over to chit-chat about Dan.”
“That’s true.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I heard you had some company t’other day. Two different kinds, as a matter of fact.”
Silas knew everything. Sometimes he even knew it before it happened. So much for Santos’s deep cover, she thought ruefully.
“The one who tried to help bothered you more than the one with the gun.” His voice held no uncertainty.
“And just what makes you think that?”
“You can handle a bad guy, but Timothy Santos has always sent you ’round the bend.”
“He’s a bad guy, too. At least in my book.”
“If that’s the case, your book is missing a few pages.”
Her fingers went tight on her coffee mug. Silas had had plenty of unkind words to say about Santos after he’d broken her heart, but basically he liked Santos because they were two of a kind. Her grandfather’s tenure as sheriff of Rio County had lasted for more than twenty years. Quick with his gun and even quicker with his handcuffs, her grandfather had seen it all. Anyone he caught breaking the law found themselves in the county jail, at least for one night. In his opinion, which wasn’t humble at all, arrests came first; the courts handled whatever followed.
“You might change your mind when you hear what he had to say about your daughter,” she retorted. “He thinks Mother might know a drug lord who has something to do with a missing—”
“Informant.”
His information net was extensive, but even she didn’t think it was this wide. “How did you—?”
He waved off her question. “Are you going to help him find your mother?”
“He’s gone undercover as a biker. The setup is crazy insane, and helping him would put the entire department in danger—”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Don’t you care that Mom might get hurt in all this?”
Silas stopped his rocking chair, dropping his boot to the faded boards of the porch with a thunk. “I care about your mother more than you’ll ever understand. And I’m not at all happy about Santos going after her. But what if he’s telling you the truth? You took an oath to uphold the law when they pinned that badge on you, baby girl.”
Her grandfather’s words reached right into her chest and squeezed her heart. He’d always been too hard on Gloria in her opinion. She’d wondered why her mother hadn’t gone to him for help when she and Rose had needed it, but she’d never asked. Most likely Silas and Gloria had as many secrets between them as she and Gloria did. Silas, just like Santos, knew nothing about the past she and her mother had shared, though. And he never would, either. No one would.
Rose looked past him at the light slanting over the mountaintops. At the edge of her dusty yard, a small brown bird flitted through the branches of a cedar tree, hopping and chirping. She spoke without looking at her grandfather.
“I guess I have to make a choice.”
“The law’s the law,” he said flatly. “There are no choices as far as it’s concerned.”
…
Santos woke up with a bad headache and a hoarse voice. Since leaving Rose, he’d been on the telephone or his computer continuously, half the time simultaneously. Austin had been trying to convince the president of a local chapter to have a sit down, and he’d needed advice and information. From the worn out ranch house, he had tried to work out all the details of the meet. To get closer to Ortega, Smokin’ ACES needed to get the real bikers to trust them. Earning that trust meant doing some things they shouldn’t. He tried to stay on the right side of the line as much as he could. Deep down, though, he didn’t really care how they accomplished their goal, as long as they found the SOB and everyone got out alive.
He went to the nearest window and stared into the distance. A braid of blue and peach ribbon cut the nearest mountain in half, the morning sun leaving it dark on one side and light on the other. He felt as if he was being divided, too. He wanted nothing as much as he wanted to find the woman he’d put in harm’s way, but when he and Rose had been sitting in her kitchen, he’d begun to truly realize just how thin the line was he was trying to walk. One wrong slip and so many people would be hurt