice called out. It was Ardella Brown, the proprietor of the flower shop down the walk. “Getting things all organized over there, are you, Frankie?” Ardella nodded at the plastic bin.
Frankie smiled. “Trying to.”
“Good girl!” Ardella’s smile was as bright as the eastern sun that glinted off her spectacles. Ever since Ardella and Frankie’s mother had been young women, they had passed each other bits of juicy gossip as if trading sticks of gum. Ardella made no secret of her feelings about the McBride sisters. She liked Robbie, didn’t like Markie, and was carefully respectful, even a tad admiring, of Frankie.
But Frankie didn’t know how to take Ardella’s new attitude about Robbie’s shop. Marynell had reported back every sniping thing Ardella had said about the beginnings of their enterprise. But recent events made Frankie wonder if Ardella had actually said those things or if Marynell had conveniently inserted words into someone else’s mouth. It was going to be hard to trust their mother ever again.
One thing was sure, her sister Robbie had been much warmer toward Ardella since Ardella had been alert enough to report smoke on the night of the shop’s fire, saving baby Danielle’s life.
“Have a good day!” Frankie shot Ardella a smile, scooted inside, plunked the bin down with a thud and hurried back out. She was reaching into the trunk to pull out the short stepladder they’d borrowed from Zack when she had a sensation of being watched. She straightened and noted two paunchy old guys in overalls looking her way. “Morning!” she called.
Living in Five Points was going to take some getting used to. In a big city like Austin, even a woman of her social standing could be anonymous. But here, everybody and everything got noticed.
She wrestled the ladder inside, turned the deadbolt, fastened the chain. Bright morning sun backlit the frosted oval glass that had graced the entrance since territorial days. Thank God the front half of the store, with its antique charm, hadn’t been damaged by the fire. On a sideboard where Robbie had set up a charming coffee service, she started a carafe of her favorite blend. Frankie had convinced Robbie that elegant touches like candy dishes and demitasse-sized cups of flavored coffee would encourage shoppers to linger.
With the coffee dripping, she hurried to the storeroom. She was pulling out rolls of wallpaper when a loud rapping on the front glass made her jump.
She frowned. Had Robbie misplaced her keys to the store yet again? Living with Robbie was starting to tax her patience.
“Coming!” she snapped, trying not to be annoyed at the scattered ways of her sister.
The flotsam and jetsam of moving lay everywhere, as it did at Robbie’s house. Frankie determined anew to help her sister get more organized. Starting with her keys, she thought as the rapping ricocheted through the store again.
She came up short when she saw, framed in the oval frosted window, the silhouette of a tall man in a cowboy hat. Her stomach plunged when she recognized Luke Driscoll’s profile. Memories rushed back. His handsome face, piercing eyes, laconic manner, broad-shouldered physique. She even remembered the sound of his voice—low, gravelly, emotionless.
“Mrs. Hostler?” that very voice now caused a flutter at her core.
She opened the door a crack, kept the chain lock on.
He actually touched the brim of his Stetson. “It’s me, Mrs. Hostler. Luke Driscoll.”
She hated the very sound of Kyle’s last name now, but that was not the Ranger’s problem.
“Mr. Driscoll. Of course I remember you.” She undid the chain and opened the door wider. You didn’t forget a man you’d shot at with a revolver, though she had certainly never expected to see, much less speak to, this one again.
“Just Luke. Remember?”
“Yes. I do…remember. What…what are you doing here?” Despite the cold air, she could actually feel her cheeks heating up.
“I saw you unloading the car while I was in there getting her something to eat,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the Aggie.
Her? Only then did Frankie notice a painfully thin girl with dark Hispanic looks, cowering behind Driscoll’s big shoulder. The teenager was wearing filthy sneakers, threadbare jeans, a baggy denim jacket and a thin shawl clutched tightly about her head. Probably an illegal. There were plenty of them around here.
But before Frankie addressed the girl, she had to ask, “You…you were watching me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said unapologetically. “Um…” He looked around. “Can we get in off the street? Yolonda’s a little skittish.”
The young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, did indeed look frightened. She mumbled something in Spanish while her wide black eyes pleaded with Frankie in a way that needed no interpretation.
“Of course.” Frankie stepped back to allow them in. Driscoll’s boots clumped loudly on the hardwood floor. “This your sister’s shop?” he asked as he steered the girl inside.
“Yes,” Frankie said as she closed the door. Although she had developed proprietary feelings about the place lately. “I work here.”
“Oh?” He gave her a curious frown. “I thought you said you were just visiting. Remember? A while back? When we met out at your parents’ farm?”
How could she forget? Frankie felt her color rising higher. She’d pointed a gun at a Texas Ranger, shot a snake, then gotten all flustered and teary. She did recall saying something about going back to Austin. But now she had no intention of reconciling with her husband. She sighed. One day she said one thing, the next she did another.
Why she cared what this man thought of her was a mystery. Maybe it was the way he was looking at her—as if he cared. Or maybe it was because he came across so…pulled together. From the top of his tan Stetson to the muscular, relaxed way he moved, the man exuded an air of strength and competence.
“I…uh…” she stammered, realizing he was still waiting for her answer. “I never went back to, uh, to Austin. I stayed on to help my sister.” Not strictly true. She’d stayed to sort out her messy life.
“As you can see—” she swept around in front of his imposing frame, leading the way through the piles of clutter on the floor “—we’re still getting organized. We had a rather unfortunate fire. We’ve fixed the damage, but…” She looked back and he was regarding her patiently. “We can sit down back here in the storage room.”
“I know about the fire,” Driscoll’s voice came calmly from behind her. “I interviewed the arsonist.”
Frankie spun around, surprised. “Really?”
“Old guy named Mestor. Interrogated him at the jail.”
The day they’d met, Frankie thought this Texas Ranger had told her he was looking for some Mexican Coyotes. Was this related? “Why ever did you question him?”
“I’m working on a string of events. But that’s not why I came over here this morning.” He pushed his Stetson back on his head. “I need to take Yolonda here out to the Light at Five Points.”
“My sister and brother-in-law’s place. You need directions?”
