True Blue & Carrera's Bride: True Blue / Carrera's Bride

“‘When in doubt, don’t,’” she quoted. She frowned. “Who said that?”

“Beats me, but it’s probably good advice.” He put down his cooling coffee and stretched, yawning. “I’m beat. Too many late nights finishing paperwork and going on stakeouts. I’m going to bed. I’ll decide what to do in the morning. Maybe it will come to me in a dream or something,” he added.

“Maybe it will. I’m just sorry I had to be the one to tell you.”

“I’ll get used to the idea,” he assured her. “I just need a little time.”

She nodded.

But time was in short supply. Two days later, a tall, elegant man with dark hair and eyes, wearing a visitor’s tag but no indication of his identity, walked into Rick’s office and closed the door.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

Rick stared at him. “Do I know you?” he asked after a minute, because the man seemed vaguely familiar.

“You should,” he replied with a grin. “But it’s been a while since we caught Fuentes and his boys in the drug sting in Jacobsville. I’m Rodrigo Ramirez. DEA.”

“I knew you looked familiar!” Rick got up and shook the other man’s hand. “Yes, it has been a while. You and your wife bought a house here last year.”

He nodded. “I work out of San Antonio DEA now instead of Houston, and she works for the local prosecutor, Blake Kemp, in Jacobsville. With her high blood pressure, I’d rather she stayed at home, but she said she’d do it when I did it.” He shrugged. “Neither of us was willing to try to change professions at this late date. So we deal with the occasional problem.”

“Are you mixed up in the Barrera thing as well?” Rick asked curiously.

“In a way. I’m related, distantly, to a high official in Mexico,” he said. “It gives me access to some privileged information.” He hesitated. “I don’t know how much they’ve told you.”

Rick motioned Ramirez into a chair and sat down behind his desk. “I know that El General has a son who’s a sergeant with San Antonio P.D.,” he said sarcastically.

“So you know.”

“My mother told me. They wanted me to know, but nobody had the guts to just say it,” he bit off.

“Yes, well, that could have been a big problem. Depending on how you were told, and by whom. They were afraid of alienating you.”

“I don’t see what help I’m going to be,” Rick said irritably. “I didn’t know my biological father was still alive, much less who he was. The general, I’m told, has no clue that I even exist. I doubt he’d take my word for it.”

“So do I. Sometimes government agencies are a little thin on common sense,” he added. He crossed his elegant long legs. “I’ve been elected, you might say, to do the introductions, by my cousin.”

“Your cousin…?”

“He’s the president of Mexico.”

“Well, damn!”

Ramirez smiled. “That’s what I said when he told me to do it.”

“Sorry.”

“No problem. It seems we’re both stuck with doing something that goes against the grain. I think the general is going to react very badly. I wish there was someone who could talk to him for us.”

“Like my mother talked to me for the feds?” he mused.

“Exactly.”

Rick frowned. “You know, Gracie Pendleton got along quite well with him. She refused to even think of pressing charges. She was asked, in case we could talk about extradition of Machado with the Mexican government. She said no.”

“I heard. She’s my sister-in-law, although she’s not related to my wife. Don’t even ask,” he added, waving his hand. “It’s far too complicated to explain.”

“I won’t. But I remember Glory very well,” he reminded Ramirez. “Cash Grier and I taught her how to shoot a pistol without destroying cars in the parking lot,” he added with a grin.

Ramirez laughed. “So you did.” He sobered. “Gracie might be willing to speak to the general, if we could get word to him,” Ramirez said.

“We had a guy in jail here who was one of the higher-ups in the Fuentes organization. He’s going on probation tomorrow.”

“An opportunity.” Ramirez chuckled.

“Apparently, a timely one. I’ll ask him if he’d have the general call Gracie. Now, how do you get Gracie to do that dirty work for you?”

“I’ll have my wife bribe her with flowers and chocolate and Christmas decorations.”

“Excuse me?” Rick asked.

“Gracie loves to decorate for Christmas. My wife has access to a catalog of rare antique decorations. Gracie can be bribed, if you know how,” he added.

