“Well, well, will wonders never cease,” Eslin murmured, catching the trailing reins in her left hand and laying her right soothingly on the mare’s neck.
Damp with sweat, the coarse sorrel hide trembled beneath her palm. The mare’s ears flicked up and down; she snorted and swung her head in a semicircle toward the scrubby slopes rolling away from the granite walls of the canyon. Behind her the colt nickered nervously.
“Something’s got ‘em spooked,” Ramón said, rubbing his knuckles along the bay’s neck.
Frowning, Eslin looked over the scrubby dun-colored foothills that slid away to the left beneath the sludge gray sky. The trail they’d followed earlier wound to the right and disappeared around the outer wall of the canyon.
It was now one forty-five, less than half an hour since Gage had ridden out of the canyon. He wasn’t coming back for them, he’d never had any intention of coming back for them—Eslin had known he was lying when he’d said it. It was also less than eleven hours to midnight. Ten hours and fifteen minutes, to be exact.
Retracing the route they’d taken from the old Indian’s house, Eslin added the minutes they’d lost hiding in the canyon and trussing up the guide, reviewed in her mind the trail they’d descended into the valley, cringed as she thought about climbing it, and estimated it would take her and Ramón the better part of two hours to make their way back to the pink stucco house.
From there to Monte Alban, to find Doc and Faber, to rent fresh horses or a helicopter or God knew what else, she tacked on an additional two hours. It would be more or less six o’clock by then, and any way she figured it, it was cutting things too close.
The sorrel mare snorted and swung her head again. Though Eslin could neither see nor feel anything wrong, she knew something was amiss. Something had reduced the tough little sorrel to a quivering, nervous bundle. She tried not to think about what that something could be, or the headache throbbing behind her eyes.
“We’ve got two options,” she told Ramón. “Go back for reinforcements or go after Gage. If we go back, I figure we’ll lose at least four hours.”
“Minimum,” he agreed. “We’ve got to go on, and like you said, hope Doc Fitzsimmons sends in the cavalry.”
“Not hope, pray,” Eslin corrected, as she thrust her left foot into her stirrup and swung herself onto the sorrel’s back.
She’d no sooner hit the saddle when the mare snorted, swung left, and took off at a trot with her head up and her nostrils flared. Because she didn’t have any idea in which direction to proceed and the sorrel seemed to know where she was going, Eslin let the mare lead the way. Gathering both reins loosely in her right hand, she glanced over her left shoulder and watched the bay colt dance on his hind legs beneath Ramón and then bolt after them with his head up and his ears pitched forward.
There was no trail to speak of on this side of the canyon, just open slopes of rocky ground rolling away from the bulk of the mountain. Vegetation was sparse, more gray than green, even in the fine, sifting rain beginning to drizzle out of the thick, sagging clouds. There were a few stunted, scraggly trees, too thinly leaved to hide so much as a bird’s nest, and Eslin felt like a lizard on a rock wall as she remembered the two cousins and their scoped rifles.
Time dragged as bleakly as the barren stretches of nothing in every direction. Getting lost didn’t worry Eslin; what did was the fact that they’d been riding for nearly an hour and had yet to come across so much as a hoofprint in the sandy soil or any other sign that someone else had recently passed this way.
The farther they traveled from the canyon the worse the pain in Eslin’s head grew. When it finally dawned on her that the pain might be significant, that it might mean something, the sorrel stopped of her own accord on the crest of a low hill, lowered her head, and started to graze. The bay colt danced up beside her, and Eslin frowned glumly at Ramón.
“I think we’ve come the wrong way,” she said.
“So what do we do now?”
“Go back to the canyon and turn right instead of left,” she said, jerking the mare’s head up.
The sorrel snorted and laid back her ears, but Eslin gave her a sharp jab in the flanks as she turned her around and kicked her into a trot. The colt followed, snorting as impatiently as the mare. Both horses were tired, thirsty, and hungry, but they didn’t have time to rest and water them. They’d already lost an hour, they’d lose nearly another doubling back to the canyon. By then, Gage would be nearly two hours ahead of them.
There would also be less than nine hours left until midnight.
