"Hi, Mom," he said, hugging her briefly. "Lucia. How are the kids?"

"Healthy and in school," she said, rolling her eyes in relief. "Your mother's medicines are such a help."

"They can be." Dan's smile vanished as he looked at his mother. "Or they can hurt."

Diana drew in a sharp, shocked breath.

"Who supplies you and Winifred with opiates for your medicines?" he asked. "Armando?"

Lucia made a small sound.

"What do you know of opiates?" Diana asked.

"A lot more than you want to hear." He glanced at Lucia. "Isn't that right?"

She flushed and looked away.

"Armando told you, didn't he?" Dan pressed.

She nodded slightly.

"What?" Diana asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Part of my work includes tracking black money," Dan said evenly. "Illegal money. The kind Armando Sandoval and his kin make butt-loads of smuggling Mexican brown or Colombian cocaine, depending on which branch of the family he's working with on a load."

Diana shrugged. Everyone knew what Armando did. "So?"

"So when I got too close, his Colombian kin put out a contract on me." Absently Dan rubbed his left leg. "The story about a climbing accident was just that, a story."

This time Diana wasn't the only one who made a shocked sound. Carly had been standing in the doorway, listening. Her eyes were wide and horrified.

Lucia crossed herself and looked at the floor in shame. "Lo siento."

He knew she was sorry, just as he knew she loved her husband anyway. She had walled herself off from reality until she was able to see Armando only as her man and the father of her children.

"It has nothing to do with you," Dan said, touching Lucia briefly. "But it has everything to do with my question."

"Why?" John asked coolly. "Have you come to arrest your mother on drug charges?"

"You know better."

"Then why do you care? She doesn't use enough opiates to make a blip on anybody's radar."

"I've been assuming that Carly was the target of the drugging at Sylvia's memorial service," Dan said. "But it could have been me. Armando could have figured this would be a good, clean shot at finishing the contract."

Lucia put her hands over her ears and shook her head. "No! He said nothing about that. He just laughed when I said you were hurt climbing. I hear that laugh before. I know it has to do with… business."

Dan looked at his mother. The darkness in her eyes made him wish he hadn't opened his mouth. "You and Winifred share the same source for opiates."

"Yes," Diana said. " Alma."

"She certainly would have had the opportunity," Carly said from the doorway. "But she was sick, too, wasn't she?"

"Si. Yes," Lucia said.

"I never ask where Alma gets her medicines," Diana said. "Ultimately, I suppose it is Armando."

"Medicines." Dan's lips turned down. "Hell of a name for it."

"The way I use opiates is medicine, just as it was before Anglo laws changed what was legal and what wasn't, but didn't change poverty and disease. Los curanderos exist because there is a need. We use what we have always used, the gifts of the land, poppy and peyote, morning glory and mushroom." Diana's dark eyes glittered with anger and impatience. "No Anglo law will change that."

It was an old argument, one that wasn't going anywhere new, especially as Dan didn't really disagree.

"The point is that someone put an overdose of opiates in the cups we all drank at the memorial service," Dan said.

Diana's hand went to her throat. "But I heard it was the food."

"No, it was an attempt to murder Carly or, maybe, me. Since no one has notified me about a new death threat, I have to assume Carly was the target. At least, until Armando tells me otherwise." Dan looked at Lucia. "Call him. Tell him to meet me at the Pico de Gallo in Las Trampas in half an hour."

Chapter 39

TAOS

FRIDAY MORNING

"WHY CAN'T I COME WITH YOU?" CARLY ASKED. "WHY SHOULD GUS HAVE TO RUN down and check on me every few minutes?"

"Every half hour."

"Whatever. You know what I mean. And I'm not talking about the archive babysitting rules."

Dan looked at the woman standing in the middle of the crowded basement. Cold air filtered down the stairway through the gaps in the cellar door that was also part of the basement's roof. His leg felt like something was gnawing on it.

He ignored everything but Carly. "The man I'm going to see is an international narcotraficante. I don't even want you in the same country with him, much less the same room. He's good for five murders on both sides of the border that we know of, and that doesn't include the poor illegals who died in the desert carrying forty-kilo backpacks of Mexican brown over the border in the middle of the desert. All those men wanted was a chance at a better life. What they got was death."

Her chin came up. "I read the newspapers and watch TV. I know what happens."

"But it doesn't happen to you. I want to keep it that way. I'll be back before lunch. If you aren't here, you'd better be in the office with Gus or with my parents."

"Is that advice or an order?" she asked through clenched teeth.

"Whatever works."

When she would have argued, he distracted her by sticking his tongue in her mouth and kissing her until she softened and returned the favor. And the flavor. Slowly, reluctantly, he lifted his head.

"Be here for me, Carolina May."

"You're not playing fair."

"I'm not playing at all."

"Like I said…" She closed her eyes for an instant. "Okay, okay. You win."

"No, we win."

She watched him walk up the stairs and out into the overcast, snow-threatening day. The scars she had seen and touched on his leg this morning were red, barely healed; she knew they must hurt. Yet he refused to let it slow him down.

In or out of bed.

Don't go there, Carly told herself quickly. The man was way too distracting and she had a lot of work to do if she hoped to have a rough draft of Winifred's history in the next few weeks. Even if Dan came through with a bridge program to transfer material from microfilm to scanner to her computer, she would still be working sixteen-hour days to meet Winifred's new deadline.

Mentally bracing herself, Carly went to the microfilm files. Somewhere in all those metal boxes was the answer to old questions and two very new ones.

Who was trying to kill her?

And why?

Chapter 40

LAS TRAMPAS

FRIDAY MORNING

SNOW LAY SPARSELY ALONG THE NARROW ROAD. THE HOUSING WAS A COMBINATION of cement block on the newer buildings and ragged, cracked adobe on the older ones. Both new and old buildings had tin roofs. House trailers of all ages and conditions hunched beside the uncertain protection of sagging wooden barns and outbuildings. Fences were made of willow posts and old boxspring mattress frames and discarded tires. Chickens and lop-eared mutts scratched out a living side by side in the cold mud.

Occasional bursts of prosperity showed in houses covered by bright paint or brighter murals. Dan had parked near one of them. The long two-story building's ancient adobe bricks were hidden beneath a painting that combined the artistic traditions of Mexico's muralists with the flowing graffiti of barrio gangs. The result was darkly colorful and oddly menacing, a blunt statement that strangers weren't welcome.

Dan had ignored it. The combination beer bar and taqueria was open, but as soon as he'd said he was Dan Duran and had come to talk to Armando Sandoval, everyone except the barkeep/cook had packed up and gone somewhere else. Dan wasn't surprised. He took his beer to a newly vacated table and waited. The room smelled of Mexican cigarettes, beer, fresh tortillas, and roasted peppers. The tables were like the men who had sat around them-dark, sturdy, and scuffed by use.