“Do you...do you think she’s dead, Kaye?”
“I don’t know.” I remembered the light, the snow, her blue hands... but was she real, or the product of an exhausted, traumatized brain?
“The floods, the devastation, the deaths. The Front Range is your home and it’s hurting. Yet you chose to leave it behind for me. Why?”
This I could answer. “Simple. I love you. There was no choice but to go with you. You’re okay with this?”
He gave a mirthless laugh. Something dark and sad possessed him. “Nothing is okay about this. But I swear, I will do anything to keep you safe.”
“I’d rather you promised I’ll never have to chase your back.”
The intense expression lifted, and once again his face was careful, blank. He threaded his fingers through mine. “I love you, so much, and I’m afraid you won’t see my love for what it is. Are you with me?”
I searched his profile, his jaw working overly hard to maintain control, and I did indeed struggle to understand. Still, I answered, “I’m with you.”
We claimed a booth at a Tex-Mex joint that had me grabbing the hand sanitizer, and spread out plates of loaded eggs and peppers, tortillas, bacon—all things Samuel wasn’t supposed to eat, but that was shelved for the time being. I swirled my fork through a mess of eggs and cheese, watched the prongs until my eyes blurred.
“Hey.” Samuel’s voice was kind. “You still with me?”
“Yes.” I straightened my slouching back and made an effort to eat.
“I need you to hear this. When we go through customs, keep your answers short and unadorned. We’re visiting family on the outskirts of Ciudad Victoria. We plan to return in one week. We aren’t carrying any merchandise.”
“Do you think you’ll have a difficult time?”
“I’ve crossed the border seven times in the past three months. I’d be disappointed if they didn’t search every crevice of my person.”
That earned a smile. “Disappointed, huh?”
“They have gentle hands at the Port of Entry.”
I choked on my water. “Jacques H. Cousteau, don’t let Hector hear you say that or—”
Samuel’s eyes softened as he watched my face crumple. He slid into the booth next to me and tucked me under his arm.
Long minutes passed. Soon my mind caught up with my fragile emotional state, and I felt the curiosity of a dozen eyes. I peered at the booth across from us. A girl whispered in her mother’s ear and the woman instructed the girl not to stare. Wiping my eyes with a napkin, I pulled myself together.
“Let’s get on the road. We have somewhere we need to be.”
Chapter 21
Layback
A strenuous climbing technique in which the hands and feet oppose each other as one pulls and the other pushes, creating leverage to maneuver up a difficult rock face.
“You didn’t pack distilled water? You’re going to get sick!”
“Relax, Molly. We’ll buy it when we get there.”
“That includes brushing your teeth. And don’t open your mouth in the shower.”
“I tell you we’re going to find Samuel’s missing sister with cartel connections, and you’re worried about drinking water?”
Her huff was so loud, she nearly cracked my phone speaker. “Well, I already advised you to call the Mexican FBI—whatever they’re called—and you shot me down with the whole ‘they’ve done all they’re going to’ B.S. What else am I supposed to tell you?”
“I just wanted you to know, and to apologize. I’m a horrible business partner.”
“No more horrible than a business partner who moves to Salmon’s Butt, Alaska for a boy. Oh wait, that was me.” We chuckled half-heartedly. “Besides, the floods seriously set back most of our clients. Who has money to spend on marketing when they’re gutting storefronts and tearing out moldy insulation? The next couple of years are going to be really rough—like, layoffs rough. It might be time to tell a few of the underlings to start job hunting.”
Guilt and shame filled my gut. I was responsible for these people, and here I was, bailing on them. “Molly, sorry isn’t enough.”
She sighed. “This would be happening whether you were here or not, okay? I’ve. Got. This! Me, and Ash the Intern. Just... please come home alive. We can’t take another hit, and if we lost you and Samuel…” Her words became teary. “Don’t be stupid for a woman you don’t know.”
The distance between me and Molly was more than miles, but if anyone could understand the foolishness of abandoning your home, your family, and your business to follow a man into the unknown, it was Molly. To the world, her risk hadn’t paid off. But I knew in her heart, it had.
