Texas Hold 'Em (Smokin' ACES) - By Kay David Page 0,30
to talk to us. One of those people—or maybe all of them—can help us.”
“You realize this could be a wild goose chase, don’t you?” she asked. “None of these people could know anything about your informant, much less where my mother might be.”
“We have to start somewhere. It might as well be there.”
After another twenty minutes of discussion, Santos folded the map and handed it back to her. “Why don’t we meet here tomorrow night? You can hide your car in the barn.” He paused. “Does anyone on the other side of the border know you well enough to recognize you?”
She laughed. “They don’t even recognize me on this side of the border. All they see is a uniform.”
“I thought so, but I needed to ask. I don’t want someone else disappearing on me.”
She opened her car door and threw the map inside. As she started to get in the car after it, he put his hand on her arm and stopped her. “Why didn’t you tell me—?” he made a motion with his hand “—all this before now?”
“Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t want to get my mother in any more trouble,” she said slowly. “She’s had a hard row to hoe, and I didn’t want to add to it. I thought if you knew you’d somehow make her life even harder, which, come to think of it, is exactly what you’re doing.”
“I wish you’d been honest with me.” He found himself lifting her chin once again, their eyes meeting in the darkness before he dropped his hand. “Things might have gone differently.”
Her eyelashes swept down to shadow her cheeks then back up. “I started to tell you once or twice,” she admitted, “but it always seemed like the wrong time. How do you tell someone you killed a guy when you were sixteen? It’s not like it just pops up in the conversation.”
“I would have understood.”
“Maybe.” She smiled sadly. “And maybe not. I’m not even sure I ever will.”
…
A last minute phone call from his boss made Santos late getting to the meet Austin Wells had set up with Dos y Tres, and when he finally arrived, the bar’s parking lot was packed. After a few minutes of searching, he found a spot in the rear of the building and backed the Harley into it, nose out. As Joaquim Guillermo came out of the shadows toward him, he thought about The Conversation and The Kiss. That’s how he referenced what had happened between him and Rose, with capital letters. He wanted to imprint The Kiss in his mind because he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen again. Despite their agreement, once she realized what was going on, she wouldn’t care about anything except getting his head on a platter, not his lips on her skin. As far as The Conversation went, he’d never forget it, period. It answered so many questions about Rose and her mother that he almost wondered why he’d never before considered the possibility of something like this, as unexpected as it was. She wasn’t the first woman who’d had to defend herself against a predator, and sadly, she wouldn’t be the last.
Joaquim had a bottle of Dos Equis in his right hand and a cigarette in the other. As Santos watched, the ACES sniper dropped the cigarette beneath his boot and crushed it, then poured the beer into a puddle beside it. Joaquim didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and didn’t talk unless he had to. Those traits set him apart from the other ACES officers, but his primary virtue—and the envy of the team members, including Santos—was his patience. If there was any waiting to be done, Joaquim did it.
“Sorry I’m late,” Santos said. “Got a call at the last minute.”
“No problem.”
“Looks like Dos y Tres brought everyone in the chapter.” Santos peeled off his gloves and Joaquim nodded.
“How many?”
“Thirty, maybe forty.”
“Everybody already drunk?”
An expression of distaste crossed Joaquim’s patrician features. A second nod was his only answer.
Without another word, the sniper turned and headed back for the open-air dive. The cool, dry air was filled with the kind of tension only a bar full of testosterone-heavy men could produce. Santos wasn’t sure what he would have to handle inside. Despite Austin Wells’s assertion that his contact from a rival gang was interested in a joint protection run, cooperation between different clubs could be as tricky as Middle East negotiations. The Welcome Wagon ladies hadn’t damaged his bike; another gang had done that.