Meanwhile, she pretended to be sympathetic to Randolph’s attentions. To keep him from suspecting her plans, she let him photograph her. To further confuse him, she submitted to the indignity of agreeing to remove her clothes before his camera. But after a few weeks in which no opportunity for escape presented itself, a new source of tension afflicted her—because changes in her body made it obvious that she was pregnant.
Esmeralda’s first thought was that Randolph had forced himself upon her, but Rebecca confessed that in a moment of weakness and passion she had given herself to Winston Case. It had been Packard’s suspicion about their intimacy that had driven him to abduct her. Now the growing evidence of that intimacy made Rebecca fearful for the baby’s safety, an apprehension that seemed justified when approaching sails made Randolph lock her away.
The boat that entered the harbor belonged to Winston Case, who had finally suspected where she was. But when he hurried up to the estate, he found that Packard had hired a dozen men from the village to guard the property and keep him from getting inside. Reduced to staying in the village, he gazed up longingly at the estate, his only consolation the messages that Esmeralda brought whenever Rebecca sent her on an errand into the village.
The rainy season arrived as Rebecca’s pregnancy reached its term. Winston waited for Rebecca to regain her strength while the baby, a daughter, became strong enough to travel. Then, with Esmeralda’s help in relaying messages, Winston used the cover of an evening storm to sneak past the guards. He hid until the storm cleared and the estate was in darkness, then used a club to overcome a guard sleeping outside Rebecca’s room.
Immediately, Rebecca was at the window. She handed the baby to him, climbed out, and rushed after him through the darkness toward a path that zigzagged down from the cliff to the harbor. Winston had hidden a lantern behind the rock formation, but before he could light it, the baby started to cry, and Packard, who had not yet fallen asleep, burst from the house, shouting for help, racing toward the cries from the baby.
He caught them at the rock formation. Winston still held the baby, but either Packard didn’t realize it or else he didn’t care, because he kept shoving at Winston, causing Rebecca to scream in protest. She lunged between the two men and reached for the baby, but Packard kept shoving, and the next thing, Rebecca’s scream was one of fright as she plummeted over the edge, vanishing into the darkness, her scream ending on the surf-pounded rocks far below.
Packard couldn’t move. Anguished, he gaped downward for the longest time, then wailed. By the time the guards arrived, Winston had scrambled down the path with the baby.
10
E SMERALDA ’ S GAZE RETURNED FROM A FARAWAY PLACE . She cast another look at the yellowed photographs on the table in the flower garden, then shook her head and glanced toward Tash.
“I was waiting at the bottom. I asked where Rebecca was. He didn’t answer, just kept urging me toward the rowboat that would take us out to his sailboat. While I held the baby, he pulled at the oars with a strength that I never would have dreamed he possessed. By the time we reached the sailboat, we heard Packard and his guards on the beach. They jumped into fishing boats to chase us. But Winston raised his sails and disappeared into the darkness before they came close.”
Esmeralda’s frail voice dwindled.
Her husband helped her to drink more juice, then told Coltrane and Tash, “You must leave now, so she can rest.”
“We understand,” Coltrane said. “Just one question. Señora, if you got ahead of Packard, you should have been able to escape to Los Angeles. But Tash’s mother said that you and Winston and the child roamed from village to village here in Mexico, where he earned food by working as a carpenter. He was rich. Why didn’t he take advantage of his wealth?”
“Winston said that if we went to Los Angeles, we would never be safe from so powerful a man as Randolph Packard. Our only way to disappear was by doing something that Randolph would never have dreamed of, by becoming poor. Only after several years did he think Randolph’s anger would have cooled enough for him and the child to enter the United States.”
“You didn’t go with him?”
“Please,” Esmeralda’s husband objected, “no more questions for now.”
“I would have given anything to continue to take care of Rebecca Chance’s daughter,” Esmeralda said, “but Winston insisted that I had my own life to lead, and he made me go back to the village. As soon as he returned home, he promised to send payment for my years of service. He kept his word. One day a messenger arrived with photographs of the child and more money than anyone in the village had ever seen.”
