“I was going to, but then I saw what cut-rate weaklings they sent after me. Afraid of a little Texas Ranger parking lot.” She made a scoffing sound. “The only way to really get some answers is to get inside again, but guys like that? Dopes with guns? Yeah, I’m not risking my life with them. My brothers can come get me themselves if it’s that important to them.”
“You’re not going back inside that family.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Since when did you become my keeper?”
“Since I’m the reason you think you need to go back there. We’ll investigate this from the outside. You don’t need to be on the inside.” He’d sacrifice a lot to actually accomplish something, but not someone else’s life.
“Shows what you know. Not a damn thing. I’ve been gone a long time, but I still know how the Jimenez family works. I can get the answers we need.”
“We need?”
She looked at her motorcycle, helmet still dangling from her fingertips. He’d watched her shake and tremble apart after seeing her mother’s picture, but she was nothing but strength and certainty now.
Again, Bennet couldn’t help but wonder if he was the sucker here, if he was being pulled into something that would end up making a fool out of him. But he’d come too far to back out. Gotten the okay on this case, gotten to Alyssa. He had to keep moving forward.
“My brothers didn’t murder our mom,” she said, raising her gaze to his. Strong and sure. “I know they didn’t. I’m going to prove it. To you. And when you find out who really did it, you can bring them to justice.”
Her voice shook at the end, though her shoulders-back, chin-up stance didn’t change.
He couldn’t trust her. She was related to one of the biggest drug cartels in the state. And while Gabby and Natalie had befriended her, and Vaughn thought she hadn’t had contact with her brothers in years, this felt awfully coincidental.
She must have seen the direction of his thoughts. “You don’t have to trust me, Ranger Stevens. You just have to stay out of my way.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” No matter what it took, he had knocked over whatever domino was creating these events. He was part of it, and whether he trusted her or not, he had some responsibility for bringing her into this.
“They must have my office bugged,” Alyssa said, scowling. “The timing is too coincidental, too weird. It’s been two years since the kidnapping rescue, and they’ve left me alone. They had to have heard you questioning me. So, they know. You have to stay out of my way so we can know what’s really going on.”
“How can you think they had nothing to do with it if they’re stepping in now when they supposedly know what I’m after?”
“They didn’t kill our mother, but cartel business is tricky. Complicated. Their never identifying her when she was Jane Doe, it could be purposeful or they feel like they can’t now or... I don’t know, but I have to find out. I’m going in. You can’t stop me, and God knows you can’t stop them.”
He didn’t agree with that. He could put a security detail on her, keep her safe and away from her brothers for the foreseeable future. Even if the Rangers pulled support, he had enough of his own money to make it so.
But it’d be awfully hard to make it so when she was so determined, and it’d make it harder to get the information he needed. It would make it almost impossible to solve this case.
He studied her, looking at him so defiantly, as if she was the one in charge here. As if she could stand up to him, toe-to-toe, over and over again. Some odd thing shuddered through him, a gut feeling he didn’t want to pay attention to.
He’d made his decision, so there was only one way to settle this. “If you’re going in, then I’m going in with you.”
* * *
AND THIS TEXAS Ranger thought she was crazy.
“You think you’re going to come with me. You think in any world my brothers would allow a Texas Ranger into their home or office or whatever without, oh, say killing you and making sure no one ever found out about it?”
“Except you.”
Unfortunately, he had a point. Also unfortunately, her last name might keep her safe for the most part when it came to the Jimenez family, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt, if she outright betrayed her family, she’d be killed.
Like your mother.
She couldn’t get over it, so she just kept pushing the reality out of her mind as much as she could. Still, it lingered in whispers. Murdered. Murdered. Murdered. How on earth could Mom have been murdered? It didn’t make any sense.
Except she left. Betrayed your father. Maybe it makes all the sense in the world.
She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She couldn’t focus on possibility. She had to focus on truth.
“I can handle this,” Ranger Stevens said resolutely.
“No. You can handle being a Texas Ranger. You can handle being a cop. You can’t handle being inside a drug cartel. Even if they let you, you’d want to arrest everyone. And trust me, that wouldn’t go well for you.”
“They didn’t hurt you. They ran away.”
“Of course they didn’t hurt me. Even if I’m not involved in the business, I’m the daughter of a cartel kingpin. I’m the sister of the people who run it. They hurt me, they’re dead. It’s a matter of honor, but that doesn’t mean that protection extends to you.” Or to her, if she betrayed Jimenez.
“So we’ll have to find a way for them to think it’s a matter of honor not to kill me.”
“How on earth do you suggest we do that?”
“I have a few ideas, but I’m not discussing them here in this parking lot.” He gestured toward the Texas Rangers building.
Alyssa laughed. “I’m not going in there. My brothers are going to think I’m working with you on a lot more than Mom’s...” she cleared her throat of the lump “...murder.”
“You know it isn’t just me at stake here. Natalie and Gabby. Their families. They’re a part of your life, and now—”
She took a threatening step toward him—or it might have been threatening, if he wasn’t about six inches taller than her and twice as wide. “You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I have made my life very separate so they would never get pulled into this if I had to be?”
“I don’t know you at all, Alyssa. I don’t know what your plans are.”
“My plan is to live a normal life. That’s all I want.” She realized, too late, she’d yelled it, shaking all over again. Normal had seemed almost within reach lately, and then this Texas Ranger had walked into her office and everything had changed.
She was Alyssa Jimenez again. Not bounty hunter and friend, not even kidnapping victim, or the
