Chapter 26
A hundred or so miles north of Oaxaca province and city, it began to rain. The tension in the invisible string that Eslin had followed all day through the neck chain began to slacken. She said nothing about it, though, just leaned toward Gage on her left arm with her legs tucked sideways in the seat and the fingers of her right hand wrapped tightly around the gold-plated horseshoe nail.
Until the rain started it had lain warm against her skin; now it felt like a sliver of ice between her thumb and first finger. Eslin knew it wasn’t a good sign.
In the backseat Ramón slept, snoring lightly. Hoping to God that she’d be able to sleep again tonight, and that the horseshoe nail would be warm in the morning, Eslin moved as close to Gage as the gearshift allowed and tried not to think about the time.
At seven-eighteen Gage wound the Bug out of the lush green highlands in low gear. There were no streetlamps, and beyond the sweep of the headlights the fringes of the highway loomed black as the mouth of hell.
From the brochures she’d collected in Mexico City, Eslin knew that Oaxaca, the ancient capital of the Toltecs and the Zapotecs before them, had always been more Indian than Spanish. The capital was still very much a provincial town. Not so provincial, Eslin hoped, that she wouldn’t be able to enjoy a hot bath and a comfortable bed. Preferably with Gage.
That thought made her feel guilty. At the moment only God knew where Ethan was, and here she sat thinking about satisfying her carnal desires. She tried, but couldn’t push them out of her mind. What was it Doc said? Something about human beings instinctively seeking intimacy in stressful situations—
“Oh, my God!” Eslin gasped, whirling wide eyed toward Gage. “I didn’t call Doc last night. Did you call your mother?”
“No.” Gage frowned guiltily.
“Oh, hell,” Eslin moaned. “I’ll bet they’re going crazy.”
“Considering our—or rather Ethan’s—present circumstances,” Gage suggested, “maybe it’s best if we don’t call.”
“No news,” Eslin murmured, “is good news.”
As Gage steered the Bug through the dimly lit outskirts of the city, she wondered what in hell she’d say to Doc. Certainly he’d agree that, “fast one” though it was, she’d had no choice but to remain in Mexico. Still, there was Ramón, and she’d promised Doc that she’d take the boy home if the situation grew dangerous. The nightmare flickered through her mind and relieved her a little. Ramón’s had not been one of the disembodied heads in the lily-dotted pool.
Gage stopped at the first motel they came to, a cluster of stucco cottages built around a main hacienda with twin banks of tall French windows overlooking a stone-balustraded terrace. There was no vacancy sign, but he crossed his fingers at Eslin as he shouldered his door open.
“Wish me luck,” he said, flipping up the collar of his polo shirt as he ran through the drizzle toward the office.
“Ramón.” Eslin leaned between the seats and gently rocked his blue-jeaned knee. “Ramón, we’re here.”
Groaning, he stirred awake.
“I was having the weirdest dream,” he said with a yawn.
Don’t ask her little voice advised, but Eslin couldn’t help herself.
“What about?”
Curiosity killed the cat, her little voice reminded her, then fell silent.
“I was riding a race in Roundtree silks,” Ramón told her sleepily.
“Well, you know what they say.” Eslin leaned between the seats again and smiled at him. “Sometimes dreams come true.”
“Not this one.” Ramón looked out the side window. “I was up on Ganylad.”
A slow crawl of uneasiness—she refused to call it foreboding—iced up Eslin’s spine. Another bad sign.
The dome light came on as Gage opened the driver’s door and got in behind the wheel. Wet and drooping over his forehead, his hair and even his eyelashes were jeweled with raindrops. He was smiling at her, not glaring at her as he had when he’d found her in Ganymede’s stall. Still her heart caught between her ribs and she suddenly wanted to cry.
“We have a two-bedroom, two-bath cottage.” He grinned as he shut the door and the light went out.
Grateful for the obscurity that hid her teary eyes as Gage drove toward the cottages, Eslin glanced at Ramón’s face, dimly lit in the rearview mirror by the backwash of the flood-lamps lighting the edge of the road. He was still staring blankly out the partly fogged window. She doubted that he’d even heard what Gage had said, yet she felt relieved that they’d all be more or less together tonight.