“And now.” Esmeralda’s husband stood.
“Thank you, señora.” Tash clasped her hands.
“No, I thank you. Seeing you is like seeing Rebecca again.” A tear rolled down the old woman’s cheek.
“May we come back after you’ve rested?”
“Please.”
Coltrane and Tash followed the old man into the house. At the last moment, Coltrane looked back, seeing the old woman pick up one of the photographs.
“Where did you get those, señora?”
“Rebecca gave them to me. She’s still alive as long as they exist. The more people who see them, the more she remains alive. I have put them throughout the village. Once a year, on the day of her death, a Mass is said for her. The village prays over her photographs.” Esmeralda shook her head dismally. “But in this climate, the images decay.”
“And Randolph Packard?”
“He abandoned the village, as I always knew he would.”
11
T HE ROAD UP TO THE ESTATE WAS SO OVERGROWN THAT Coltrane wasn’t sure the rented car would make it to the top. Leaves blocked his windshield. Branches scraped the doors. As the Ford’s wheels jounced over a fallen tree limb, sunlight gleamed, butterflies scattered, and the estate was spread out ahead.
What had seemed white from the distance of the village was now revealed as the gray of concrete from which stucco had fallen, a few surviving patches indicating that the original color had been coral. Some buildings had one level, others two. All had an elegant simplicity that reminded Coltrane of pueblo architecture. A jumble of fallen poles and decayed thatching visible through an open doorway showed where woven palm-leaf roofs supported by timbers—peaked as in the village—had long ago collapsed.
“Imagine how magnificent this place once looked,” Tash said as they stopped outside a low vine-covered wall that enclosed the compound.
“And how everything went wrong.” As Coltrane stepped from the car, he admired the gardens that had run wild, hibiscus, bougainvillea, and orchids seemingly everywhere. He raised his camera and took a photograph.
“I don’t know what I expected to find here,” Tash said. “The truth is down in the village. With Esmeralda.”
“I’m not so sure. Some inconsistencies bother me.”
Tash looked puzzled.
“If Randolph Packard killed Rebecca Chance, why did he keep hunting Winston Case? Revenge couldn’t have been a factor. Rebecca’s death was Packard’s fault, not Case’s.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Winston he was hunting. Maybe he wanted the child.”
“Why? If the child was Winston’s, as Esmeralda claims, why would Packard have wanted her?” Coltrane asked.
“Maybe he wanted to kill the child to get even with Winston.”
“For what? For making Rebecca Chance pregnant? Packard had plenty of opportunity to hurt the child when it was born.”
“And risk losing any hope of making Rebecca love him?” Tash said.
“True.” Coltrane brooded about it. “But that still doesn’t explain why Packard was so desperate to get the child after Rebecca was killed. Unless . . . Do you suppose he believed he was the father? He was trying to get his daughter back.”
Tash raised a hand to her throat. “You’re suggesting Randolph Packard is my grandfather?”
“It explains why he put you in his will. He sp
ent most of his life trying to find his daughter. But she was dead by the time he did, and he was near death when he learned about you. He couldn’t reveal his connection with you without incriminating himself. Still in love with the woman he had killed, all he could do was give you the place where she gave birth to your mother.”
“A ruin.”
“Fitting, given all the lives that were ruined in the name of love.” For a moment, Coltrane couldn’t help thinking of the ruin his own father had caused. But not me, Coltrane thought. He dismally surveyed the husks of the buildings. “Well, as long as we’ve come this far . . .” He walked along the wall, passing a gigantic aloe vera, approaching the back of the estate.
“Where are you going?”
“To see where your grandmother died.”
Tall cacti stood like sentinels as Coltrane approached the cliff. Ignoring a lizard that scurried underfoot, he concentrated on the catlike rock formation before him. “Definitely the formation in the photographs that Packard took of Rebecca Chance.”
