Neither could Faroe, but it wasn’t a topic he wanted to discuss with anyone, including himself. If that made him pigheaded, so be it. A man was entitled to the occasional indulgence.

Silence grew.

“We never were very good at small talk,” he said, gesturing toward the little chart table in the center of the salon. “Do you have a ransom note?”

Grace sat at the small table. “Nothing that obvious. Carlos and Hector simply made it real clear that Lane wasn’t leaving without Ted’s-my ex-husband’s-signature on the form. Unfortunately, Ted is in the wind somewhere, not returning calls or e-mails. He’s not just ducking me, either. I’m getting calls from angry people at all hours of the day.”

Faroe nodded. “Tell me about Carlos and Hector and your last visit with your son.”

Grace sipped, organized her thoughts, and gave Faroe the same presentation she’d given Steele. Faroe listened intently, his eyes focused on the grounds at the bottom of his own coffee cup, a fortune-teller looking for something in the murk.

He’s learned to listen, she realized. Sixteen years ago, he talked more. At least with me.

Not that they’d spent a whole lot of time talking.

“…and then I drove back to the border as fast as I could,” she said. She’d been crying silently all the way, but that wasn’t something Faroe needed to know. “I wasted hours calling everyone I could think of. Then I called your cell phone. St. Kilda answered.”

Faroe swirled the cup, drained the last dregs, and looked up at her.

Grace went still. His eyes were still that astonishing cool green, almost the color of a jade pendant she’d worn the night of their first date. She’d understood from the moment she first saw him that she would sleep with him, even though she knew better. All her life she’d been a dutiful, good girl.

But not with Joe Faroe.

He’s the worst mistake I ever made.

And the best.

“Sounds like Colombia, not Mexico,” Faroe said finally.

“What do you mean?”

“C’mon, Grace. You’re not that naive.”

“I’ve never been to Colombia and only rarely to Mexico,” she said.

Faroe shrugged. “Kidnap and extortion are a way of life in Colombia.”

She swallowed hard. “You have a way of making it sound so…”

“Ordinary?”

“Yes.”

“It’s much more common than you want to know,” Faroe said. “There are a lot of places in the world where hostage-taking is a way of life. Didn’t Steele tell you about what he so elegantly refers to as ‘the Sanguinary Exchange’?”

“What a grim phrase. I guess he was too much of a diplomat to use it with me.”

“Too bad. The term describes what you lawyers might call an exceptional business model.”

“Meaning?” she challenged. He still hates lawyers. Why am I not surprised?

“When a businessman can’t rely on contracts and statutory protections to guarantee performance, he finds other ways. If he fronts, say, a ton of cocaine to a smuggler, he expects the smuggler to put up a son or a daughter or a wife in return.”

Grace grimaced. “All right. Yes. Of course I’ve heard about such things, but not here, not as part of American life.”

“And you don’t want to know about it.”

“Not everyone likes living in the gutter. Most people want more.”

Didn’t we have this conversation sixteen years ago?

Both thought it.

Neither said it aloud.

“It’s all very civilized,” Faroe said, his voice neutral and his eyes cold. “The hostage takes a little vacation trip to Bogota or Medellin or Cartagena. They get to stay in a nice hotel, all the comforts that money can buy, no car batteries wired to their genitals, no cigarette burns. In a month or two, they fly home with a good suntan…so long as things go well with the shipment. If something goes wrong, too bad, how sad, you’re dead.”

Grace put her cup on the table hard enough to send coffee jumping over the lip. “Blunt. Yes, I remember that about you.”

“Pretty words don’t make a situation pretty. The Mexicans have been hauling loads for the Colombians for years.” Faroe set his own coffee mug aside. “I guess the Mexicans have taken over the kidnap part of the business model. But then, you kind of knew that, didn’t you? You’re a very bright person. You were usually miles ahead of me in terms of seeing how the world worked beneath the legalities.”

With cold eyes, he waited for her response.

“Do you really believe I’m involved with something as twisted and corrupt as drugs and hostages?” she asked.

“That’s a no-brainer. You are involved. The only question is how much you know.”

“You’re still a real hard-case son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Grace said it calmly, like she’d just discovered he still ordered his steak blood rare.

“It’s a hard-case world out there. And isn’t that what you’re spending two hundred fifty grand for? A hard-case son of a bitch who can deal with this problem efficiently, ruthlessly, few or no questions asked?”

Grace stared at Faroe, trying to see past the cold eyes and expressionless face of a man who’d spent his adult life working undercover against drug smugglers and murderers.

“Right,” she said. “I got what I asked for.” Lucky, lucky me.

“So, are you involved?” Faroe asked, pouring himself a little more coffee.

“In what?”

“In whatever deal Calderon and Rivas are on the other side of.”

“You insulting, overbearing, obnoxious-” Grace bit off the rest. She needed him. Lane needed him. “No. I’m not involved.”

Faroe watched her closely, searching for the microexpressions of deception. He glanced quickly at the vital triangle at the base of her throat. Her pulse beat steadily beneath smooth skin that was the color of light toast. She faced him without flinching. Her lips were drawn back in a snarl that was much less civilized than her words.

Not lying.

“But you do have some idea of what Calderon and el jefe chingon want, right?” Faroe asked.

Grace translated the nickname in her mind and made a face.

“Yeah,” Faroe said, watching her over the rim of his coffee mug. “El jefe chingon. The head motherfucker. That’s what they used to call Hector Rivas Osuna, back when I was buying dope in the Pussycat bar on Revolucion in Tijuana.”

“Delightful.” Grace looked at her clenched hands and slowly unlocked her fingers. She didn’t know why Faroe was baiting her, but she knew that he was. “There was talk about money, but I don’t think it’s merely that.”

“Merely?” He smiled grimly. “Spoken like the wife of a billionaire.”

“Ex-wife.”

He shrugged and told himself he didn’t care. “So you’re half a billionaire.”

“Don’t count on it,” she shot back. “All I got from Ted was the house my salary had been making payments on for ten years, my car, and half of a horse ranch that is a college fund for Lane.”

“Then how could you afford St. Kilda Consulting?”

“The old-fashioned way-I mortgaged my house. Anything else you want to know about me and money?”

“If the boys down south don’t want money from you, what do they want?”

Grace had thought about that a lot on the way back from Mexico. “Ted.”

“Why?”

“They say he stole money from them.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s had dealings for years with Carlos, but I don’t know any of the details.”

“Yet you let your soon-to-be-ex-husband send your son south. Why?”

Grace made herself ignore the baiting tone and answered the question. If she’d thought yelling at Faroe would do any good, she’d have started screaming the instant she set foot on the dock.

“Lane is very bright, very bored in school, and a wizard with computers,” she said. “He’s a teenager in full hormonal rush. His judgment isn’t all it could be.”

“Drugs?”

“No! He hacked into the school computer and changed his grades.”