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“Well, no, they want someone to convince the general to make a trade agreement with us once he’s back in power. They’re certain that he will be, which is why they want you to make friends with him.”
“I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed to know he has a grown son who’s a cop,” he said coldly. “Especially since he’s wanted by our government for kidnapping.”
She leaned forward with her chin resting in her hands, propped by her elbows. “You could arrest him,” she pointed out. “And then befriend him in jail. Like the mouse that took the thorn out of the lion’s paw and became its friend.”
He made a face at her. “I can’t walk across the border and arrest anyone. I might have been born in Mexico, but I’m an American citizen. And I did it the hard way,” he added firmly. “Legally.”
She grimaced.
“Sorry,” he said after a minute. “I know you sympathize with all the people hiding out here who couldn’t afford to wait for permission. In some of their countries, they could be killed just for paying too much attention to the wrong people.”
“It’s very bad in some Central American states,” she pointed out.
“It’s very bad anywhere on our border.”
“And getting worse.”
He got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. His big hand rested on the coffeemaker as he switched it off. “Who’s the mole in my office?”
“I honestly don’t know,” she replied. “I only know that Sims told his friend, Cash Grier’s patrolman, about it. He said it was someone from a federal agency, working undercover.”
“I wonder how Sims knew.”
“Maybe he’s the mole,” she teased.
“Unlikely. Most feds have too much respect for the law to abuse it. Sims actually suggested that we confiscate a six-pack of beer from a convenience store as evidence in some pretended case and threaten the clerk with jail if he told on us.”
“Good grief! And he works for the police?” she exclaimed, horrified.
“Apparently,” he replied. “I didn’t like what he said, and I told him so. He seemed repentant, but I’m not sure he really was. Cocky kid. Real attitude problem.”
“Doesn’t that sound familiar?” she asked the room at large.
“I never suggested breaking the law after I went through the academy and swore under oath to uphold it,” he replied.
“Are you sure you didn’t overreact, my darling?” she asked gently.
“If I did, so did Cassaway. She was hotter under the collar than I was.” He laughed shortly. “And then she beat the lieutenant on the firing range and he let out a bad word. She marched right up to him and said she was offended and he shouldn’t talk that way around her.” He glanced at her ruefully. “Hence, the rose.”
“Oh. An apology.” She looked disappointed. “Your lieutenant is very attractive,” she mused. “And eligible. I thought he might find Miss Cassaway interesting. Or something.”
“Maybe he does,” he said vaguely. “God knows why. She’s good with a gun, I’ll give her that, but she’s a walking disaster in other ways. How she ever got a job with the police, I’ll never know.” He didn’t like talking about Cassaway and the lieutenant. It got under his skin, for reasons he couldn’t understand.
“She sounds very nice to me.”
“Everybody sounds nice to you,” he replied. He smiled at her. “You could find one good thing to say about the devil, Mom. You look for the best in people.”
“You look for the worst,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “That’s my job.”
He was thoughtful, and morose. She felt even more guilty when she saw how disturbed he really was.
“I wish there had been some other way to handle this,” she muttered angrily. “I hate being made the fall guy.”
“Hey, I’m not mad at you,” he said, and bent to kiss her hair. “I just … don’t know what to do.” He sighed.
“‘When in doubt, don’t,’” she quoted. She frowned. “Who said that?”
“Beats me, but it’s probably good advice.” He put down his cooling coffee and stretched, yawning. “I’m beat. Too many late nights finishing paperwork and going on stakeouts. I’m going to bed. I’ll decide what to do in the morning. Maybe it will come to me in a dream or something,” he added.
“Maybe it will. I’m just sorry I had to be the one to tell you.”
“I’ll get used to the idea,” he assured her. “I just need a little time.”
She nodded.
But time was in short supply. Two days later, a tall, elegant man with dark hair and eyes, wearing a visitor’s tag but no indication of his identity, walked into Rick’s office and closed the door.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
Rick stared at him. “Do I know you?” he asked after a minute, because the man seemed vaguely familiar.
“You should,” he replied with a grin. “But it’s been a while since we caught Fuentes and his boys in the drug sting in Jacobsville. I’m Rodrigo Ramirez. DEA.”
“I knew you looked familiar!” Rick got up and shook the other man’s hand. “Yes, it has been a while. You and your wife bought a house here last year.”
He nodded. “I work out of San Antonio DEA now instead of Houston, and she works for the local prosecutor, Blake Kemp, in Jacobsville. With her high blood pressure, I’d rather she stayed at home, but she said she’d do it when I did it.” He shrugged. “Neither of us was willing to try to change professions at this late date. So we deal with the occasional problem.”
“Are you mixed up in the Barrera thing as well?” Rick asked curiously.
“In a way. I’m related, distantly, to a high official in Mexico,” he said. “It gives me access to some privileged information.” He hesitated. “I don’t know how much they’ve told you.”
Rick motioned Ramirez into a chair and sat down behind his desk. “I know that El General has a son who’s a sergeant with San Antonio P.D.,” he said sarcastically.
“So you know.”
“My mother told me. They wanted me to know, but nobody had the guts to just say it,” he bit off.
“Yes, well, that could have been a big problem. Depending on how you were told, and by whom. They were afraid of alienating you.”
“I don’t see what help I’m going to be,” Rick said irritably. “I didn’t know my biological father was still alive, much less who he was. The general, I’m told, has no clue that I even exist. I doubt he’d take my word for it.”
“So do I. Sometimes government agencies are a little thin on common sense,” he added. He crossed his elegant long legs. “I’ve been elected, you might say, to do the introductions, by my cousin.”
