Lynn Michaels

by The Dreaming Pool

  “Old bandit,” he muttered under his breath.

  Riding the sorrel mare walking placidly beside his chestnut gelding, Eslin smiled sympathetically. The old Indian hadn’t understood the word haggle; he had recognized a rico americano when he saw one. He’d firmly stated his price, one hundred and fifty American dollars per horse for the remainder of the day, another fifty to park the Bug in his lean-to—all up front, in cash—then had folded his arms across his chest and said no more.

  “Hope the car’s still there when we get back.” Gage shifted his weight onto his hands and the worn leather reins draped over the pommel, and grimaced at the uncomfortable fit of the old saddle. “Hope I can still walk too.”

  Eslin didn’t say anything, just smiled vaguely and shaded her eyes with her left hand as she watched Ramón lead the way on the frisky bay colt he rode toward the trail, which the old man had told him led into the mountains. Squinting through the hair fluttering across her eyes, Eslin cupped her palm tighter against her forehead, tipped back her head, and looked up at the green, rock-studded hills rising above the windbent tops of the pine and fir trees. The thin, dry clouds that had drifted high and white above Monte Alban were frayed and gray around the edges now and drooping lower all the time.

  Eleven twenty-seven. Twelve and a half hours till midnight.

  An icy chill slid up her back, and she glanced sideways at Gage. He’d drawn the neck chain out of his shirt and wrapped his fingers around the horseshoe nail. He wasn’t looking at her, but at the mountains.

  “Will you know the waterfall when you see it?”

  “Sure. Once we get close enough, I can probably lead you right to it.”

  He let go of the neck chain and looked at her.

  “And from there?”

  “From there I don’t know.”

  He’d been afraid of that. She smiled at him apologetically. He smiled back and shrugged a little.

  Near the fringe of the trees fifteen or so yards ahead of them, Ramón reined the bay colt, twisted in his saddle, and waved at them. With a click of his tongue against his cheek and a quick, jerky lift on the reins, Gage goaded the chestnut gelding into a canter. Snorting and laying back her ears at the gentle tap of Eslin’s heels, the sorrel mare broke sulkily out of her walk into a slow, heavy-footed trot.

  “Some trail.” Gage cocked a dubious eyebrow at the narrow ribbon of beaten earth winding to the right around the flank of the trees.

  “Only one I see.” Ramón shrugged, leaning forward to rub his curled knuckles against the colt’s neck.

  “Oh, well.” He sighed heavily and reined the chestnut around him. “I better go first, I suppose.”

  Like the cattle or goats that had made it, the track meandered across weedy stretches of ground that grew steadily rockier and steeper. The sun slid in and out of the clouds building and darkening overhead, alternately throwing long four-legged shadows across the low, stony foothills, then disappearing in a cool lift of wind that smelled heavily of rain.

  At a split in the track Gage drew his gelding to a halt and Eslin reined the sorrel mare beside the chestnut.

  “Anyone care to flip a coin?” Gage frowned at the scrub-studded ground falling away in front of them.

  The right fork twisted higher into the foothills, the left wound for forty or so yards along the lip of the hill they’d stopped on, then angled down the slope past a jutting, naked flank of gray stone. Granite, Eslin thought, watching a misty green veil of rain drift across the rock face toward a tree-dotted valley below where black and white goats and red and brown cattle grazed. The colors stirred the memory of the nightmare in her mind, tugged at her, and drew her toward the left side of the fork.

  “We don’t need a coin,” Eslin told him as she heeled the mare around to follow the track along the crest of the hill. “We go this way.”

  The descent was steeper than it had looked from the top, and the rain overtook them halfway down the slope. Some forty minutes later the sorrel mare slid on loose shale down the last foot or two of trail. The bay colt and the chestnut gelding jumped it behind her, snorting and shaking their heads, the jingle of their metal bits and the creak of stirrups and leather raising the heads of one or two of the cows feeding close by.

  “It’s warming up,” Gage said, his fingers stroking the horseshoe nail. “I’ll ride the point.”

  At a right angle they cut across the meadow and paused again on its opposite side. Another pebbly track wandered along the base of a soaring green escarpment, and Eslin felt her heartbeat quicken as she gazed at the mist jeweling and dripping off the thick, lush foliage.

