Don't Look Back (34 page)

“They could save your life,” Eve said.

Will tried to smear the moisture from his face. She could see he was doing everything within his power to fight off the panic, to acclimate to the cold, hard facts.

Claire’s eyes welled. “I don’t want to die here and not be remembered.”

Something bloomed inside Eve like a swig of booze, hot and caustic and not entirely unpleasant. She said, “I will get us out of here.”

Claire blinked, and tears fell.

“If he sees you out there, you’re dead,” Eve said. “Wait here until I come back or until I get out and send help.”

“Don’t have a lot of days.” Will picked up a protein bar, let it fall to the stone. His skin was ashy and looked fragile, paper-thin. “You still haven’t told us the plan. You going back to the
alcalde
?”

“He could still be gone, waiting out the weather. Plus, it’s the wrong way—up the mountain. We need to go down.” She licked her chapped lips. “We need a vehicle.”

“The Jeep’s gone,” Claire said.

Eve said, “There is one other Jeep in this jungle.”

“Where?” Claire said.

Eve just looked at them.

They stared back, realizing. The dripping continued, louder. One of the bats dropped from its roost and fluttered into place again, its wings rustling against stone.

“No,”
Will said. “You’re kidding. No, Eve—al-Gilani’s Jeep? Are you crazy? You can’t go back there.”

“What choice do we have?” Eve said. “Anyway, it’s
already
across the river.”

“He’ll kill you. And we’ll die here. We’ll never be found.”

“It’s the last thing he’d expect. No way he’d think I’d be stupid enough to go back there again.”

Claire said, “
Are
you?”

A noise escaped Eve, half laugh, half sob. Claire leaned over and gripped her tight in a hug, almost choking off her air, their cheeks mashed together. Claire’s breath was hot against Eve’s ear. “You can,” Claire said. “
You
can.”

Eve pulled back and stood up, feeling the brink of the ledge at her heels. She looked down at Will. His eyes glimmered, but he mustered a smile and said,
“Vaya con Dios.”

Turning, she faced the rippling black sheet, sucked in a breath, and dove. She hit the water in a clean line, wanting to plunge as deep as possible to spare her exhausted muscles. The underwater channel closed around her, and she stroked hard through darkness, the blind, otherworldly rush like a birth or a death. She kicked through the canal toward the unknown.

Ahead, the gloom turned from black to sea green. The roar of the cascade was muted underwater, so she misgauged its proximity. The downward force caught her by surprise, pounding her to the muddy bottom. She went with the undertow, flattening out as if flying, letting it propel her from beneath the weight of the falling water. With aching lungs she coasted free. Golden rays reached her at last, down here, however faintly. Air seemed very far away. She clawed toward the wavering light overhead, the light of heaven, the light of her son’s bedroom in the morning.

She broke the surface.

Chapter 45

Leaves and branches laid a net of camouflage across Eve’s face as she lurked at the jungle’s edge, watching the sawed-off zip line flailing in the water. Though she’d knocked the cable free from the near bank, the far end was still fastened to the tree on al-Gilani’s side. The length of the line remained in the river, undulating over whitecaps and flicking between boulders halfway across. For hours she’d been sitting with a sniper’s stillness in the mud, fronds hiding everything but her eyes. The diamonds of light off the water had turned from yellow to gold, now giving over to the pastels of sunset. The current had not slowed, but it hadn’t quickened either, and the zip line’s dance across the surface had resolved into something predictable. Her muscles still had not recovered from the day’s hike from the cascade, and it seemed likely that the soreness would remain with her until she got out of the jungle or died. At some point soon, it would be one or the other.

Fortunato’s body was no longer pinned to the boulder, but now and then Eve would blink and conjure it there with perfect clarity. She figured that it hadn’t washed away but that al-Gilani had removed it, covering his tracks. If he had his way, there would be no trace of any of them.

She was the only thing between him and that.

Lulu’s woven hemp bag lay on the ground by her knee. She waited for night to nudge a few shades closer, then reached for it. Inside, a fist-size chunk of quesillo Oaxaca bulged, protected by a Ziploc. Insulated in other plastic bags were Jay’s nearly expired satphone and Eve’s increasingly ragged copy of
Moby-Dick,
there to bolster the loose-shifting supplies as well as her spirits.

