“Maybe I should sic my uncle on your abuelita,” he said.
Lina took a shaky breath. “Abuelita would shred him. In Mexico, any woman who has even the smallest measure of power has to be tough and smart enough to know where and when to use it. Manipulate, manage, and never get caught with your hand on the power switch.”
Hunter laughed softly. “Every culture has its version of a dragon lady.”
“There’s a reason. Patriarchy creates them every time.” Lina took another long breath. “What’s that smell?”
“Dust.”
“No, not that. The flowery one.”
“Plumeria. My uncle won’t pay to have the house dusted, but there’s a gardener to pamper the greenery.”
Lina thought about the army of workers who attended the Reyes Balam estate. It was something she had taken for granted as a child. As an adult on her own, she appreciated the luxury of the estate and understood that it went two ways. The men and women of the nearby villages had steady, lifelong work on the estate, money to feed their children and to celebrate their religion. Celia sponsored the brightest kids through high school. The ones who had ambition she sent to college or technical school, whichever the child chose. Reyes Balam depended on the villagers and they depended on Reyes Balam.
“Uncle Danny claims he hates all the flowers that my aunt planted and loved,” Hunter said. “But after she died a few years back, he hired someone to keep the flowers alive.”
“He loved her,” Lina murmured, wondering what it would be like.
“Still does.” Hunter pulled the sheet off the low, Danish Modern couch. The smell of dust rose, then settled beneath the perfume from outside. “But you’d have to shove glass splinters under his fingernails to get him to admit it. I used to think that was funny. Now I understand.”
“You loved your wife,” she said.
There was a taut silence, a near-silent rush of breath, and then Hunter spoke in a neutral voice. “I got Pauline pregnant when I was eighteen and she was seventeen.” He smiled thinly. “Sometimes the party lasts longer than the party hat.”
Lina waited. Hunter didn’t show anything on his exterior, but she sensed the cost of every word he said.
“Little Suzanne was the light in my life,” he said after a moment. “Four years later Pauline told me I wasn’t Suzanne’s sperm donor. Her boyfriend was out of jail and she wanted a divorce so she could live with the man she loved. I didn’t want to let go of Suzanne, but I believed a child had a right to live with her father and mother. The three of them lived on alimony and child support until the drugged-out son of a bitch met a long-haul rig head-on at over one hundred miles an hour. The trucker got a few broken bones. Pauline and Suzanne died instantly. Her lover took a week to die. I hope he hurt like hell on fire every second of it.”
Lina didn’t know what to say, so she simply watched Hunter methodically tear off more slipcovers from the furniture.
“I didn’t particularly love my wife, but I loved my little girl,” he said finally. “How about you? Any great loves in your life?”
She had to swallow several times before she answered. His neutral voice and seething emotions made her want to weep.
“No,” she said. “No loves great or small. Living north of the border for seven months a year and south of the border the rest of time…” She shrugged. “When I was old enough to live on my own, I was too hooked on the thrill of the digs to worry about spending quality time on anything else.”
Silently Hunter folded slipcovers and put them in a tiny hall closet. He wasn’t about to say the truth out loud: he was glad she hadn’t found a man, married, and settled down before he had ever known her.
Lina studied the furniture. Unlike life, it was all clean lines and smooth surfaces. The colors were solid earth tones and blacks, as if the clock had stopped at a very fashionable 1954 and never started again.
“The bedrooms are back here,” Hunter said. “We’ll need to get into town early and buy clothes and supplies.”
“And then what?”
“See what my ICE contacts and my uncles come up with.”
“I should be at the family estate soon,” Lina said. “I promised Mother and Abuelita.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing your family home.”
Silently she absorbed the fact that Hunter assumed he was going with her. She started to object, but didn’t. Everyone was always harping on how she should bring a man home to meet the family.
Hunter was all man.
“No argument?” he asked.
“We have to assume the objects came from the Yucatan,” she said.
“Looks like it. More important, the tools who tried to grab you came from there. Right now I’m as worried about you as I am about Jase.”
Lina gave Hunter a startled look. “Jase is in more danger.”
“He’s under guard in the hospital. His family is under guard. He’s safer than you are.”
“Under guard?”
“I talked to Stu Brubaker, Jase’s boss. I told him straight up that he had sent Jase blindfolded into a firefight, and if anything else happened to him, Brubaker’s political ass was on my firing line.”
She looked at Hunter’s eyes and saw the predator she had always sensed beneath his easy movements. It didn’t worry her. Life had taught her that it was better to have a predator with her than against her.
Predators were strong enough to be gentle.
“I bet the boss didn’t like that,” Lina said.
“From me, no, but he got to the bottom line even before I called. He put the guards on Jase and his family. Right now Brubaker is backdating files to make it clear that Jase was officially working undercover for him on a very politically sensitive project.”
“Wasn’t he?”
“In a back-door kind of way. The files make it up front, which means that Jase was shot in the line of duty. Uncle Sam will take care of the bills. Every last penny of them. If Jase comes out of this injury less than one hundred percent, he’ll get full disability whether he stays in the field or not. Jase’s choice.”
She cleared her throat. “Sounds like you and Brubaker had quite a chat.”
“In our family, we call it a come-to-Jesus talk. Brubaker’s a good man underneath the bureaucracy. It shook him hard to see Ali and the kids. Reminded him that more than an attaboy from the vice president was at stake in this sorry game. And Brubaker’s plenty savvy enough to know that his career is gone if he doesn’t take real good care of Jase.”
“So he won’t fire Jase over the artifacts even if they aren’t found?”
“Not while I’m on watch. Brubaker and I have a Mexican standoff on that subject. If my guess is right, he’s quietly twisting arms to get his hands on some objects that are close enough to pass at the repatriation ceremony. Since we’re talking truckloads of goods already slated to be handed over, and there was no hoo-ha over Jase’s artifacts in the first place, it should work.”
“Then you don’t need me anymore. Jase’s job is safe.” Lina’s voice dried up as she looked into Hunter’s eyes. They were intense, focused solely on her.
Hunter shook his head. “Sweetheart, you couldn’t be more wrong. You’re not going anywhere alone until I know who and what this El Maya dude is. He pulled the trigger on your kidnapping. And Jase.”
“My family has bodyguards,” she pointed out. “Everyone with money in Mexico does.”
He nodded. “Ever think that some of the money your family has might not be clean, and that’s a reason for you to worry and for men to be after you?”
She bit back her first response, which was a snarling denial. Finally she said, “I’ve never believed that my family was involved in anything truly illegal.”