Lexi got his attention again. “He risked his life for the money and the adventure, and nothing more.”
“That’s what he does.” He started searching around, scanning the ground, then prowling their prison. Finally, he slid his hand into the water and came up with a long, thin bone. What was he doing?
“I know about the papers you signed, saying you weren’t allowed to see us. That’s why you never called, why you followed my social media, but you never reached out to me, isn’t it? He told me you never meant to leave us at all.”
For a moment, he gripped the bone, his knuckles whitening, then he lay it aside between the pantleg and the socks. “She hired him because he hates me.”
“And you just followed him here.”
“That’s right.” He shifted his position, preparing for something.
“How can you still believe that, after everything he’s done?”
His head fell, his chest working for breath, then he looked back to her. “It’s easier than believing someone like him did all of this … for me.” A small sign for himself. So many perfect signs, so many grand gestures, so loud all the time, but when he imagined someone sacrificing on his behalf, his hands overpowered his word, his voice. Had her mother done that to him? Had she?
Lexi shifted positions, going to Malcolm’s other side where she could talk to her father, and help Malcolm at the same time. “Do you even know what friendship is?”
“Your friends let you leave them behind and lied to cover for you meeting up with Malcolm.”
She studied Malcolm’s resting face. “Because they would do anything for me. That is what friends do.” She said this emphatically, clasping her fingers into the sign for friendship, holding it, moving it from her father, toward the wall behind them. “You’re wrong about him. About how he feels about you.”
He gave a nod, or maybe just bowed his head, then he finally met her gaze. “I’ve been wrong about him for years.” He gestured toward Malcolm. “I’m ready. Can you keep him still, maybe hold his shoulders?”
Lexi moved toward Malcolm’s head. “Are you sure about this? Shouldn’t we wait for —”
“For what? Like it or not, I’m what we’ve got. If we don’t do this, he loses the leg. I’ve seen that before — trust me, you don’t want it to happen to him. The longer it takes for us to get out of here, the worse off he’ll be.” His hands looked so sure, his signs commanding.
Their eyes met over Malcolm’s still form. “Then you do think we’ll get out of here.”
One corner of his mouth quirked, and he pointed toward the ceiling before saying, “As long as it doesn’t keep raining.”
She looked up then, to where trickles of water reached along the edges of the stones and plinked from the roots. All the while they spoke of other things and he prepared to save her boyfriend’s life, he’d been hearing the sound of their own doom coming from above, an army of raindrops seeping in and slowly filling the chamber — with them inside of it.
CHAPTER SIXTY
* * *
What are you talking about? Are you saying they’re alive? That Lexi’s alive?” Pam wore a scarf over her head, holding back her hair as if to save it from the rain that pounded at Grant, goading him toward urgency.
“There’s a chance.” He turned away, jogging a diagonal path toward level ground, toward the machete-cut path they must have taken from the trucks. The women followed, one dubious, the other nearly hyperventilating. He didn’t have time for it.
“After that?” Eleiua indicated the ruined saddle between the two hills. On one side, the stripped earth and fallen trees revealed a series of worn terraces built of stone.
“The cup said three paths, for three princesses. The first one is dead, the Maya tomb.” He halted at the group of three trucks. Should’ve searched the dead for keys. He could hotwire a truck if he had to. “The second was Raxha, the middle chamber, the one with the drugs.” He jogged to the furthest truck. Be hell turning in these conditions, but he could make it happen. “She’s dead, too. And the third one was you. It’s not a well, it’s a cenote, a limestone cave. You told me he used to dive them —”
“Until I asked him to stop.” Eleiua blinked at him. “Because when it rains, it’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t understand,” Pam shouted. She hurled something at him: the go-bag Eleiua prepared, which he’d left, along with his cellphone and a few other things, at the top of the hill. He dodged.
“Stop avoiding me!”
“I’m not avoiding you —” mostly true — “I don’t have time. If I’m right, neither do they.” The rain clattered on the truck’s windshield and roof.
