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  "I'm fine," she said, pulling away. "I'd love to get something, though. We could talk about Rosalita and a new case I've got that I think I'm going to need your help on."

  "You like fried oysters?" he asked.

  "Sure."

  "Come on. Follow me. Del Frisco's has the best."

  Casey shut down her computer, packed her notes into her briefcase, and followed him out into the back lot. She noticed for the first time the slight bow in his muscular legs. When he turned to say something, she blushed and looked away. He stood there, waiting for her to get into the Mercedes and start the engine before he nodded and climbed into his pickup. She followed him onto the Tollway and they headed north almost to the Belt Line.

  Casey handed her keys to a valet.

  "You know the hubcaps is gone on this, right?" the valet said.

  "I try not to be too flashy," she said.

  "Just 'cause I don't want anyone saying nothing."

  "Try to keep it away from that Bentley over there," she said, angling her head toward the lot and the enormous car with its sparkling grill. "I don't want those wide doors chipping my paint when some P. Diddy guy swings it open."

  Casey left the valet pinching his lip and stepped toward the door Jose held open for her.

  "Very fancy," she said, looking around at the dark wood, the candles, and the linen tablecloths.

  "I try to spend as much as I can, so if something happens to me my wife won't get a dime."

  "You have a daughter, don't you?"

  "And a life insurance trust in her name," he said, following Casey inside, "so if I do die, she'll be all set. The trustee is my mom and you know she won't let the ex see a penny of it. Cash, cars, my watch."

  He rattled the stainless steel Submariner.

  "Anything liquid," he said, "and even though it goes to my girl, she'll have her mitts all over it."

  Jose had called ahead for a table and the hostess took them to it right away.

  "I'm sorry. You don't want to hear crap like that," he said, leaning over his open menu. "That's no way to start a da-a dinner."

  "This isn't a date, is it?" Casey said. "Is that what you were going to say?"

  "I like working with you," he said. "I don't want to screw that up."

  "You think I can afford to fire you?"

  Jose rubbed his chin and said, "I think you'd fire yourself if you got the itch."

  "Can I ask you a strange question?"

  "Would you mind a strange answer?"

  "Do men ever get a rash from sex?"

  "Down in Juarez you're apt to, but I don't frequent those kinds of places."

  "Not that kind of rash. I mean, like breaking out in hives on your chest."

  "Can I wait until I've had a couple oysters?"

  "I'm being serious," Casey said. "I had a client tell me her husband always breaks out in a rash. That's how she knows he hasn't been sleeping with his boss's wife."

  "This sounds more like my paying clients," he said.

  "I don't buy it," Casey said, ignoring his smirk. "Some women just don't want to know. You heard about Senator Chase and that hunting accident?"

  "It was all over. Everywhere."

  "This part wasn't."

  Casey told him the story, as much as she knew. Jose's dark eyebrows dipped farther and farther toward his nose as she went on. When the champagne came, the waiter popped the cork and she stopped talking.

  The waiter filled their glasses. Jose raised his and said, "I didn't mean to be goofy about it. Cheers, anyway."

  "I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't gotten that kind of reaction from Norman Case," she said before taking a sip and nodding at her glass. "That's good. He's supposed to be a straight shooter."

  "You think Chase killed this guy over the wife?"

  "If it was an accident," Casey said, "why the rush to get Isodora out of the country?"

  "Embarrassment?" Jose said. "Isn't Chase big on sending every Mexican without a swimming pool back across the border?"

  "He didn't support the Immigration Bill, but who did?"

  "It's how he didn't support it."

  "I didn't follow it that close," Casey said.

  "I did," Jose said, sipping his champagne. "I ever tell you I got a degree in poli-sci from Angelo State? Anyway, that man's a xenophobe."

  "But these people lived on his ranch."

  "Funny how they do that," Jose said, forcing a smile, "use these people like slaves until someone catches them. Then they say they didn't know and start calling them thieves and talk about breaking into the country."

