Those questions he asked himself. But the answer to each question was the same, and he already knew the answer: one day she would leave. About that he had no doubt. But there was one question that Jesse Rincon could not answer, a question that would not be answered until that day came, when the governor's wife left him: Was it truly better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?
"Doctor?"
His shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. He turned and walked back to her.
"Go home, Mrs. Bonner."
He sat down behind his desk and began packing his bag.
"But I thought-"
"This is not a Junior League project, Mrs. Bonner. This is life on the border."
"I'm not here for that. I'm here because I care."
"About these poor people? Why?"
"Because someone has to."
"I do."
"You can't do this by yourself."
"I have for five years."
"I can help you."
"For how long? A day? A week? Maybe a month? Then the stink and the dirt and the death will beat you down, and you will run home to Austin, back to the Governor's Mansion where you belong. Go home, Mrs. Bonner."
"You need a nurse… and I need to do this."
"Why? Because you had a fight with the governor and now you need to prove something to him?"
"Because I need to prove something to myself."
"And what is that?"
"That my life can still have meaning. That I can still make a difference." She fought back the tears. "That I'm not too old to be useful."
He stared at her, as if trying to see into her soul. He finally stood.
"Okay. Are you hungry?"
Bode bit into the thick juicy steak. He chewed with the intensity of a man still pissed off at his wife for ruining a sexual encounter with his mistress-and harboring a nagging worry that his wife had been kidnapped. After Ranger Roy's phone call-and despite Mandy's best efforts-he could not recapture the erectile moment. He chased the steak with a swallow of bourbon. Pedro entered the dining room with a portable phone in hand.
" Senor gobernador — Ranger Roy, he has called again."
Bode took the phone and answered.
"Well?"
"We found your wife, Governor."
Lindsay Bonner wrapped the green scarf around her head and tucked her red hair underneath. She then put on a wide-brimmed straw hat. She checked herself in the mirror and smiled.
She was no longer the governor's wife.
They had stopped off at an outdoor market in Laredo on the way to the doctor's homestead on the other side of town. She shopped for clothes to wear as Nurse Byrne; he shopped for groceries. He said he cooked. Latino music played and Spanish was spoken; it reminded her of their vacation to Acapulco years before. She held a yellow peasant dress against her body and looked in the mirror. She turned at the sound of girls giggling; the doctor stood surrounded by several pretty young Latinas. They flirted and took cell phone photos with the handsome doctor. He really was something of a celebrity on the border. Lindsay now appraised herself in the mirror. She sighed. She was still lean and slim and even considered the glamorous governor's wife; but she was not a beautiful young girl anymore. She was a forty-four-year-old woman.
Her cell phone rang.
"What the hell are you doing down on the goddamn border?"
Bode had stepped out of the dining room. Waiting for the call to ring through, his blood pressure had jacked up to mini-stroke levels. Still, he felt relieved when his wife answered-but his anger and the alcohol quickly took over.
"Are you drinking?"
"No… yes."
He could never lie to her, except about Mandy.
"How'd you find me?"
"GPS. Your cell phone."
"My phone? "
"Cell phones are just tracking devices that make calls."
"You tracked my phone?"
"The Rangers did. So what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm nursing."
"Who?"
"No. I'm going to work as a nurse."
"In Laredo?"
"In the colonias."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Lindsay, that's crazy!"
"Maybe to you, Bode. But not to me."
"You're the governor's wife."
"Not down here."
"Go home, Lindsay. Now."
"No. I'm staying here. Give my best to Mandy."
The line went dead. He stared at the phone. Shit.
Lindsay stared at her phone a long moment then looked up at the doctor looking at her. His arms were full with two bags of groceries and his face with the awkward moment.
"She's twenty-seven. Mandy."
Which made the moment even more awkward.
"So," he said with a forced smile, "let us have dinner."
"I hope you bought wine."
The governor of Texas downed his bourbon. His third. He needed hard liquor after learning that his wife knew about his mistress.
"That sonofabitch can carve up a cow faster'n those raptors in that dinosaur movie," John Ed was saying. "I get Manuel to run a dried-up cow inside the game fence every week or so. That big ol' lion sniffs her out in no time, hunts her down, pounces on her, rips her apart. Damnedest thing I've ever seen."
Mandy, Ranger Hank, and Jim Bob had gone upstairs. Mandy needed her beauty sleep, Hank needed his sports fix on satellite TV, and Jim Bob needed to plug his laptop into a landline like a patient on life support. Bode and John Ed had gone into the study to drink Kentucky bourbon and smoke Cuban cigars.
"You sure you want me to shoot your lion?"
"There's more where he came from. Course, you gotta track him down and get close enough to put a bullet in him. Maybe two."
John Ed puffed on his cigar.
"Manuel, he'll have the horses saddled and your guns packed, ready to ride at dawn. He's a good tracker. He'll find that lion for you. Used to be the foreman on a game ranch outside Guadalajara, big place catering to Americans. Then the cartels took over the country, so Americans stopped going south to hunt-they became the hunted instead of the hunter. I needed a place to hunt, so I turned this land into a game ranch, hired Manuel. Been with me five years now."
"He legal?"
"Hell, no. None of my Mexicans are legal." John Ed chuckled. "While back, me and Manuel, we're riding the range in the Hummer, he asks me, ' Senor John Ed, is Obama going to make me a citizen?' I said, 'Why the hell do you want to be an American citizen?' He says, 'I want to vote.' You believe that? I bring him up here, give him a job, place to live… now he wants to vote. How's that for gratitude?"
John Ed Johnson had come of age back when men were men and women were cheerleaders and Mexicans did the hard work and kept their mouths shut.
"Life was simple back then," John Ed said. "Oil, cattle, and Mexicans doing what they were told and didn't expect us to educate their kids or make them citizens."
Bode knew better than to get John Ed started on Mexicans, so he diverted the conversation.
"You riding out with us in the morning?"
"Nope. Man my age, I sleep in. You and Jim Bob have fun. Me and Mandy, we'll have a long breakfast." He winked. "You know, I never lost my testosterone. Most men my age, they need a pill to get it up, if they can. Not me. You?"
" Me? Hell, no."
Bode said it with such conviction he almost believed himself.
"I still wake up every day with a hard-on," John Ed said, "which is why I sleep in… usually with Rosita. I enjoy sex in the morning."
John Ed Johnson had a reputation for being a horny old bastard, chasing skirts all across Texas and plowing through four wives. He was currently between wives if not skirts. But being a self-made billionaire-and not in computer code that no one understood, but in cattle and oil that everyone understood-he had achieved that larger-than-life legendary Texan status, the kind of man kids would read about in their Texas history class one day, like LBJ and H.L. Hunt. A Texas politician could never have a better friend-if you always said yes-or a worse enemy-if you ever said no. You did not want to be on his bad side. As Jim Bob said, "That's a dark place indeed." John Ed had contributed $20 million to each of Bode's last two campaigns-there was no limit on campaign contributions by individuals in Texas-and Bode was waiting on his $20 million check for the current campaign. John Ed Johnson had put Bode Bonner in the Governor's Mansion.