Carriage lights illuminated the stone-and-stucco front of cottage Number Fourteen. As she and Ramón got out of the VW and she tucked the brochures in her shoulder bag, Eslin noted that the cottage was about the same size as her house in Santa Barbara. As they helped Gage with the luggage, she suddenly wanted desperately to be home.
A yen for familiar things and surroundings was another of Doc’s classic responses to stress. Or fear.
The pang she felt subsided as Gage unlocked the cottage door and flipped on a wall switch. In the threshold Eslin paused, looking back over her shoulder at the milky ground fog drifting around the bloom-laden flower beds, the rain-soaked trees glimmering silver in the artificially lit night. The shadows were there, hanging in wait somewhere beyond the electric glow. She couldn’t see them but she could feel them as she followed Gage into the cottage.
Carved Spanish furniture, upholstered in rusty earth tones, ringed a stone fireplace with a rough-hewn mantle that held pewter plates and candlesticks. Tall amber lamps stood on the dark tables. The heavy glass windows were latticed, the pinpoint reflections of the lamps sliding from pane to pane to follow Eslin as she crossed the polished tile floor and opened a worm-eaten door on her right. She found the wall switch, flipped it, and stepped into a bedroom with a mahogany four-poster bed, a dressing table, two small chests, and an upholstered wing chair and ottoman. She put her suitcase down and walked to a pair of French doors that were latticed like the windows.
A dozen reflections of Gage leaning on one shoulder in the bedroom doorway looked back at her in the glass. She turned around and smiled at him.
“Ramón says he isn’t hungry, how about you?”
Eslin shook her head as he came toward her. He slipped his hands around her waist, eased her gently against him, and smiled.
“I put my grip on the other single bed in his room and he just sort of looked at me funny. I think he’s onto us.”
She tried to smile at him but didn’t quite make it. Just the corners of her mouth trembled as she wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek on his chest.
“What is it, Eslin?” Gage slid his arm up around her shoulders. “Is your headache back?”
“No.” She sighed heavily. “I’m just tired.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“Mmmm.” She sighed again, then backed out of his arms. “I’m going to call Doc,” she said, moving toward the white Continental phone on the nightstand.
“Okay.” Knowing that something besides fatigue was bothering her, he watched her sit down on the edge of the four-poster and lift the receiver. “Once Ramón’s finished, I’m going to take a shower.” He left the room and closed the door behind him.
It took a good two minutes for the call to Roundtree to go through, but when Josefina answered Eslin didn’t identify herself, just asked to speak to Doc. He came almost immediately to the phone, his greeting, “Fitzsimmons here,” bringing tears to her eyes.
“Doc, this is Eslin, but if Rachel’s there call me Kelly.”
“She’s upstairs dressing for dinner, I’m in the study. What’s happening?”
“Nothing good,” Eslin began, and as quickly as she could told him everything that had happened since they’d arrived in Mexico City.
“Jesus Holy Christ!” he exclaimed.
“We’re close, Doc, I know we are, but I don’t know how close. The neck chain’s gone cold on me.”
�
��The what?”
“The horseshoe nail of Ganymede’s that Gage wears. He gave it to me. Don’t ask me how, but it led me this far.”
“Fascinating.”
“Doc!”
“Sorry. The FBI here didn’t tell me Ethan had been kidnapped. All they told me was that their man there—this Faber you met in Mexico City—had arranged to have Alberto detained in Puebla. So you needn’t worry about him—you’ve got enough to worry about with Byrne and his three other cousins.”
That was an understatement. The line clicked. Static, Eslin thought, as she listened to Doc sigh.
“How’s Ramón?”
“Behaving himself,” she said, the fingers of her right hand tangling themselves unconsciously around the neck chain at her throat. “He’s beginning to suspect that there’s more going on here than ransoming Ganymede, but I don’t think he’s put it all together yet.”
“What do you think your chances are,” Doc asked, “of talking Ramón onto a plane headed for Santa Barbara?”