  "How can we find out?" Casey asked.

  "It'll be hard to prove that it wasn't an accident," Jose said. "They said the guy jumped right up in front of him. No one else was there."

  "Pretend the wife was with Elijandro," Casey said, eyeing the plate of deep-fried oysters the waiter set down. "Go at it like that and how do you prove it wasn't an accident?"

  "You dig in," Jose said, stabbing an oyster and drowning it in hot sauce. "You ask questions. You start from the start. Eventually work your way around to the wife, but I'd save that. First you got the arrest report. Autopsy. Visit the scene. Even if it is in the Triangulo de Bermudas."

  "Even I speak that Spanish," Casey said. "The Bermuda Triangle's in the Caribbean."

  "We have our own here," Jose said. "The Mexicans around here are real superstitious about that corner of the county. There's a chief of police who don't like Mexicans and supposedly people have disappeared going through there."

  "What do you mean? Arrested? Kidnapped?"

  Jose shrugged. "Don't know, but when I was doing some undercover work right before I left the force there were these two bangers who almost went to war over a missing container full of people. One of the guys ran the route and the other's cousins were in the thing and it just disappeared."

  "Maybe they didn't make it across the border," Casey said. "Or they got lost in the desert someplace."

  "Right," Jose said, swallowing his oyster and holding his fork in the air. "Only the truck driver made a call from just outside Wilmer, so they made it across. That was the last time anyone had a line on the truck. Twenty people. Poof. Vanished.

  "Don't worry though," he said with a grin.

  "Why not?"

  "'Cause I'm not superstitious."

  CHAPTER 16

  ON MONDAY MORNING, CASEY WAITED FOR ISODORA ON THE fourth floor, in the central hallway by the immigration courtrooms. The court schedule was posted on a thick column in the middle of the hall, and a small crowd, composed mostly of family members, clustered around it. The din of Spanish-speaking voices echoed up and down the sterile hallway with a rhythm and life that reminded Casey of something caged. She detected only two other attorneys, both men, who stood out in their suits and ties. She pressed through the crowd and rolled her eyes when she saw that Isodora was the second-from-the-last case in courtroom number three.

  A few minutes later, Maria appeared, out of breath and explaining that an accident had made her bus late.

  "You'll get her out, Ms. Jordan?" she asked.

  "It depends on what the judge had for breakfast," Casey said.

  "Breakfast?"

  "It's just a saying," Casey said, eyeing a commotion by the elevators. "It means these judges can pretty much do what they want. Sometimes it depends on their mood. You brought the money?"

  "Everything I could get," she said, pulling an envelope fat with faded small bills from her purse. "Almost eleven hundred."

  The elevators at the far end of the hall disgorged the prisoners, who marched forward in orange jumpsuits, handcuffed and chained together like a troop from death row. Casey twisted her lips in disgust, walking to meet the advancing prisoners. She scanned the bunch for Isodora and finally found her, the last of the female prisoners before the men came led by a four-hundred-pound Latino with tattoos and a greasy ponytail. The pretty young Isodora hung her head, and when she did look up, her big brown eyes sagged with despair.
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  "Will I get my baby, Miss Casey?" she asked.

  "I'm going to try, Isodora," Casey said, falling in alongside her client on their way to the courtroom. "What can you tell me about your husband's brother?"

  "Teuch?"

  "You know him, then."

  Isodora shrugged. "He's nothing like my husband."

  "He's a gang member?"

  "He's a King. The Latin Kings," Isodora said, shuffling along under the clinking of chains.

  "And you and your husband aren't in business with him in any way?" Casey asked as they stopped just outside the courtroom.

  Isodora's eyebrows shot up. "Never. They didn't speak."

  Casey raised a finger into the air and said, "You say it to the judge, just like that."