That’s why I hadn’t called Danita first… I left that chore to Samuel.
“How was it?” I asked as he slid behind the wheel.
“Bad. I don’t think I should repeat the things Dani called me. Or you, for that matter.”
I took one of the water bottles he offered and cracked it open.
“She’s worried out of her mind.”
“I get it. But we had to tell them. If something were to happen…”
“They need to know.”
“Tamaulipas is not Cancun,” he said. I raised an eyebrow. “But it would be patronizing to explain this to you.”
I wouldn’t have known Tamaulipas from Cancun anyway, save for a distinct lack of beachfront resorts and spring-breakers. I’d never before seen a lick of Mexico. I’d imagined what it would be like to cross this foreign country, to have this missing puzzle piece, to complete this landscape of brightly colored contrasts that was Samuel Caulfield Cabral: familiar and mysterious, sensible and neurotic, compassionate and bitter. This land was fraught with strangeness. Like home, old brick and iron mixed with sleek modern buildings, but everything was blindingly bright, colorful…even the grayest of stone. Parts of Tamaulipas could have been a corner in the Hispanic neighborhood of Lyons. Spanish words plastered on billboards and above ramshackle grocery stores were a language of love to my ears. Even the mountains were southern sisters to my beloved Rockies.
There was a disproportionate number of VW Beetles on Tamaulipas roadways. The memory of a childhood car game, Slug Bug, made me smile. Whenever one of us spotted a Bug on the road, we’d shout, “Slug Bug!” and pound each other in the arm. Danita had a particularly bruising punch, with her boney fingers and pent up aggression.
In a moment of inspiration, I thumped Samuel.
“Hey!”
“Slug Bug.”
He rubbed his shoulder. “Seriously? You can’t play Slug Bug in Mexico. Half the population drives a VW.”
“Best time to play.”
“Oh, little girl, you’re going to rue this day. Slug Bug.” He walloped me in the arm, just as a white Beetle cruised up the opposite lane.
Admittedly, resurrecting Slug Bug was not the best idea.
Farms slid past in the early morning light, miles of rippling sorghum and maize. Samuel tuned into a Latin pop station, then classical, then finally turned off the radio. As we drew closer to Ciudad Victoria, nervous ticks resurfaced. Bouncing knees, drumming fingers. When we stopped for gas and I returned from the station with two coffees, I witnessed his hand tremble as he replaced the gas cap.
We eased into the Sierra Madre Oriental foothills just shy of noon. These mountains were more like mounds than the jagged peaks of home, smoothed over by green foliage. Cinder block homes and rusted roofs jutted out of the hillsides. Old cars lined street curbs or sat in border gardens of fruit trees and giant red blooms. The torrential rains of Hurricanes Manuel and Ingrid had seeped into underground streams, and now the land was as lush as a sailor on shore leave. Soon we were on the outskirts of Ciudad Victoria. Samuel turned onto a gravel side street and parked the behemoth.
“Just a quick stop. Stay in the car please.”
“Where are we?”
“Tía Mariángel’s place in town. I need to borrow something from my uncle, and then we�
��ll book it to La Vereda.” He rubbed his jaw, sensing my confusion and, I admit, hurt. “It’s not that I don’t want to bring you in to the familia, Kaye. But...”
“This isn’t a social visit,” I finished, forgiving. “I also know relationships are strained, so do what you need to do. I’ll wait.”
He closed the door. I watched him jog up to the concrete house and enter the garden. A curtain covering one of the front windows fluttered and I thought Mariángel peered around it. I waved and it dropped back into place.
Club music blared over a radio from the home across the street. A wooden fence was overgrown with vines and flowers, but through the gaps I saw two girls practicing cartwheels. Next to the fence, a mongrel dog lay in the shade, tongue hanging out of his mouth when he wasn’t scratching his hide, his haunches. A normal neighborhood on a quiet, sunny day.
