Fatal Harvest (7 page)

She nodded. Opening the door, she climbed in and slid next to Cole. “Billy’s coming with us. He had a flat, and his wheel is ruined.”

“Hold on a minute now.” Cole reached across her and put up his hand. “Whoa, boy. You better just call your dad, and—”

“I told him he could come with us,” Jill said. “Hop in, Billy. It’s no problem.”

“No problem?” Cole grimaced as the boy slammed the cab door, and Jill’s elbow sank into his rib cage. “Whose truck is this, anyway?”

“It’s yours. But I’m half of the duo, and I promised Billy he could ride along.”

Cole sighed as he pulled back out onto the highway. Trying to make herself smaller than she already was, Jill attempted to think of something to say to ease the tension. Unfortunately, Billy smelled like a teenager who had gone too long without a shower and a toothbrush. She was fairly sure she could even catch a pungent aroma emanating from his shoes.

Cole, on the other hand, smelled of something disturbingly masculine. Shaving cream? Or maybe it was the denim he wore. She wished his shoulder weren’t so hard. And that she could move her legs.

“There’s a truck stop on the outskirts of Hobbs,” Cole said. “We’ll swing by and ask if they’ve seen Matt.”

Maybe Billy and I can switch places, too,
Jill thought. She’d rather have a door handle against her hip than the hard plane of Cole Strong’s thigh.

“I hope they have a restaurant,” Billy said. “I could eat a horse.”

The sun had begun its climb through layers of El Paso’s brown smog as Matt pulled his pickup into a parking lot near the bridge spanning the Rio Grande. He had spent Thursday night in McKelligon Canyon, with the Franklin Mountains looming around him and an owl hooting in a tree nearby. The concrete tables at the picnic area where he parked were broken and sprayed with graffiti. Litter covered the ground. He hadn’t slept, and he’d been too scared to get out and use the public restroom.

In fact, since leaving Hope, the only time he had set foot outside his truck was at a convenience store in Alamogordo. There he had wandered around selecting a road map, some Tylenol for his headache, four Snickers bars, a bag of Cheetos, and an orange soda. While paying for a tank of gas and his food, he had glanced at a television set. His own picture stared back at him on the evening news. Police were seeking
the whereabouts of a sixteen-year-old in connection with a possible murder near Hope.

Murder—
him?

Freaked to the max, Matt had barely made it out of the store without breaking into an all-out run. Luckily, the young clerk had been talking on the phone and hadn’t paid much attention to her customer. Still, Matt knew he had been recorded on the video monitor. Every highway patrolman in two states must be watching for his truck.

As he had started across the desert toward El Paso, Matt tried to figure out why the police thought he might have killed Mr. Banyon. How did they even know he’d been out to the house in Hope? It didn’t make sense. No one had seen him there. For the hundredth time, he wished Billy were with him. Common sense was Billy’s specialty. He never did stupid things.

Matt had turned the situation over and over as he drove, replaying the scene at Mr. Banyon’s house and trying to recall what clue he had left behind. He hadn’t dropped a shoe or a jacket. He’d thrown out his cell phone, but it was well hidden in the thicket. Surely they hadn’t found it. Not this quickly.

He hadn’t been inside the house long enough to disturb anything. He’d just stared at that terrible face on the couch…at the bloodstain on the fabric…at the gun….

The gun! He’d picked it up! Matt had groaned as the realization swept over him. Why had he picked up Mr. Banyon’s gun? Why had he even touched it? How stupid could you get? Now it had his fingerprints all over it. Next, they would track him to the convenience store in Alamogordo and then to El Paso and then they would get him. If the Agrimax men didn’t find him first, the police would, and he’d be charged with killing Mr. Banyon.

How could he prove he hadn’t done it? He couldn’t. There was no way. He hadn’t been at school all afternoon. He hadn’t been with Billy. He had no alibi. He was dead meat.