“Slim and none,” Gage said morosely. “Excuse me for butting in—”
“No, no,” Doc assured him. “I’m glad you did. At the moment I don’t know what I’ll tell your mother, but I certainly won’t tell her any of this.”
“Good. I don’t want her to know, and I’m sure Ethan wouldn’t either. What would you do if you were me?”
“Well…” Doc sighed.
“The deadline’s midnight tomorrow, I suppose Eslin told you that?”
“Ummm,” Doc murmured.
“Here’s what I’m thinking. Start the search at first light, and as soon as Eslin locates Ethan, jump on the radio to the FBI. Or, if she hasn’t found him by, say, noon or one o’clock, holler for the FBI anyway.”
Doc sighed again, thinking. In the background Eslin heard a faint, muted roar. From the bathroom, she guessed, probably the shower.
“Sounds good,” Doc agreed quietly. “I don’t suppose you could use a little moral support, could you?”
“We sure as hell could,” Gage said with feeling. “Too bad you don’t have a visa.”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Ethan and I discussed the possibility that reinforcements might be needed. I went straight to the consulate’s office from the airstrip.”
“Let me guess.” Gage said dryly. “As soon as Bob dropped us in Monterrey, he flew back to Roundtree.”
“The jet’s fueled and ready to go,” Doc replied smoothly. “All Bob has to do is file a flight plan. We can be on our way in an hour, two tops.”
“Good,” Gage said, relieved. “How are you going to explain your sudden departure to my mother?”
“I’m more worried about slipping the FBI. They’ve been camped out here since you left, but they should believe that I have a patient in crisis in San Francisco.”
“Good—gotta go,” Gage said hurriedly. “Ramón’s out of the shower.”
The line clicked again.
“Eslin?”
“Yes, Doc?”
“Feel any better knowing the cavalry’s about to come charging over the hill?”
“Yes,” she lied, “I’m very relieved.”
“You don’t sound it.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“Get some sleep, and don’t worry, the FBI is there and they’re very discreet. Tell Gage I’ll call back with our ETA once I’ve spoken with Bob.”
“All right.”
“Eslin?”
“Yes, Doc?”
“We’ll get Ethan out.”
“I know we will, I’m not in the least concerned. See you—soon, I hope.”
“Very soon. G’night, Eslin.”
“Good night, Doc.”
Leaning forward on the bed, she replaced the receiver in its cradle and sat staring at her white knuckles clenched around it. Not once had Gage or Doc mentioned Ganymede. Valuable as he was, he’d been forgotten. As she untangled her fingers from the neck chain, she wondered if that was why the horseshoe nail had gone cold. She closed her fingers around it tentatively and felt her heart start to pound again. The nail was still frigid.
“He’s alive,” Gage said quietly. “I’d know if he wasn’t.”
Startled by the close proximity of Gage’s voice, Eslin jumped, the horseshoe nail slipping out of her fingers as she looked up at him leaning in the doorway. He felt a stab in his solar plexus as the horseshoe nail thudded against her breastbone.
“Ganymede was the bait, wasn’t he? The lure to get you and Ethan down here.”
Gage looked over his shoulder at Ramón. He stood a foot or two behind him, still dressed and dry as bone.
“You little sneak. You turned the shower on and listened through the door, didn’t you?”
He didn’t deny it, he just looked at Gage defiantly.
“How else was I s’posed to find out what’s going on around here?”
“You could have asked.”
“I did. In Mexico City, remember?”
Gage remembered, but didn’t say anything.
“This is all because of Johnny Byrne isn’t it?” Ramón stepped into the wide doorway and leaned against the molding opposite Gage. “Marco thinks you’re responsible for his father’s death, doesn’t he?”
Gage nodded and looked at the floor. His back was turned to Eslin but she could still see the heavy black aura hanging around him.
“But that’s dumb, man. You and Ethan didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“True.” Gage looked up at him slowly. “But our father’s dead.”