He paused a few careful steps from where the cliff fell away to the sea. The pounding of surf against rocks rumbled up, making him uneasy.
“The lantern was behind this rock formation,” Tash said. “The path down the cliff is . . . over here, where the coastline curves toward the village, forming the bay. This is where Randolph Packard and Winston Case fought.”
“And where Packard inadvertently pushed the love of his life over the cliff. He spent the rest of his days mourning for having killed the woman he worshiped. He couldn’t let the world know what had happened, so he built a secret monument to her, where he achingly studied the photographs he had taken of her.”
Although the day was hot, Tash hugged herself and shivered.
“Stay there for a moment. Just like that,” Coltrane said.
He stepped back from her, moving farther along the ridge, putting the cliff on his left and Tash’s profile ahead of him. As a breeze pushed her hair, he raised his camera, sighting through the viewfinder. Reality and his memory coincided. “Packard once stood on this very spot, taking a photograph of your grandmother on the spot where you are now, in that same pose.”
Tash shivered again.
Coltrane pressed the shutter release. “If you were wearing a white shawl, the images would be virtually identical.”
“This gives me the creeps.”
“The height doesn’t help much, either,” Coltrane said.
“Good-bye.” Tash peered down, as if addressing the soul of her grandmother.
“I warned you,” a voice said from behind.
Spinning, Coltrane just had time to see the blur of a fist before it jolted him off his feet.
12
S PRAWLED NEAR THE ROCK FORMATION , Coltrane struggled numbly to raise his head. Blood streaming from his mouth, he stared up dizzily at the impossible towering presence of Carl Nolan.
“I gave you a fair chance.” Nolan’s face was livid, twisted with fury. “I told you nicely.” The sergeant’s powerful arms, his weight lifter’s muscles bulging in a short-sleeved flower-patterned shirt, dragged Coltrane to his feet and shook him so hard that Coltrane’s teeth snapped together. “But a smart guy like you just can’t listen, can you? You always know better. Well, maybe you’ll listen to this.”
The second blow struck Coltrane harder. Ears ringing, his vision blurring, he landed hard, but his head seemed to be falling farther, and at once his consciousness cleared enough for him to realize that his head had indeed fallen farther. Half of him was hanging over the cliff.
“Or to this.” Nolan kicked him another few inches over the cliff. “I told you not to touch her again, but you went ahead and did it anyhow. You never take advice.”
This time, when Nolan kicked him, the force was so great that it shocked Coltrane over the edge. A groan escaping him, stomach rising, he clawed at the rock wall, scrabbling to find an outcrop. With a strain that threatened to dislocate his arms, he jerked to a halt, his body dangling, his fingers clinging to a two-inch ledge ten feet below the top. A hundred feet farther down, the hungry, pounding surf waited for him.
“Still hanging around?” Nolan frowned over the edge. “What do I have to do, drop a rock on your head?”
Staring up helplessly, his ribs aching from where he’d been kicked, Coltrane opened his mouth to say . . . he didn’t know what. Whatever it was came out as a hoarse inhuman croak.
Above him, Nolan looked around, presumably for the rock he meant to drop, then scowled at something behind him. “Hey, where the hell do you think you’re going?” He charged away from the cliff.
Tash, Coltrane thought. She must be running for help. He’s trying to stop her.
Despite the agony that racked his body, Coltrane scraped his shoes against the cliff. Unnerved by the thunder of the surf below him, he trembled, feeling a surge of hope when his right shoe found support in a crevice.
Do it! he mentally shouted. He lifted his left foot, taking three tries before he pressed his shoe onto a rock spur. His mind became gray. No! Clinging more fiercely, he inhaled deeply. His heart pounded faster. His consciousness focused, the gray dispersing. Move!
But his body didn’t want to obey.
Then his reflexes took control when he heard Tash shouting. He reached up his right hand, wedged his fingers into a crack in the stone, lifted his right foot, scraped it against the cliff, planted it on an outcrop, and pulled himself higher. The camera around his neck snagged on something. He squirmed, fearful that his movements would dislodge him, imagining his plunge to the rocks.