A familiar face exited a gas station a block up and strode across the street. I bolted upright. He was an older man, garish purple Aloha shirt flapping over his gut, sunglasses pushed high on the bridge of his nose. Uncle Javier. He scratched his whiskers and glanced my way, then froze. I ducked below the dash, hoping he hadn’t spotted me in this sore-thumb-of-a lime monstrosity with Colorado license plates. When I peeked over the dash a minute later, he was gone. But, parked as we were outside the Cabrals’ bungalow, our cover was busted.
I jumped as the car door opened and Samuel slid in.
“Good to go?” I asked.
His hand hovered over the ignition, and I wondered if he’d just prefer to remain in the quiet of the car, on the safe side of the street.
“Guess who just moonwalked out of that gas station?” I told him about my sighting, camouflaged as Javier was in a motif of palms and hibiscus.
Tiny lines formed between his brows. “It sounds as if he wasn’t expecting to see you, which means he has a different reason for being in the neighborhood.”
“Cartel business?”
“Possibly. Or a residence. Either way, someone is watching my aunt and uncle’s house.”
“And if he has connections in La Vereda…”
“They know we’re here.”
Frickety-frick. “You still think the woman you spoke to was your sister, that this isn’t a set-up?”
No response, just his old fallback: a judiciously blank face.
“Why’d we stop, anyway?” We pulled into traffic and cruised past shopping centers, restaurants, hotels.
Finally, he answered. “I borrowed Tío Tomás’ gun.”
Blood drained. A search of his torso produced a gun tucked in his waistband, beneath his shirt. “Aren’t guns illegal in Mexico?”
“When I told you this was going to be dangerous, I didn’t mean ‘driving over the speed limit’ dangerous. And believe me, if it comes down to us or them, I won’t hesitate to pull that trigger.”
My breaths became shorter. How the heck had I—naïve, backcountry Aspen Kaye— ended up playing peek-a-boo with a drug cartel? Stuff like this only happened to people on Forensic Crimes episodes.
This wasn’t one of Samuel’s Nixie adventures, a thrilling showdown between water sprites and demons. Rivers didn’t roar at my command. Snow didn’t crash down mountainsides at the clap of my hands, and winds didn’t swirl and gust with my every exhale. I’d felt my frailty on the snowfield of Longs Peak, as torrents of white swept away all signs of life.
Hector had been a scholar at reading rivers. Every dip and eddy spoke to him in his native language, and in the end, it hadn’t been his to conquer.
Samuel was not infallible, either. He may have a genius brain and a working knowledge of Mexico’s underbelly, but in real life, it only took one bullet.
None of us held the keys to Hades. In the end, we would all die. Some earlier, some later, and if I went earlier fighting for those I loved...I could live with it. Well, not live with it.
My gasping breaths slowed and peace settled into my body, my mind, my heart. All was in agreement.
As we traveled southwest, city limits gave way to country slopes covered in green and sand, giant cacti, and spiky plants that might have been agave. The mountains loomed blue and hazy before us. Not too far.
Samuel pointed out a drive that veered off the main road. “The Cabral family’s hacienda. It’s more of a weekend home for family gatherings. Utility and maintenance expenses are too high to justify permanent residence, once my abuelo died and the farming operation ceased. I imagine it will be uninhabitable in a decade or two.” His tone held disapproval. “Last I heard, it was falling into disrepair, but the family would rather see it topple to the ground than accept my money. Se creen mucho.”
I craned my neck to see where Alonso had spent his childhood summers, but the house was obscured by unruly mango trees and overgrown, flowering bushes, so I only glimpsed its white walls and arches before we sped by, one final, resigned glance in the rearview mirror.
“Can we stop on the way back from La Vereda?”
That pinched, uneasy look returned. “Maybe.”
Minutes later, Samuel steered into an old gas station, its pavement crumbled by thousands of tires like the dredges of a potato chip sack. “Pit stop,” he mumbled and headed toward the faded “baño” sign. I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes.
My mother tromped into my head with her sturdy rubber boots and colorful handkerchiefs, many of them once having belonged to Gran. Was that how Mom kept her near? Gran’s cancer scarves? If I died, what would my mother choose to hold onto? And my father.
