Tres Leches Cupcakes

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Can I use your phone?” Sadie asked Rex, who was still stewing over her last comment. Headlights from the other direction of traffic lit up his face intermittently. The phone was sitting in the middle console, and she reached for it, expecting he’d say yes. Before she got it, he grabbed it and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

  “I need your phone,” Sadie said, confused and wary.

  “What for?”

  “I need to talk to Pete about all of this and ask his advice.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Sadie bristled. “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to tie up the line. Caro might call me back.”

  “I know how to answer a call if it comes through,” Sadie said. It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. He was infuriating. “And I really need to call Pete.”

  Rex hesitated, then retrieved his phone from his pocket. Instead of giving it to Sadie, however, he pressed a button again—speed dial—and the speakers in the truck started ringing.

  “Who are you calling now?” she asked, annoyed.

  “Maybe she’ll answer this time.”

  Sadie lifted her eyebrows and gave him an incredulous look. “Caro? She hasn’t answered the other times. We need to take advantage of all our options, and Pete can—”

  “Rex?” The shaky voice playing on the speakers of Rex’s truck silenced Sadie in an instant.

  “Caro!” Rex said, leaning forward in his seat, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay, but Sadie’s in trouble, and I need your help.”

  Chapter 35

  Rex cast a confused look at Sadie. “What are you talking about, Caro? What do you mean Sadie’s in trouble?”

  “I can’t explain everything right now,” Caro said, her voice shaking. “But Sadie has something that doesn’t belong to her, and if you and I don’t get it to these men, they’re going to kill her, Rex.”

  It was the same story the Cowboy had told Sadie—that if she went with them, they wouldn’t kill Margo. She grabbed a pen from the truck console and wrote on the notebook, I’m not here. Rex read it and nodded.

  “Who’s going to kill her?”

  “These me—” The line went quiet. Rex and Sadie both froze. Of course the men were listening, but they were also orchestrating.

  “Caro!” Rex yelled.

  “I need you to find this thing Sadie took,” Caro said, coming back on the line and talking fast. “It’s got to be in one of the boxes she packed up on Thursday. The ones stacked in the apartment. We’ve looked everywhere else.”

  Sadie wrote looked through my hotel and car on the paper and showed it to Rex while Caro continued. The Cowboy had Sadie’s purse, which had her hotel key. And Horace had found Sadie’s car key when he’d searched her.

  “I need you to go through the boxes and find this item. It’s an artifact of some kind. Valuable,” Caro said.

  Sadie wrote Don’t say you have it and showed it to Rex, who frowned. She held her breath until he spoke again.

  “You’re sure it’s there?” Rex asked. His knuckles were white against the steering wheel.

  “It has to be,” Caro said, and the desperation in her tone convinced Sadie that she believed her life, and Sadie’s too, might be forfeit if this artifact wasn’t found. “We already checked her ho—” The line went mute again. Sadie circled the word hotel that she’d written earlier.

  Rex pressed down on the gas pedal, and the truck sped up. He knew Caro was in Albuquerque and wanted to get there as quickly as possible. Sadie estimated they were still a good fifteen minutes from her hotel.

  “I’ll find it!” Rex shouted. A moment later the background fuzz from Caro’s phone sounded through the speakers again. Rex relaxed the smallest bit. “I’ll find it,” he said again. “Then these people will let you go, right?”

  “Yes,” Caro said. “They’ll let Sadie and me both go.”

  Rex was silent for a moment. “Where is Sadie?”

  “I don’t know where she is, Rex. But these same people took her. They’re holding her somewhere, but she won’t help them find this artifact. She said she’d rather die, and so . . . so they came for me,” Caro said, almost in a whisper. “You have to find it fast, Rex. Where are you? You didn’t answer at the house.”

  “I, uh, had to go to the store for some antacids,” Rex said, looking at Sadie for help. She nodded that it was a good answer. “I’m almost back home. What do I do when I find this, uh, thing they’re looking for?”

  “Um . . .” Hushed voices on Caro’s end of the call caused Sadie to lean forward, hoping she could make out a word or recognize a voice, but the sound was too distorted. “I’ll call you back in half an hour,” Caro said after a few seconds. “And—”

  There were muffled voices in the background, and suddenly a man’s voice filled the cab of the truck: the Cowboy. “You call the cops, I’ll know about it, and she’s dead. You got that?” He didn’t give Rex a chance to answer as the connection broke.

  They both sat in silence for several seconds, as if waiting for Caro’s voice to come back on the line. Rex sped up even more. They were going to get pulled over. “What hotel were you staying at?”

  “The Hampton,” Sadie said as her fingers gripped the armrests. “By the airport. But she thinks you’re in Santa Fe.”

  “I know. We’re going to cut them off at the hotel.”

  “We’re at least ten minutes away,” Sadie said.

  Rex wasn’t listening. “We’ll cut them off and get her back. The sooner the better. I’m not waiting half an hour while some mercenaries hold my wife for ransom. You’ve seen this van before. You know what we’re looking for.”