Chapter 32
Once Eduardo had drunk a cup of coffee, he satisfied himself with a second round of vicious tugs on the ropes binding Gage’s wrists so that he couldn’t break the knots. He picked up his rifle then and strode outside, leaving the door open behind him. A cool, rainy wind drifted across the dirt floor and made Ethan shiver beside Gage, but Marco, who sat sipping coffee in the recliner, seemed not to notice the chill.
“It’s as cold in here as it is outside,” Gage said. “Can’t you close the door and move my brother by the fire?”
“I could but I won’t. After you murdered my father and my mother died of shame, I was sent to my aunts and cousins in Mexico City. I’ve lived most of my life in hovels like this.”
“I didn’t murder anybody, and neither did Ethan,” Gage replied brusquely. “Johnny committed suicide.”
“After he was falsely accused, convicted, and maligned by the Roundtrees,” Marco retorted coldly. “You paid to have my father charged and found guilty to save yourselves from scandal.”
“Is that what he told you? That he was innocent, that the Roundtrees framed him?”
“No, that’s what Blaine Aldridge told me.” Marco sipped his coffee and smiled. “A short while after my father died he came to see my mother and wrote her a check. He continued to write me checks after she died. He deposited them in a trust fund in Los Angeles which was turned over to me two years ago. That’s how I was able to finance all this.” He waved his slim right hand around the room. “You have his guilty conscience to thank for your present predicament.”
Jesus Christ. Blaine hadn’t told them that, only that their father had paid each of the commissioners a hundred thousand dollars to find Johnny guilty. Gage swallowed hard and glanced at Ethan. The grim, tight line of his brother’s mouth told him he’d already heard this.
“Nobody’s hand was on that gun but Johnny’s,” Gage insisted. “He blew his brains out because he didn’t have guts enough to stand and fight for himself.”
“You took his courage away from him too,” Marco said, his face darkening. “He only loved the horses. He didn’t love the winning, not like your father. To him it was everything, the only thing. He’d do anything—and did—to win. My father was not wealthy, he had a family to support, he only followed your father’s orders—”
“Bullshit,” Gage interrupted hotly. “Nobody forced Johnny to shoot up those three-year-olds. He could’ve told my father to shove it and quit. He was one of the top trainers, he could’ve gotten a job with any stable in the country—”
“He gave you his loyalty and you repaid him with treachery!” Marco bolted to his feet. “You used him, shamed him, and he died because of it! That’s murder!”
“Did it ever occur to you that he killed himself because he couldn’t face up to his own guilt?”
“He had no guilt—he was a pawn that was used and discarded by the Roundtrees. You misused him—”
“I didn’t misuse anybody,” Gage cut in, “and neither did Ethan. Our father did, yes, he is—was—guilty of everything you say. But my brother and I had no idea that he’d hung the rap on Johnny until you stole Ganymede. Blaine came out to Roundtree then and told us.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“What is?”
“That your father is already dead.” Marco’s smile twisted maliciously. “I’d much rather kill him.”
He turned away then and walked
outside. Another cool draft of wind blew through the open door and Ethan shuddered beside Gage.
“I’ve said the same things to him over and over for the past two days,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve talked myself blue in the face and gotten nowhere.”
“He’s crazy,” Gage murmured, staring at Byrne’s back as he strode across the muddy yard toward the Jeep.
“As a loon,” Ethan agreed. “I hope to God you’ve talked to Gerald.”
“He’s here, he flew in this morning, and so’s the FBI. We talked briefly to an agent named Faber after Byrne snatched you in Mexico City. I left the radio with Eslin and told her how to use it before I came ahead looking for you.”
“Thank God.” Ethan sagged weakly in his chair. “I wish to hell they’d hurry.”
He didn’t ask where Eslin and Ramón were and Gage was glad. He didn’t have the heart to tell Ethan about the third cousin, the guide from Monte Alban whom Byrne had sent to find Eslin and Ramón and bring them here. He could hardly bear to think of Byrne catching Eslin and Ramón. They were his and Ethan’s only hope right now.
