Fatal Divide (21 page)

Dylan thought the same thing about the space and about what the boys would think about their mother’s condition. Ange was right, he had stopped noticing the odor in the trailer, except when he hadn’t been there all day. To tell the truth, he avoided being there, and that shamed him.

He rocked his upper body back and forth, an exaggerated nod. “Okay, I’ll start looking as soon as I can. And I guess I’ll need to look for a babysitter too.”

Ange glared at him. “Oh, so you were expecting me to do that?”

Jeez, he couldn’t win! “No! Well, maybe just after school. Shit, Ange, I’m just trying to do my best here. I didn’t expect any of this.”

Her expression softened, and she patted him on the cheek. “None of us did, hon, none of us did. But you won’t need a babysitter. There’s a program at the school, before and after care. As long as you can pick them up by six, you’re good.”

It was the best news he’d heard all day, after finding Wanda safe.

FORTY-FOUR

When Dylan didn’t return in an hour, Alex gave up and put the leftovers away. She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt; maybe his mom needed him more than they needed to talk. But she couldn’t help feeling that he’d dismissed their argument. Or, maybe, to be fair, she pissed him off by acting the way she did.

Miserable, she sought the company of someone who might be able to understand her - Sophia. She knocked on the door of the guest room. “Sophia? May I come in?”

“Yes.”

The one-word answer wasn’t very welcoming, but she opened the door anyway. She had to take into account the different culture in which Sophia was raised.

“Are you sleepy, or busy? I don’t want to interrupt. I just wanted someone to talk to, really.”

“It’s okay. You want to hold the baby?”

Alex smiled and held out her arms for the warm bundle Sophia placed in them. She looked around and settled on an old chair in the corner.

“Sophia, can I ask you another question, you know, about being so young and having a baby?”

“I guess you can.”

Alex was getting used to the girl’s manner. It seemed to be more cultural than personal. Sophia’s expression wasn’t as sullen as the answer had sounded. “You said you were scared. Was it because you thought you were too young?”

The girl’s eyes widened and her mouth parted a bit. “No! Why would you think that? It was because I wasn’t sure my family would accept Juan. Because he was with the cartel, you know? I
wanted
the baby. Because I knew he would bind Juan to me. He would never leave me if we had a baby. Now, Diego is all I have.”

Cold tingles ran from the back of Alex’s head, down her neck, to her shoulders. Sophia had deliberately gotten pregnant to hold on to her chosen man, even though he was cartel. Unbelievable. And yet, she could see Sophia loved the baby. She took good care of him, and her face was transformed when she was looking at him.

It didn’t help her own dilemma, though. She had to know how it would be, at her age, having her boyfriend become a single father with other responsibilities — other people he needed to pay more attention to than her. Was she being selfish about this?

Wasn’t the proper order of things to become involved with the person you wanted to spend your life with, slowly? Getting to know him at a deeply intimate level and then spending your early married life immersing yourselves in each other? Alex wasn’t naive; she saw many examples of people who didn’t hold those same values. She also saw a lot of divorce, spousal and child abuse. Maybe those problems would have come to light before children came along, if the couple had taken their time in the first place.

And then there was the whole irony of her almost losing her virginity to Dylan, before she was old enough to have any thought of lifelong love. That seemed like fate had intervened, but she now knew it was dumb luck, plus her dad’s demand of Dylan that he leave her cleanly. She’d been saved from that embarrassment and possibly worse consequences. What kind of wild coincidence was it that she and Dylan had this second chance, fueled as much by shared risk as by infatuation?

And here she was, back at the starting point. How could she spend enough quality time with him to be sure, once he became his brothers’ legal guardian?

“Alex?” Sophia said, bringing her out of her reverie with a start. “Um, I’m ready to go to sleep. Was there anything else?”

“Oh, Sophia, I’m sorry! I was thinking about something.”

“I could see that.” Sophia smiled. “You were thinking about Dylan, yes? He’s very handsome.”

“Yes, he is, isn’t he? Sophia, did you talk to anyone, before, you know, before you were, uh, with Juan?”

“Before we had sex? A little. I mean, I talked to my friends.”

“The same age as you? Or older?”

“Same age. They’re the ones that told me Juan wouldn’t leave me if I had a baby.”

Her heart broke for Sophia. Chances were, if Juan hadn’t died, Sophia would have had a rude awakening. But then, having your child’s father killed before the child was even born was a rude awakening of its own.

“I hope things work out for you with Jimmy. Someone told me he was a good man.”

“I hope so, too. Diego needs a father, and I need a husband. Maybe I can learn to love him.”

What a sad, ass-backwards way of looking at it. Alex got up and gave Sophie an impulsive hug. “Maybe so.”

FORTY-FIVE

Wanda was nearing total exhaustion, having refused to sleep while Hector was unconscious and the deputies outside the door.

Thurston finally came through with a written statement that the execution of the warrant for her arrest was on hold until the outcome of Hector’s condition was known. In return, she told him as much as she knew; that the warring cartels had snatched her as she hunted for a young relative who may be able to shed more light on her grandfather’s murder.

She didn’t know which cartel had held them captive; only that her relative had secured their release. No, she didn’t know where he went. He hadn’t been to the hospital since he and Dylan Chaves brought Hector and her there.

She was certain that Dylan had nothing to do with the murder, but she couldn’t offer proof. She didn’t think he would do such a thing, even to secure his brothers’ adoption. Besides, that wouldn’t ensure the outcome he wanted.

She had not been in communication with Dylan before the old man’s murder, nor with anyone else who had a reason to murder Alvarez. She absolutely denied doing so herself. After submitting to two hours of redundant questions, Wanda called a halt.