Rick smiled. “An assistant district attorney working a bribe. What if somebody tells her boss?”

“He’ll laugh,” Ramirez assured him. “It’s for a just cause, after all.”

Rick started down to the jail in time to waylay the departing felon. He spoke to the probation officer on the way and arranged the conversation.

The man was willing to take a message to the general, for a price. That put them on the hot seat, because neither man could be seen offering illegal payment to a felon.

Then Rick had a brainstorm. “Wait a second.” He’d spotted the janitor emptying trash baskets nearby. He took the man to one side, handed him two fifties and told him what to do.

The janitor, confused but willing to help, walked over to the prisoner and handed him the money. It was from him, he added, since the prisoner had been pleasant to him during his occupation in the jail. He wanted to help him get started again on the outside.

The prisoner, smiling, understood immediately what was going on. He took the money graciously, with a bow, and proceeded to sing the janitor’s praises for his act of generosity. So the message was sent.

Gwen Cassaway was sitting at Rick’s desk when he went back to his office, in the chair reserved for visitors. He hated the way his heart jumped at the sight of her. He fought down that unwanted feeling.

“Do they have to issue us these chairs?” she complained when he came in, closing the door behind him. “Honestly, only hospital waiting rooms have chairs that are more uncomfortable.”

“The idea is to make you want to leave,” he assured her. “What’s up?” he added absently as he removed his holstered pistol from his belt and slid it into a desk drawer, then locked the drawer before he sat down. “Something about the case I assigned you to?”

She hesitated. This was going to be difficult. “Something else. Something personal.”

He stared at her coolly. “I don’t discuss personal issues with colleagues. We have a staff psychologist if you need counseling.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Honestly, do you have a steel rod glued to your spine?” she burst out. Then she realized what she’d said, clapped her hand over her mouth and looked horrified at the slip.

He didn’t react. He just stared.

“I’m sorry!” she said, flustered. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to say that…!”

“Cassaway,” he began.

“It’s about the general,” she blurted out.

His dark eyes narrowed. “Lately, everything is. Don’t tell me. You’re having an affair with him and you have to confess for the sake of your job.”

She drew in a long breath. “Actually, the general is my job.” She got up, opened her wallet and handed it to Rick.

He did an almost comical double take. He looked at her as if she’d grown leaves. “You’re a fed?”

She nodded and grimaced. She took back the wallet after he’d looked at it again, just to make sure it didn’t come from the toy department in some big store.

She put it back in her fanny pack. “Sorry I couldn’t say something before, but they wouldn’t let me,” she said heavily as she sat down again, with her hands folded on her jeans.

“What the hell are you doing pretending to be a detective?” he asked with some exasperation.

“It was my boss’s idea. I did start out with Atlanta P.D., but I’ve worked in counterterrorism for the agency for about four years now,” she confessed. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “This wasn’t my idea. They wanted me to find out how much you knew about your family history before they accidentally said or did something that would upset you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve just been presented with a father who’s an exiled South American dictator, whose existence I was unaware of. They didn’t think that would upset me?”

“I asked Cash Grier to talk to your mother,” she said. “You can’t tell anybody. I was ordered not to talk to you about it. But they didn’t say I couldn’t ask somebody else to do it.”

He was touched by her concern. Not that he liked her any better. “I wondered about your shooting skills,” he said after a minute. “Not exactly something I expect in a run-of-the-mill detective.”

She smiled. “I spend a lot of time on the gun range,” she replied. “I’ve been champion of my unit for two years running.”

“Our lieutenant was certainly surprised when he found himself outdone,” he remarked.

“He’s very nice.”

He glared at her.

She wondered what he had against his superior officer, but she didn’t comment. “I was told that a DEA officer is going to try to get someone to speak to General Machado about you.”

“Yes. Gracie Pendleton will talk with him. Machado likes her.”

“He kidnapped her!” she exclaimed. “And the man she’s now married to!”

He nodded. “I know. He also saved her from being assaulted by one of Fuentes’s men,” he added.

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“She’s fond of him, too,” he replied. “Apparently, he makes friends even of his enemies. A couple of feds I know think he’s one of the better insurgents,” he added dryly.