  “They could be anywhere,” Sadie said, trying to make him see reason while trying to think of a better idea. “Get off the freeway,” she said a few seconds later.

  Rex looked at her like she was nuts. “I’m going to the hotel.”

  She sat up straight, scanning the section of road in front of them and looking for the next freeway exit. “They won’t be there waiting for you, but they think you’re in Santa Fe so they’re going to be heading your direction. If you get off the freeway and pull over on the on-ramp, we can watch for them. I know the van and when it passes, we’ll be on their tail.”

  Rex considered that for a moment, still speeding down the freeway.

  “And if you don’t slow down, you’re going to get pulled over. I saw on the news that nearly every cop in the city is working this weekend because of the Fiesta.”

  A sign for exit 233 came into view—the exit for Fiesta Park, in fact—and Sadie let out a breath when Rex started slowing down. “You better be right about this,” he grumbled.

  “I am,” Sadie said with confidence. “They were driving the speed limit when they had me, and they were worried about the police so I bet they’ll do that again. They weren’t driving when we talked to them on the phone just now. It was too quiet in the background for them to have been in a car, so they likely called from the hotel. They’re in a hurry to get this pipe back, so they’ll come your direction.” She paused, letting her thoughts catch up with her tongue. “Once we have a visual, we can call the police and set up a roadblock or something.”

  “They said no cops. I’m not risking it.”

  Oh, he was a stubborn man. “Well, we want to follow them anyway. Get off at the exit.”

  Rex nodded, slowed, then pulled off the freeway. He turned left, then left again, and pulled to the side of the on-ramp, positioning himself so that they both had a clear view of the traffic.

  Sadie stared at every vehicle that passed by. Finding the van would be cake, and the success of her plan so far dispelled some of the rising tension. “They’ll be driving in the slow lane,” she said, thinking of the many cars she’d heard passing on the left when they’d been driving her out to the desert. She wondered if they were planning to go to the same location where they’d tak
en her. She hoped not. It would be difficult to follow them there. “I bet they’ll be here within the next five or six minutes.”

  Rex nodded, but his expression was severe. This was his wife these men were holding. Every time her frustration with him rose, she had to remind herself of that.

  “Please let me call Pete now.”

  “I’m not calling Pete,” Rex said as resolute as ever. “He’ll call the cops, and they said no cops.”

  “They also said to wait for them to call after half an hour, and we’re not doing that.”

  “We are waiting.”

  He had a point.

  She was working out a new argument as to why they had to call Pete when a white van sped past them.

  “It’s them,” she said, hitting Rex in the arm. “Go, go, go!”

  “You’re sure?” Rex asked as he merged onto the freeway. The taillights for the van were a mile or so ahead of them by the time he’d reached freeway speed.

  “It’s a white van, I’m sure of that. See if you can get closer. If it’s the one we want, there should be a crack in the back window.”

  “It better be the right van,” Rex said between clamped teeth.

  “Seriously, Rex, I’m this close to slapping you. I’m doing the best I can here, okay?”

  He muttered something she chose to ignore, but he sped up slow and steady. When they were within twenty feet of the van, Sadie leaned forward and felt a rush of relief when she identified the crack. Thank goodness. Rex would likely have kicked her out on the side of the road if she’d been wrong. “That’s it. Back off so they don’t get suspicious.”

  Rex eased off on the gas and let another car get in front of him. They passed a cop car with lights flashing on the side of the road. That, but for the grace of God, could have been Rex.

  Each time they approached an exit, she worried the van was going to pull off into the desert, but they continued toward Santa Fe long enough for Sadie to know they weren’t taking Caro to the same place they’d taken her. She was relieved, but then it opened up the new fear of an unknown location.

  When the van did finally slow down, it took an exit Sadie had never taken before. They hadn’t passed the airport yet, so they weren’t quite to Santa Fe. There was a closed down gas station at the base of the off-ramp and a few boxy homes scattered here and there, but it didn’t scream “residential area” and had a run-down look to it.

  “Where are we?” Sadie asked. “Is this part of Santa Fe?”

  “Not quite. It’s gonna become obvious we’re following them. I’ll turn the other way. Circle back.”

  Sadie nodded, and Rex turned right as the van went left. He drove a hundred yards down the road before turning around on a ragged street. Another car got off the freeway and headed the same direction the van had taken—west. Rex fell in behind it.

  There were scattered homes, most of them trailers placed with a lack of organization. Some of the lights were on inside the dwellings, but there wasn’t a lot of traffic. The car between them and the van turned onto a narrow road, and Rex slowed down so as to give the van more space. Luckily, the van didn’t pull onto a side street where it would have looked suspicious if Rex had followed them. Instead the van continued forward at least four or five miles before turning onto a dirt road. A mailbox was posted out front.

  “It’s a driveway,” Sadie said.

  “Watch them,” Rex said as he drove slowly past the entrance while Sadie surveyed the property.

  “There’s a house back there,” Sadie said. “No lights on inside, but the headlights of the van lit it up for a minute. Trailer, I think.”

  “Any other vehicles?”

