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her a kiss and walked into the kitchen, reappearing with his own mug a few minutes later. He took a taste before speaking, the rocking chair creaking as he sat down beside her and pushed off.
    “Just saw Dan off to the ranch,” he said conversationally. “He’s got a bigwig from Houston looking to bag something he can brag about.”
    Daniel Covington was a hunting guide, and he had been her high school sweetheart. Whenever he came to town, her grandfather’s place was always his first stop. After a tractor had rolled over Dan’s father on the family ranch, Silas had taken it upon himself to mentor the fatherless boy, and they’d been close ever since. Rose suspected she and Dan had dated more as an offshoot of his relationship with Silas than anything else.
    He’d followed her to San Antonio and become a cop a year after she did. He was too late. She had already met Santos by then. A risky sting operation and a bullet to the knee had ended Dan’s career.
    She tensed, expecting her grandfather to say she needed to reschedule the dinner she’d skipped with Dan when Santos showed up. She’d only agreed to go in the first place to placate her grandfather and possibly put the topic to bed once and for all, but she had no intention of calling Dan now. She’d almost rather face the kid with the gun again.
    “How’s he doing?” she forced herself to ask. “Every time I see him, he seems angrier than the time before. If you think I’m rescheduling that dinner I had to cancel, don’t hold your breath.”
    “I’d be unhappy if I was him, too,” Silas said mildly. “God knows he’s got plenty of reasons. You broke up with him, you’re a cop, and he can’t be—”
    “That’s enough,” she said, holding up her hands in defeat. “I suspect you didn’t come over to chit-chat about Dan.”
    “That’s true.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I heard you had some company t’other day. Two different kinds, as a matter of fact.”
    Silas knew everything. Sometimes he even knew it before it happened. So much for Santos’s deep cover, she thought ruefully.
    “The one who tried to help bothered you more than the one with the gun.” His voice held no uncertainty.
    “And just what makes you think that?”
    “You can handle a bad guy, but Timothy Santos has always sent you ’round the bend.”
    “He’s a bad guy, too. At least in my book.”
    “If that’s the case, your book is missing a few pages.”
    Her fingers went tight on her coffee mug. Silas had had plenty of unkind words to say about Santos after he’d broken her heart, but basically he liked Santos because they were two of a kind. Her grandfather’s tenure as sheriff of Rio County had lasted for more than twenty years. Quick with his gun and even quicker with his handcuffs, her grandfather had seen it all. Anyone he caught breaking the law found themselves in the county jail, at least for one night. In his opinion, which wasn’t humble at all, arrests came first; the courts handled whatever followed.
    “You might change your mind when you hear what he had to say about your daughter,” she retorted. “He thinks Mother might know a drug lord who has something to do with a missing—”
    “Informant.”
    His information net was extensive, but even she didn’t think it was this wide. “How did you—?”
    He waved off her question. “Are you going to help him find your mother?”
    “He’s gone undercover as a biker. The setup is crazy insane, and helping him would put the entire department in danger—”
    “That doesn’t answer my question.”
    “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Don’t you care that Mom might get hurt in all this?”
    Silas stopped his rocking chair, dropping his boot to the faded boards of the porch with a thunk . “I care about your mother more than you’ll ever understand. And I’m not at all happy about Santos going after her. But what if he’s telling you the truth? You took an oath to