The sun was well over the mountain ridges by the time they rode north out of Mexico City. Paco was quiet for a while, reading his partner’s mood from long experience. Ever since he’d met Ginny Brandon, Steve Morgan had changed. He’d always been a man who attracted women, but he could take them or leave them, when and how he pleased. Only with Ginny things had been different.

In a way, Paco understood. There was a fiery quality to her that matched Steve’s stubborn nature, even conquered him at times. He’d seen him do things for Ginny that once he would have sworn Steve Morgan would never do for anyone, man or woman.

But for Ginny, he had. He’d turned himself in to the French for her—and nearly died for it. Flogged to within an inch of his life, then relegated to the mines to die a slow, anonymous death, he had still survived it.

It hadn’t been easy for Ginny, either. Not in those tempestuous times when Juaristas were still fighting the French, and Mexico seethed with revolution. Betrayed and taken hostage, she had suffered terribly. It was a miracle they had both survived.

Steve reined his mount to a halt in the shadow beneath a rocky overhang that jutted beside the trail, and pulled the cork on his water pouch, squirting a stream into his mouth before he offered it to Paco. It was quiet, the only sound the wind and muted clink of curb chains and creaking saddle leather. The smell of baking rock thickened the air.

“Bishop doesn’t like this.” Paco handed him back the water pouch, his eyes thinned against the glare of the sun beating down and warming the damp earth. “He seems to think this could endanger the shaky relationship between the United States and Spain, for some reason.”

“I don’t think Luna has that kind of influence, though he’d like to pretend he does.”

“How does he figure in all this? Luna, I mean. What does he have to gain by taking Ginny?”

“Revenge. Guess you’d call it that.” Steve shrugged. “I met him a long time ago in Italy, when I was there with ’Cesca. Luna fell for her in a big way. She was mad at me, decided that I needed to be taught a lesson, but Luna took her flirtation seriously. He viewed me as a rival for her affections. When he became too insistent and a problem for her, I had to convince him she didn’t want to see him again.”

“So now he is taking your woman as revenge?”

“Ginny wouldn’t go with him willingly.”

Paco hesitated. “Bishop said she had met him before, in Ojinaga.”

“How would he know that?” Astounded, Steve swore under his breath. “Damn Bishop, if he knew all the time that Luna meant to use her to get at Brandon—Where is he?”