“I’m late.”

“Blame the shoes.”

Grace shook off his hand, hiked up her skirt, and tried to balance on one foot while she removed a shoe.

“You don’t want to walk around in Tijuana barefoot,” Faroe said. “Your antibodies aren’t up to it. Just what in hell do you think you’re doing?”

Grace shook out a small pebble she’d picked up, slipped the shoe back on, and started walking. “I’m going to meet Hector.”

“Alone?” Faroe asked, striding alongside. “Dressed like that?”

“You weren’t answering your phone. My clothes are left over from Plan A, when you were supposed to be the new cock on my walk and I was a judicial tart gone slumming. Your tart, to be precise. That was your plan, right?”

“It’d be tough for you to make that plan fly without a man to snuggle up to.”

“There will be a roomful of men with Hector. I’ll ask for volunteers.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. I’m determined. Get with the program or get out of my face.”

Faroe looked her over the way every man in that room would. “Tijuana lap-dancer makeup, red leather skirt, red-on-red flowered silk blouse, red shoes-all screaming sex. How’d you find that getup in a strange department store in under fifteen minutes?”

“A salesgirl and a fifty-dollar tip. I told her I wanted to look like a narcotraficante’s girlfriend.”

“Better undo the top buttons on the blouse. Hector’s muy macho, the kind that likes a lot of cheap cleavage.”

She gave him the response he deserved. “Screw you.”

“You already did a world-class job of that, in every meaning of the word.”

“As you so kindly pointed out in a similar case, I wasn’t alone in that bed.”

They walked a few more steps.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Faroe asked.

“Unlike a man, I’m capable of asking directions.”

“But you sure don’t take them worth a damn.”

“Since when does it require a penis to be pigheaded?”

Faroe fought against a smile and gestured toward a parking lot. “This way, my little piglet.”

She made a sound that could have been choked laughter or a curse. He was too smart to ask which.

Silently he led the way along the fenced parking lot that spread out from the lighted entrance gate of the track. Several hundred cars were parked in ranks behind the fence. In the distance came the rumble of the crowd cheering and cursing the dogs.

“I just got off the phone with Steele,” Faroe said. “He’s flying out. I think he wants to make sure we don’t kill each other before we get Lane back.”

“That would be lovely.”

“Get real, Grace,” he shot back. “Did you think I was going to be happy?”

“I didn’t think you were going to be so full of righteous rage. For a moment there, I thought you were going to hit me.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“You should have seen your face,” Grace said.

“What is it that everyone suddenly wants me to look in the mirror?”

Silence.

“Relax,” he said after a minute. “For now we’re on the same side. After Lane’s free, all bets are off.”

She stopped sharply and spun toward him. In the half-light from the dingy parking lot, her face was shadowed and unreadable.

“That sounds like a threat,” she said quietly.

“It’s a fact. You had Lane for fifteen years. It’s my turn. I have at least as much claim on him as you do, particularly if you end up in a federal prison for whatever part you’ve had in your crooked husband’s schemes.”

“Listen to me, Joe, and listen well.”

“I’m listening.”

And he was. There was a deadly edge to Grace’s voice that he’d never heard before.

“I have no more secrets, nothing more to hide,” she said. “I don’t know anything about my husband’s business. I never did. Don’t ever threaten to take my son away from me again.”

Faroe looked at her eyes, as cold and clear as her voice. He rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen the tension that had grown in him every second since she’d told him Lane was his son.

“This whole situation sucks donkeys,” he said. “I wish to hell you’d kept it shut for a few more days.”

“Who backed me up against the wall and kept pushing? You just had to know, didn’t you? The great Joe Faroe just couldn’t wait another bloody second to-”

“We have to stop fighting.” Despite the hard beat of his pulse in his neck, his voice was calm. “For Lane.”

Grace drew a deep breath and blew it out. “Then stop taking cheap shots at me.”

“I still find it hard to accept that you and Ted were on different planets. You’re too smart. You couldn’t live with a guy and not know what he’s up to.”

“We haven’t lived together in the way that you mean since he gave me gonorrhea nine years ago. I told him he could have the sluts or he could have me. He chose the sluts.”

“Why didn’t you divorce him?” Faroe asked.

