“That’s not the way—”
“Look! I don’t care what way you do things here! And don’t try to con me with some lame story about his grandmother wanting you to arrest him. The fact is that you arrested Benny Hernandez without just cause, and you’ve been holding him without due process. If you persist in detaining him, I will obtain a writ of habeas corpus tomorrow to get him out, and then you and this county are going to be slapped with a big lawsuit for false imprisonment!”
Lisa stabbed the air with her forefinger as she talked, the force of her fury carrying her closer and closer to the sheriff until she was almost touching him with her punctuating finger. Quinn thought about wrapping his hand around her far smaller one and jerking her up against him, then silencing that berating voice with his own mouth.
That would be, he reminded himself, a good way to get his face slapped. Of course, it might be worth it….
They stared into each other’s face for a moment, poised on the edge. Lisa could see the red light burning in Quinn’s brown eyes, feel the heat of his body only inches away from her, and something in her wanted to lean forward that last little bit, to precipitate some final explosion between them.
His jaw tightened, and he stepped carefully around her, going to the door and opening. “Padilla!” he barked. “Go down and release Hernandez. His attorney is taking him home.”
Chapter 2
It was Deputy Padilla this time who escorted Lisa back to the locked double doors leading into the county jail. He spoke with the deputy inside, and a few minutes later, Jerry brought Benny Hernandez through the double doors, dressed this time in the usual jeans and T-shirt of a teenaged boy.
“Hey, you did it.” He smiled, looking a little surprised.
“Can I give you a ride home?” Lisa didn’t know whether the sheriff had literally meant that she would take him home. But in any case, she was a little curious to meet the young man’s grandmother—could the sheriff had been serious when he said the woman had asked him to lock up her grandson?—and she couldn’t imagine any place in this little town that would take her too far out of her way.
She drove through Angel Eye, following Benny’s direction. The courthouse sat in the courthouse square typical of little Texas towns. A few stores lined the other sides of the street around it. It was not thriving, but neither did it look as abandoned as some little towns she had driven through. Past the stores, the streets were lined with trees, obviously planted and nurtured by the people who had lived there in the past, for outside of town, the landscape boasted little more than bushes of varying heights, yucca, and prickly pear cactus.
It was actually a rather pleasant-looking little town, Lisa thought, though she could not imagine what it must be like to grow up here. She had noticed when she drove into town that the population was just over sixteen hundred people, a mind-boggling concept to someone who had grown up in Dallas. The number of students attending her high school had been more than lived in this entire town. She had thought Hammond was small, but Angel Eye made it seem a positive metropolis.
She had never dreamed that she would wind up here. A scholarship she had applied for and received in law school had stipulated that she must spend the first year after she graduated doing legal aid work at one of the Hispanic organization’s legal aid clinics. She had agreed readily to the terms, for she had already intended to use her law degree to help needy Hispanics. However, she had simply assumed that the work would be done in some large city, such as Houston or Dallas or San Antonio. It had never occurred to her that the position she would fill would be in Hammond, Texas, a town of little more than ten thousand people about an hour’s drive from San Antonio. She had been certain she had landed in an alien place when she drove down main street and saw that the only two national fast-food chains in town were lodged in the same building, sharing a kitchen and eating space.
The first month she had lived in Hammond, she had found herself making the six-hour drive back to her parents’ home in Dallas every weekend. Finally that had grown too tiring, and now, after two months, she was more or less resigned to remaining the rest of her year there.
“What do people do around here?” she blurted out, then realized a little guiltily that her words were rather tactless.
Benny glanced at her, then chuckled. “Talk about everybody else, mostly. Turn right at the next street.”
He straightened a little, and Lisa could see him tense as they drove down the street. He pointed to a small blue frame house, and Lisa pulled up to the curb in front of it. The front door opened, and a short Hispanic woman bustled out of the front door. Lisa had been picturing Benny’s grandmother as a traditional-looking abuelita, with graying hair in a bun and wearing a cotton housedress, so she was a little surprised to see that while his grandmother’s thick black hair was streaked with gray, it was cropped short, and her rather squat body was encased in blue pants and a flowered top.
Benny groaned and cast a glance at Lisa. “You’ll have to meet her. I’m sorry.”
“I would like to meet your grandmother,” Lisa assured him and stepped out of the car.
Señora Fuentes was crying and talking at great length in Spanish, and she did not pause in either activity when she threw her arms around her grandson and squeezed him to her. Finally she released him and stepped back, looking up at him.
“What are you doing home so quick?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips and gazing at him sternly. Lisa, listening, had the feeling that maybe Sheriff Sutton had been telling the truth, after all. Benny’s grandmother, after her initial greeting, did not seem to be too pleased at having him home.
Benny, who had been grinning and looking faintly embarrassed a moment earlier, adopted his former blank expression. He shrugged. “He didn’t have anything on me. He was messing with me.”
“Messing with you?” the old woman repeated, contempt tinging her voice. “I think it’s the other way, you messin’ with the law.” She launched forth into another spate of Spanish, this one by the look and sound of it, a stern lecture on Benny’s troublesome ways.
Benny crossed his arms and gazed down at the ground as the old woman went on and on, and with every sentence, Lisa could see his jaw tighten. Finally, flinging his arms up, he shot back a short sentence in the same language and turned away, striding off down the sidewalk away from the house.
His grandmother looked after him for a moment, then swung around to face Lisa. She started to speak in Spanish again, and Lisa held up her hands to stop the rapid flow of words.
“Señora, no, please, no comprendo. Yo no hablo español.”
Señora Fuentes stopped, a puzzled frown settling on her face. “Oh. I’m sorry. I thought—you are not Latina?”
“Yes, I am,” Lisa protested quickly, feeling the familiar embarrassment and faint sense of being different. “At least on my father’s side. It’s just—I’m afraid I don’t speak Spanish.” The old woman continued to look at her, as though trying to understand how this could be. Lisa hurried on, “My name is Lisa Mendoza, Señora Fuentes. I am your grandson Benny’s attorney. I got him released from jail.”
“You did?” Señora Fuentes looked her up and down. “But you are a girl.”
Lisa struggled to suppress her irritation, reminding herself that this woman was old and unused to seeing women, especially Hispanic women, in positions of strength. Patiently, she said, “Yes, I am a woman. I am also an attorney.”
Señora shook her head, disappointment stamping her face. “I never thought the sheriff would give in to a bit of a girl.”
Lisa straightened, her eyes flashing. “Señora Fuentes, I am not ‘a bit of a girl.’ I am a grown woman and a lawyer, and Sheriff Sutton did not ‘give in’ to me. He had no reason to hold your grandson. He knew