  “This is definitely the right way,” she said, clicking her tongue at the mare and prodding her onto the path.

  A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold slithered up Gage’s back. Turning partway round in his saddle, he leaned his left hand on the creaking cantle and looked behind him. Even though he didn’t see anyone there, he knew they weren’t alone on the trail. The frigid horseshoe nail told him so as he rubbed it between his fingers, turned around in his saddle, and caught a glimpse of Eslin glancing back at him. He couldn’t see her face, just the shadow of her profile and the sharp kick in the flanks she gave the mare.

  The sorrel snorted and sprang forward. Behind her the bay colt broke into a trot that jerked Ramón out of his slump. The boy shook his wet hair out of his face and shot a brief what’s-the-rush look of surprise at Gage over his shoulder as the old Indian’s three horses bolted down the track.

  The thick foliage hanging off the cliff face brushed the back of Gage’s neck. Loose shale and rocks spilled over the edge of the narrow track. It was wide enough to be considered safe, he supposed, and though the scrub-grown drop-off on his left looked gradual, they couldn’t get the hell off the trail fast enough to suit him.

  Twice more he looked over his shoulder, saw no one, and once more checked the neck chain. The nail was cold as dry ice and burned his fingers. He let go of it, clenched in his left hand the loose rein he’d given the chestnut, then heaved a giant sigh of relief as the gelding rounded a curve and the track widened and opened into a rocky, enclosed valley.

  “What’s up?” Eslin asked, her cheeks flushed, her hair windblown around her face as she turned the sorrel mare toward him.

  “I think we’re being followed,” Gage told her shortly.

  “FBI?” Ramón asked hopefully, twisting in his saddle to look at him as the bay danced in a half-circle.

  “Doubtful.” Gage frowned at the sheer rock walls around them. They were really in a canyon, not a valley. “I suggest running, since there doesn’t seem to be much place to hide.”

  Nodding, Eslin heeled the sorrel around and sent her at a gallop across the dirt-and-stone-floored canyon. The chestnut slid twice behind her and the bay colt. Treacherous as the going was, it would’ve been absolutely lethal for a shod horse, and Gage thanked God repeatedly as they crossed the canyon that the gelding wore no shoes.

  Over the blood pounding in his ears he didn’t hear the muted roar of the waterfall until the chestnut passed through a cleft in the rain-streaked granite walls and sat back on his haunches to avoid a nose-to-tail collision with the sorrel mare. He saw it then over the top of Eslin’s head, a smooth, almost glassy slide of water falling over the rim of sheer rock walls. The track entered this smaller canyon, then made a sharp left turn and slithered out again through a funnel in the rock thirty or so yards to the left of the narrow gap that had led them into it.

  “This is it.” Eslin looked over her shoulder at him. “This is the place I dreamed about.”

  Chapter 29

  As cataracts went, the waterfall wasn’t impressive, the drop no more than thirty or forty feet. The water frothed where it spilled into the pool, then slid smoothly away between the mossy rocks. There the water looked deep and cold and so green it was almost black. The granite walls, which were reflected on the surface of the pool, should have amplified the sound of the water, but they didn’t. The c
anyon was eerily quiet, the gush of the falls no louder in Eslin’s ears than the muted spray of the shower against the blue ceramic tiles in her bathroom.

  Still she shivered, and her teeth clenched as the nightmare replayed itself inside her head. The marble stallion—no, Ganymede—reared above the pool in the atrium at Roundtree, his flanks dripping blood, the disembodied heads staring with glassy eyes, their mouths opened and twisted with horror—

  “Hurry,” she said urgently, her voice trembling as she twisted in her saddle, “we’ve got to get—”

  The words out of here died on her lips as she looked behind her and saw the riderless chestnut nibbling at the moss underfoot. Eslin panicked. Where was Gage? A few seconds later she saw him slipping out of the gap between the canyon walls, walking quickly toward them.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she repeated.

  “We don’t have time,” he told her grimly, as he mounted the chestnut. “Looks like two of Marco’s cousins are no more than a couple minutes behind us.”