Somewhere along the road, he had pulled onto the shoulder and taken a moment to check his e-mail. Miss Pruitt had written to him again. She and his dad were worried. They knew about Mr. Banyon’s death, and they didn’t believe Matt had anything to do with it. But if he didn’t show up soon, his dad would go looking for him.

Dad? Agrimax could ruin Cole Strong, and it would be his son’s fault. He shot back an e-mail warning Miss Pruitt not to write him again and not to go looking for him. He tried to make himself think straight. Tried to be brave and trust in the Lord.

But this wasn’t supposed to happen. None of it! Mr. Banyon was going to take care of everything. He was planning to take the USB key to Josiah Karume. The chairman-elect of I-FEED would be attending some kind of a food summit in France this spring, and Mr. Banyon had arranged to fly over there and meet with him. Now Mr. Banyon was dead and Matt had the key—and everyone thought he was a murderer!

There was no way Matt was going to Europe. The only course he’d been able to think of was to take the key to a different I-FEED official, in the hope that this person would be able to get it into Karume’s hands. Miss Pruitt had given Matt the names of several famine-relief workers to contact for his term paper, and he had e-mailed back and forth with Hector Diaz, the man who ran the Mexico division of I-FEED. Diaz’s office was in Juarez, just across the river from El Paso. So that’s where Matt was headed.

But he probably ought to turn himself in right now and just get it over with. Being held by the police would be better than getting grabbed again by the Agrimax men. At least he could spend his life in prison instead of winding up dead.

All those thoughts and fears had swirled through Matt’s head as he drove. He had crossed the state line into Texas, and somehow he made himself keep going. As he inched
toward El Paso, he kept glancing in the rearview mirror, expecting to see flashing red lights. The USB key weighed ten tons in his jeans pocket. It was like an Edgar Allan Poe story he had read for English class. Instead of a telltale heart, the key was pulsing away in his pocket.
Boom, boom, boom.
Full of its secret sins.

He hated having the key, but he knew he couldn’t just throw it out the window as he’d done with his cell phone. No, he had to carry out Mr. Banyon’s plan. He had to do God’s will.

And so he had shivered his way through a sleepless night in the canyon. He had dried blood in his hair where the Agrimax men had thrown his head against the wall, but other than that, he felt okay. At dawn, he drove into El Paso and headed for the border crossing into Mexico. Figuring the authorities would be looking for his truck, he parked it and set off on foot toward the bridge, laptop under his arm and the key in his front pocket.

Even at this early hour, the line of trucks and cars waiting to cross into Ciudad Juarez stretched half a mile. Pedestrians bustled along the walkway, few of them tourists. Those would come later. Matt had considered waiting a few hours to blend in better, but he decided to keep moving.

The USB key growing heavier with each step, Matt approached the guard gate. He thought he knew the routine. His parents had taken him to Juarez when he was little, before his mother died and everything changed. And he’d been there a second time on a field trip in fifth grade. He figured he would have to show some identification. He had a passport from a trip he and his dad had taken to Cancún a few years back—the one and only vacation they had ever taken together. He was planning to use it again this summer for the youth mission trip to Guatemala. But it was back home in his desk drawer.

Matt hoped his driver’s license would get him into Juarez.
He would have to state his business and let the guard know when he was returning. What if they recognized him from the TV news or from police alerts? Would his next stop be a Mexican jail? He imagined the key pulsing, threatening to tell on him.
Boom, boom, boom.

Matt decided this would be a good time to pray. Protection, guidance, wise counsel—for all these things he petitioned the Lord as he followed the line of people closer and closer to the gate.

“Buenos dias,”
the Mexican guard said, glancing up at him. “Where are you going so early, my friend? And walking?”

Somehow the Spanish he had learned at Josefina’s knee rose to the tip of his tongue.
“Voy a la ciudad a visitar a un amigo.”
I’m going into the city to visit a friend.

“Su amigo?”
The man grinned.
“O su amiga?”

Matt mustered a smile at the reference to a girlfriend.
“Amigo solamente.”