“Kevin, I’ve told you everything I know and everything I think. Go investigate something else, I’m tired.”

“You know this isn’t over, Wanda.”

“It is for tonight. Leave me alone.”

When Thurston finally left the room, Wanda closed the door in the deputies’ faces and curled up in a chair that she pushed near the bed. She threaded her fingers through Hector’s unresponsive ones, sighed, and put her head down. Maybe it would be okay just to close her eyes for a moment. They burned, and there were no more tears to put out the fire. Indeed, the tears had been part of what irritated them. Wanda’s eyelids fluttered closed.

She woke in alarm, as a commotion at the door signaled the arrival of medical personnel in response to the shrieks coming from the telemetry panel on the other side of the bed. Wanda cried out Hector’s name as they swept her aside to get to him and looked on in terror as the nurses worked to bring his vitals back to near-normal. When one of the nurses slammed her hand against the intercom’s button and yelled “Code Blue!” Wanda came near to fainting in her panic.

Moments later, more medical staff arrived, pushing a crash cart. Wanda watched as they yanked down Hector’s hospital gown, ripped leads off his chest and placed paddles near his heart. “Clear!” someone called, and everyone took their hands off Hector. His body jumped as the electricity coursed into him to start his heart. Someone else manually checked his pulse and shook her head.

“Clear!” came the call again, and Hector’s body leaped again. Wanda’s own heart was beating rapidly, but she would have said it stopped, waiting for the verdict on the second defibrillation attempt.

“I have a pulse.”

Wanda let out the breath she’d been holding and then fell into the chair that the nurses had pushed aside. Someone came to take her pulse, which she protested weakly.

“Mrs. Lopez, I think we need to admit you. You’ve had a bad shock, but Hector’s heart is beating normally now. You can see that we’re right here to save him if it stops again. You need some sleep, and unless I miss my guess, it wouldn’t hurt to hydrate you intravenously.”

“No, I want to stay with him!”

“Mrs. Lopez, you can’t do him any good if you’ve collapsed yourself. Come on, now, let’s go.”

Still protesting, Wanda allowed herself to be led away. The resident accompanying her fixed the deputies with a stern stare when they made to follow. “I’ll let you know what room we put her in. Until then, stay out of our way.”

FORTY-SIX

Saturday Night

Thurston tended to believe Wanda, on all counts. It was true they’d butted heads more often than not on town policies and how he chose to enforce the law, but he’d never known her to lie to his or anyone else’s face. Nevertheless, the only leverage he had was the arrest warrant that still hadn’t been executed. He left the hospital and returned to Dodge, still harboring deep misgivings about this case.

It seemed to be dissolving in front of his eyes. He still had no viable suspect, though he liked Dylan Chaves for it. On the other hand, something had certainly happened to the Lopezes, and it seemed to be related. He didn’t have a clear idea who this mysterious relative was.

Her story was a little garbled on that count. Why had she been looking for him? Was he the same relative who’d rescued her? How had he known where to look, or even known
to
look? Nothing added up. Wanda had held back on him, again, and it didn’t sit well.

Once he was back in Dodge, he cruised the town, mostly to determine if people were where they should be. He found Chaves’ truck at Maria’s trailer. The Lopez house was still empty, of course, its occupants at the hospital in Sells. Alex Ward’s piece-of-shit Nissan was in her dad’s driveway, as was Paul’s SUV.

That was a little odd. He would have expected to find Paul at the Rattler. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, like clockwork. Paul Ward had a little thing going on with Jen Mackey, and who could blame him? The poor sap’s wife had taken off years ago. He should just divorce her in absentia and claim Jen. That gal was a looker, no doubt about it.

Thurston went home after checking on the whereabouts of all the people of interest. He had no grounds to hassle them, and it had been a long day. Tomorrow, he’d go back to Sells and see what had developed there, unless his men brought Wanda in overnight. But that would mean her husband had either woken up or died.

Neither option was better or worse, for his purposes, but he had nothing against ol’ Hector. The man had never given him any trouble, unlike his wife. And if he died, there’d be another murder to investigate. What the hell was happening to his quiet little town?

Before he got out of his SUV, Thurston answered his own rhetorical question. It was the illegals causing all this trouble. And maybe that MC that Bill asked about. With a sigh, Thurston started his SUV again and backed out of his driveway. He needed to cruise by Stars and Garters too, to see if there was any trouble there.

FORTY-SEVEN

Ange went back into the trailer to put his mom to bed, and then Dylan left for Alex’s house, unaware of how much time had passed. When he arrived, all the lights were out. He looked at his watch. After ten, how had that happened?

His stomach growled, reminding him that he’d had no dinner. It was too late for the DQ, they’d be closed. The kitchen was probably closed at The Rattler, too.

Facing the alternative of waking up Ange at home or going hungry, he stopped at one of the two gas stations in town and grabbed a sad looking pre-made sandwich, a bag of chips, and a soda. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Maybe it was at breakfast that morning.

He sat in the parking lot at the station, eating the unappetizing meal and wondering if Alex had waited at all for him before she went to bed. He wasn’t sure where he stood with her. This just underlined his impression that things had gone wrong somehow. He couldn’t pinpoint when she became so moody, and he sure didn’t know why.

Dylan noticed the SUV passing behind him, mostly because it was the only vehicle he’d seen on the road since he got there. It had the sheriff’s department shield on the side, and looking back over his shoulder, he could see the bubble-gum lights on top. No sirens, so it wasn’t trouble. Probably just a routine patrol.