And then he looked up, right at her, and something clicked in his mind as well. He stared as she approached him. Red-gold hair in a bun atop her head. Pleasant face, but not beautiful. Lovely figure. She carried herself well, without conceit, but as if she knew exactly where she was going.
He smiled. Eduardo Duarte Velasquez was thirty-six years old. He was the sum of the tragedies of his life, which had been many. He’d lost everything he’d ever loved. Now he was rich and powerful. And it was worth nothing. The people he’d worked so hard to save, to spoil, were all long dead. The people he’d wanted to prove himself to were also dead. He was a living ghost, trapped in a life he hated, with no way out. Well, there was one. Drastic and permanent. But not yet, perhaps.
The woman intrigued him.
Raines had recruited this young woman without Eduardo’s approval. He was uneasy about the collaboration. They were ata strategic point in the movement of an enormous shipment of drugs worth millions of dollars. He didn’t dare jeopardize that with some inept person who could get them all arrested. Which, in fact, this young woman had just done.
Not that it was her fault. Raines had been careless and parked the truck at the bar in Percell while he had drinks. This was not only careless, it was also stupid. These days with so much pressure on drug smugglers it was difficult to find reliable people. Eduardo himself was very intelligent. His family owned a great deal of property in northern Mexico where he had a ranch, which was thousands and thousands of acres big upon which he ran Santa Gertrudis cattle. He really wanted the Big Spur ranch that belonged to the Everett family. His minion had offered a price, he was told, but the owners refused. He wasn’t told that a threat had been included with the offer, or the minion might not have lasted longer.
But failing the purchase of the ranch, he was more than happy to bid on the lot of young purebred bulls that Everett was selling at a private treaty sale. He had arranged to go, and it was safe because no one in this part of Texas had ever seen his face. He would look like any other Hispanic businessman looking for a bargain. Raines had spoken of nothing else for weeks, so Eduardo had agreed. It would also get him a good look at the Big Spur, about which he had heard so much.
He had also heard a great deal about this young woman from Raines. She seemed capable, but Velasquez had learned not to trust people. Especially women. The loss of his child was still an open wound. That tragedy had led to another tragedy involving the sheriff here, Dunn Marlowe. He wasn’t sure how much Marlowe knew about his involvement in that tragedy. It was another open wound that he was unable to heal. If Marlowe knew about him, he probably wanted him dead. He couldn’t blame the man for that. It had taken him years to track down the manwho actually killed his child after a very tragic mistaken identity and mistaken retribution.
The new cleaner whom his agent had found was inept, terrified, inefficient and deadly all at once. He was still hiding out from Marlowe, as he had been hiding out from Velasquez as well, for several years. He imagined that Marlowe would like the man dead as much as Velasquez did. The difference between them was that Marlowe couldn’t bring himself to go outside the law to do it. Velasquez, on the other hand, was lawless. It would not bother his conscience at all. If he could ever find the perpetrator.
A bartender just across the border where Raines and the girl had gone to arrange the shipment had killed a man whose daughter had cancer. He killed the poor man in cold blood with total indifference. And he didn’t know it, but Velasquez had sent a cleaner after him who would arrive soon. The blind child of the poor dead man would have suffered greatly, because her father had been her only support. Eduardo had already sent men to find her whatever the cost and take care of her. Not that he had anything to do with it. Except in a roundabout way. But had he been there the bartender would never have touched the man.
They spoke of honor among thieves as if it were a joke. Velasquez was, in spite of his notorious reputation, an honorable man. To him, honor was still a rare and precious commodity.
He looked up as the young woman with red-gold hair paused beside his table. She walked straight and proud as if she were afraid of nothing. Her clothes were casual and not expensive, but she wore them well. Around her waist she wore a holster angled on what he imagined was the wrong side of her body but in a good position for a quick draw.
He did wonder why she carried it. Raines had told him that she had enemies, and she’d had death threats. Considering her rap sheet, which he had accessed, she had been arrested and prosecuted but not convicted of assault with a deadly weapon;she had apparently shot a man who was too overbearing and threatened her. According to the court documents the threat had been a real one. However, her assailant had relatives high in local politics and belonging to rich families. So the judgment went against her.