“Lane called him Daddy. I could put up with being cheated on if it meant that Lane had two parents.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t cut off Ted’s balls.”

“Why? They weren’t any use to me.”

Faroe whistled softly. “Did you ever love him?”

“He was safe. At the time, that was enough.”

“And now?”

“What are you asking?”

“I don’t know,” Faroe admitted. “Question withdrawn.”

They walked along the parking lot fence in silence.

“Did Ted have any enemies?” Faroe asked finally.

“Like grains of sand on the beach. He screwed over a lot of people in business and in politics.”

“I always thought politicians were glad-handers.”

“Ted isn’t a glad-hander. He’s a kingmaker. There’s a difference. That difference is money.”

“I’d like a list of the top twenty,” Faroe said.

“No one will talk to you. Ted’s a monster when it comes to business, and for him, politics is business. Most of his associates and employees are scared to death of him.”

“But you weren’t.”

“If you’re asking if Ted knocked me around,” she said, “the answer is no. If you’re asking if he hit Lane, the answer is I’d have put Ted in jail and he knew it.”

“Sounds like you wouldn’t mind feeding Ted to Hector now. What changed your mind?”

“Watching you play touchy-feely with a bomb.”

In silence they walked on toward a side gate that was guarded by a small shack.

Fifty yards from the shack Grace asked softly, “Did you like Lane?”

“He’s a good kid, tough, smart. He held it together better than most men in his position would. I like that.”

“Yes, that would be the most important thing to you,” she muttered.

“What do you want me to say? I spent half an hour with him.”

They didn’t speak again until they were almost to the guard shack. At the last moment, Faroe said very quietly, “Lane loves his mom a lot. She loves him the same way. Seeing it made me…hungry. Until that moment, I didn’t really know why I quit St. Kilda.”

Before Grace could say anything, two men in black windbreakers stepped out of the shadows of the guard shack. Both men carried pistols. The barrels were pointed slightly toward the ground, but not nearly enough for comfort.

Faroe stepped to the side, away from Grace.

The gun muzzles tracked him.

35

TIJUANA

SUNDAY, 9:27 P.M.


“YOU WORK FOR HECTOR Rivas Osuna?” Faroe asked calmly.

One of the men snapped on a flashlight. “Si, senor. Manos up, por favor.”

Faroe held his hands up and his arms out.

The guard frisked him with quick, neutral efficiency.

“Very polite, these two,” Faroe said to Grace. “Show them your arms.”

Grace stood in a hip-shot pose while the Mexican ran his flashlight over her costume.

“Satisfied?” she asked sweetly.

The guard’s mustache twitched in what could have been a smile or a sneer.

A pair of black utility vehicles roared up the street. With his flashlight the guard gestured toward the lead vehicle, a Cadillac Escalade.

“?Que pasa?” Faroe said sharply. “Hector is meeting us at the track.”

“Hector, he change his min’ mucho,” the guard said in the Spanglish of the border. “Get in.”

Faroe looked at Grace. “You don’t have to risk this. Go back to the hotel.”

Without a word she walked toward the Escalade in a skirt so tight he didn’t see how she breathed, much less moved. He opened the vehicle’s back door, put his hand on her leather-clad butt, and gave her a boost up into the Escalade.

Heavily smoked windows made the interior dark. Grace settled into the middle bench seat. An instant later she realized there was someone on the jump seat behind her. She could smell him, a mixture of sweat, hair oil, and gun oil. When she turned to look, light from the street gleamed faintly on the barrel of the assault rifle that lay across his lap.

“Don’t worry about him,” Faroe said. “He just suffers from testicular insufficiency.”

“You recognize the symptoms, right?”

“In others.”

The guard with the flashlight shoved his pistol into his belt and climbed into the front passenger seat. “Andale.”

The driver bulled his way back into traffic. Behind them brakes screamed and horns shouted. The driver of the Escalade stuck his arm out the window and pumped up and down, the Mexican version of a raised middle finger.

“In Tijuana, working for Hector Rivas means never having to say ‘Excuse me,’” Faroe said.

“You’re enjoying this,” she muttered.

“It’s like a hockey game. You don’t have to wonder where you stand.”