“He did install democratic government in Barrera,” she pointed out. “He instituted reforms that did away with unlawful detention and surveillance, he invited the foreign media in to oversee elections and he ousted half a dozen petty politicians who were robbing the poor and making themselves into feudal lords. From what we understand, one of those petty politicians helped Machado’s second-in-command plan the coup that ousted him.”

“While he was out of the country negotiating trade agreements,” Rick agreed. “Stabbed in the back.”

“Exactly. We’d love to have him back in power, but we can’t actually do anything about it,” she said quietly. “That’s where you come in.”

“The general doesn’t even know me, let alone that I’m his biological son,” he repeated. “Even if he did, I don’t think he’s going to jump up and invite me to baseball games.”

“Soccer,” she corrected. “He hates baseball.”

His eyebrows lifted. “How do you know that?”

“I have a file on him,” she said. “He likes strawberry ice cream, his favorite musical star is Marco Antonio Solís, he wears size 12 shoes and he plays classical guitar. Oh, he was an entertainer on a cruise ship in his youth.”

“I did know about that. Not his shoe size,” he added with twinkling dark eyes.

“He’s never been romantically linked with any particular woman,” she continued. “Although he was good friends with an American anthropologist who went to live in his country. She’d found an ancient site that was revolutionary and she was involved in a dig there. Apparently, there are some interesting ruins in Barrera.”

“What happened to her?”

“Nobody knows. We couldn’t even ascertain her name. What I was able to ferret out was only gossip.”

He folded his hands on his desk. “So, you’re a fed, I’m one detective short and you’re supposed to be heading a murder investigation for me,” he said curtly. “What do I do about that?”

“I’ve been working on it,” she protested. “I’m making progress, too. As soon as we get the DNA profile back, I may be able to make an arrest in the college freshman’s murder, and solve a cold case involving another dead coed. I have lots of information to go on, now, including eyewitness testimony that can place the suspect at the murdered woman’s apartment just before she was killed.”

He sat up. “Nice!”

“Thank you. I have an appointment to talk to her best friend, also, the one who took the photo that the suspect showed up in. She gave a statement to the crime scene detective that the victim had complained about visits from a man who made her uneasy.”

“They’ll let you continue to work on my case, even though you’re a fed?”

“Until something happens in the general’s case,” she said. “I’m keeping up appearances.”

“You slipped through the cracks,” he translated.

She laughed. “Thanksgiving is just over the horizon and my boss gets a lot of business done in D.C. going from one party to another with his wife.”

“I see.”

“When is Mrs. Pendleton going to talk to the general, did the DEA agent say?”

He shook his head. “It’s only a work in progress right now.” He leaned back in his chair. “I thought my father was dead. My mother told me he was killed when I was just a baby. I didn’t realize I had a father who never even knew I was on the way.”

“He loves children,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but I’m not a child.”

“I noticed.”

He glared at her.

She flushed and averted her eyes.

He felt guilty. “Sorry. I’m not dealing with this well.”

“I can understand that,” she replied. “I know it must be hard for you.”

She had a nice voice, he thought. Soft and medium in pitch, and she colored it in pastels with emotion. He liked her voice. Her choice of T-shirts, however, left a lot to be desired. She had on one today that read Save a Turkey, Eat a Horse for Thanksgiving. He burst out laughing.

“Do you have an open line to a T-shirt manufacturer?” he asked.

“What? Oh!” She glanced down at her shirt. “Well, sort of. There’s this online place that lets you make your own T-shirts. I do a lot of business with them, designing my own.”

Now he understood her quirky wardrobe.

“Drives my boss nuts,” she added with a grin. “He thinks I’m not dignified enough on the job.”

“I’m sure you have casual days, even in D.C.”

“I don’t work in D.C.,” she said. “I get sent wherever I’m needed. I live out of a suitcase mostly.” She smiled wanly. “It’s not much of a life. I loved it when I was younger, but I’d really love to have someplace permanent.”

“You could get a job in a local office.”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “Meanwhile, I’ve got one right here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was at first,” she added. “I would have liked to be honest.”

