LITMIR.BIZ

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I get,” she replied.

      He made a sound in his throat, like a subdued chuckle. He turned to Consuelo. “I’m going to be away for the weekend. I’m leaving Castillo in charge. If you have any problems with him, let me know.”

      “He does not…” Consuelo began, glancing at Glory.

      “He doesn’t bother us,” Glory interrupted with a speaking glance.

      “Since you have no contact with him, I can’t imagine why he should,” he told her. “If you need me, you have my cell phone number.”

      “Yes,” Consuelo said.

      He walked out without another word.

      “Why didn’t you let me tell him?” Consuelo asked worriedly.

      “He’d think I was complaining to you,” Glory said simply. “If Castillo gives me any trouble, I’ll take care of him myself.” She smiled gently. “You shouldn’t think that my hip slows me down very much,” she said softly. “I can take care of myself. But thank you for caring.”

      Consuelo hesitated, then she smiled. “Okay. I’ll let you handle it your way.”

      Glory nodded, and went back to work.

      CASTILLO DIDN’T BOTHER them. But he did have a long conversation with a man in a white van. Glory watched covertly from the kitchen window, making sure she wasn’t visible to him. The van was old and beat-up and the man driving it was as muscular and as tattooed as Castillo. She made a mental note of the van’s license plate and wrote it down on a pad, just in case.

      She shouldn’t have been so suspicious of people, she told herself. But she knew a lot about drug smuggling from the cases she’d prosecuted, and she had something of a second sense about the “mules” who transported cocaine and marijuana and methamphetamine from one place to another. Many of the “mules” were in street gangs that also helped distribute the product.

      She and Consuelo were kept busy for the next couple of weeks as the fruit started to come in. They had baskets and baskets of it, picked by the workers and spread around the kitchen. If Glory had wondered why there were two stoves, she didn’t have to ask any longer. Both were going night and day as the sweet smell of preserves and jams and jellies wafted through the house.

      Slowly Glory had become accustomed to seeing Rodrigo in the kitchen at mealtimes. He slept upstairs, so she didn’t see him at night. Sometimes she heard him pacing up there. His room was apparently right over hers.

      She served Rodrigo bacon and eggs and the homemade biscuits she’d made since she was ten, because Consuelo had to go to the store for more canning supplies, including jars and lids. She poured coffee into a cup and put that on the table as well. She’d long since eaten herself, so she went back to peeling a basket of peaches.

      RODRIGO WATCHED HER COVERTLY. She had her hair in its usual braid. She was wearing old blue jeans and a green T-shirt that showed very little skin. She wasn’t a pretty woman. He found her uninteresting. Not that it mattered. Now that Sarina was married, and she and Bernadette were no longer part of his life, not much did matter. He’d hoped that the reappearance of Bernadette’s father, Colby Lane, would make no difference to the close ties he had with the woman and child. But in scant weeks, Colby and Sarina were inseparable. They had been married years ago and it seemed that the marriage was never annulled. It was like death to Rodrigo, who’d been part of Sarina’s family for three years. He couldn’t cope. It was why he’d taken on this assignment. It was both covert and dangerous. He was known to the big drug lords, and his cover was paper thin since he’d helped put away Cara Dominguez, successor to famous, and dead, drug lord Manuel Lopez.

      Rodrigo was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He and Sarina, a fellow agent, had worked out of the Tucson division for three years. Then they’d been asked to go undercover in Houston to ferret out a smuggling enterprise. They’d been successful. But Colby Lane, who’d helped set up the smugglers, had walked off with Sarina and Bernadette. Rodrigo had been devastated.

      Sarina had promised Colby that she’d give up her DEA job and go to work for Police Chief Cash Grier here in Jacobsville. So Rodrigo had asked for this undercover assignment, to be near her. But Sarina had been persuaded by the DEA to work with Alexander Cobb in the Houston office on another case. Colby hadn’t liked it. Rodrigo had liked it less. She was in Houston, and he was here. Colby had remained at Ritter Oil Corporation in Houston as assistant of security for the firm, while Sarina settled back in with the Houston DEA office. Bernadette was back in Houston finishing out the school year in a familiar place.

      Sarina had come here to tell him the news. It had been painful, seeing her again. She knew how he felt; she was sorry for him. It didn’t help. His life was in pieces. She was concerned that his cover was too flimsy and he stood to be killed if the drug lords found him out. It didn’t matter. There was a price on his head in almost every other country in the world from his days as a professional mercenary. This country was the only place left where he wasn’t in danger of being assassinated. On the other hand, his line of work was likely to get him killed.

      “You don’t talk much, do you?” Rodrigo asked the woman peeling peaches beside him.

      She smiled. “Not a lot, no,” she replied.

      “How do you like the job, so far?” he asked.

      “It’s nice,” she replied. “And I like Consuelo.”

      “Everyone does. She has a big heart.”

      She peeled another peach. He finished his coffee and got up to get a refill for himself. She noticed. “I don’t mind doing that,” she said. “It’s part of my job to work in the kitchen.”

      He ignored the comment, added cream to his coffee, and sat back down. “How did you hurt your leg?”

      Her face closed up. She didn’t like remembering. “It was when I was a child,” she said, circumventing the question.

      He was watching her, very closely. “And you don’t talk about it, do you?”

      She looked him in the eye. “No. I don’t.”

      He sipped coffee. His eyes narrowed. “Most women your age are married or involved with someone.”

      “I like my own company,” she told him.

      “You don’t share things,” he replied. “You don’t trust anyone. You keep to yourself, do your job and go home.”

      Her eyebrows arched. “Are we doing a psychological profile?”

      He laughed coolly. “I like to know something about the people I work with.”

      “I’m twenty-six years old, I’ve never been arrested, I hate liver, I pay my bills on time and I’ve never cheated on my income tax. Oh,” she added, “and I wear size nine shoes, in case it ever comes up.”

      He chuckled then. His dark eyes were amused, alive, intent on her face. “Do I sound like an interrogator?”

      “Something like that,” she said, smiling.

      “Consuelo says you speak Spanish.”

      “Tengo que hablarlo,” she replied. “Para hacer mi trabajo.”

      “¿Y qué es su trabajo, pues, rubia?” he replied.

      She smiled gently. “You speak it so beautifully,” she said involuntarily. “I was taught Castilian, although I don’t lisp my‘c’s.”

      “You make yourself understood,” he told her. “Are you literate?”

      She nodded. “I love to read in Spanish.”

      “What do you like to read?”

      She bit her lower lip and gave him an odd look. “Well…”

      “Come on.”

      She sighed. “I like to read

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