“ ‘The sins of the fathers,’ “ Eslin murmured, “ ‘are to be laid upon the children.’ “
She hadn’t thought he’d heard her, but he turned toward her suddenly, his back and his shoulders stiff. For no more than half a heartbeat his aura pulsed a vivid, bloody red, then the color subsided and the hollow blackness seeped across the few feet of tile floor separating them and made her shiver.
“Why did he just take Ethan?” Ramón asked. “Why not you too? And what do Eslin and I have to do with Johnny Byrne?”
“I don’t know,” Gage said, and shook his head.
“Maybe all he wants is a life for a life, and it doesn’t matter whose life it is,” Eslin suggested quietly. “Then again, Ethan is the oldest, and traditionally the eldest child inherits money, property, and in Marco’s twisted mind, the responsibility he’s laid on the Roundtree family for his father’s death.”
There was more, but watching Gage’s face turn as gray as his eyes, Eslin kept it to herself. The lines she’d first noticed around his mouth and eyes in Mexico City settled heavily into place. She’d seen lines like those on her Granny Rose’s face, and in the reflection of her own after her mother’s funeral.
“Listen for the phone, will you, Eslin?” Gage asked. “I really am going to take a shower now.”
He smiled at her, a feeble effort at best, and ruffled Ramón’s hair as he walked away. The boy made a face that disappeared when Gage did, and Eslin sat on the side of the bed watching his mouth purse thoughtfully as he unconsciously swiped his glossy bangs off his forehead. At the faint, echoing sound of a door closing, his gaze shifted across the room to meet hers.
“It’s worse for him, isn’t it?” he asked. “Worse ‘cause Byrne didn’t take him.”
Blinking at the tears that had suddenly filled her eyes, Eslin tried to answer but couldn’t. All she could do was nod, bite her lip, and remember the anguish, the futility of seeing someone you loved slipping away from you and knowing there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to stop it.
“Where do you and I fit into this?”
With her index fingers Eslin brushed her wet eyelashes and looked up at Ramón. He’d slid his hands in the pockets of his jeans and crossed one ankle over the other.
“I don’t know about you,” she told him truthfully, “but I assume Marco hatched this game of hide-and-seek once Kroenke told him Ethan had consulted a clairvoyant.”
“He doesn’t think you
can find Ethan, does he?”
“I don’t think he’s certain.”
“Maybe he wants you to find him. Did you ever think of that?”
No, Eslin hadn’t. The shoe on the other foot made as much—if not more—sense.
“It’s possible, very possible,” she murmured thoughtfully, then smiled at Ramón. “Maybe you should be a detective instead of a jockey.”
He shrugged, flushed, and ducked his head, then quickly crossed the room and dropped onto the side of the bed beside her.
“Nobody, not even my mother, thinks I know about this,” he told her, his voice low and urgent. “They all think I’m just a kid. I am, but I’m not stupid.
“About two weeks after Ganymede disappeared, just right after the FBI guys figured out that Paul Johnson was Marco Byrne, some old guy came to see Rachel. I was sneaking out of the house as he was coming in, I almost bumped into him. He didn’t see me, or if he did, it didn’t register. He looked real worried, and kinda familiar. I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t remember where or when, you know?”
Twisting sideways on the bed, Eslin nodded.
“Well, shit, I was in big trouble and I knew it. See, I’m s’posed to help my mother serve and stuff when they have company, so I knew I’d catch hell when she couldn’t find me. I’d slipped out through the sun-room, had nearly walked into this guy coming through the gate, and once he’d gone inside I ran like hell around the house and snuck back into the atrium. The sun-room doors were open, and Rachel and Ethan and Gage and this old guy were in there. So was my mother pouring coffee. I could see them, so I figured they could see me if I made a dash for the dining room, so I hid in the plants behind the pool.
“I could hear their voices, but I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, just a word or two now and then. The old guy was doing most of the talking, and his voice was real faint, kinda like he was sick or something.”
“What did you hear?” Eslin asked, feeling some of Ramón’s agitation seeping into her.
“Just words.” His eyes had drifted away from hers, but shifted suddenly back to her face. “And names—Ganymede, Edward—that’s Ethan and Gage’s father—”
Lynn Michaels Page 22
