Fearless by Diana Palmer Page A

didn’t have any gang activity.
    “This is Glory.” Consuelo introduced her son to the younger woman.
    “Hi,” he said, smiling. “Nice to meet you.”
    “Same here,” Glory replied, and tried to smile normally.
    “Where’s the boss?” he asked Consuelo.
    “Out in the warehouse,” she told him. “You be nice,” she added firmly.
    “I’m always nice,” he scoffed. “He’ll love me. You just wait and see!”
    He winked at his mother, gave Glory a brief glance and went out the back door whistling.
    “Isn’t he handsome?” Consuelo asked. “He looks just as his father did, at that age.”
    Glory had been curious about Consuelo’s husband. She never mentioned him.
    “Is his father still alive?” she asked delicately.
    Consuelo grimaced. “He’s in prison,” she said bluntly, watching for Glory’s reaction. “They said he was smuggling drugs across the border. It was all lies, but we had no money for a good defense attorney, so he went to prison. I write to him, but he’s in California. It’s a long way, and expensive even to take the bus there.” She sighed. “He’s a good man. He said the police had him mixed up with a man he knew, but he got arrested and charged just the same.”
    Glory sympathized, but she wasn’t convinced. The state had to have a certain level of evidence before it proceeded to charge anyone. No prosecutor wanted to waste taxpayer money pursuing a case he couldn’t win.
    “Marco looks just like him,” Consuelo continued, smiling as she washed more canning jars and lids. “But he trusts people too much. He was arrested last month in Houston and charged with trespassing,” she added curtly. “Stupid cops! He was just lost, driving around a strange neighborhood, and they assumed he was involved in a drive-by shooting, can you imagine?”
    Drive-by shootings and gang wars over drug turf were commonplace in Glory’s world, but she didn’t dare mention it. As for the police mistaking a lost motorist for a drive-by shooter, that was unlikely. It was obvious that Consuelo thought her son was the center of the universe. It would do no good to point out that an innocent boy wouldn’t be likely to sport gang paraphernalia and tattoos. It was fairly obvious that Consuelo didn’t have a clue as to her son’s true nature.
    “He’s very good-looking,” Glory said, feigning innocence.
    “Yes,” Consuelo said, smiling absently. “Just like his father.”
    Glory had lost track of the good-looking muscular boys who’d passed through her office on their way to prison. The whole culture of low-income teens seemed to glorify doing time, as if it were a status symbol for young men. She recalled a social crusader who went into the poor sections of town trying to convince gang members to give up their lives of crime and become useful members of society. In other words, give up the thousands of dollars they made running drugs or manufacturing them to work behind a counter in a fast-food store for minimum wage.
    Someone who had never seen the agonizing poverty that produced criminals had no idea how difficult it was to break out of the mold. She’d lost track of the number of poor mothers with absent husbands trying to raise multiple children alone on a minimum wage salary, often with health problems as well. The older children had to help take care of the younger ones. Frustrated by their home lives, when they lacked attention there, they found it in a gang. There were so many gangs. Many were international. Each had its own colors, tattoos, hand signals and methods of wearing clothing to express their particular affiliations publicly. Most police departments had at least one officer whose specialty was the gang culture. Glory knew the basics, because she’d had to prosecute gang members for drug peddling, homicides, burglaries and other felonies. She never stopped feeling rage at the conditions that produced the crime.
    She glanced at Consuelo. “Is Marco your only child?”