“What are you doing?” she repeated.

“Just what it sounded like-setting up a passive surveillance on your son. As long as he can keep the phone within arm’s reach, we’ll know where he is.”

“That’s too dangerous. What if they find out?”

Faroe turned onto the toll road and headed south, toward Ensenada. “What are they going to do, spank him? Come on, Your Honor, get serious.”

“I am,” she shot back. “You might as well have given him a loaded gun.”

“Hell of an idea. Did you have one handy?” Faroe gave her a hard sideways look. “I didn’t think so.”

“You’re crazy! If they find that phone, they’ll know that I-”

“Look,” Faroe cut across her words, telling himself to be patient, she was under a hellish strain. “All they’ll know is that someone gave him a way to communicate with Mom. What’s important is that Lane feels like he’s connected, not cut off, not so much a prisoner.”

“But-”

“Despair is the prisoner’s worst enemy,” Faroe said flatly. “Right now, Lane feels like he has a way of controlling his own fate. We need him level, not panicked or shut down.”

“You didn’t see how scared he was underneath the drugs and the don’t-worry-Mom talk.”

“Your son is a tough, savvy kid. Let him use that. It could make the difference between getting free and getting dead.”

“He’s barely fifteen!”

“A lot of kids don’t make it that long. Life’s only money-back guarantee is that you die.”

Grace simply stared at Faroe and bit back all the words she wanted to scream.

You don’t understand! Would you be so damned calm if you knew Lane was your son?

Or is it different for men? Don’t they get the importance of children? Sex, yes, that’s important to men.

But not babies.

Even their own.

Yet part of Grace was afraid that Faroe would be different. He would care, and in caring, hate her for what he’d never known.

Damned if I do and damned if I don’t. So don’t.

Don’t think about it.

Any of it.

You can’t change the past. You can’t foresee the future. You can only live now, this moment.

And don’t scream.

Whatever you do, don’t scream.

But she wanted to scream so much she felt like she was being strangled.

Grace turned away and stared out the window so that Faroe wouldn’t somehow sense the bleak warfare pulsing beneath her silence.

25

ENSENADA

SUNDAY, 4:00 P.M.


THE DRIVE TO ENSENADA wasn’t long, but by the time Faroe reached the city, he’d had a gutful of the silent tension in the car, an invisible storm waiting to unload.

Grace had barely breathed.

“The first time I saw Ensenada,” Faroe said, “it was a lazy resort with a few hotels for gringos and a business district forty years out of date. Now it’s a full-speed-ahead port city with seventy-five thousand people, a good seawall, cruise ship docks, and a working waterfront.”

Grace didn’t even look at him.

So much for a neutral topic, Faroe thought.

In silence he found the hotel overlooking the harbor, parked, and went inside. After a little haggling he rented an ocean-view suite on the fourth floor. He went back to the SUV, pulled Grace out, and herded her up to their room.

In silence.

Faroe shot the bolt behind them and went immediately to the balcony to check out the sight lines. The restaurant Magon said would host a Rivas prewedding celebration was crammed into a corner on the ocean side of the hotel property, surrounded by a head-high wall and a small, well-tended desert landscape. A sign was posted on the wrought-iron front gate, but it was too far away to read from the balcony.

He dug a small pair of binoculars out of his bag and went back for a better look at the sign.


CERRADO


A translation was included for the language-impaired gringos whose dollars fueled Ensenada.


CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY


So far, Magon’s information looked good. The Cancion was indeed reserved for Hector’s clan.

When Faroe turned back to the room, Grace was standing in the center of the suite clutching her shoulder bag. She had the shattered-around-the-eyes look found in psych wards and battlefields. The flat line of her mouth told him that she wasn’t going to feel chatty anytime soon.

Faroe went to the telephone, ordered food and a bucket of beers from room service, and came back.

She hadn’t moved.

“You want me to throw you in the shower,” he asked, “or would a cold washcloth get the job done?”

Without a word Grace went to the bathroom and shut the door behind her. She looked at the toilet and wondered if she could get rid of the cold fear in her gut by sticking her finger down her throat.