Dusk had thickened to the point where she could no longer read the dive watch clearly without risking use of the backlight; when she’d arrived here in the late afternoon, she had decided that would be the signal that it was time to cross. Right at the tipping point between light and darkness, when it was gloomy enough to provide some cover but when there was still enough ambient light left in the sky to allow her to make out the boulders in the current. The bioluminescence of the water might help her navigate as well, but she wasn’t sure how helpful the glow would be once she was submerged in it.

She donned Lulu’s woven pack, the contents pulling tight across her back like folded wings. One of the water bottles dug into her scapula, but aside from that she wore the items comfortably. Two fronds waited at her feet. To protect her palms, she wound them tightly around her hands like boxing wraps, squeezing to hold them in place.

Lulu’s bag. Jay’s satphone. Neto’s cheese. The items, a roll call of the dead. A wash of grief moved through her—all that loss, sure, but also the
pointlessness
of it. Jay had died why? So al-Gilani could remain unidentified? Jay hadn’t cared who he was or what he had done. Neither had Neto. Nor Lulu.

Eve stepped through the fronds onto the riverbank, moving cautiously, part fugitive, part hunter. After she’d been dug in for so long, the open air and breeze off the water struck her as deliciously fresh. She cut down the slope a good twenty yards upriver from the zip line, crouched a moment to read the water, and then launched herself into the current before she could lose her nerve.

The cold grabbed her, threatening to bring panic, but she stroked forward once, twice, shooting past a jagged upturned tree trunk before she was whisked down a bump in the rapids. Dusk hid the zip line, but she sensed the looming rise of the boulder around which it was looped, the boulder upon which Fortunato had shattered his spine.

She twisted, bringing herself in the best position to grab hold of the line, hands and legs pointing to the far bank, ready to clamp. The metal cord slid sharply through the space between her shoulder and neck, and she fumbled to gather it in. Her palms and knees clenched. One of the frond wrappings tore off immediately, whisked into the freezing unknown, but her other hand held tight, slowing her enough to pendulum through the current so she could brace a leg against a submerged ledge of rock. Water blasted up her arms, power-washing her face, forcing her to turn her head to draw air. But she knew she had it now.

She hand-over-handed the zip line, her thighs burning as she fought to plow her body along the submerged ledge toward shore. The rock vanished underfoot, replaced with the sandblasting action of the immersed shoal. For a moment she flailed, but she managed to haul herself over and into a rise of mud, embedding in the far bank.

She pried herself out and up, rolling over the ridge of the bank where she lay panting and hacking up water. If al-Gilani appeared from the jungle’s edge, she’d be defenseless, yet knowing this—understanding in this moment her utter exhaustion and vulnerability—provided her a break from worrying about it.

He did not appear.

Her breathing settled back to normal, her strength returned, and she managed to stand. She pulled a water bottle from the dripping hemp bag and took a few cautious sips, then rewarded herself with a third of a protein bar and a bite of cheese.

Keeping off the main path, she retraced the route Fortunato had forged through the jungle, making meticulously slow progress, reaching the northern mouth of the canyon floor as they had before. As she inched around low branches, the house came lurchingly into view, squatting darkly at the base of the canyon rise. Every few steps she paused and counted off five minutes, listening, her eyes straining to pick out any movement in the surrounding foliage.

The approach took several hours, but finally she was standing beside the natural carport nestled between trees, the rusting Jeep in reach. She hooked her fingers beneath the handle, bit her lip, and clicked the door open.

She held the frozen pose, staring at the house, ready to bolt. After a time she eased the door open and felt for the ignition hole. No key. Her gaze flicked back through the bug-splattered windshield, checking for movement at the house. Next she dropped the sun visor, but nothing fell out. A sprinkle started up, smearing the glass, distorting her view. Silently, she checked the glove box, beneath the tattered floor mat, panic mounting every second her eyes shifted from the house to search the Jeep’s interior. No luck. The key, then, was where she’d feared.

In the house.