He prayed that Eslin had had time to raise the FBI on the two-way radio, and that she’d had sense enough to deep-six it once she had. He hoped, too, that Ramón had sense enough not to be brave, and most of all that neither of them would tell Byrne they’d whistled up the FBI. That, he was certain, would be fatal … for all of them, not just he and Ethan.
“I owe you an apology,” Ethan said, his voice little more than a weary, ragged whisper. “I don’t know what made me agree with Blaine that Dad hadn’t any choice, that Johnny didn’t matter, that the most important thing was to save Roundtree. I deserved to be slugged.”
Slugged maybe, but not choked half to death by his own brother.
“I’m sorry too,” Gage said. “I’m sorry I didn’t strangle Blaine. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Ethan.”
“I think I was in shock,” he went on slowly. “I think I was trying to rationalize it away.”
“We were all in shock,” Gage replied, wincing at the pain in his shoulders as he tried to work at his knots again. “You don’t have to tell me this, Ethan.”
“This may be the only chance I’ll have.”
Gage stopped trying to reach the rope on his wrists and looked at his brother. His face looked pale, his eyes red behind his glasses.
“I’ve always tried to protect you—too much, I suppose.” Ethan smiled thinly. “Mother kept having miscarriages and I thought I’d never have a little brother. When I did I overreacted, I suppose. I’ve never said this to you, Gage, but I—”
Byrne came back inside then, and Ethan fell silent. As he sat down in the recliner, and took a sheaf of papers out of a black alligator briefcase, Gage tried, painfully and futilely, to loosen the knots binding him to the chair. He stopped momentarily when he heard the muffled snoring beside him. Ethan was asleep.
Byrne didn’t so much as glance up. Ignoring Gage and Ethan, he began to write.
As the gray half-light in the house began to fade, and Gage felt his arms and legs going numb, it dawned on him—finally—that if cousin number three, Harpo the guide from Monte Alban, had apprehended Eslin and Ramón, he should have been here with them by now. Because Gage didn’t have Eslin’s affinity for time or access to the Timex strapped to his wrist, he hadn’t any idea how long he’d been tied up beside Ethan. At least an hour, maybe two, and as best as he could figure, it had taken the Jeep no more than fifteen minutes to deliver him here.
He’d been twenty minutes past the canyon when Eduardo and Zeppo had jumped him, fifteen minutes more in the Jeep made thirty-five. If he’d been here two hours, then Eslin and Ramón must have somehow escaped Harpo’s clutches. That meant he was still out there looking for them, along with Eduardo and Zeppo who’d just left in the Jeep. What kind of chance did they have against three armed men? Slim and none, that’s what—
Unless you help them, said the voice that had spoken to him at Monte Alban.
It wasn’t Ethan’s voice, any more than it had been Eslin’s earlier that morning. It came from someplace inside Gage, he didn’t know where, but he knew it had always been there. It had spoken to him before, on the day Ganymede had been foaled, and on the night of his twelfth birthday party it had directed him to the balcony outside his room where he’d seen his father and Mimi Fitzsimmons.
He’d always ignored it, but he closed his eyes now and tried to listen to it…. How, he asked, how can I help them? Gage concentrated with every ounce of will he had, so hard that he felt himself sweating but there was no reply. How, goddamnit, he demanded, tell me!
Still there was no answer. He exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he’d drawn, opened his eyes, and heard it faintly, like an echo inside his head—You know how, you’ve always .. . It began to fade away, and though he shut his eyes and tried to find it again, it was gone.
Furious, Gage wrenched himself sideways in the chair. The ropes bit into his wrists, the old wood creaked beneath him, but Marco Byrne didn’t so much as glance up from the writing on his lap. Son of a bitch. Groaning silently, Gage let his cramped shoulders sag against the chair, let his head loll back on his neck—then hissed and stiffened as the icy cold horseshoe nail touched the hollow of his throat.
That, Gage knew, was not a good sign.
Oh, God, he groaned again, oh, Eslin, help me.
Wearily, he shut his eyes, and saw her sitting in her white nightgown on the bench in the atrium at Roundtree. You’re doing it wrong, she’d told him. You don’t have to try so hard. What had she told him next? She’d told him just to look at her, to focus his eyes on her forehead and not to blink as he’d done when he was a child and he’d stared at the sun until he’d seen spots in front of his eyes. But he had nothing here to look at, nothing to focus on.