“Your cousin …?”
“He’s the president of Mexico.”
“Well, damn!”
Ramirez smiled. “That’s what I said when he told me to do it.”
“Sorry.”
“No problem. It seems we’re both stuck with doing something that goes against the grain. I think the general is going to react very badly. I wish there was someone who could talk to him for us.”
“Like my mother talked to me for the feds?” he mused.
“Exactly.”
Rick frowned. “You know, Gracie Pendleton got along quite well with him. She refused to even think of pressing charges. She was asked, in case we could talk about extradition of Machado with the Mexican government. She said no.”
“I heard. She’s my sister-in-law, although she’s not related to my wife. Don’t even ask,” he added, waving his hand. “It’s far too complicated to explain.”
“I won’t. But I remember Glory very well,” he reminded Ramirez. “Cash Grier and I taught her how to shoot a pistol without destroying cars in the parking lot,” he added with a grin.
Ramirez laughed. “So you did.” He sobered. “Gracie might be willing to speak to the general, if we could get word to him,” Ramirez said.
“We had a guy in jail here who was one of the higher-ups in the Fuentes organization. He’s going on probation tomorrow.”
“An opportunity.” Ramirez chuckled.
“Apparently, a timely one. I’ll ask him if he’d have the general call Gracie. Now, how do you get Gracie to do that dirty work for you?”
“I’ll have my wife bribe her with flowers and chocolate and Christmas decorations.”
“Excuse me?” Rick asked.
“Gracie loves to decorate for Christmas. My wife has access to a catalog of rare antique decorations. Gracie can be bribed, if you know how,” he added.
Rick smiled. “An assistant district attorney working a bribe. What if somebody tells her boss?”
“He’ll laugh,” Ramirez assured him. “It’s for a just cause, after all.”
Rick started down to the jail in time to waylay the departing felon. He spoke to the probation officer on the way and arranged the conversation.
The man was willing to take a message to the general, for a price. That put them on the hot seat, because neither man could be seen offering illegal payment to a felon.
Then Rick had a brainstorm. “Wait a second.” He’d spotted the janitor emptying trash baskets nearby. He took the man to one side, handed him two fifties and told him what to do.
The janitor, confused but willing to help, walked over to the prisoner and handed him the money. It was from him, he added, since the prisoner had been pleasant to him during his occupation in the jail. He wanted to help him get started again on the outside.
The prisoner, smiling, understood immediately what was going on. He took the money graciously, with a bow, and proceeded to sing the janitor’s praises for his act of generosity. So the message was sent.
Gwen Cassaway was sitting at Rick’s desk when he went back to his office, in the chair reserved for visitors. He hated the way his heart jumped at the sight of her. He fought down that unwanted feeling.
“Do they have to issue us these chairs?” she complained when he came in, closing the door behind him. “Honestly, only hospital waiting rooms have chairs that are more uncomfortable.”
“The idea is to make you want to leave,” he assured her. “What’s up?” he added absently as he removed his holstered pistol from his belt and slid it into a desk drawer, then locked the drawer before he sat down. “Something about the case I assigned you to?”
She hesitated. This was going to be difficult. “Something else. Something personal.”
He stared at her coolly. “I don’t discuss personal issues with colleagues. We have a staff psychologist if you need counseling.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Honestly, do you have a steel rod glued to your spine?” she burst out. Then she realized what she’d said, clapped her hand over her mouth and looked horrified at the slip.
He didn’t react. He just stared.
“I’m sorry!” she said, flustered. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to say that …!”
“Cassaway,” he began.
“It’s about the general,” she blurted out.
His dark eyes narrowed. “Lately, everything is. Don’t tell me. You’re having an affair with him and you have to confess for the sake of your job.”
She drew in a long breath. “Actually, the general is my job.” She got up, opened her wallet and handed it to Rick.
He did an almost comical double take. He looked at her as if she’d grown leaves. “You’re a fed?”
She nodded and grimaced. She took back the wallet after he’d looked at it again, just to make sure it didn’t come from the toy department in some big store.
She put it back in her fanny pack. “Sorry I couldn’t say something before, but they wouldn’t let me,” she said heavily as she sat down again, with her hands folded on her jeans.
“What the hell are you doing pretending to be a detective?” he asked with some exasperation.
“It was my boss’s idea. I did start out with Atlanta P.D., but I’ve worked in counterterrorism for the agency for about four years now,” she confessed. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “This wasn’t my idea. They wanted me to find out how much you knew about your family history before they accidentally said or did something that would upset you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve just been presented with a father who’s an exiled South American dictator, whose existence I was unaware of. They didn’t think that would upset me?”
“I asked Cash Grier to talk to your mother,” she said. “You can’t tell anybody. I was ordered not to talk to you about it. But they didn’t say I couldn’t ask somebody else to do it.”
He was touched by her concern. Not that he liked her any better. “I wondered about your shooting skills,” he said after a minute. “Not exactly something I expect in a run-of-the-mill detective.”
She smiled. “I spend a lot of time on the gun range,” she replied. “I’ve been champion of my unit for two years running.”
“Our lieutenant was certainly surprised when he found himself outdone,” he remarked.
“He’s very nice.”
He glared at her.
She wondered what he had against his superior officer, but she didn’t comment. “I was told that a DEA officer is going to try to get someone to speak to General Machado about you.”
“Yes. Gracie Pendleton will talk with him. Machado likes her.”
“He kidnapped her!” she exclaimed. “And the man she’s now married to!”