“They’re in a cave, that’s what he means,” Eleiua explained. “And the water rises. But Casey —” She touched him again, and drew back. “The trucks. They won’t help you. We made a barricade, to stop the rest of them joining her.”
His palms pressed to the window, leaning in. The obsidian blade had carved into his hand; now his blood seeped from the cuts, joining the rain to run in pink rivulets down the pane. The barricade had probably saved their lives, only to spend them again.
“Then I’ll run there.” He pushed back from the truck and straightened.
She looked him over, her face crumpling, and he imagined what she saw: bruised and scraped and bleeding, his hair in his face, his clothes torn and soiled, and now every inch of him soaking wet, and he hardly looked like a brawler to begin with. How much could he possibly have left?
He had to believe he had enough. “I’m not done yet.”
“You look like you are,” she whispered. “Even with the blood washed off.”
“No. Not while there’s hope.” Over her shoulder, he met Pam’s stare. Her make-up still held, in spite of the rain. “Gooney gave me a black eye, didn’t he? Trust me, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Trust you, Mr. Casey? I don’t even know what to hope for.”
“Neither do I, but that won’t stop me trying. I’ve run marathons.”
“Go — go!” She waved her hands as if she could shove him down the track.
He was already turning, but Eleiua popped open the truck door. “Just a minute! It’s eight miles on the roads to my house, much shorter through the jungle. There’s a bridge, a shortcut for the workers, it’s not good, but maybe good enough. And it takes four miles off the trip.” Eleiua scooped up the bag and tossed it into the truck. “Get in. I took the keys so they can’t escape.”
Pam scrambled into the rear seat while Grant took shotgun, his heart already pumping and ready to go.
Eleiua, used to the jungle conditions, started up the truck and rammed it forward, heedless of the vegetation. “These plants are not so strong. The truck is stronger.” She slapped an arm along the back of the seat, swiveling, and punched the truck into reverse, grinding backwards, smashing into one of the other trucks. “And who needs the bumpers.”
In the back seat, Pam gave a little shriek as Eleiua took charge, and Grant caught the older woman’s smile, the flash of her glance toward him in the rearview mirror.
Forward again and she stamped on the gas. “You’re maybe a runner, Mr. Casey, but I have driven the getaway car.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
* * *
Lexi set her hands on Malcolm’s shoulders as her father gripped her boyfriend’s leg, one large, powerful hand at his knee, one at his ankle, the dirt and blood on his hands shaded them closer to the tone of Malcolm’s skin. Her father took a deep breath, then pulled, firmly and carefully drawing Malcolm’s foot away, stretching the muscle.
Malcolm woke with a scream, and Lexi clung to him. His hands clutched at her, trying to reach her father as he completed the movement. The foot shifted back as if it wanted to, settling into a more natural orientation. Malcolm subsided again, gasping.
“You’re gonna be okay, Malcolm. I set your leg — the break is bad, but I’ve seen men recover from worse.” He spoke first, then signed to her. How had she forgotte
n that — her mother would toss words over her shoulder, would sign to her, then turn away to take care of her own business without waiting for Lexi’s reply as if she didn’t even care, and the father she believed truly didn’t, he was the one who spoke with her, who always had time to listen to her.
Her father leaned to rinse off his hands in the water beside him — had it been creeping closer this whole time? He wrapped the pantleg around the injury and lay the spare bone he had collected alongside it. “I’m making a splint, okay? It should be snug, but you should still feel your toes, right?” After signing to Lexi, he again touched Malcolm’s ankle, waited, and let out a smile.
“Thank you, sir,” Malcolm signed, with great deliberation.
“Hey, you jumped in to save my daughter’s life, and mine. I owe you, big time.” A grand movement to emphasize the debt he owed.
“I just, is it okay, Lexi?” Malcolm’s signs faltered. His gaze caught hers, his eyes blinking, his breathing still ragged from that scream. “I’m spent.” His hands dropped wearily to his chest.
