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  “For who? For you?”

  “No, of course not!” He sat up a little straighter, throwing a slightly annoyed look in my direction. “I’m not involved, but we’re a small group. I know each and every person who works there. I hate the idea that one of my friends might be a thief.”

  “I’m sorry, Scott.”

  He ran his hand over his head and sighed. “It’s making me a little short-tempered, I guess.” He glanced at me, forcing a little smile. “Sorry about that.”

  “I love you. You can be as crabby as you want.”

  He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my palm with a lingering touch. “We’ll head over to the clinic first thing in the morning. The staff is already in place, and they’ve been stocking supplies for several days—at least they should have been—so you should be able to see patients almost immediately.”

  “A week.”

  “A week. I promise. We already have a lead on a doctor who might be willing to sign a long-term contract, but there’s been some legal issues about getting him down here.”

  “Of course there has.”

  “Val, I’m telling you, he’ll be here. Or if he doesn’t work out, we’ll find someone else. It’s fine.”

  I nodded, fully aware of what his promises meant. But he was doing a good thing, helping the poor people in this place. Who was I to complain about missing out on part of my vacation?

  “How’s the dating scene?” I asked.

  He laughed, tossing his head back in something of a more relaxed gesture. “I think I’ve gotten more action from Taylor today than I’ve gotten from anyone in six months!”

  I had to agree with him. I thought I’d gotten more action just from watching her drool over him than I’d gotten in recent memory. Dating was just one of those things that I no longer had the time or enthusiasm for.

  “My last date was nine months ago,” I admitted to Scott. “A dentist from Katy. He was very good-looking, very charming, and very aware of both those facts. He had it in his head that we’d be in his bed by the end of cocktails while I was still trying to get a word in edgewise.”

  “Allow me to apologize for all men,” he said, making an exaggerated bow with his head and shoulders. “We can be asses sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?”

  He laughed again, once more lifting my hand to his lips. “I haven’t fared much better. Sometimes I think the monks have it right.”

  “Yes, well, I like sex. I like being close to another human being and I like having a man’s hands on my body. Just… you know, not five minutes into the date.”

  Scott tilted his head, about to say something, but the door slammed open and laughter joined us in the form of Taylor and TJ.

  “What are we talking about?” Taylor demanded as she presumptuously took a seat in Scott’s lap. “Anything important?”

  “Would you care if it were?”

  She brushed a hand over the top of his head, brushing his thick blond hair off his forehead. “Not if it were the cause of these fine wrinkles. You are on vacation. You shouldn’t be worrying your little head about anything.”

  “My little head?” There was a flash of anger in his eyes. I sat up a little, ready to spring into action if he lost his temper, but a second later the flash was gone and a smile spread his full lips. “You’re right. We’re on vacation tonight. Let’s break open another bottle of wine and enjoy ourselves, boys and girls! Today is a good day!”

  Scott gracefully lifted Taylor off his lap and disappeared into the kitchen. Taylor settled in his chair, a big smile on her face. “I think I’m making headway. He actually knows my name now.”

  “He always knew your name, Taylor.”

  “Yes, well, he’s using it now.”

  TJ clicked his tongue. “Are women always this naïve?”

  When I turned to respond to TJ, I caught a glimpse of someone standing in the small grove of trees to the right of the deck. I sat up and squinted a little, wondering who would be hanging out down there at this time of night. It was after ten, fairly late for a local who would need to be up in less than five hours to work at the wharf.

  “Do you see someone down there?”

  “Where?” Taylor asked, unfolding her legs to join TJ at the rail. They both looked over the edge of the high deck, peering into the same stand of trees I was looking into, but then both shook their heads.

  “There’s nothing there,” TJ announced, giving me a look that was clearly laced with concern.

  “Probably just a trick of the light,” Taylor suggested.

  “Probably.” I leaned over and picked up the blanket that had fallen, pulling it back over my legs. But there was this prickle at the back of my neck, this conviction that someone was still there, still watching us. I was almost relieved when someone suggested we go inside away from the cooling night air.

  Paranoia. I wasn’t normally a paranoid person, but it’d been a strange sort of day.

  Chapter 5

  Valerie

  “Hola, senor.”

  The man smiled brightly as he looked over at me, his expectation based on that one phrase of Spanish clear in his excited expression. The problem was, that was the extent of my knowledge of Spanish. I wasn’t good with languages and I’d chosen French in college. There were a few words I could figure out when I heard them spoken or saw them written, but no one spoke slowly enough for my brain to keep up, so I was constantly lagging behind.

  “I’m going to examine you now,” I said, pronouncing my words slowly as if that would help the man understand better. I lifted my hands, showing him the gloves I’d placed over them. “Examine.”

  He nodded enthusiastically, quickly unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a body hardened by manual labor and a belly softened by too many tortillas. I quickly listened to his heart, felt the lymph nodes in his neck, and checked his pulse. He coughed as I worked, a raspy cough that made me think of lung disorders and a possible heart condition. I called to TJ, ordered some blood work, hoping the guy would come back in two days as per my request, offered in broken Spanish.

