Out of Time

by Samantha Graves

  He glanced at her white knuckles and at the absolute concentration and determination on her face. She’d gotten him this far, and he wasn’t about to burst her bubble after she’d saved his ass. He took a deep breath and crossed his arms to relax in the seat. “No problem. But you might want to take your foot off the brake while you’re driving. Kills the gas mileage. Got a ways to go before we stop tonight.”

  She nodded and eased her foot off the brake.

  Simon pulled out his cell phone and dialed Paulie’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  “What’s wrong? Is Jillian okay?”

  Simon turned to look out the back window. “Why do you always assume something is wrong?”

  “Because you already called me today, which means something went wrong.”

  “Jillian’s fine. We just had a bit of trouble,” Simon told him. “The flashing-red-lights kind.”

  Paulie sighed. “What do you need?”

  “Information, for now,” he said. “We’re heading south toward Matias Romero, Oaxaca. I need to know if the authorities put an APB out on us. Can you do that?”

  “Sure can. Wait. South? Why are you heading south? I thought the plan was to follow the Olmec trail?”

  Simon glanced at Jillian. “South is where the archives are.”

  Paulie said, “Okay. Anything else?”

  “No. Just call if you hear anything.”

  Simon hung up the phone and slipped it into his pocket.

  “So what’s the itinerary?” she asked.

  Damn good question. He checked the map. “We’ll stop for the night and ditch the Jeep as soon as possible. They took down the license plate number.”

  Jillian said, “No problem. I ripped the plates off the old truck. They’re in the back.”

  Simon turned slowly and stared at her in utter astonishment.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Hey, I paid a hundred bucks for them.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  Some local cops spotted Simon Bonner at a filling station north of Matias Romero,” Walsh said. “They stopped to make sure and got a little overzealous. Tried to bring him in, but both he and the woman escaped.”

  Donovan paced the balcony, the glorious sunset wasted on him. At least she was still alive. Without her, they would never find the archives. Never. They’d been hidden for thousands of years. There was a reason why.

  “Do we have anyone on them now?” he asked.

  “Based on where they were heading and the time they left, they’re probably near La Ventosa by now. I’m trying to clean it up from here, but they caused one hell of a commotion at the filling station. I have my hands full calming the authorities.”

  Donovan puffed on his cigar. “Pay them off.”

  “I will, but there comes a point where it just gets too big and too loud. Let’s hope Bonner knows to keep a low profile from here on in.”

  And finds the archives soon, Donovan thought. He wasn’t the only one getting restless.

  Walsh said, “There’s something else you should know. We picked up a man following them. It took some legwork, but we learned his name is Kurt Kesel, a gun for hire. He’s been implicated in a slew of assassinations and nasty jobs. Spent some time in prison. I don’t know why he’s after them, but at this point, he’s not interfering with their progress.”

  Donovan rubbed his temple. Was he working for another collector? “Can we take him out?”

  “Quietly? Probably not. Plus he’s already disappeared off our radar. This guy is a pro.”

  The cigar glowed as he drew on it. “Then we’ll deal with him when we have to.”

  Jillian weaved the Jeep between potholes large enough to swallow them whole. A tiny rural farm town made up of wooden and weathered structures leaned into the rutted dirt road.

  Simon pointed to one place where several townfolk were gathered on the porch, eyeing them with keen interest. “Pull over there.”

  She parked the Jeep and turned off the ignition.

  “I’m going to see if we can get a place to stay for the night,” Simon told her.

  She nodded, distracted by her surroundings.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She turned to him and smiled. “This kicking-ass thing takes a lot out of a girl.”

  He watched her intently. “Gotta get used to it.”

  Right. She peeled her cramped fingers off the steering wheel. Never happen.

  Simon opened the door and stepped out. “I’ll be right back.” Then he leaned in. “By the way. You kick ass pretty damn well for a civilian.”

  Jillian smiled as he shut the door. The events of the day swept through her bones. Her brain was going a mile a minute. She was dusty and hungry and so wired she couldn’t stand it.

  The crazy plan had worked far better than she’d imagined. She still couldn’t believe she’d actually pulled it off. No wonder Raven loved this. No wonder she was addicted to it. It was scary and terrifying and fun as hell.

  Jillian sighed and exited the Jeep to stretch her tight muscles. The smell of manure mixed with the humid, sultry air. The sun was hanging low over the mountains, waning to a warm red glow.

  She spotted a little girl watching her from a doorway of one of the shacks. Big brown eyes studied her quietly. Her hair was long and uneven. Her fingers were dirty, and Jillian almost gasped when she put them in her mouth to suck on.

  She appeared to be about three years old, but her eyes were ancient, seeing far more than she should ever have to. There was no smile for Jillian. No reaction. Nothing.

  Jillian swallowed the emotion in her throat as she surveyed the town with brutal honesty. The stores and buildings were little more than rough-cut boards slapped together to form walls. Rusted tin roofs dipped in the waning daylight. Sheets covered the broken windows and doorways.

  Two rows of shacks on either side of the road made up the town center. Three men, dirty and ill clothed, stood barefoot and watched her from the front porch of one.