You can’t throw up the past.

Falling apart won’t do Lane any good.

Breathe, damn it.

Just breathe.

She drew a ragged breath, then another, and walked two steps to the sink. The mirror reflected an exhausted woman with a tear-streaked face and wild hair. She dropped her purse on the tile counter and turned on the faucet. Water ran coldly in the sink, sounding loud in the silence. She dipped her hands in the flow, cupped up a double handful, and slapped it against her face. The water smelled faintly of chlorine. It took a few hard, cold splashes, but finally she breathed almost normally without having to remind herself.

The soap was wrapped in paper. It smelled too sweet, like Grandma Marta’s pink bath bar, a scent that brought memories gushing back, everything Grace had vowed to leave behind.

Tears much hotter than water ran down her face.

Never look back.

For the first time she wondered if Marta had managed that inhuman feat.

With quick, automatic gestures, Grace fixed her makeup and finger-combed her hair. Despite eyes bloodshot from crying, the new woman in the mirror looked more together. She dug out a bottle of eyedrops. They burned worse than tears, but the next time she looked in the mirror her eyes were clear. She smoothed her clothes as best she could, opened the bathroom door, and went out to face whatever came next.

Sultry, thick air billowed through the open drapes. Boats at anchor moved restlessly, reflecting the power of the distant storm even in sheltered waters. She felt her mood lift. Part of her was looking forward to the violent storm to come. She’d always loved storms. They had a freedom she’d allowed herself only once.

With Joe Faroe.

The man who was leaning against the railing, his arms straight, his attention entirely on the view below.

Memorizing everything, no doubt, she thought with a flash of irritation. Where does that man get his energy and focus?

Room service had been uncommonly quick. A handful of plates covered with tin hats sat on the table. An ice bucket on a stand held six long-necked bottles of Corona beer.

Faroe looked over his shoulder as she walked up behind him.

“Better,” he said. “Food will help even more.”

“Stop mothering me.”

He stepped close to her, close enough to stir her hair with his breath. “I don’t feel a damn bit motherly toward you.”

Her eyes widened. “It’s just the wind.”

“What is?”

“The wind reminds you of the time when we were…together.”

“Amada,” he said, breathing in her scent, “there are few things on the face of this earth that don’t remind me of you.”

For an instant she was certain he was going to kiss her. Then he stepped away.

“There’s chicken, steak, and cold lobster,” he said. “Eat.”

He went to the table, opened two bottles of beer, and lifted lids off plates. Three kinds of protein. Baskets of small flour tortillas and a bowl of fresh salsa. He took a tortilla, forked a few bites of roasted chicken into it, and added salsa. Then he folded the tortilla neatly, rolled it in a napkin, and offered it to her.

“Do you have to do everything so well?” she asked, irritated all over again.

“You pay for the best, you get the best,” he said, still holding out the food. “Eat. Like I said before, you’re a high-octane woman and you’re running on empty. If you won’t eat for yourself, do it for your son.”

She took the burrito. A single bite told her that Faroe was right. She was so hungry she was weak.

No wonder my emotions are all over the place.

Quickly she ate the burrito, looked up, and found another burrito under her nose. Lobster this time, marinated in cilantro and lime, so succulent she almost drooled. She dove in and didn’t come up for air.

Watching Grace without appearing to, Faroe ate a few pieces of lobster meat dipped in salsa. Then he made himself a fat steak burrito and added a couple of jalapeno peppers from a separate plate. He grabbed a beer, took the burrito to the balcony, and watched the restaurant.

Grace scooped more lobster into a tortilla, made a defiantly messy burrito, and went out to the balcony.

Four stories below, two workmen were busy inside the restaurant’s high fence. There was a pile of flagstones that the men had lifted out of the walkway.

“That’s another irritating thing,” she said.

“Workmen moving flagstones?” Faroe asked without looking away from the men.

“No. You. You’re always multitasking. Eating and talking and watching, yet still completely focused on the job.”