their own law because the banks want their profits. Just as the gringos want his products. Oh, the appetite they have for the marijuana and the heroin and the cocaine! Insatiable. And extremely profitable. Enrique's empire had grossed over $5.5 billion U.S. last year and was on track to gross $6 billion this year. His personal net worth now exceeded $7 billion; he had billions invested in U.S. real estate, stocks, and bonds. He ranked one hundred thirty- four on the Forbes list of billionaires. Twenty-four years ago, he had started with nothing but a Harvard degree, and now he had an empire that spanned the globe. Markets in North America, South America, and now even to Europe he transported his products via a fleet of 747s-there was no radar over the Atlantic Ocean-something no other cartel had even imagined. By land, by sea, by air, even by tunnels two miles long he transported his products north, always one step ahead of the gringos. Innovation, that was the key to staying ahead of the competition and foreign authorities. Enrique de la Garza possessed vision-he saw what others could not even imagine. And now, at forty-six years of age, he had it all-wealth, power, respect, the admiration of his people, good children-everything a man could desire… everything except the love of a woman. His eyes returned to the image frozen on the television.
A woman like her.
He often found himself longing for a woman again. For love. For romance. His wife had always said he was a hopeless romantic, and perhaps he was. But he had been without romance since her death five years before. Five years he had mourned for his beloved Liliana. He still loved her; he would always love her. But he wanted to love and be loved again, to feel a woman close to him-not a woman who wanted his money; those women he could have any day-but a woman who wanted him, as Liliana had.
Perhaps a woman like the governor's wife.
He stepped to the full-length mirror on the wall and examined himself. He was well-mannered and well- groomed, educated and sophisticated, still lean and fit from his beisbol days, but… gray streaks now marred his jet-black hair and goatee and made him look old. As old as he often felt. Older than his years. When he watched American baseball on the cable channels, always the advertisements were for the erectile dysfunction drugs and hair color for men. Enrique had no need for Viagra, not yet, but… He ran his fingers through his hair and stroked his goatee just as the door opened and Hector appeared.
'?Jefe! '
Enrique raised an open hand.
'Hector, do you think I should use that 'Just for Men'?'
'Just for what?'
'The hair color. To wash away the gray.'
'Oh.'
Hector was bald.
'Uh, I do not know, jefe.'
'Do you think she would find me more attractive?'
'Who?'
Enrique gestured at the television screen.
'The governor's wife.'
'Oh, yes. Definitely.'
'You are not just saying that?'
'No, no.'
'Hector, I need a woman-'
'I will go get you one.'
'No, not that kind of woman. A wife. A mother for Carmelita.'
It was very difficult these days to be a single parent with all the bad influences on children-the Internet, cable TV, violent video games, iPhones-he had caught Carmelita texting a boy at her school the other night. She was only ten! He wished their mother were still alive. She knew how to raise children. And how to be firm. Sweet Carmelita, she knew how to wrap her father around her little finger.
'Make a note for Hilda. Next time she comes to cut my hair, have her bring that hair color.'
' Si.'
'Now what is it that you need, Hector?'
'?Jefe!?Esto es urgente! Your son needs you!'
Enrique de la Garza-known to the rest of the world as El Diablo-turned from the mirror and took one last long look at the woman's image on the television screen.
'She is a very beautiful woman, no? I should like very much to meet her one day, the governor's wife.'
FIVE MONTHS BEFORE
TEN
The governor's wife stifled a yawn.
The heat and her county fair lunch of fried chicken, fried okra, fried ice cream, fried Twinkies, fried butter- every four years the governor's wife had to prove to the voters that she was still a country girl who ate country food-had conspired to make her drowsy. But she fought her heavy eyelids. It would not do her husband's campaign any good for the cameras to catch her yawning during his speech. Standing at the podium a few feet away, Governor Bode Bonner bellowed sound bites in his booming campaign voice.
'We got boys marrying boys and girls marrying girls and kids having kids and Mexicans having Americans and…'
Of course, it was difficult not to yawn when she had heard the same speech a hundred times, maybe more. She knew every crowd-pleasing phrase, every pause for effect, every applause line… and she hated every word of it.
She wanted to scream.
She always put her mind somewhere else during his speeches, tried not to listen to her husband's words and hoped he didn't believe them, that he was just an actor on a stage reciting his lines. But was he? Had he come to believe his own speeches? She feared he had. That he had bought into his own ambition.
He wanted to be president.
A faint hint of smoke from the wildfires out west and a stronger scent of farm animals filled the stock show arena at the Lubbock County Fairgrounds where that very morning the governor's wife had presented the prize for the Grand Champion Bull. The governor now stood before ten thousand registered Republicans gazing up at him like a flock of sheep, waving little American flags, and eating up his red-meat stump speech, the one in which he railed against the federal government, Washington, deficits, taxes, global warming, gay marriage, ObamaCare, liberals, and illegal Mexican immigrants.
'What part of illegal don't they understand? They don't need a path to citizenship-they need a path to the border!'
Amarillo on Tuesday, Midland on Wednesday, and Lubbock on Thursday. A campaign swing through the rural counties of West Texas-the Bible Belt of Texas. The brightest red counties in a bright red state. Tea party country. Bode Bonner country. Cattle ranches, cotton farms, and oil wells. Where the people loved their governor and hated their government-except the government that gave them farm and ranch subsidies and tax breaks for oil. They liked that part of government. But her husband was a politician, so he told them what they wanted to hear.
'They want to pick your doctor and indoctrinate your kids… They took Christ out of Christmas and prayers out of school…'
And she now wondered, as she often wondered when out on the campaign trail: How did she get from a cattle ranch in Comfort to a stump speech in Lubbock?
The first day of April had Lindsay Bonner longing for home. Not the Governor's Mansion-that had never been home to her-but their ranch in the Hill Country north of San Antonio. Her family had moved to Texas when she was five and Comfort when she was fifteen. At twenty-two, she had married Bode Bonner and moved to his family's five-thousand-acre ranch. That had been her home until eight years ago when they moved into the Mansion. She missed the ranch. She missed the small hacienda-style house with the courtyard and the flowers and the shade