  One down; dozens more to go.

  We worked for hours, patient after patient, barely a minute between to catch my breath. It wasn’t until the siesta hour, that small slot of time late in the afternoon when most of the locals found a place in the shade to rest for a while, that things began to slow down. A screaming child sobbed himself into a restless slumber as I handed him back to his worried mother, gesturing with a vial of antibiotics.

  “Make better,” I said, wishing I knew more Spanish or that the interpreter had a clone who could remain by my side all day. “Two days. Dos.”

  “Dos?”

  “Si. Dos días.”

  She nodded, her worried glance moving back down to the child’s face. I touched her arm. “Come back if his fever doesn’t break.” Of course, she didn’t understand, confusion marring her pretty, youthful features. “Dos días nino… bueno. If no, aqui.”

  She frowned for a second, forcing me to search my already overtaxed language center for more words that might express what I was saying. But then a light bulb came on in her eyes and she nodded.

  “Si no es major dos días, tráelo de vuelta. Entiendo. Gracias, doctor.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I touched her arm and smiled, briefly wishing my patients’ parents back in Houston were as kind and gracious as these people were. Then again, when the communication gap was so large, they could be smiling while calling me derogatory names and I’d never know it.

  “Come get a load of this!”

  I snapped off the gloves I’d been wearing and wandered over to the large picture window that looked out onto the dusty street, stopping beside Taylor. She practically had her nose to the glass, staring at the auto mechanic’s garage across the street.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” she asked, her voice made breathy by the admiration dripping from it.

  A man stepped up to the front of the garage, wiping his hands on
a rag as he leaned against the track the large roll-up door ran on. It was a hot day, in the mid-nineties, and it must have been sweltering inside the dark garage because he was stripped down to just a pair of jeans and heavy boots, his bare chest glistening from the sweat that ran in large rivulets over his entire body, pressing the sparse curls of hair against his pale skin. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a narrow jaw that was covered with a thin, dark scruff that contrasted nicely with the color of his flesh, skin that was as of yet untouched by the rays of the sun.

  “All these beautiful men! What am I going to do with myself?”

  Taylor fanned herself, sighing as she continued to watch.

  “I’d stay away from that one,” I told her, turning away to prepare the room for the next patient.

  “Why?”

  “He’s an ex-con. He’s probably an American running from the cops.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You see the tattoo on his shoulder? The black one with the M in the center?”

  “Yeah? What about it?”

  “It’s La Eme. The Mexican Mafia. And the teardrop by his eye? Indicates he’s taken responsibility for a murder, either someone he killed or a friend he believes was murdered and he’s seeking or gotten revenge for.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Remember Pauly Decatur? The defense attorney I dated back in medical school?”

  “Barely.”

  “His dad was a parole officer, worked with a lot of these ex-cons. He knew the meaning of every prison tattoo anyone could possibly dream up. We’d sit in a diner and watch people walk by, and he’d point out all the ex-cons using nothing but the tattoos they sported on their bodies. Some were pretty surprising, too.”

  “And that makes you an expert on these things?”

  I glanced at her. She was still staring out the window, watching this guy leaning against the building like he was a fashion model waiting for the photographer to get the lighting just right. I moved up beside her again, admiring the masculine turn of his body, the broadness of his shoulders and the thick muscles across his chest. He was very good-looking, but that didn’t take away from the fact that he was also, clearly, trouble.

  “Looks are just part of the package, Taylor. There’s a lot more to a guy than just his muscles or the size of his shirt collar.”

  “But he’s so pretty!”

  “And there are some things to be said about size,” TJ said, joining us without warning. “And that one… who says size doesn’t matter?”

  Taylor sighed and I… I’ll admit, my eyes did go to places they probably shouldn’t have. There was something about the low waist of his jeans that made certain things look impressively… bulgy. There was a definite part of me that wanted to strip out of my doctor’s coat and run out there to do a Mae West impression.

  Hey, big boy, why don’t you come up and see me sometime?

  Almost as if he sensed the attention he was drawing, his gaze shifted from the towel he was using to wipe his hands to the windows of the clinic. Those dark eyes seemed to look right through me for a minute, sending a shiver of something—heat—through me. Taylor and TJ immediately shifted away, laughing as they dodged out of view of the window, but I hesitated, catching his gaze like one might catch a stranger’s gaze across a crowded room. And, for a second, it felt like he could see me, that he could see right through me into every secret I tried to keep hidden. It was a crazy thought, but—

  “Valerie!”

  Taylor was still laughing as she pulled me back, shoving me against the cool of the concrete wall.

  “Did he see you?” TJ wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. So what if he did?”