He sensed that. He grimaced. “It’s hard for me, too, trying to understand the past. My mother, my adopted mother,” he said, just to clarify the point, “said that the general was only fourteen when he fathered me. I’ll be thirty-one this year, in late December. That would make him—” he stopped and thought “—forty-five.” His eyebrows arched. “That’s not a great age for a dictator.”

She laughed. “He was forty-one when he became president of Barrera,” she said. “In those four years, he did a world of good for his country. His adopted country.”

“Yes, well, he’s wanted in this country for kidnapping,” he reminded her.

“Good luck trying to get him extradited,” she cautioned. “First the Mexican authorities would have to actually apprehend him, and he’s got a huge complex in northern Sonora. One report is that he even has a howitzer.”

“True story,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Pancho Villa, who fought in the Mexican Revolution, was a folk hero in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. John Reed, a Harvard graduate and journalist, actually lived with him for several months.”

“And wrote articles about his adventures there. They made them into a book,” she said, shocking him. “I had to buy it from a rare book shop. It’s one of my treasures.”

Chapter 6

“I’ve read that book,” Rick said with a slow smile. “Insurgent Mexico. I couldn’t afford to buy it, unfortunately, so I got it on loan from the library. It was published in 1914. A rare book, indeed.”

She shifted uncomfortably. She hadn’t meant to let that bit slip. She was still keeping secrets from him. She shouldn’t have been able to afford the book on her government salary. Her father had given it to her last Christmas. That was another secret she was keeping, too; her father’s identity.

“And would you know Pancho Villa’s real name?” he asked suddenly.

She grinned. “He was born Doroteo Arango,” she said. The smile faded a little. “He changed his name to Pancho Villa, according to one source, because he was hunted by the authorities for killing a man who raped his younger sister. It put him on a path of lawlessness, but he fought all his life for a Mexico that was free of foreign oppression and a government that worked for the poor.”

He smiled with pure delight. “You read Mexican history,” he mused, still surprised.

“Well, yes, but the best of it is in Spanish, so I studied very hard to learn to read it,” she confessed. She flushed. “I like the colonial histories, written by priests in the sixteenth century who sailed with the conquistadores.”

“Spanish colonial history,” he said.

She smiled. “I also like to read about Juan Belmonte and Manolete.”

His eyebrows arched. “Bullfighters?” he exclaimed.

“Well, yes,” she said. “Not the modern ones. I don’t know anything about those. I found this book on Juan Belmonte, his biography. I was so fascinated by it that I started reading about Joselito and the others who fought bulls in Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century. They were so brave. Nothing but a cape and courage, facing a bull that was twice their size, all muscle and with horns so sharp…” She cleared her throat. “It’s not PC to talk about it, I know.”

“Yes, we mustn’t mention blood sports,” he joked. “The old bullfighters were like soldiers who fought in the world wars—tough and courageous. I like World War II history, particularly the North African theater of war.”

Her eyes opened wide behind the lenses of her glasses. “Rommel. Patton. Montgomery. Alexander…”

His lips fell open. “Yes.”

She laughed with some embarrassment. “I’m a history major,” she said. “I took my degree in it.” She didn’t add that she came by her interest in military history quite naturally, nor that her grandfather had known General George S. Patton, Jr., personally.

“Well!”

“You have an associate’s degree in criminal justice and you’re going to night school working on your B.A.,” she blurted out.

He laughed. “What’s my shoe size?”

“Eleven.” She cleared her throat. “Sorry. I have a file on you, too.”

He leaned forward, his large dark eyes narrow. “I’ll have to compile one on you. Just to be fair.”

She didn’t want him to do that, but she just nodded. Maybe he couldn’t dig up too much, even if he tried. She kept her private life very private.

She stood up. “I need to get back to work. I just wanted to be honest with you, about my job,” she said. “I didn’t want you to think I was being deliberately deceitful.”

He stood up, too. “I never thought that.”

He walked with her to the door. “Uh, is the lieutenant still bringing you roses?” he asked, and could have slapped himself for even asking the question.

