Alex studied the man he’d just learned was going to be his new partner. He didn’t need a partner, didn’t want one, and certainly had not requested one! Perhaps he could make this a very short term pairing. He’d done it before.
Manuel Ortega stood about five-foot-ten, built husky and solid like most of his tribe, ancient desert dwellers who had been here before the Spaniards landed in the new world. The older members tended to run to fat and often fell prey to diabetes, Alex knew. Likely, their metabolism had never adapted to the rich diet the Europeans had brought to them. Fragments of facts he’d learned in anthropology classes skidded through his mind in no particular order. He never forgot anything, but at times, his brain didn’t keep all the data neatly arranged.
Despite Alex’s normal