  “Where did they come from so damn fast?”

  “I don’t know, but they know where they’re going and what lies beyond this canyon and we don’t. I think our best bet is to get ourselves out of sight, let them go ahead of us, then maybe we can follow them to Ethan.”

  It sounded like a reasonable plan, but it felt wrong to Eslin.

  “Look, I don’t think—” she began, but got no farther as Gage heeled the chestnut past her and Ramón reined the bay colt behind him.

  Hoping that the cold clutch she felt in the pit of her stomach was a reaction to the waterfall, not to Gage’s plan, Eslin followed them. One cousin at Monte Alban, Alberto in jail in Puebla, these two behind them; at least now all of Marco’s cousins were accounted for.

  There wasn’t so much as a chink, let alone a cave or a grotto, in the granite walls; they did, however, curve gradually away from the edge of the pool and, within forty yards or so, screened them from view of the canyon entrance. Here they dismounted, and Ramón held and shushed the horses while Gage and Eslin crept back along the wall to keep watch.

  It had stopped raining, though the heavy gray clouds held the promise of more. The sky, the canyon walls, and their reflection on the surface of the pool were all the same color, and looked like some alien, surreal landscape. Eslin shuddered as she laid her hand lightly on Gage’s back. Beneath her palm she felt him tremble. He turned and smiled bleakly at her, then looked back at the gap in the rocks. Leaning around him a little, she caught a view of the gap and suddenly clenched a handful of his sodden jacket in her fingers as two men appeared in the cleft.

  They were carrying rifles. Flattening herself against the wall, Eslin prayed the horses would remain quiet and not betray their position to Marco’s cousins. Beside her Gage tensed, his hand shaking as he reached behind him and wrapped his fingers around her left wrist. Reassured by his touch, she inched toward him and peered cautiously around his right shoulder.

  The two men still stood in the cleft, bracing the butts of their long-barreled, scoped rifles on their hips. Both of them wore jeans, one a denim jacket with a turned-up sheepskin collar, the other a camouflage fatigue. They said nothing, just stood there for what seemed an eternity to Eslin, but in reality was no more than forty-five seconds, then muttered something in Spanish that she could barely hear, and turned to follow the trail through the funnel and out of the canyon.

  Sagging against the cold rock wall, Eslin exhaled deeply. Gage’s grip on her wrist eased a little, but otherwise he didn’t move for at least two minutes; then he turned toward her.

  “I’m no expert,” he said, his voice low and just a little unsteady, “but it looked to me like they’ve got either telescopic sights or sniper scopes on those rifles.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means if they’re any kind of shot at all, they can pick a lizard off a rock at two hundred yards.”

  Eslin didn’t say anything, just shivered.

  “How do you feel now about Ramón’s theory that they want us to find Ethan?”

  “I think that it was a lovely fantasy while it lasted,”

  “So do I.” He sighed, putting his right arm around her as he walked toward the horses and Ramón.

  “All clear?” he whispered, his face pale as he glanced at them over his shoulder.

  “All clear.” Gage nodded, unzipping his jacket and withdrawing the two-way radio he’d tucked inside his belt for safekeeping.

  It wasn’t very big, a little smaller and a little thinner than a shoebox, but heavy as a lump of lead in Eslin’s hand as he gave it to her.

  “Raise the FBI and do your best to give them a fix on where you are,” he told her, taking the chestnut’s reins from Ramón and swinging himself into the saddle. “If I don’t come back for you in an hour, get yourselves back to Oaxaca and try to find Fitzsimmons.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ramón protested, but Eslin tugged warningly on his sleeve and he bit down hard on his lower lip.

  “Marco’s cousins are toting rifles, pal, so the plan has changed,” Gage said, looking down at the boy. “I’m tailing them by myself. What time is it, Eslin?”

  “One twenty-three.”

  He pushed up his left sleeve, looked at his watch, then smiled at her.

  “On the money.” He tucked the watch face under his wet cuff and gathered the gelding’s reins in his right hand. “Don’t wait beyond two-thirty, Eslin. Promise me.”

  “Scout’s honor,” she lied, making the three-fingered pledge sign with her right hand, while crossing the fingers of her left behind her back.