“I’m right here, Malcolm.” She nodded to him, and he let his eyes slide shut again.
“He’s good people.” Turning his hands to other work, her father used the socks to pad the area between Malcolm’s leg and the extra bone, then indicated the area to Lexi. “Can you hold this together?”
Lexi shifted down to join him holding together the layers while he used Malcolm’s bootlace, plus the ones that had been dangling from his arms, to bind the whole splint together. When he had finished, he cocked his head, frowned, then said, “Improvise, adapt, overcome. God willing.” He finally edged away, rolling his shoulders back.
From the far side of her boyfriend, Lexi asked, “What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”
That earned her a sidelong glance, a wary smile. “I guess, but she’s … it’s complicated.” A wiggling movement of one finger across his brow, like a worried brow.
“And this isn’t?”
He hesitated. “My divorce from your mother hurt like hell.” Sharp-edged words as if there was more he wanted to say but he held himself in check. “My girlfriend’s divorced too: she’s one of the vast majority for whom divorce leaves the woman worse off, never mind the trust issues. Besides that, we’re both law enforcement. She’s out of state, and I don’t know if I’m ready to leave Boston.”
That twigged Lexi’s memory, then she clapped her hands together. Malcolm’s eyes opened a little as she said, “That sheriff. Resurrection County. She’s your girlfriend?” Last fall, someone sent around this crazy ad for a woman sheriff showing three men whose lives she had saved, and her father had been one of them. In uniform, looking pretty good.
Her father pulled back a little, looking concerned. “You know about that?”
It had made her wonder about him, about what he was doing in Arizona, and what happened to him that this sheriff had to save his life. The articles she found didn’t say much, a series of headlines about his arrest and the heinous nature of the crime he’d been accused of, then the stunning reversal when the sheriff revealed he’d been on the right side all along. She had been so angry at him for so long that she had wondered then why it hurt to think he had almost died. “One of my friends saw it on Instagram and tagged me. They thought I’d be curious. Did she really save your life?”
He shook his head, ducked almost shyly. “She brought me back from the dead.” He touched the scar she had noticed at the corner of his jaw. “Maybe in more ways than one.”
“How awesome is that?” Malcolm said, but his hands shook so hard she caught them in both of hers, holding tight.
“Totally.” Her father lit up. “She’s smart, funny, fast, courageous” — a sign with both hands at his chest, then moving out and forming fists as if he were holding on to something or making ready to fight. “Her mother was a missionary in China. Grant helped her come home.” He sagged, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
Malcolm cleared his throat and said something out loud.
Her father’s hands hesitated over the interpretation, then supplied,”Is he dead?”
Lexi slipped her hands free to sign, “I hope not,” but her father said, “Probably.”
Malcolm’s voice, then her father’s hands said, “I’m so sorry to hear that, sir.”
“You don’t need to call me that.” Her father’s face looked worn, his eyes haunted, then he added, “My friends call me ’Gooney.’“ His nickname formed by fingerspelling, hollow at its heart.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
* * *
When the heap of farm equipment came in sight up ahead, Eleiua stopped the truck and pointed toward a gap in the jungle across from the plantation lands. “It’s there.”
Grant slipped from the cab, back into the rain, gooseflesh starting to rise. Before shutting the door, he leaned toward the back seat. “I’ll do my best, Pam. We’ll need hospital transport.”
“We’ll take care of this part,” said Eleiua, “and see what happened to the rest of the crew.”
Pam stared bleakly back at him. “You really think it’s possible?”
“Only one way to find out.” He slammed the door behind him and turned for the path into the trees. The broad leaves and fronds caught rainwater and channeled it down to dump on him at the worst moments, like a sadistic water park. Then he came to the gorge and stopped short. Down below, a ravine that stood dry for most of the year now channeled a gushing stream, fed by a half-dozen little waterfalls. And all of that water rushed to fill the caves below. How much time did they have? Should’ve taken a longer look at that exit when he was scanning the stash chamber.