  “Not that I could see,” Sadie said. The property was far enough behind them that she had turned around in her seat. “There’s a shed and an old camper, I think. Lots of sagebrush and overgrown grass.”

  Rex drove another quarter mile, then turned around, shut off his lights, and drove back the way they had come. She looked hard at the area surrounding the house. A window was now lit up inside. Rex stopped in front of the driveway. They both remained silent, but the unasked question hung between them.

  “Now what?” Rex finally asked.

  “How long has it been since that call?” Sadie asked.

  “Twenty-six minutes.”

  “Which means they’ll be calling any minute. I think you should tell them you have the pipe when they call. They’ll probably want you to meet them somewhere.”

  “What if it’s a trap?”

  “Which is why we should call Pete. Caro’s his cousin, he isn’t going to want anything to happen to her, which means he’ll be careful. He understands how people like this think.”

  Rex shook his head; Sadie wasn’t surprised. “Okay,” she said, moving on. “Then I’m going to sneak up to the house and make sure Caro’s in there and that she’s safe. Do you have a flashlight?”

  “I need to get out of the road,” Rex said, pulling forward.

  “Head over there,” she said, pointing toward a dark, obviously abandoned trailer a hundred yards down the road. The windows were boarded up and a no trespassing sign had been nailed crookedly onto one of the plywood panels.

  “I’m coming with you,” Rex said as he pulled in behind the abandoned trailer.

  “You can’t,” Sadie said with a shake of her head. She put the lid back on the box with the pipe and set it on the floor at her feet. “You have to stay here to take their call and arrange the trade-off.”

  “What if you don’t get back before they call?”

  “Then leave. I’ll figure something out.” She’d find a way to call the police is what she meant. She’d paid attention to the road signs, and the number on the mailbox was 89. She’d break into one of the other homes and use their phone if she had to. Her focus right now, though, was to make sure Caro was there and to get close enough to figure out who these men were and what part Caro played in their overall plan.

  “I can’t just leave you here,” Rex said, but he sounded annoyed, making her wonder if he wanted to leave her but couldn’t get past his own conscience.

  “You will if you have to choose between Caro and me,” Sadie said. “Now, do you have a flashlight in here somewhere? I can signal you from the house with it, let you know I’m there, and you can pump the brakes—I’ll see the glow of the brake lights—to confirm you saw me.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “I worked with Cub Scouts for too long. The flashlight?”

  “In the roadside kit,” he said, getting out of the truck and going around to the back door.

  Sadie did the same, careful to be as quiet as he had been, and found a tire iron about the same time he handed her the small flashlight. She turned it on quickly to make sure it worked; it did. She had light and she was armed—it was a good start. If only her heart wasn’t racing.

  Chapter 36

  Okay,” Sadie said after they rounded the edge of the trailer. “I’ll flash the light once if she’s there, twice if she isn’t.”

  “She has to be there,” Rex said.

  Sadie nodded and kept to herself that the other part of her plan was to try to get Caro out of there. These men were killers, though she hadn’t made a big deal about it to Rex.

  “And then you’ll come back to the truck?”

  “Leave without me if you have to, I’ll be okay.” She was impressed by how calm she sounded despite how freaked out she was. She didn’t want to be alone in the dark desert. But this was for Caro, and Sadie had to make sure she was safe.

  “I should have brought my gun,” Rex said.

  Sadie almost made a joke about New Mexicans and their guns but decided now wasn’t the time. Instead, she did one more scan of the truck for anything that might come in handy. She wished she had the walkie-talkies she and Caro had used when they were doing her informant work.

  They found a place for Rex to stand that gave him a solid view of the house and determined where Sadie would need to
be in order to give the light signal and see his response. By the time she hurried across the street, it had been thirty-four minutes since they’d talked to Caro. Why hadn’t anyone called Rex back yet?

  She kept to the thick brush and grass that lined the road, then darted across the driveway and went from a large bush to a small tree to a hiding place behind the shed, which was about thirty feet west of the house. From there she eased around the side and got a better view of the trailer. It was gray, old, and in disrepair. It sat on a concrete foundation, about half of which was covered in white lattice skirting. The windows were covered with either heavy drapes or old mini-blinds, which meant she had to get closer in order to make the visual confirmation of Caro. After crouching down as low as she could and still be able to walk with her incredibly sore muscles, she hurried across the open space toward the west end of the trailer.

  Once there, she pressed her back against the metal siding, caught her breath, and then turned and went up on her tiptoes. She could just see over the windowsill—but even being this close, the blinds prevented her from seeing anything more than the movement of bodies. She could hear the murmur of voices and wondered if it were just Horace and the Cowboy in there or if the third man had joined them this time. She hated the idea of Caro being so horribly outnumbered, and that gave her more motivation to confirm whether or not Caro was even there. Rex was likely very antsy by now. She wondered if they’d called him yet.

  She stayed close to the trailer and scooted around the back corner, hoping for another window that might afford her a better view. A large wooden porch—more like a deck, really—had steps coming down the side, parallel to the trailer rather than straight back from the back door. If she stood on one of the steps, she might be able to see through a gap where one of the blinds was bent.