Dad wasn’t one to hold onto anything or anyone, but I hoped he might make an exception. I took out my phone and started to dial, but paused.
Samuel startled me as he opened the door. “You should call them, Kaye. Don’t worry about international.”
“It’s not that. I just don’t know what to say. Anything I would tell them, I already did when I was in the hospital. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Sure. You don’t horde your ‘I love yous’ until it’s too late.”
If that proverbial red flag had only fluttered before, now it whipped around like crazy.
“Do you think we’re driving into a trap?” The sun was sinking over the southwestern sky as we left the main highway and bumped along a deeply rutted road.
“I don’t know. I’m flying blind here, firecracker, and a part of me hates that I wasn’t strong enough to make you stay home. The other part is elated you’re here. Frankly, it’s terrifying.”
Soon we turned off of that road onto an even sketchier path up a steep hill that flirted with mountain status. At the base was a shuttered building, its wood slats long stripped of paint, now little more than a termite buffet.
“The old market. Farmers, rural folk would buy and sell at the road crossing decades ago. Papá and my father—Antonio—would stop on their way up to La Vereda. But it was too isolated, unincorporated as it was, to be safe. I believe the owners had enough and moved into the village.”
Humidity clung to my skin, leaving me feeling clammy and dirty, so unlike the thin, dry air of Colorado. Overgrown foliage swiped the sides of the car with every hairpin turn. As we traveled higher, thick undergrowth gave way to sparse shrubs and blonde, crackled rock. A boxlike house jutted out of the hill, followed by another, and around the bend was a cluster of homes, some blue, some peach, others not painted at all. A cinder block building with a cross painted on the wall sat on the corner of two intersecting streets. A handful of businesses followed it up the hill—a grocery store that was little more than a shack, a municipal building, perhaps a cantina.
“Now what?”
Samuel rubbed tired eyes beneath his sunglasses. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the locals.”
We passed the few storefronts, homes, people walking on the streets, sweeping driveways or hammering rebar for home construction. All met us with closed faces and few words. I wondered if Alonso would have been a better companion for Samuel.
“They don’t trust me much,” I whispered.
“They don’t trust outsiders much, but can you blame them? Outsiders have lured away their young people. This way.”
He took my hand and led me into the neighborhood, where an ancient man and woman sat at a table. The couple’s skin was as brown and weathered as the bark of the pine-oak forest that sheltered the village. Between them was a gorgeous potted plant, straining at its ceramic confines. The last of its fragile white blossoms spilled over the edge of the table and fluttered to the paving stones. I plucked one from the ground and inhaled. Citrus?
“Orange blossom. It will go there in the spring.” The woman pointed to a small dirt patch by the door. She spoke in a Spanish so regional, I struggled to translate. Her eyes were red and clouded with cataracts, but when she met my gaze, I saw sharp intelligence.
While her fingers deftly threaded a needle, the paperback in the man’s hand shook as he turned a page. Not just any book—one of Samuel’s nixie stories.
“Kaye, may I introduce Señor y Señora Rodriguez. They are the grandparents of Daniel.”
Startled, I wiped a clammy hand and held it out in greeting, stumbling through an expression of sympathy. They turned to Samuel.
“Señor Cabral, I am honored to see you again,” said the old man.
“All is ready?”
Señor Rodriguez gestured to the house. “It is secure here. He is up the street, at the mercado. Guard your back, young man.”
Wait, ‘he’? Not ‘she’?
Samuel grasped the man’s hand and pressed his cheek to the woman’s face with deference. “Gracias Señor, Señora.”
Her eyes met mine again. Her hard gaze was that of a hawk’s, hovering over a ditch as it waited for mice to surface from the tallgrass. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
Something wasn’t right. Dread filled me as I watched Samuel push open the door of a dark, windowless home.
It’s windowless...the other houses have windows. I grabbed my husband’s sleeve and held firm.
“Samuel, don’t go in there. Something doesn’t feel right.”
Fourteeners Page 35