“What do you have there? The box?”

“A laptop computer.”

“You going to sell it in Mexico?”

“No, no. It’s personal. Games and e-mail, that’s all.”

The guard shrugged. “Have a nice day,
señor.
”

“You, too.”

Matt slipped through the narrow opening onto the bridge.
Boom, boom, boom.
Somehow the USB key had grown so enormous and heavy he wasn’t sure he would even fit on the causeway. Hardly able to believe he had passed the guard without incident, he made his way above the fabled river and was swept into the press of people on the Mexican side.

Breathing too hard, Matt lifted up a prayer of gratitude and added another—a request for a taxi. Then the smell of frying sausage hit him, followed by the fragrance of freshly baked bread. Not far from the bridge stood a row of vendors’ carts. The snacks he had bought the evening before were long
gone, and his stomach churned with hunger. From the vacation with his father, Matt knew the risks of eating and drinking in Mexico. They both had fallen ill after sampling some street food.
“Be careful what you eat in Mexico,”
Josefina had warned them after the fact.
“You’ll get a bug.”
An amoeba, his father had clarified. Dysentery.

Now, surveying the row of sausages sizzling on an open grill, he tried to tell himself he could go without eating. This mission was all about hunger anyway, wasn’t it? Millions of people had nothing to eat, so why did Matthew Strong think he deserved to fill his belly? He passed up the meat and approached a cart loaded with fresh fruit. Could Mexican fruit make you sick? Flies buzzed around a tray of cut mangoes. Forcing himself on, he came to the bread vendor.

“Pan, señor?”
a woman asked. She was smiling at him, her eyes as dark and shiny as Josefina’s. “You want bread?”

He was salivating by now, so hungry he thought he might faint. Could he at least have bread, the staff of life? “Uh, no,” he said. “That’s okay.
Gracias, señora.
”

As hungry as he felt, Matt knew he couldn’t afford to get sick. Not before he found the man he was seeking. Not before he got rid of the key. Not before he was back home in the safety of his room.

“A leather belt?” a man called out from a storefront. “Leather purse for your girlfriend? I make you a good price,
señor!
”

Feeling light-headed, Matt approached the clerk. “I need a phone book. An address. I need a taxi.”

“You come inside. Buy a new wallet!”

“I don’t need a wallet. I need a phone book.
Telefono. Yo quiero el direccion de la oficina I-FEED. De Señor Hector Diaz.
I need the address of Hector Diaz.”

“Come and see our beautiful leather jackets,” the man replied, guiding Matt into the shop.

The scent of polished leather goods swept over him as he
stepped through the door. Sandals, purses, backpacks, suitcases, attachés, vests and leather jackets filled countless shelves in the narrow room. Matt shook his head. This wasn’t going well.

What would Billy do now? What was the right thing to say? How should he act?

“A telephone book,” he told the man again. “I need to find an address.”

“No telefono, señor.”
He held up a pair of cowboy boots. “I make a good price for you. One hundred dollars. Is snakeskin here, you see? Very expensive.”

Matt began trying to back out of the store. “I just…I need a phone book.”

“Okay, eighty dollars.”

The man was holding the boots in Matt’s face, shaking them, coming at him no matter how far away he tried to get. Matt saw strange lights around his eyes, and he had a bad feeling he was going to pass out.

“I need something to drink,” he mumbled.

“I make you the best price of the day. Sixty dollars. I cannot do better than this. For snakeskin? You will not find this in all of Ciudad Juarez.”

“No!” Matt said, slapping the boots out of the man’s hand. “I don’t want them!”

“
Ai!
What are you doing?” The man swung around and began calling to some men at the back of the shop.

A flurry of Spanish words ringing in his ears, Matt found the door and stumbled outside. He needed a drink. Water. Or a Fanta.

Behind him, three men now stood in the doorway of the shop and shouted in anger. Matt crossed the street, back toward the vendors, back to the old woman with the bread cart.