The Last Honorable Man

He cocked his head to the side as he studied her for a long moment with intense eyes, then to her surprise, said seriously, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

Del flexed his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove west, squinting into a sun so strong that tinted windows and aviator sunglasses both couldn’t stop the glare. Elisa didn’t seem to be bothered, though. She sat upright in the passenger seat, eyes forward and hands folded demurely in her lap. On the surface she looked harmless enough, even a little bit vulnerable, with the slight bulge in her midsection and the crinkles of worry at the corners of her eyes. Underneath, he suspected she was an entirely different woman. He sensed strength in her, more metaphysical than physical, and pride that could make her stubborn as a jackass.

Unfortunately, he also sensed she had good reason to be stubborn. He mentally sorted through the few facts he could recall about San Ynez, and the picture he put together wasn’t pretty. The current government had taken power in a bloody coup and had quickly thrown an immature, but growing, nation into a state of economic infancy. Industry had been abandoned for the cultivation of narcotics; education ground to a halt; tourist attractions were converted into terrorist training facilities. All in the name of profit.

No wonder Elisa didn’t want to go back.

She’d had a chance here, in the U.S.—a chance he’d taken away.

He glanced at her surreptitiously, found her almond complexion paled to alabaster and her expression frozen into a picture of complacency through what he figured had to be sheer willpower, as exhausted as she seemed to be.

Her gaze flicked toward him and he quickly looked away. Every time he caught a glimpse of her he found more to admire—her high, arching cheekbones, the dense brush of lashes over dark, feline eyes, the deep, wine color of her lips.

A horn blared close by. Too close. Looking toward the sound, Del realized his rearview mirror was just about scraping the side window of the pickup truck in the next lane. Adrenaline flooded his system in a hot surge. He jerked the steering wheel to the right, and the Land Rover lurched back to his half of the highway.

He’d been staring, he realized. And not at the road. The fight-or-flight instinct that had heated his blood cooled to lukewarm embarrassment. The driver of the pickup flipped a rude gesture at him, and Del waved pathetically in return.

At least Elisa hadn’t noticed his lapse. She turned to him and blinked slowly, almost dazedly.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Her rs rolled together in a sensual purr that pulled his own vocal chords tight as high wires. When was the last time he noticed anything about a woman other than whether or not her face matched one of the dozens of wanted flyers that crossed his desk each day?

He couldn’t remember.

That bothered him. Maybe he’d gotten a little obsessive about his job. Lost perspective. But it bothered him even more that this woman was the one he chose to finally notice. A woman as out of reach to him as the moon to a howling coyote.

So where was he taking her?

Not to his place. Not when he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. And not when he was under investigation for the death of her fiancé, for chrisakes. That kind of complication neither of them needed.

On the other hand, he couldn’t just dump her at some cheap hotel alone. She needed clean clothes, a decent meal and maybe a little help from someone with some influence who would talk to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

He blew out a sigh. She needed Gene Randolph.

Fifteen minutes later Del braked to a stop at the wrought-iron gate in front of the Randolph estate. When he lowered the window to punch the security code into the console, a small sound escaped the woman next to him. He hesitated, frowning at the deepening creases in her forehead. “You okay? You going to be sick again?”

“No,” she said, breathlessly, and he wasn’t sure if she meant no, she was not okay, or no, she was not going to be sick again.

“This is your home?” she asked.

He glanced at the sprawling grounds beyond the gate. An automatic irrigation system kept the lawn emerald green even in the most arid conditions. Grand oaks shaded the path to the house, surrounded by flowering crepe myrtle in red, pink and white, beds of Mexican heather and trellises covered with climbing yellow roses in full bloom. “No.” Not on a ranger’s salary. “It belongs to a friend.”

Her hand trembled on the door handle. He frowned.

“This is the Randolph estate,” he explained. “Gene Randolph, maybe you heard of him? Two-term governor of Texas a while back.”

“Diós,” she muttered. “Un político.”

She clutched her tattered olive bag with her left hand and made the sign of the cross with the right. When she turned to him, all hints of dazedness had vanished from her eyes, replaced by sharp, clear fear. “Please let me go. I cannot stay here.”

Chapter 3

“You got something against politicians?” Del asked. The words sounded casual, but the look that accompanied them made Elisa’s stomach churn. This time the illness had little to do with her pregnancy.

She was defenseless against that sharp, gray gaze of his. It pierced the armor of aloofness in which she’d cloaked herself, like a knife through an overripe mango. The ranger’s eyes cut to the core of her. Bared her very essence. Given enough time, all her secrets would be exposed to him. All her doubts.

She couldn’t let that happen. 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.