  She’d never seen such poverty. Manhattan had its poor, but nothing like this. Dirt poor, Simon had told her, and he was right. She probably had more money in her pocket than anyone in this town made in a whole year.

  This was their everyday situation. Did the children go to school? Did they laugh? Did they realize there was more to this world than what they could see?

  At that moment, she wanted to give them everything she owned, do something to make this better. Like Simon had. Who could see this and not want to do anything in their power to make it right? He was a good man. He had tried to make it better.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, a whisper said, You’re falling for him.

  Slowly, the rest of reality overcame her, snuffing out the last of her excitement. How many laws had she broken today during their grand escape? That was not the real Jillian, and she had to remember that. She’d give anything to help these people, but she wouldn’t break the law to do it. She couldn’t live like that.

  Simon walked out of the shack with keys in one hand and a small bottle of tequila in the other.

  “We have a place to stay for the night,” he said and handed her the tequila.

  She opened it and took a swig that made her shudder. Then another. Simon watched her curiously. “The accommodations are not going to be stellar.”

  She nodded, never taking her eyes off the depressing scenery. “That’s fine.”

  “Getting to know the town?” Simon asked as he took a drink from the bottle she offered him.

  “Not much to see,” she admitted, and then she looked at him. “How do you fix this?”

  He put the cap on the bottle. “You don’t. Let’s go.”

  Reluctantly, she abandoned the discussion and climbed into the passenger side of the Jeep. Simon drove them to the edge of the town and parked behind a shack on a low hill surrounded by a cornfield.

  While Simon switched the plates, Jillian went inside to survey the night’s accommodations. A single overhead bulb
shed a meager light that didn’t quite reach the corners.

  It was a two-room shed with a battered metal roof, bare boards for walls, and screens in the two windows. New blue curtains fluttered in the breeze, looking out of place.

  Wide wood planks covered a floor that had been neatly swept. A clean blanket was thrown over the bed in one corner. One handmade table and two mismatched chairs took up the other side. A narrow door led to the tiny bathroom, which consisted of a stained toilet and a sink. One towel hung on a nail.

  As humble as it was, she couldn’t help but think she had the best room in town tonight.

  She made a meal of cold, squashed tamales, a bag of chips, and tequila in two glasses she found in a box on the floor. Simon entered and gave the place a cursory glance before pulling up a chair. He tossed a pile of folded maps on the table between them. “Time to regroup.”

  “Give me a minute.” She tossed the tequila down and felt it burn her throat. Then she shook off the shudder.

  Simon grinned at her, and she warmed. And not from the tequila. Then his smile faded, and he reached for his glass. “There are a few things you should know.”

  She groaned. “You have got to come up with a better opening line.”

  He drank two shots of tequila in a row, and she knew it was going to be bad.

  Finally he said, “The kidnappers are following us. Using Jackson’s phone as a tracker.”

  She refilled both their glasses. “Okay.”

  He eyed her. “Okay? That’s it?”

  Jillian clinked her glass against his. “All relative now. What else?”

  Simon watched her down the tequila in one shot. As soon as she stopped drinking, she was going to hit the wall. Between blowing up the garage and passing out at San Lorenzo, she’d had a long day.

  “Kesel is probably following us, as well.”

  She gave a little shake and poured more tequila. “Yup. Dead guy.”

  “Uh-huh. And now the cops.”

  Jillian shot the entire glass and grinned at him. “So basically you’re trying to tell me that everyone is following us. Half of them are waiting until we find the archives to jump on us. The other half of them could jump us at any time.”

  He could tell by the plastered smile on her face that he needed to talk quickly. “Exactly. We need a plan.”

  “Okeydokey,” she said, picking at a tamale as he spread out the map.

  He circled Mancuso’s town with a pen. “This is where we started, where you first saw the light. Can you remember where you saw it?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I was a little wasted on tequila at the time.”

  He grinned. “One of my fondest memories.” He handed her the pen. “Draw a line in the general direction of the light.”

  She drew a short line pointing south. Then he circled Tres Zapotes, where she’d had the first sighting of the priest, and she drew her line in the direction he had pointed. They went through the other sightings—Catemaco, Acayucan, and today at San Lorenzo.

  A pattern began to form, converging on a single location. She was right. And it was triangulating to just southeast of this spot.

  “We’re close,” she observed.

  They were close. This was really going to happen. And all the worries he’d had about how they were going to pull it off and get out alive were now coming to the forefront.

  “Maybe that’s why you seem to be getting more involved with every sighting,” he noted.

  She yawned. “Maybe.”

  She was fading fast. He marked a route on the map, trying to stay clear of the main roads, which was going to be tricky in this part of the country.

  “I think our best course of action is to keep heading south until we are parallel with the light you’re seeing. Then head east. We’ll follow the beam until we run out of road. From there, it’ll be on foot to the archives.”

  She stared at the map for moment. “And then what? We leave breadcrumbs for everyone following us? We wave a white flag?”

  From the look on her face, she understood what they were up against. They were on their own. They couldn’t trust anyone, including the police. “I could call in Paulie—” he began.