As Gage glanced around the nearly dark room, his gaze caught on the low-burning fire. It was little more than glowing red embers, but it was something. There wasn’t much slack in the ropes, and he bit his bottom lip against the pain in the knotted muscles of his arms as he shifted as far as he could toward the fire, fixed his gaze on it, and willed himself to relax and not to blink.
His eyes began to burn, his vision to smear blurrily. Tears ran down his cheeks, but Gage could no longer feel the cramps in his arms. He didn’t blink, just thought about Eslin and how much he loved her while he concentrated on building a picture of the white stucco house in the dying embers of the fire.
Chapter 33
Eslin’s headache intensified as she and Ramón neared the canyon. When they reached the funnel the boy slid off the bay colt to slip through the rocks and make sure the guide was still securely bound and gagged.
When Ramón came back, nodding at Eslin as he remounted the colt, she turned the nearly exhausted mare down the track that wound away to the right of the canyon. Twenty minutes later, in a cleft between two boulders, Eslin reined in the mare, and Ramón stopped the bay colt beside her.
“No wonder Marco’s cousins came up on us so fast,” he said, shivering as he looked down at the deep tire treads in the mud.
“No joke,” Eslin muttered, heeling the mare forward at a walk. “Four wheels beat four legs any day.”
Deep meant fresh, and a chill slithered up the back of her neck as Eslin kept her head down and watched the cleat marks in the track fill with rain. They followed the tire treads for another ten minutes, then she stopped the mare again and pressed her right hand to her splitting head.
The trail ended here, petered off into nothing but mud. The tire tracks sliced away to the left across a coarsely grassed slope scattered with slabs of rock. Suddenly the sorrel mare threw up her head, lifted her wet ears, and whinnied shrilly. Eslin heard it then, the sputtering and not-so-far-off growl of an engine. With a sharp tug on the reins she drew the mare back on her haunches and wheeled her in a tight circle that sent the bay colt behind her halfway up on his hind legs.
“Go!” Eslin breathed urgently to Ramón, he
r widening eyes catching the boy’s startled gaze.
Hauling the snorting colt around on his rear hooves, Ramón kicked him into a leaping canter. Clods of mud flew in Eslin’s face, but she dug her heels into the mare’s flanks and sent her flying after the bay as the engine whined closer behind them.
“Follow me!” Ramón called over his shoulder as he jerked the bay sharply to the left—and straight at the solid rock wall of the cliff.
The scream parting Eslin’s lips died there as the mare veered behind the colt and a wet tree branch slapped her across the face. Just barely, she managed to keep from falling off as the mare twisted herself around in a suddenly dark and tight space.
Blinking through the tears streaming from her eyes and the curtain of slender branches screening the cliff face, Eslin felt the rock walls on both sides of her vibrate as an olive-green Jeep, its engine roaring, sluiced sideways in the mud as it shot past their hiding place. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the two cousins she’d seen in the canyon, the one in camouflage fatigues, the other in a sheepskin jacket, then pitched forward in her saddle to keep the mare’s feet on the ground as she tried to rear.
Neither Eslin nor Ramón moved again until the roar of the engine had faded to a dull, muffled echo. They looked at each other then, both of them chalky faced and breathing hard, but Eslin didn’t say anything until the echo had died away completely.
“How did you know this place was here?” she asked unsteadily.
“He found it.” Ramón patted the bay colt’s lathered neck as he wickered plaintively and shifted his weight on his rear quarters. “He tried to nose his way in here when we passed it the first time.”
“Good boy. This is the perfect place to hide two exhausted horses.” Eslin stroked the colt’s shaggy mane and looked at Ramón. “If you’ll cut them some grass I’ll turn them around so they can drink.”
Nodding, the boy dismounted, withdrawing the guide’s hunting knife from his belt as he slid through the trees and out of the grotto. It was tight and tricky, but Eslin managed to turn the mare and the colt around, then leaned wearily against the flank of the cliff.
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