He raised an eyebrow. “This threat amuses you?” he asked her coolly.
“Sorry,” she said. “But I must tell you, I would look very good under a rosebush, so long as it was a nice heirloom pink one.”
He stared at her. His eyes began to twinkle. And he burst out laughing.
“And I thought this meeting would be boring,” he murmured, still chuckling as he sipped his drink, which looked like straight whiskey with ice.
“Life is full of strange things,” she told him.
“Raines,” he told the other man, “go find something to do for an hour.”
The other man looked surprised, but he did as he was told. Eduardo turned back to Josie. He frowned, as if something about her puzzled him. It was a long and curious appraisal, during which Josie had a flash of insight, as if she could see right inside the man, whom she knew she had never met.
Velasquez saw that look in her eyes. He nodded as if at some spoken remark.
“Yes,” he said aloud. “We meet someone whom we have never seen before, and they are immediately family, as if we have known them forever.”
Josie caught her breath. It was exactly what she had been thinking.
Josie and Velasquez both laughed at the irony of shared thoughts. “This is unexpected,” he told her, leaning back in his chair to study her.
She felt oddly relaxed. The man was obviously high up in drug circles or she wouldn’t be introduced to him, but he seemed far more like a corporate CEO than a drug dealer. He was sophisticated. His English was perfect, with only a faint accent. His eyes were intelligent.
“Excuse me,” she said after a minute, “but you don’t look like a drug dealer.” She flushed at her own forwardness.
He just laughed. He toyed with a coin on the table. “I was thinking the same of you. Perhaps we were both destined for other professions and took a wrong turn.”
She nodded.
“I was the first of five children,” he said. “We had nothing, as so many in rural Mexico have nothing. I ran errands for coins for the hacienda, for the owner of the ranch where my father broke horses for little pay. Then one day he was dead, and since I was the eldest, the responsibility for my family fell to me.” He looked up. “I was twelve years old.”
She grimaced.
He shrugged. “I could not provide food with my poor income, and the house where we lived was owned by the landlord, who wanted it for his next wrangler. Those were bad times,” he added unnecessarily.
“I can imagine,” she replied. She leaned forward. “What did you do?” she asked, and seemed, and was, interested.
“There was a gang nearby which had ties in Mexico City. There was always work for those who would risk much to do illegal things. It was quite profitable, as long as one was not caught.”
She nodded, intent.
“So I did illegal things. I worked my way up in one of the families, which was notorious for such things and, one day, I took a... higher position. That way I could take care of my family.” He didn’t want her to know who he was. Not yet.
He didn’t add how he had worked his way up, and she didn’t ask.
“So I moved my mother and my sister and three brothers to the city with me.” His face hardened. “Within a year, my mother died of pneumonia while I was away on business forseveral weeks. My siblings had been placed in an orphanage. When I returned to find this, I was almost out of my mind. At least, I realized finally, I could salvage my siblings, so I went looking for them.”
“And...?” she prodded.
His eyes turned down to the table, to the coin. “You know that children are often used as livestock, in brothels...?”
She ground her teeth together.
“They had been sold out of the country. It took me years to find them.” He didn’t add that this had been his reason for becoming what he was; it was the only way for someone born in his circumstances to earn a lot of money very quickly. Some of the things in his past haunted him, even though he’d done it to save his siblings. “However, by the time I finally found them, only one brother and one sister were still alive. I tracked down my brother first. He had found a partner whom he seemed to love, and he wanted nothing to do with me. So...” He spread his hands. “It was several more years before I managed to find my sister, who had struggled to survive with no help. In between those times, I found a lovely woman, the daughter of a partner in business.” He smiled. “She was an angel. Quiet and sweet, the kind of woman that men die for. We had a little boy...”
He stopped abruptly. His voice broke. His teeth clenched. He averted his eyes, but she could see the moisture in them all the same. On the table, his hand was clenched into a fist so tight that his fingers had turned white.
Impulsively, she reached out and covered his hand with her own; she, who never touched people at all.