Instead, he faced the bridge, the broken one. To one side sat a few piles of materials for the promised repairs. Beyond, a steel cable suspension bridge at least a hundred yards long spanned the ravine, its fittings rusty and its wooden slats slick with fallen leaves and green with algae. So apparently those action films didn’t make up everything. Slow was smooth, and smooth was fast. Nobody was served by him falling. He slipped his hands onto the cables, letting them ride in case he needed a sudden grip, then moved as quickly as he deemed reasonable, setting his feet with care, grabbing the cable once when a slat shifted around a rotten bolt. The cable burned into his cut palm, and he moved on, gaining speed as he gained confidence.
He hit the ground running on the other side, finding his stride, turning up the road toward the hacienda. Rain sheeted over him, and he let go of his thoughts, placing everything he had into every stride, letting his body do what he knew it could, compartmentalizing the aches for later. Eleuia’s gate lay bent and torn free to one side, the right-hand pillar leaning inward.
Barking greeted him, and his stomach dropped, but the twin rottweilers barreled toward him, only to stop short with brief, satisfied wags. They turned back again and raced aside to whatever business they had before his arrival. They stopped short again, barking ferociously up at the small guard shack that stood a bit uphill and apart from the gate.
A voice hollered. “Salvame! Los perros!” Atop the open-fronted shack perched Ramon. His eyes widened as Grant angled that way. “Zorro! The dogs didn’t eat you?” He continued in Spanish.
The kid was alive, and still here. He must have hidden from his former allies. A sign in his favor. “They like me,” Grant told him. “But not you.”
“Are you —” Ramon swallowed. “You came back for me? To kill me?”
Grant shook his head. “I’ve got more important things to do.”
“You’re not a zeta, are you.” Ramon whispered. He leaned down from the roof like a pitiful gargoyle, rain spilling from his back and trickling down his face.
“Ramon, look at me. Raxha is dead, Dante is dead, and almost everyone who knew you wanted to be one of them is dead, too. You have a chance to change your path. Don’t wreck it.”
The kid gave a shuddering breath. “Can I trust you?”
“That’s up to you, Ramon. Eleiua’s on the way with help. She’
ll call off the dogs when she gets here.” Given the barricade, and the weather, he hated to think how long it might take. And he was already running late.
Shaking his head, Ramon clung to his awkward perch. “I can’t see her — she’s so angry.”
“Maybe, but she’ll give you a second chance.” He started jogging past, toward the outbuildings.
Ramon called after him, “How can you be sure?”
“Because she got one, too.” He left the kid and the barking dogs behind.
First shed, dive equipment. He’d spotted it when he raced to set Ramon free before jumping the copter. Just where he remembered it. He found a light switch, then sluiced the water from his face, and checked over the kit. Dive light, definitely — and functional. Two sets of dive rigs with regulators and side-mounted tanks for cave diving, neither with a full tank. Better pray it wasn’t a long passage. Climbing harness and gear to lower into the well.
Now that he’d stopped running, his skin twitched and shivered, the rain just on the wrong side of the temperature break. Wonderful — and he wasn’t underground. His estimation of how long they could last down there dropped by the minute, even granted the chamber not filling up to drown them inside.
He pulled a wetsuit off a peg, dislodging a few years of accumulated debris. Farmer-style. Better than nothing. And the legs were only a little short. He bundled the gear into a tarp and tied it off with a rope, ready to lower, then heaved the load over his shoulder. His back ached already.
He set down his load, noticing anew the heavy rope set up on the metal frame, a clear indication that more than water was hauled here. A small roof protected the rope from the worst of rain and sunshine. Grant flicked on his light, inspected what he could see of the rope, then peered into the well. Urgency was one thing, stupidity quite another.
The Maya Bust Page 25
