She’d lived in the jungle long enough to know better than to show weakness to a predator.
“Politicians are all corrupt.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded venomous. Lifting her chin, she turned away. The wrought-iron gate before them clanked and swung open with a mechanical buzz. Past it, park-like grounds rolled over a series of low hills. A red-brick mansion lorded over the estate from the highest knoll. Three stories high and Georgian in style, with thick white pillars supporting wide, shady porches hung with green ferns on all three levels, the house looked big enough to sleep an army. A wing swept back from each side of the stacked porches. Elisa counted seven windows she assumed to be bedrooms on each floor of each wing.
Make that two armies.
Her chest burned with the fire of the oppressed. How many slept in gutters so that one man could sleep in opulence?
“All those who live like this are criminals, or they take kickbacks to let the criminals operate. Like cannibals, they feed off of their own people,” she added.
Despite the danger to her privacy, Elisa turned back to him, ready to meet the sharp point of his gaze. To her surprise, she found him staring out the windshield as if trying to see the landscape through her eyes.
“Not Gene Randolph,” he finally said, shaking his head. Whatever he’d been looking for, he hadn’t found it.
Elisa hadn’t expected him to. He couldn’t possibly see what she saw. He hadn’t lived her hell. Had never been dragged through a place like the house on the hill, as she had. Marched through the dining hall where guests ate off bone china, to the cellar where she ate with the rats.
The memory brought a cold sweat to the back of her neck. She smelled fear and the stink of human excrement, heard the cries of the dying, as if she were back in that hole. Instinctively her hand covered her abdomen protectively.
“He’s a good man,” the ranger said. Behind them the gate clanked shut, sounding to Elisa’s ears like a cell door. “You can trust him.”
A disbelieving laugh bubbled up within her. “You want me to trust a politician?” She rolled her gaze toward him. “Ranger, I do not even trust you.”
He didn’t say anything, but his lips seemed thinner as he put the car in gear and eased it forward. The silver glow in his eyes dimmed. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was…hurt?
Because she didn’t trust him?
He had made a good show so far of playing the repentant warrior, bound by honor to help the woman left behind by the man he had killed in error. But surely he did not expect her to put her faith, her fate and that of her baby, in his hands so easily. He couldn’t possibly. And still her lack of trust bothered him.
His reaction confused her. Where she came from, men like him—policía—didn’t care what people like her thought. She was no one to him. Yet he had not treated her like no one. Another day, another time, she would have liked to ask why. Today, here, she just wanted to get away, to grieve for Eduardo and raise her child alone.
She had found a way to escape a place like this once before. She would find a way again. Soon.
“This Randolph, he is in charge of the Texas Rangers?” she asked, fingering the door handle nervously.
“No, we have a new governor now.” He didn’t look at her.
“Then why have we come here?”
“Because Gene knows how the system works. And he still has a lot of influence.”
Influence. A fancy word for power. Control. The ability to crush lives. People. Elisa’s pulse fluttered in the base of her throat like a fledgling’s wings.
“He doesn’t even know me. Why would he use his…influence to help me?”
“Because he does know me. And Gene stands by his friends.”
The ranger still did not look at her. She thought he was still insulted that she doubted his motivations, and now she had questioned his friend’s honor, too. It occurred to her that provoking him further might not be wise. Antagonizing him would only make escape more difficult.
Carefully she blunted the edge of her uneasiness until she could speak in what she hoped would sound like a conversational tone. “You and this politician are close?”
He nodded, a measure of the tension slipping from his expression. “I guess you could say that. I’ve known Gene since my highway patrol days. I, ah, helped him out of a jam once.”
He rubbed his thigh absently as if it ached. Elisa recognized the gesture. She saw it too often in her country, the soothing of phantom pain from an old wound.
“Gene kind of took me under his wing after that. Helped me get into the Rangers. Even put me up here in town. My family has a farm about ninety miles north of here. It was getting to be a hell of a commute.” He nodded down a lane that cut off the main driveway toward a two-story structure that replicated the architecture, if not the size, of the main house. “Guess I just never got around to moving out. I stay in the apartment above the carriage house there.”
“So he owes you.”
“No,” the ranger said quickly. Too quickly. Then he shrugged. “Maybe he feels like he does. But he shouldn’t. I was just doing my job.”
“Your job required you to take a bullet for him?”
His jaw slanted sideways. “How did you know?”
“Now he provides you a place to live.”
His forehead creased. “It’s not some kind of kickback, if that’s what you mean. I pay rent.”
“Even better.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She’d vowed not to antagonize him, but she couldn’t help herself. Politicians were the same worldwide, it seemed. “He is a rich man. Rich men have enemies, no? People who would hurt them for their money.”
“I suppose.”
“So for nothing more than the use of his garage, your friend takes your money every month, and gets a Texas Ranger guarding his front door.” A smug smile slipped over her lips as she shook her head. “Políticos.”
“Gene isn’t using me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She studied the flowering crepe myrtle lining the driveway. The ranger sighed noisily.
“Maybe having a cop close by makes him more comfortable,” he said. “If so, I’m glad to give him the peace of mind.”
She turned toward him. “Because he was your governor?”
“Because he is my friend.” He enunciated each word quietly, but with vehemence. She looked away. Did he really think she would so easily accept that he was exactly what he seemed, an honorable man, helping her in an effort to right the wrong he had done, and his friend, a politician, would help without a hidden agenda or profit motive?
No, he could not. She could not.