  “No,” she said, tracing the route with her fingers. “It won’t do any good.”

  Simon watched her faith die in front of him. “We don’t have to do this. We can leave now. Create new identities, go to a place where no one will find us. Start over.”

  Her gaze rose slowly to meet his. “And let Celina die.”

  “She might anyway,” Simon told her truthfully.

  Jillian smiled weakly. “And she might not.”

  A touch of relief replaced the horrible feeling in his gut. “We’ll think of something.”

  She nodded wearily and laid her head down on her forearms. “Sure.”

  Crash city. He refolded the map. “Bedtime, babe.”

  She was already asleep.

  Simon woke up to an empty room and sat up with a start. Moonlight shed a ghostly glow over everything. The wind had died down, turning it hot and sticky in the shack. The bathroom door was open and dark.

  “Jillian?”

  No answer. He tamped down the flash of panic. She was fine. Probably just looking at that damn light again. Simon threw off the sheet, pulled on a pair of shorts, and jammed his feet into shoes before stepping outside.

  The full moon illuminated the cornfield and sparse collection of trees. A dog barked in the distance, but Simon couldn’t see much over the cornstalks that crowded the shack. He checked the Jeep first. She wasn’t in or around it.

  “Jillian?” he yelled louder.

  For a heart-pounding moment, all he heard were insects in the darkness. He turned south and slashed through the cornfield, calling her name. A thousand scenarios dominated his thoughts. What if she was lost in the field? What if she wandered away in her sleep? What if she changed her mind and decided she couldn’t handle this anymore?

  In a grassy clearing at the edge of the field, he found her, wrapped up in a white sheet, staring up at the mountains. Moonlight grazed her delicate features, and blond hair floated over her shoulders in the breeze. She didn’t seem to notice when he approached—a bad sign—and he braced himself for the worst.

  “I’m okay,” she said suddenly.

  “You could have answered me,” he said, his voice rough.

  Dragged from a past only she could see, Jillian turned to his worried face and saw the residual concern in his eyes. That was her fault. She’d scared him. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if your voice was real.”

  He swore softly and looked away, his face lost in darkness. “You see it?”

  Jillian gazed at the narrow blue beam reaching into the heavens. It was perfect now. Crisp, clear, with ribbons of clouds that danced along its length. She held her hand up, silhouetted against the blue.

  “It’s so beautiful. I could stand here all night.”

  Her voice didn’t sound like her own. She felt a strange yearning flow over her and sighed at the way it called to her soul. She was drawn into its simple splendor, a gift from the past. How long had it been here with no one to appreciate it?

  “Will you be able to let it go?”

  No, she felt herself say, mesmerized and lost. It was so close. Never. This belongs to me.

  “Jillian, come back.”

  She heard his voice, and part of her splintered. Simon.

  His name rolled through her mind, cleaving her from the light—bit by bit. She felt pressure in her chest like she was being torn in two. Despair filled her mind.

  You can’t have both.

  I want both, she replied desperately.

  You have to choose.

  I can’t. I don’t even know who I am anymore, she thought.

  You have to find out.

  And then she was free, released from the grip of turmoil and delivered whole. Strong hands held her arms. Soft lips pressed against hers. She moaned and leaned into the safety of Simon’s embra
ce.

  She kissed him with complete and careless freedom. For now—for this brief moment in time—she chose him. Relief flowed across her mind. For tonight, she was free from the decision. Betrayal could wait until tomorrow.

  She shrugged off the sheet and let it drift to the grass at her feet. Simon inhaled deeply as she pressed her bare body to his. The breeze brushed her skin like a lover’s first touch. She felt alive, naked and vulnerable in the unknown wilderness. The air was cleaner, the night sounds soothing, and the grass soft and welcoming beneath her feet.

  She pulled Simon to the ground with her. He followed silently, knowing what she needed more than she did. He’d always known, from the very first time he touched her.

  Why did it have to be you? The one man who could tempt me from the past? The one man I could give it all up for?

  Simon buried his fingers in her hair, holding her while he kissed her face over and over, each kiss full of compassion. As he braced himself on his elbows, his knees nudged her legs wider, and she obliged. He growled softly and trailed kisses down her throat, between her breasts. Warm palms cupped her, fingers rolled her nipples gently. She arched her back for more and opened her eyes to the stars. The universe gazed down on her—immense yet strangely intimate.

  Sensations overwhelmed her as Simon rediscovered every curve and tender valley. He rubbed his cheek against her belly, his shadow of a beard igniting the fire that had been smoldering. She moaned when he dipped lower, easing to her core. His strong hands wrapped around the inside of her thighs.

  She pulled in a deep breath when he touched her with his tongue, exhaled when he closed his lips around her, and cried out when he sucked.

  She gripped his hair with her fingers as pressure built with every flick and nibble and drag of his tongue. The intensity became unbearable, and she tried to move away. Simon would have none of it, his grip tight and sure. With one last choked cry, she succumbed to the raging climax. It ripped her apart, scattering her starry world before slowly, magically, coming together in mindless peace.