Velasquez hated that. He had grown up very poor. He still remembered going to bed hungry sometimes and having nothing. And going to school where the other children laughed at him because his parents couldn’t afford clothes for one of their five children. He was too big and too tall to wear the hand-me-downs. So he had no new clothes and had to make do with what he already had. It had been a painful childhood. It had been an even more painful adolescence.
His father was an alcoholic who stayed on the wrong side of the law and was eventually killed attempting a bank robbery, leaving Velasquez to take care of his mother and siblings. Fortunately, he moved his way up through the gangs and brought in enough money as part of the gang so that he could provide for his family, which he did. When he grew older, he married a girl from a good family and had a son by her. His face hardened as he remembered the child. His wife had died soon after the child after suffering agonies of grief. He hated remembering how...
He took a deep swallow of his drink and pushed the memory to the back of his mind as Raines introduced the young woman. As he stood, a courtesy he always afforded women, he realized that her eyes were a bright, beautiful mint green. In all his life he could not remember eyes that looked like that. He smiled when he did not feel like smiling.
Josie had no idea who this man was. She had already met the head man, the El Paso man, in the Poco Loco bar in Percell with Raines sometime back, but Raines spoke of this man with reverence without naming him.
This man was elegant. He had thick jet-black hair, wavy but combed very conventionally. His eyes were such a dark brown that they seemed black as obsidian. He had a pale olive complexion, and he was extraordinarily handsome. He stood up as she approached, a courtesy that was unexpected, and he gave her a slight bow. He indicated for her to sit with one elegant gesture, his hand as beautiful as his face, strong, supple, beautiful.
Josie felt starstruck. He was the kind of man very, very rarely seen in real life. He would have looked right at home in a castle wearing a crown. She smiled self-consciously at her own whimsy.
“Good evening,” he said in a pleasant deep voice, like deep, dark velvet. “I am Eduardo Duarte.” He didn’t add his last name. He didn’t want her to put a reputation in her mind along with his appearance. He wasn’t sure why.
Josie was impressed despite herself. This man was extremely cordial. And hardly the sort of person you would expect to find in a small, raw Texas town like this. She sat down at the table.
“What would you like to drink?” he added as he sat down as well.
“Something fizzy,” she replied with a grin.
He chuckled. “Raines, bring that and my usual,” he told the man, who nodded and said “yes, sir” and headed right for the bar. Obviously, Raines had known this man for a while and was deferring to him as he had to the distributor she’d met before. This man must be in the same chain of command somewhere.
“So you are in this with us,” he said to her and smiled gently. “Forgive me, but you do not look like the sort of person who indulges in this pastime.”
Josie’s heart jumped but she managed to smile and fought down her sudden panic. “Isn’t there some saying, needs must when the devil drives?” she replied unexpectedly.
“I believe this is a British thing,” he told her. Descriptive. Also very accurate.
It had to be a trick of the light, she told herself, but he had the kindest eyes she’d ever seen. Large and dark and soulful. She was getting crazy feelings sitting close to him as her intuition kicked into overdrive. Here was a man who had known incredible tragedies, but he was generous and kind, which was a conundrum. How could he be in this business and be those things as well? Then she reminded herself of serial killers who were kind to elderly people and helped out around the house and brought in groceries for old ladies. It had taken her years to learn that one trait in a person does not negate another trait. In other words, a person can be kind in one respect and murderous in another. It was what caused juries to let killers go free. Because they couldn’t separate the two traits; couldn’t believe people to be both kind and cruel.
“I’m sort of in trouble,” Josie told the man as Raines came back with the drinks. She sipped hers.
“Yes, I know,” the man across from her said, surprising her. “Your difficulty with the authorities is something I hope to address soon. But first we have business that must take precedence. It was unfortunate.” He glanced at Raines with cold eyes and Raines looked haunted. “The trial shipment was confiscated and the two of you were arrested. This will not make things easier. And I must tell you, the big boss is not at all happy. This is why he sent me to speak with both of you,” he lied easily, his eyes daring Raines to contradict him. He leaned forward and his eyes began to glitter. “If anything of this sort,” he said, his voice very low and deep and gentle, “ever happens again, I will plant very nice flowering bushes over each of you.”
Josie had to fight down a chuckle. It was a very specific threat, and it wasn’t really funny, but she had to fight hard to resist the error to burst out laughing at the way he said it.
