The Stronghold. Lisa Carter

herself. To release the inner pain.”

      Shrinking inside himself, he closed his eyes.

      “Having Manny in her life has been her salvation. He kept her from the brink of the abyss. And I don’t think she’s . . .” Again, his grandmother faltered. “I don’t think she’s done those things to herself in a long while. Manny gave her a reason to live, to get up in the morning. A purpose greater than herself.”

      Alex set the rocker in motion. “When Byron called me, he said Manny was in trouble.”

      “She and Manny need your help. Manny may be the only way to get through to Pilar. Though our rather-take-a-fist-in-the-mouth Pilar is never going to admit to that.”

      “I think fist-in-my-face is the way Pilar’s leaning right now, Abuela.”

      Isabel laughed and sounded younger than her years. “That’s the Pilar we know and love, isn’t it, Nieto.”

      “She’s determined to keep me at arm’s length for the duration of this investigation.”

      “After losing both parents early, she’s spent a lifetime erecting barricades.” Abuela rose, her joints creaking. “You’ll find a way to breach her defenses. You always do.”

      She smiled. Her teeth flashed white in the darkness of the night. “You’ve always been the chink in her armor.”

      “Her downfall, too.”

      “You must stop punishing yourself. Not everything was your fault.”

      She planted a quick kiss on his forehead. “Your parents and I were equally afraid we’d lost you, too, back then. Afraid your self-flagellating penance would bring you home in a body bag.”

      Alex would never tell Abuela or his parents how close he’d come to dying on a dusty battlefield in the Helmand Province. Later after his Quantico training, he’d poured himself into his undercover work in Mexico, battling not only the insidious evil of the cartels but also his own despair and self-loathing.

      But he’d not understood why he’d survived when so many good men hadn’t, until Byron called him a month ago with an opportunity for absolution.

      Absolution was all Alex dared to imagine.

      “God has a plan for you and Pilar, Alex.” His grandmother placed her cool, dry hand against his cheek. “Plans for a future and a hope. He’s not done with either of you yet. Hang on to your faith. Don’t let go of it or her.”

      Faith—hard won and wrested from the brink of his personal abyss.

      An owl hooted.

      His grandmother straightened. Venturing to the edge of the porch, she gazed into the inky blackness of the desert night. She lifted her face and sniffed the air. A strange look crossed her lined, broad-planed face.

      “What is it, Abuela? Can you smell the rain coming?”

      Isabel was legendary for reading the natural signs of her desert homeland. Drought or thunderstorm. Tornado or blue skies. She had married the only son of the powerful Don Torres and, after her husband’s early death, had been the driving force behind the success of the Torres family brand.

      “Not rain. But something is a-coming.” She tucked her hands into her elbows. “Something not good.”

      He darted a glance at the foreboding tone of her voice.

      She shooed him toward the door. “Get some rest. You’ve got a busy day ahead of you tomorrow.”

      “Aren’t you coming, Abuela?”

      “Not right this minute. Going to commune with nature a bit longer. But I’ll be in soon, I promise.”

      Over the years, he’d seen her do her “communing” countless times. As if she put out her antennae to things only she could see.

      She stood where he’d left her, poised and alert on the top step. Her stance guarded. Her head with its elegant silver chignon tilted as if she listened.

      Listened to what? Alex wondered as he closed the door softly.

      To sounds only she could hear.

      Chapter 6

      6

      Before

      Fifteen-year-old Alex didn’t miss L.A.

      Truth be told, he was relieved when the judge and his parents removed him from an environment increasingly out of his control. The gang pressured him to do things with which he wasn’t comfortable. Once in, forever in, and he’d escaped just in time.

      Being that this was Alex’s first offense, the judge ordered probation. And at their wit’s end, Alex’s parents arranged with his probation officer to send Alex as far from the gang’s reach as possible: to his grandmother, where the Torreses had ranched longer than the Anglos had been in Arizona.

      On the ranch, there was open space, towering mountains, and blue sky. Room to breathe. Room to dream. Room to be.

      Here he met the two best friends, Alex suspected, he’d ever have. Byron—quiet to the point of invisibility, but a force to be reckoned with on the football field. Coiled energy with something to prove, Byron loved only two people: his sister, Pilar, and Alex’s abuela.

      As for Pilar?

      He smiled at the thought of the defiant, Apache girl who almost matched him for competitiveness.

      She’d punch him in the gut for even thinking that. Just like she did every time she beat him to the top of the mesa. And he didn’t let her win. Cater-Pilar was, as Byron warned, swift as the wind.

      Little in stature, mighty in mouth. Feisty, tough as the spikes on a saguaro, and smart. She made him laugh. And unlike the other females he’d twisted around his finger with a smile since birth, Pilar didn’t seem overly impressed with Alejandro Roberto Torres.

      She was halfway between being a child and—he swallowed—halfway to being whatever Pilar was yet to be.

      Pilar and Byron were also the angriest people the laid-back Alex Torres had ever met. They didn’t erupt or rage. But anger seethed beneath the surface of their broad, high-cheekboned faces.

      Because their Chiricahua mother from the Mescalero rez in New Mexico was dead? Or because of their stepfather, a Western Apache from the White Mountain rez farther north? He was a strange, morose man.

      Morose. One of Pilar’s new words. And like the To-Clanny kids, Alex steered clear of the man whenever possible.

      Byron and Pilar had called the ranch home for the last two years. The longest, Byron told him, they’d ever lived anywhere after their mother drank herself to death when Pilar was only eight.

      Pilar—Tagalong as he liked to tease her—followed them everywhere that summer. Always dogging their heels. Never backing down from any challenge.

      He didn’t mind her hanging around. Surprisingly—because she was still such a little girl with her books, stray cats, and flyaway hair—Pilar was a lot of fun. She upped the ante on whatever scheme Alex devised. Brought a charge of electricity to every adventure he concocted for himself and his best pal, Byron.

      But when school began in Saguaro Gulch, Alex turned his attention to the future. He used his considerable charm on his teachers and the plethora of females who flocked around the football squad. Thanks to him, he and shy Byron never lacked for female attention.

      The first game of the season Alex scored a touchdown toward the final victory. The rest of the team engulfed him in a frenzy of triumph. And for the first time, he belonged.

      He emerged from the locker room to find Pilar waiting. “You gonna do one of those victory dances for me?” Alex grinned.

      Pilar looked down and then up at him out of the corner of her eye. “Maybe.” She tossed her long, glossy braid over her shoulder. “Once we get