“Oh, certainly not,” she said primly. “That was just an apology, for using bad language in front of me.”

“He’s a widower,” he said as they reached the door.

She paused and looked up at him. He was very close all of a sudden and she felt the heat from his body as her nostrils caught the faint, exotic scent of the cologne he used. He smelled very masculine and her heart went wild at the proximity. Her head barely topped his shoulder. He was tall and powerfully built, and she had an almost overwhelming hunger to lay her head on that shoulder and press close and bury her lips in that smooth, tanned throat.

She caught her breath and stepped back quickly. She looked up into his searching eyes and stood very still, like a cat in the sights of a hunter. She couldn’t even think of anything to say.

Rick was feeling something similar. She smelled of wildflowers today. Her skin was almost translucent and he noticed that she wore little makeup. Her hair was caught up in a high ponytail, but he was certain that if she let it down, it would make a thick platinum curtain all the way to her waist. He wanted, badly, to loosen it and bury his mouth in it.

He stepped back, too. The feelings were uncomfortable. “Better get back to work,” he said curtly. He was breathing heavily. His voice didn’t sound natural.

“Yes. Uh, m-me, too,” she stammered, and flushed, making her skin look even prettier.

He started to open the door for her. But he paused. “Someone told me that you like The Firebird.”

She laughed nervously. “Yes. Very much.”

“The orchestra is doing a tribute to Stravinsky Friday night.” He moved one shoulder. He shouldn’t do this. But he couldn’t help himself. “I have two tickets. I was going to take Mom, but she’s going to have to cater some cattlemen’s meeting in Jacobsville and she can’t go.” He took a breath. “So I was wondering…”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, if you were going to ask me…?” she blurted, embarrassed.

Her nervousness lessened his. He smiled at her in a way he never had, his chiseled mouth sensuous, his eyes very dark and soft. “Yes. I was going to ask you.”

“Oh.” She laughed, self-consciously.

He tipped her chin up with his bent forefinger and looked into her soft, pale green eyes. “Six o’clock? We’ll have dinner first.”

Her breath caught. Her heartbeat shook her T-shirt. “Yes,” she whispered breathlessly.

His dark eyes were on her pretty bow of a mouth. It was slightly parted, showing her white teeth. He actually started bending toward it when his phone suddenly rang.

He jerked back, laughing deeply at his own helpless response to her. “Go to work,” he said, but he grinned.

“Yes, sir.” She started out the door. She looked back at him. “I live in the Oak Street apartments,” she said. “Number 92.”

He smiled back. “I’ll remember.”

She left, with obvious reluctance.

It took him a minute to realize that his phone was still ringing. He was going to date a colleague and the whole department would know. Well, what the hell, he muttered to himself. He was really tired of going to concerts and the ballet alone. She was a fed and she wouldn’t be here long. Why shouldn’t he have companionship?

Gwen got back to her own office and leaned back against the door with a long sigh. She was trembling from the encounter with Rick and so shocked at his invitation that she could barely get her breath back. He was going to date her. He wanted to take her out. She could barely believe it!

While she was savoring the invitation, her cell phone rang. She noted the number and opened it.

“Hi, Dad,” she said, smiling. “How’s it going?”

“Rough, or don’t you watch the news, pudding?” he asked with a laugh in his deep voice as he used his nickname for her.

“I do,” she said. “I’m really sorry. Politicians should let the military handle military matters.”

“Come up to D.C. and tell the POTUS that,” he murmured.

“Why can’t you just say President of the United States?” she teased.

“I’m in the military. We use abbreviations.”

“I noticed.”

“How’s it going with you?”

“I’m working on a sensitive matter.”

“I’ve been talking to your boss about it,” he replied. “And I told him that I don’t like having you put on the firing line like this.”

She winced. She could imagine that encounter. Her boss, while very nice, was also as bullheaded as her father. It would have been interesting to see how it ended.

“And he told you…?”

He sighed. “That I could mind my own damned business, basically,” he explained. “We’re a lot alike.”

“I noticed.”

“Anyway, I hope you’re packing, and that the detective you’re working with is, also.”

“We both are, but the general isn’t a bad man.”