  The court had no wood paneling or carved balustrades. It was a big empty room filled up with rows of simple metal benches facing a dais with a desk flanked by the American and Texas flags. Behind the desk, a plastic ICE seal had been screwed into the wall. On the floor, to either side of the dais, rested a table for the government and another for the defense, each with three metal chairs. The ICE agent sat down at the government table. On the defense side, a young Hispanic interpreter already waited.

  The prisoners were shuttled into the front row and the agents escorting them clanked and rattled the chains as they separated them one from another, the women on one side and the men on the other. Casey found a seat in the back with Maria among the family members and the two other lawyers.

  The judge came in through a side door, followed by a sharply dressed young woman wearing her hair in a tight dark bun. Casey knew that she would be the ICE assistant chief counsel.

  The judge, a thin, elderly man in a robe that had faded from black to dark green, peered down his nose, adjusting his glasses as he studied his morning slate of cases. With very little interest, the judge clicked on a small tape recorder, set it on his desk, and began calling the prisoners to the defense table to give an accounting of themselves. None of them spoke English and the judge directed his attention to the young man sitting beside them, the interpreter, glancing only occasionally at the prisoners and the family members appearing on their behalf.

  During this process, the young woman with the tight hair would chirp respectfully at the judge from the other side of the room about the government's position. The two of them, despite their differences in age and appearance, worked together like cogs in a machine, grinding slowly through the roomful of prisoners. While the judge showed no emotion, Casey took it as a good sign that many of the prisoners were released to their friends and relatives, even though some-like the enormous man wearing the ponytail-were left to sit and scowl in their handcuffs.

  When the judge called Isodora's name, Casey stood and approached the front of the room to address the court beside her client.

  "May it please the court, Your Honor," Casey said, using her best courtroom etiquette, "I'd like to ask for a hearing to seek adjustment of status for my client. In the meantime, I'd like to respectfully ask the court to release my client to her own recognizance."

  "Without bail?" the judge asked, leafing through the file without looking up at her.

  "My client has undergone extreme hardship, Your Honor," Casey said. "Her husband was just killed in a hunting accident. You may have heard of the-"

  "You don't think that has anything to do with this?" the judge asked, glaring down at her with a furrowed brow, his mouth a paper cut.

  "No, Your Honor," Casey said. "I just wanted you to know the circumstances. My client has a child, who is a United States citizen who is currently in foster care."

  "Ms. Jordan," the judge said. "Do you need me to extend to you the courtesy of explaining the law that you're supposed to already know? You've been in this court before. You know how I feel about this whole anchor baby nonsense. I won't have it."

  "The little girl is only two, Your Honor," Casey said in a pleading tone. "She needs her mother and I think I could show the court extreme hardship that would convince it to adjust her undocumented status."

  The ICE lawyer leaned toward the judge from the corner of her table and said something in a low tone, pointing to the file in front of him. The judge put his head down and began to read, moving his lips as he did.

  "Well, it's your lucky day," he said, looking up. "Even under the circumstances."

  The judge looked back down and selected a paper from the file, which he studied as he spoke. "The government is willing to offer Ms. Torres a voluntary departure."

  "Circumstances?" Casey said.

  The judge scowled at her. "Your client has links to organized crime, Ms. Jordan. She's a Homeland Security person of interest and the state is giving her a generous offer."

  "She has nothing to do with her brother-in-law, Your Honor. I'd like you to hear her on that subject."

  "At a minimum, they have the same last name," he said. "As you can see, we have a lot on the docket, Ms. Jordan."

  "What's our alternative, Your Honor? Can I get a hearing?"

  The judge raised his eyebrows and glanced over at the young woman lawyer from ICE before holding the paper up at Casey. "Of course you can have your hearing. That's your right, isn't it? Probably by the end of the week. That will end with an order of deportation, unless I'm a fool, and I'm not. After that, you can appeal to the Immigration Board in writing. And, right now, those rulings are running about eighteen months. In the meantime, under the circumstances, I can't see your client being reunited with her child."

  "She met the brother-in-law only twice in her life," Casey said.

