Desperately she hid her inner quiver. She had held out hope that her physical response to him was mostly in her imagination, fueled by his deadly aura. Women daydreamed about dangerous men, when in reality a nice, normal guy was far preferable. But this was no daydream, and she had to clench her hands to keep from reaching out and stroking that mouth. Diaz wasn’t a bad boy, he was a bad man, and she would do well to remember the difference. He didn’t walk on the side of the angels.
But they were alone in her house, isolated in this small pool of light, and she knew that all she had to do was part her knees and he would be between them. He hadn’t made a pass or even indicated he was thinking about it, but she knew he wouldn’t turn her down. He would oblige her, and then he would disappear again, the encounter having meant no more to him than a drink of water when he was thirsty.
So she remained in the chair, and kept her legs together. She refused to be nothing more than convenient sex for anyone, even herself.
“Gallagher kissed you,” he said, letting her know that he’d watched them from a window, since her door was solid. Even as she watched, his face was changing, losing its brief animation and settling back into the familiar stone mask.
“I didn’t want him to.” For some reason, she felt as if she owed Diaz an explanation. “He keeps asking me out, and I keep refusing.”
“Why were you with him tonight?”
“I had dinner with some friends and True stopped by our table. My friends are both doctors, and one of them was called to the hospital on an emergency. She took their car, so True drove me home while Rip took a cab home.”
He was silent as he considered that, then shook his head. “I won’t help you unless you stay away from him.”
She didn’t bridle at the ultimatum, because it jibed with her own feelings. “All right.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. You know him, don’t you?”
“We’ve met.”
And yet True, when she’d asked him about Diaz, hadn’t said anything of the sort. Instead he’d pretended to be looking for information. It was possible he thought she would be safer if she never crossed paths with Diaz, and if so then he was right, but she made her own decisions and took her own chances. By trying to keep her from Diaz, he’d been blocking her from information she desperately needed.
“Did you find Pavón?”
“Working on it. Got a lead. He may stay out of sight for a month or so, though, since he got word I was looking for him.”
Any sane person would stay out of sight longer than that, like for a lifetime. “Then why are you here, if you don’t have any new information?”
“To tell you I did run across something that might interest you. One of my informants knew something about a baby-smuggling ring going on about ten years ago.”
She stiffened, chills running up and down her spine and over her scalp. She felt as if her lungs suddenly constricted, preventing her from breathing. “What did he say?” she asked, her voice stifled.
“It was a fairly high-class operation, as these things go. The kids were flown across the border in a small private plane, rather than stuffed in car trunks and driven across.”
She still couldn’t quite catch her breath; all she could do was gasp. A plane! She’d had nightmares, thinking of Justin dying of heatstroke in some car trunk and being tossed aside like so much garbage.
“This doesn’t mean it was the same ring that kidnapped your baby,” he warned. “But the time is about right, and they operated in southern Chihuahua and Coahuila. They had a contact here in Texas who arranged for birth certificates for the kids, so they could be legally adopted.”
“Birth certificates.” Then it had to be someone who worked in a county courthouse, or a hospital. Since Justin had been born in Mexico and all the paperwork had been done there, she wasn’t sure exactly how birth certificates were issued, and she had never thought to check.
“Things wouldn’t work the same way now,” he said, reading her mind. “Everything is on computer. And the birth certificates could have come from any state.”
“I know.” Adoption records were also private, unless otherwise directed by the birth parent. That was a huge obstacle. Nor could she look for a noticeable spike in a certain county’s birth rate, because the number of extra certificates would far more likely be a few hundred for one year, rather than thousands. In a county that contained a large city, with a transient population, those extra birth certificates wouldn’t even be noticed. But the larger cities would also have been more likely to be computerized ten years ago, she thought. A small rural county, with limited funds that didn’t cover full computerized record-keeping, would be a better bet. She said as much to Diaz, who nodded.
“What would you look for?”
“Birth certificates issued in clumps. How many babies would be born in a small county on the same day, or the same week? Even the same month? If the total in some months was noticeably higher than in other months, I’d concentrate there.”
He was silent, and she waited while he processed whatever he was thinking. Finally he glanced up at her. “Supposedly, the smuggling ring stopped operating when the private plane crashed.”
Her lips went numb as the feverish hope in her turned into yet another nightmare. “When?”
“Roughly ten years ago. Everyone on board died, including the six babies.”
She sat staring at her hands long after he’d gone. Life couldn’t be so cruel, God couldn’t be so cruel, to let her go for so long and get this far, then snatch everything away from her. She knew Justin wasn’t necessarily on that plane, that a different smuggling ring might have taken him. But this was another nightmare possibility that she had to deal with, another horrible ending to innocent little lives.