She shook her head and interrupted him. “Hector, we’re neighbors who are friendly, but we aren’t friends. The most important thing, and what I keep telling you, is that I’m not your enemy. I don’t wish you, your family, or your business ill.” She leaned forward and tapped the tips of her fingers together between her legs. “I’ve heard what happened, and no one I do business with had anything to do with that.”

He nodded and sighed dramatically. “I know that, but someone is responsible.”

“And you don’t know who?” That wasn’t the answer she was thinking he’d admit. With the amount of money he must’ve offered here and at home, something should’ve shaken loose by now.

“This is a move to take me out,” Hector admitted, shrugging. “That too might make you happy, but ask yourself something.” His Spanish accent slipped more than she thought he meant it to.

“What’s that?” She smiled again and he did as well. They’d never be anything more than this, but she had to admit Hector possessed an infinite amount of charm. “Better the devil I know?”

“Yes, because all my money has found only one name. My problem is I don’t know who he is, but maybe you do.”

“Who is it?” If their businesses or multitude of problems overlapped, it was better to have as much information as possible.

“Jerome Rhodes.”

It was a name she knew. The man who’d been Gracelia Luis’s lover was a mystery, but he seemed so inconsequential. She remembered him pacing and smoking on the levee like a caged rat, and she’d figured he was concerned because he was in over his head. He hadn’t been there when Gracelia was taken, and he’d disappeared after the dust had settled on whatever Gracelia’s plan had been, one they’d never fully know since it had failed in spectacular fashion. It didn’t have anything to do with them, so she hadn’t worried about it at the time. Her only concern with the whole thing was finding Juan Luis and turning his mother over to Carlos Luis.

“Gracelia Luis brought him with her when she came back to exact her revenge with her son. That’s who’s done this to you?” Just what she needed, another piece on her chess board to worry about—because Jerome Rhodes was a name she’d heard before. Had he really been in on plotting her downfall all along? It had occurred to her that Rhodes might be Anthony Curtis until she laid eyes on him. She doubted the FBI agent would have done what Juan had to hide his identity. No matter what Shelby and the others said, there was no way Anthony wasn’t working undercover.

“His is the only name I hear whenever I ask anything.”

“I don’t know who he is.”