  “She’s the boss,” Gage told Ramón sternly. “Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled sullenly, and looked away. “I got it.”

  “Good. See you in an hour.” He kicked the chestnut into a walk.

  Beside her, Ramón quivered with pent-up outrage, but kept a lid on it until the gelding’s switching tail had disappeared through the funnel that led out of the canyon.

  “We can’t do this, we can’t just stand here—”

  “Of course we can’t,” Eslin interrupted him, her cold, wet fingers fumbling to pull up the antenna on the radio. “We’re going to send an SOS and then follow him.”

  “Whew,” he sighed with relief. “You had me worried there for a minute.”

  “Really, Ramón. As terrified as Gage is of heights, did you honestly think I was going to let him go wandering around these mountains by himself?”

  “Gage? How do you…” He grinned sheepishly. “Never mind.”

  There were two switches on the side of the radio; a white one marked on/off, a red one marked send/receive. Eslin flipped the white one, and nearly dropped the damn thing as it squawked to life with a burst of static. She pushed the red switch to send and the crackle subsided a little.

  “Hello,” she said into the speaker on the front of the radio. “Hello, this is Eslin Hillary. Hello?”

  She pushed the switch to receive, winced, and held the radio at arm’s length as the channel leapt and popped. The sorrel mare snorted and laid back her ears, the colt whinnied and shied, but Ramón caught their reins and shushed them.

  “Eslin, this is Doc. Where—” His voice faded away in a sudden, crackling roar.

  “In a canyon,” she said, then realized she hadn’t switched to send, did so, and repeated, “In a canyon up in the, hills—west of the city, I think, but the clouds are so thick I haven’t the faintest idea where the sun is. Where are you?”

  “At Monte Alban with Faber. His partner Thompson had a run-in with one of Marco’s cousins who works here as a guide. He also carries a knife, which Thompson discovered the hard way. Unfortunately, the bastard got away—”

  Doc’s voice faded and crackled. Eslin and Ramón looked at each other. She shivered, the boy swallowed hard.

  “Eslin—Eslin, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Doc.”

  “There’s an awful lot of interference. Is there a lot
of rock around you?”

  She switched to receive and replied, “A few million tons.”

  “There’s the cause of it, then, and the rain isn’t helping any either. Thompson’ll be all right, I stopped the bleeding, but we can’t leave until the ambulance gets here. How far would you say you are from Monte Alban?”

  “I’m not sure.” Eslin sighed tiredly. “But I’d guess a good ten miles west—I think.”

  “All right. Get out of that canyon”—a spurt of static overrode him again—”leave the channel open, maybe we can get a fix on you. And for God’s sake be careful—Marco’s cousin is out there someplace with his knife. Tell Gage that Faber made positive IDs on all four of them from the pictures he took in Chapultepec Park. They’re wanted for everything from drug smuggling to assault with deadly weapons. Try me again in a half hour or so. Did you get all that?”

  Unfortunately, she thought grimly.

  “Yes,” she said. “Will do.”

  She left the switch on and mounted the sorrel mare. No sooner had she landed in her saddle when static jumped out of the receiver, and the mare whinnied and reared violently. Eslin held onto the pommel for dear life, and Ramón quickly grabbed the mare’s bridle and kept her from going over backward as her hind feet slid on the slippery moss. The boy brought her down safely, but he looked as frightened as Eslin felt.

  “I think we’d better turn the radio off until we get out of this canyon,” she said shakily, and flipped both switches to the off position.

  She looped the plastic carrying strap around the pommel and let the radio hang against her saddle flap. As they neared the gap that led out of the canyon, she looked over her shoulder at the uncannily quiet waterfall and the green-black pool. Eslin hoped to God she’d never dream about this place again; then, catching a glimpse of Ramón’s suddenly widening eyes, she whirled around in her saddle to see the third cousin, still dressed in his khaki guide’s uniform, step out from behind the rocks.

  There was nothing at all friendly about the smile on his face or the long, scope-mounted rifle be rested on his knee. The hilt of a knife, probably the same one he’d used on the FBI man Thompson, protruded from his utility belt.