  "You can argue that at your hearing," the judge said, looking at the next file, "not here."

  "Your Honor," Casey said, raising her voice, "the court can't keep a mother and her child apart for that amount of time without doing irreparable harm."

  "The court isn't keeping them apart, Ms. Jordan," said the judge, scrunching up his wizened face. "The offer of a voluntary deportation is extremely generous. Maybe you don't know that."

  Casey's cheeks burned. She turned to Isodora just in time to see two tears spill from the corners of her eyes.

  "My baby, please," she said.

  "If we go along, they're going to put you on the next plane out of here," Casey said in a low tone. "Maybe today."

  "To Mexico?" she asked.

  Casey nodded.

  "But Paquita is American, Miss Casey."

  "I know," Casey said. "But she can't help you stay here until she's twenty-one. And if we take the hearing and they order your deportation, you can't get back in legally, ever."

  "I just want my baby."

  "Maybe I can work on some kind of visa," Casey said, trying to overcome the sinking feeling that nothing would bring this woman back. "There are other ways to get you back. Maybe a green card."

  Isodora clasped her hands together, looked down, and nodded yes.

  "Ms. Jordan," the judge said, "you may be getting paid by the hour, but the court isn't."

  "We'll take the voluntary deportation, Your Honor," Casey said.

  The ICE lawyer looked up at the judge, beaming.

  CHAPTER 17

  WHAT HAPPENED?" MARIA ASKED IN THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE the courtroom.

  "We did the best we could," Casey said, watching Isodora as she trudged away down the hall behind the fat man while the three other prisoners she'd come in with sauntered alongside them.

  "They didn't let her talk," Maria said.

  "They didn't stop her," Casey said. "They offered her a deal and she took it. She wants to be with her baby, Maria. You can't blame her for that."

  "Everyone I know," Maria said, "they say she will be let go until her hearing. Now she must leave? This is not right."

  "Maybe," Casey said.

  "I know this."

  "I'm going to try and find out if it's not right," Casey said. "Excuse me."

  Casey broke off from Maria and strode down a side hall, working her way through a small maze toward the ICE
counsel offices. When Casey turned the corner past the judges' offices, she actually caught sight of the back of the ICE lawyer's tight hair bun up ahead.

  Casey took off at a jog, catching the young lawyer just as she reached for the handle to the door of the ICE counsel offices.

  "I wanted to thank you," Casey said with her broadest smile.

  The lawyer gazed without commitment.

  "For offering up the voluntary," Casey said.

  "It's the best thing for the child," she said.

  "Look, we don't want to embarrass the senator, either," Casey said. "I just wanted you to share that with everyone. That's never been my or my client's intent."

  The lawyer stammered for a moment before she raised her eyebrows and said, "I'm sorry?"

  "Having undocumented workers there, on his ranch," Casey said. "I'm sure he didn't know. Some people don't understand how hard it is to find good help."

  The lawyer blinked and bit down on her lower lip.

  "I know we can't really talk about it," Casey said, pressing the tips of her fingers into the young woman's shoulder. "But, unofficially, just pass the word, so they don't worry."

  "The staff at his liaison office is great," the lawyer said. "I'm sure they'll be glad to hear it."

  CHAPTER 18

  JOSe DIDN'T ANSWER HIS CELL PHONE. CASEY TRIED PAGING HIM, but that didn't work, either. She went into the reception area and asked Stacy if she'd heard from him.

  "Since when does he answer to me?" Stacy asked. "You're the one having dinners with him."

  "How'd you know about dinner?" Casey asked, her cheeks warming.

  "I got my sources," Stacy said.

  Casey glanced at a young woman sitting by the window, waiting for her appointment, and angled her head, signaling Stacy into her office for some privacy.

  "Don't worry," Stacy said. "She can't understand you. So how was it?"

  "First time I ever had fried oysters," Casey said, glancing at the young woman.

  "Not the food," Stacy said, "Jose. How was it?"