She withdrew from the Jeep, leaving the door slightly ajar.

On the balls of her feet, she breezed swiftly through the sparse trunks toward the house, making sure to clear the trip wire. Not yet calm enough to check through the windows, she put her back to the concrete wall and regulated her breath.

For a moment she considered faking footsteps into the jungle, backtracking carefully, then tripping one of the alarm wires to draw al-Gilani away from the house, but it seemed foolish given his expertise. He would know how to read the ground at least as well as Fortunato had. Plus, if he wasn’t in the house but in the surrounding hills, she couldn’t risk raising a ruckus and losing her shot at getting inside.

Painstakingly, she rolled across her shoulder and peered through the front window. Blocks of shadow checkered the dark room. At first everything looked alive—looked like
him
—but she settled herself enough to shape the dark masses into what they were: a chair looming here, a discarded heap of clothes there. The rain stayed light. Under other circumstances it might have been refreshing, but she barely noticed it anymore. Just as she barely noticed the leeches on her legs or the bugs swirling about her head or the mineral taste of the river lingering in her mouth.

She crept along the side of the house and checked the rear windows. Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. He was not home. Most likely he was out hunting her.

She had to go in.

Of course she had braced herself for this reality, but facing it now, her very body resisted. She had to issue each command to her limbs, telling her legs to lift and swing, to set down and pull her toward the door. They listened reluctantly.

She arrived.

The lockless knob was smooth against her palm. It turned easily, silently.

Gulping air, she tiptoed inside. The hinges, on tilt, called the door back to the frame, and she eased it silently the rest of the way shut. A wrinkled mat bunched underfoot, drying her shoes. Across the room a fall of moonlight half caught the plywood with its crude human silhouette.

The bedroom first.

As she passed the plywood, it came clearer, pocked with gash marks from the thrown machete and marred with oil-colored stains she knew were not oil. The rain intensified, drumming the roof, starting to spill down the windows, streaking the glass.

The dark doorway to the tiny bedroom waited. She passed through. Each breath a small sip of air.

There was the prayer rug, neatly rolled. The Qur’an rested on its mat of twigs.

She trickled her palm along the objects atop the dresser. Reading glasses, a hairbrush—private things.

But no keys.

She tugged open the top drawer, revealing wads of clothing. His scent rose from the fabric, musky and strong, the smell of a man living in the wild.

No keys.

The next drawer.

No keys.

The bottom drawer.

Empty.

Panic expanded in her chest, threatening to explode in a scream. She whirled, her wild stare settling on a dark spot on the overturned crate serving as a nightstand.

She raced to the object, snatched it up. Metal, rubber head, jagged teeth. The stamp came visible when she squinted:
JEEP
. Static clouded her sight, and she realized she’d been holding her breath. Pocketing the key, she spun toward the main room.

That was when she heard the front door open.

Chapter 46

The instant al-Gilani’s first footstep tapped down on the concrete floor inside the house, Eve dropped and rolled neatly beneath the cotlike bed. She was slender enough to slot neatly in, though the bowed metal mesh dipped to within a few inches of her face.

Her only thought had been getting in, finding the key, and rushing out, and yet somehow at the sound of his approach her body had reacted with a plan of its own.

She realized that she was making noises. She mashed a palm over her mouth and put her other hand atop the first, trying to seal all sounds inside. The rain on the roof laid a white-noise wash over the sound of her trapped breaths.

The footsteps grew nearer. A click brought a piercing yellow light to the room, severely slanted by an unseen lampshade. Two muddy boots entered. He stood across the room, facing away, his head severed from view. His shoulders bobbed, and then his shirt peeled back and fell away.

His back was marred with scar tissue, gouges and burns, whip marks and healed-over slashes. So much pain memorialized, carved into the body, an imperfect record of past deeds and torture. It was difficult to imagine the gnarled stretch of flesh as human skin; it seemed more a living parchment.

She pressed her hands harder over her mouth, fingernails digging into her cheeks. Her nostrils flared, trying to bring in enough air. An image seized her, Sue and Harry navigating the storm-battered roads to Huatulco, clearing the occasional debris and their consciences.