Taylor looked down at her father—her real father. He lay in a pool of blood widening beneath him. Raw, red spatters lay bright against his shirt as his open, lifeless eyes stared back at her.
Taylor dropped the gun and pressed her hand over her mouth to stop her own scream. The last thing she remembered before the room began to spin and she went down into darkness was that curiously, she felt cold.
Epilogue
An intense investigation was conducted in the weeks that followed, by both the American and Mexican authorities. The days were a confused and crowded blur for Taylor. She was initially hospitalized for shock, along with Craig for treatment of his injuries. She felt neither fear nor anger about the attack upon Cabrera. She just remembered seeing the worried faces of the people who crouched over her afterwards, their mouths moving with no sound, like a silent movie that kept replaying itself over and over again.
She and Craig stayed in Culiacan for much of the initial activity, jostled about between DEA interviews, Embassy offices, and local police headquarters to give statements and assist in the investigation. Later, as events wound down, they traveled to Acapulco to sort out the details of their own future together. It was springtime in California now, a time of changes and new beginnings.
The six armed commandos on Cabrera’s property that fateful night were arrested, as well as Pierre Montagne. A photograph of him taken after he was sent to Mexico City “for interrogation” eventually appeared in the morning newspapers. His battered face accompanied an article commending the Mexican federales for their work in extracting the “confessions” of his crimes.
The day after the arrests at the house, Cabrera’s field houses were raided and his acres of illegal crops destroyed. The Mexican and Indian prisoners were returned to the hands of the government, while the Americans, through the aid of the U.S. Embassy, were transferred to detention centers in the States. There, each case would be heard and processed individually by the proper American governmental authorities.
Comandante Luis Suarez was murdered in prison the day after his arrival there.
For his assistance in helping Craig’s escape, and in exchange for other vital information he possessed about the country’s drug operation, Jim Walden was afforded an attorney through the American Embassy, who began negotiations to clear him of the drug charges against him while he returned to his home state of Texas. Craig took Taylor to meet him one night before he left, at one of the outdoor clubs that peppered the white Acapulco beachfront. They were both able to thank him for his efforts.
With the help of the local authorities, Chico, or Andre Mendoza, his real name, was reunited with his family.
Robert Cabrera’s entire drug smuggling operation was now exposed and collapsed.
~ ~ ~
Taylor put the finishing touches to her face before the hotel mirror. The suitcases were by the door. They were going home. She was starting to find herself again. Her eyes were coming more alive with each day, and her cheeks had regained their rosy coloring.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror, contemplating recent events. She thought about Shaun, as she often did lately. Teams of searchers had scoured the mountains for him for weeks, but his body was never found.
She missed him a lot. Sometimes she would dream about him. She couldn’t remember what the dreams were about, but he seemed to come to her, alive and whole and full of energy, so much like his old mischievous self. The dream always ended with her waking up openly weeping. She hoped that wherever he was now, he was at peace.
She heard a knock at the door, and Craig walked in.
“Everything ready to go, luv?” He embraced her, then looked into her reflected face. “What’s wrong?”
She sighed. “Just thinking. Sometimes I sit and wonder who I am. I always thought I knew who I was, until all this.”
“You are Taylor Fairchild, daughter of Bruce Fairchild. What you will never be is the daughter of Roberto Perez. Now come away from there. I can’t hold a woman in a mirror.”
She smiled as they sat on the bed together. “The life I knew, that we knew, seems an eternity ago.”
“Yeah, well, Cabrera will never hurt anyone again.”
“We came so close to losing each other for good because of him,” Taylor said. “And he was my father. I don’t know what I would have done if he—” She vowed to herself not to shake again, but when she dwelt on the awful events that had occurred, they would periodically overwhelm her.
Craig held her close. “It will be hard to forget for a while,” he soothed, “but you’ll see. We’ll put the whole bloody mess behind us. Shaun would have wanted it that way, too.”
Craig looked at her, and pulling her close to him, he ran his fingers through her hair. “I love you, Yankee. Stay with me. Always.”
“I will,” she whispered in return.
She knew time would put all the pieces back together. It was a new beginning for them. The beginning of forever.
A Perilous Pursuit Page 30