Again Tash shouted. He freed the camera and stretched higher, lifting, pawing, groping. Then he couldn’t find another handhold. His strength dwindling, he clawed at air, heard Tash shout a third time, and realized that the reason he couldn’t find another handhold was that there weren’t any to be found. His fingers were at the top. All he had to do was grip the edge, push himself up, and . . .
13
T HE ROCK FORMATION CAME INTO VIEW . Squirming over the rim, he rolled onto his back, but he couldn’t allow himself to rest, and he rolled again, onto his hands and knees. The next shout from Tash made him waver to his feet and charge in her direction.
Her cry came from somewhere among the ruins. Adrenaline giving him strength, he didn’t waste time looking for a gate through the waist-high wall. He raced straight ahead, sending more lizards scurrying as he scrambled over the wall. Landing among a tangle of ferns and flowers, he heard Tash yell within the maze of buildings. His camera thumping against his chest, he charged past the shells of what might once have been guest houses and servants’ quarters. Vines tugged at his ankles, threatening to topple him as he veered around a corner and saw Nolan push Tash against a wall, trying to kiss her.
This time, it was Nolan who was caught by surprise. Before he could register the noise behind him, Coltrane slammed against his back, driving him hard past Tash, ramming him against the wall. With a groan, Nolan sagged, then spun, only to double over from Coltrane’s fist in his stomach.
But before Coltrane could strike again, Nolan rammed his head forward. Colliding with Coltrane’s chest, he propelled both of them across a flower-choked courtyard, walloping Coltrane against the opposite wall.
Coltrane wheezed, his breath knocked out of him. He did his best to punch Nolan, but his arms were weak from struggling up the cliff, and he had no effect on Nolan’s solid body. Nolan’s hands found his throat, gripped the camera strap around it, and twisted. Wheezing again, Coltrane fought to breathe, his face swelling as Nolan tightened the camera strap, cutting into Coltrane’s neck.
Coltrane’s strength failed. His vision dimming, he fumbled to try to peel Nolan’s hands away. He brushed against the shutter button on the camera, unintentionally tripping it, the camera’s whir barely audible, the last sound he might ever hear. No! Conscious of Tash’s frightened presence, he told himself he had to save her. He rammed his knee into Nolan’s groin. Again. Again. Nolan lurched back in pai
n.
It was the sweetest breath Coltrane had ever known. As he filled his lungs, Nolan kept stumbling away, needing to gain as much time as he could to recover from his pain. Then Nolan took one step back too far, tripped over vines, and toppled backward into the wreckage of a ruined building. Coltrane gaped. His eyes had to be playing tricks on him, he thought, for the decayed thatch of the collapsed roof suddenly came to life when Nolan landed, poles and twigs and strands of fiber thrashing into motion, snapping at Nolan, twisting, rippling over him, and—Oh, my God, Coltrane thought, those aren’t poles and twigs and strands of fibers. Those are snakes.
Nolan barely got a shriek out before his body tensed and trembled, dying. Snakes that had made their home in the ruin slithered out of the doorway.
“Tash!”
Momentarily paralyzed, she snapped into motion and rushed toward Coltrane. As the snakes hissed and coiled, Tash and Coltrane raced from the chaos of the ruins, staring frantically around to make sure they weren’t running into others. Every bush seemed a danger, every cluster of flowers a trap. They squirmed onto the wall, hesitating, afraid of what might be hiding beneath the shrubbery below them. The quick-legged scamper of a lizard made Tash cry out and jump down past ferns, racing toward the car.
Coltrane was only a few hurried strides behind. They scrambled into the car and yanked the door shut, breathing in a frenzy.
“Dear God,” he managed to say. His chest wouldn’t stop heaving. Sweat mixing with the blood from his swollen lips, he turned toward Tash, whose head was pressed exhaustedly against the back of the seat. Her eyes wide with panic, she stared at the ceiling.
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