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McDonald, relief workers who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and are now seeking shelter with El Patrón.” The two middle-aged women gave her shy smiles. “Then we have Ramon and Luis, two of El Patrón’s guards.” Two more teenagers in T-shirts and Nikes and armaments stared at her stonily. “And last but not least, Senora Soledad Alicia Maria Mercedes Lambert de Ferrara y Morales. Samuel’s wife.”
    Maddy’s full attention was caught now. The sulky beauty at the far end of the table probably wasn’t as old as she was, and the look in her glittering black eyes was intense dislike. She stared at Maddy, not even sacrificing a regal incline of her intricate coiffure to welcome the interloper into the fold. The stream of Spanish she directed at Jake was rapid and rich with invective, and of all the words Maddy could make out only
gringa
and
puta
, meaning bitch or whore. Maddy had little doubt who Soledad was referring to.
    Jake ignored her. “And this is Miss Allison Henderson of the United States.”
    “Not according to her,” Richard pointed out cheerfully.
    “No, according to her she is Maddy Lambert, daughter to El Patrón.”
    The simple words were like a bombshell. Soledad’s expression darkened to one of intense rage, the two older ladies looked both pleased and doubtful, and Doc merely laughed.
    “I didn’t think Sam had a daughter,” he said with an almost indiscernible slur. “I’ve been with him almost ten years and he’s never mentioned one.”
    “There was the son, of course,” Richard mused, staringat her curiously. “I remember when he died. Suicide, wasn’t it?”
    Maddy stood there and accepted the blows stoically enough. Stephen had been dead for seven years; surely by now it would stop hurting.
    “No, it was a drug overdose,” Soledad said in her charmingly accented Spanish. “And I am certain that if Samuel had a daughter he would have mentioned her at the time. You are not my husband’s daughter,
señorita
. So then, who are you?”
    Jake watched all this with unblinking concentration, and Maddy wondered dismally why she would have thought he’d come to her rescue. “Her passport says she’s Allison Henderson. So that’s who I expect she is. Carlos said she’d been seen with Ortega down in La Mensa. She must be part of one of his grandiose schemes.”
    “And you let her in?” Soledad shrieked. “She’ll probably murder us in our beds. She’s part of Ortega’s gray-shirt death squad, and you welcome her with open arms. ….”
    “I wouldn’t have called it open arms, would you, Allison?” he mocked. “Besides, she’s unarmed. I checked.”
    “How thoroughly did you check?” Soledad said in a shrill voice. “She should have a body search. I, for one, do not intend—”
    “Enough,
mi alma
,” he drawled, the endearment an insult. “She can do no harm as long as she is watched. And I, for one, would prefer to have her within reach, rather than out in the hills meeting with her gray-shirt confederates.”
    “Are you certain the young lady isn’t Mr. Lambert’s daughter?” Mary Margaret or Margaret Mary murmured hesitantly.
    Jake’s sudden gentle politeness was a painful revelation. Maddy had seen that gentleness years ago, had been the recipient of it in another life. “Nothing is certain in this life, Mary,” he replied softly. “And take comfort in the fact that Allison is a lot safer here than anywhere else in San Pablo. At least here I can protect her.”
    “You don’t think she’ll send messages to General Ortega?” one of the young soldiers demanded.
    “If she’s working with them I have little doubt that she’ll try,” Jake said. “It will be up to us to make sure that she doesn’t.”
    Maddy was beginning to get a little tired of standing there with the bunch of them discussing her as if she wasn’t in the cavernous room. She felt almost faint with hunger, and her rib was aching abominably. Without further