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to end the lie, to tell her of his obsession to stop the real drug runner. To agree with her in every way. To make her see him as a man of honor.
    Choking back the truth, he shrugged, knowing his cover had to remain top priority. “A man like me,” he said slowly, carefully, “is nothing but the smallest fish. A small fish does little harm.” He gazed across the morning haze to the spot where he knew Cervantes’s house sat. He couldn’t see it, but every sumptuous carpet and ornate piece of furniture and thin crystal glass stood out in sharp relief in his mind’s eye. “You should worry about the sharks, Olivia. Sharks prey on the poor and the addicted, and they grow wealthier and wealthier with each passing year. They are not struggling to feed their families. They are killing your high school kids to make themselves rich. You, of all people, should know how much damage a shark can do.”
    “You try to excuse your actions by telling me you’re only a small dealer, insignificant in the wave of drugs that comes across the border.” It made her angry that he would dig for any excuse at all. “But you are a part of it—you and whoever your partner is. You are still in the wrong.”
    Her tone infuriated him. She was right, of course. He’d spent his entire adult life dedicating himself to stopping the flow of drugs between the two countries—but to hear her condemn him made him crazy.
    “What do you know about right and wrong, princesa? ” he said, putting every ounce of disdain he could manage into his words. “I don’t imagine you have had to make any real decisions about right and wrong since the day you were born.”
    “Are you kidding me?” Olivia jumped up, her aching, oozing feet forgotten. “Do you think because you were born poor and I wasn’t that you have had all the moral decisions to make?”
    He nodded slowly, enraging her further. She poked him in the chest, ignored his wince of pain. “Well, I have news for you, amigo, ” she said. “I make moral decisions at every turn. Do I marry to please my parents and give them the grandchildren my culture and my hormones demand, or do I make my own way in a man’s world? Do I work myself to death, or let my father’s money help me slide through? Do I hold onto my cultural heritage with both hands, or bleed into the Anglo life to make things easier on myself? At every turn I have chosen the right path. How dare you accuse me of not knowing the difference between right and wrong simply because you have chosen poorly.”
    Her chest was heaving, her wild, messy hair was tossed back by the freshening wind. She looked every inch the princess he accused her of being.
    Rafe leaned into the finger that had been poking him in the chest. “Do you really think, Dr. Galpas,” he asked blandly, “that these decisions you have made are the same as the decision whether or not to starve to death? You are very brave to make them, of course,” he said expansively, ironically, “but have you had to decide whether stealing or smuggling or eluding the border guards is better or worse than watching your children cry themselves to sleep at night because they are hungry or cold or merely hopeless?”
    “I am not ignorant of the world’s problems,” she said.
    He shook his head. “I think you are,” he said slowly. “I think, Doctor, you are ignorant of many things.”

Chapter 4
    “I thought I might find you here.”
    The voice came from the rocks at Olivia’s back, and they both pivoted to face it. Rafe’s gun was in his hand before Olivia could think to be afraid—or relieved—that one of Cervantes’s men had found them.
    But the voice just laughed. “A little late for caution now, Rafael.”
    Out of the corner of her eye, Olivia saw Rafael relax and lower the gun to his side.
    A man stepped out from behind the rocks. “You two were arguing so loud, I could have taken you out any time in the past ten minutes.”
    “How long have you been there?”