  I pulled away, jumping back into the preparation of the room, slamming drawers and dropping syringes that were, thankfully, wrapped in plastic. There was something about the way that guy had looked at me—I wasn’t even sure if he could see me. But there was something about the look on his face…

  “What’s the matter with her?” TJ asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she just realized how badly she needs to get laid.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  They giggled as they left the room, a new patient stepping through the door a second later. I sat on my stool and rolled over to the exam table, listening to the quick dialogue my patient was using to explain something about a boil on her throat—I only caught two or three words of the entire monolog—the hairs on the back of my neck standing on edge. I stole a glance back toward the window, half expecting him to have come to stand directly outside the warped glass. But he’d apparently gone back inside, because he was no longer visible.

  Stupid thing. Stupid me.

  I’d never let a man get under my skin before. Why start now?

  Chapter 6

  Oliver

  “La transmisión de este es una mierda. Ve si puedes arreglarlo por cinco, ¿de acuerdo?”

  “Sure, boss.”

  I watched Miguel walk away before turning to the ancient Ford he’d just put up on the lift. Overhaul a whole transmission in less than three hours? That would be a trick—but a trick I felt up to. It was nice to have something to do with my hands, something logical. I’d always liked working with my hands, always liked the feeling of creating something out of nothing—or, in this case, bringing something back to the state it was meant to be in.

  Being assigned to the diesel garage in prison probably saved my life. No, it did save my life. I’d never imagined myself in prison, never imagined having that much time to do nothing, never imagined… I’d never imagined my life ending up in a six-by-six cell.

  I picked up a wrench and went to work, pausing only to get a breath of fresh air when the heat became almost overwhelming. The weather was damn cold here compared to San Antonio—or Houston—in the summer, but the garage had no air conditioning and I’d become accustomed to air conditioning everywhere in my American upbringing. My body didn’t know what to do with this al natural way of living.

  I wiped my hands on a rag as I stood in the doorway, my practiced eyes moving around the yard in front of the building: My coworkers—watching them joke with each other as they worked on small parts they’d brought outside and had sitting on crates as they cleaned them and put them back together. The street—watching as a group of kids chased a dog around after their short siesta period. The clinic across the street—watching the long line of indigent people trying to get healthcare for the first time in months or even years.

  There were four large windows along the front of the building—a former diner, and a tourist shop before that—large picture windows designed to show off what was inside. The owners of the clinic hadn’t bothered to cover those windows despite the intimate events taking place behind them, but I was sure that was a matter that would be dealt with sooner rather than later. There were three ways into the building—beyond breaking a window: the front door, the back door that opened onto a small fenced yard, and the locked door on the side that opened directly into what was once the kitchen. It was a new addition, put there for the comfort and convenience of the cooks when it was a diner, likely unopened since the diner had been closed.

  Seven vulnerable points altogether. And security was minimal. There was a local man who stood guard overnight to keep locals from breaking in and stealing the few drugs kept there, but no security at all during the day. I supposed they assumed that the activity and all the warm bodies filling the place was enough to discourage any sort of criminal activity during the day.

  Big mistake.

  You’d think in this day and age of school shootings and planes flying into buildings that people would be more cautious about security. But, I supposed, there were still people out there who naïvely believed that bad things couldn’t—or wouldn’t—happen to them. Those were usually the people who ended up on the news saying what a quiet man he was…

  I could walk in there right now, unarmed, and take out almost the entire staff in les
s than two minutes. Or I could take one of those pretty ladies and shove her into the back of a car and be halfway to Tijuana before anyone even realized she was gone.

  They were watching me. Two women and a man, standing at one of the windows in the exam room to the right of the reception area. Taylor Greene had an expression of open admiration on her face when our eyes met. She’d jerked back the second she’d realized I’d spotted her, TJ Thomas going with her. But the other, Valerie Cole, stayed where she was, meeting my gaze with a boldness that I couldn’t help but admire.

  She was a looker, this lady. Petite in a long-legged sort of way, she had long hair that she’d piled onto the top of her head in a sort of purposely messy bun that allowed long curls to fall around her face and stick to the sweat dotting her forehead, her hair a deep mahogany color that made me think of long planks of cedar and strips of cherry-wood laminate. I knew from pictures that her eyes were a pure green, the kind you might see in costume jewelry or the real emeralds that sometimes grace the necks of celebrities. Those eyes were fringed with thick lashes that made her appear to have eyeliner on at all times of the day and night, that gave them the sort of dark gaze I was seeing now. She was dressed in a thin blouse she’d sweated through, the material sticking to her chest and belly like she was a contestant in a wet T-shirt contest under a heavy doctor’s coat that was like some sort of cliché, some sort of joke.

  Beautiful lady. Too bad she had no idea about the darkness that was about to touch her world.

  Someone pulled her back, out of my line of vision. I watched her go, then turned myself, headed back into the garage to finish my work. Might as well earn my living for the short time I was to be here. Things would go down soon, and when they did… the whys and whats weren’t really my problem, were they? Maybe the lady deserved what was coming.

  In the meantime, I could work with my hands and enjoy the almost mind-numbing Zen that came with it.

  Chapter 7

  Valerie

  “I’m fine. I told you, it’s just a long line of patients during the day, and walking on the cool sands of the beach at night. Nothing too stressful.”