Short Cut to Santa Fe (21 page)

“Doesn't that hurt?”

“Mmm,” she said. “A bit. I have a high pain threshold—or is it the other way around? It hurts, but not as much as it might hurt someone else. It's handy, but dangerous.”

“I can see that,” said Harriet, who didn't believe a word of it.

And they set out, Diana clutching a piece of wood to support herself as she limped along. Her face was gray and taut with pain and the effort of walking, but when she spoke, she sounded almost angrily cheerful. “I wish you'd let us help you,” said Harriet.

“I'm fine,” said Diana. “You worry about yourselves and the children. I can manage.”

“You could put your other arm around my shoulder and lean on me.” She raised a hand to stop her objections and turned on her in a fury of anger and frustration. “You're not going to be much good to anyone if you pass out. You'll be a hell of a lot more difficult to carry, but we'll try, you know. We'll have to try. Because by now you've convinced us you're in danger, and that means John will never leave you behind. He's trained as well. And I'm going to be furious if either one of us gets killed because you're too goddamn stupid and stubborn to accept help.”

“You really make a girl feel good, don't you, Harriet,” said Diana. “Okay, lend me your shoulder and we'll see.”

“What are you trying to say to me, slimeball? Are you saying you can't find someone when you already know where she's stashed? And you know who put her there? And you know how to find him?”

“But, Carlos, we're not sure he was the one who stashed her.” Ginger leaned against the study door, not deigning to answer, but his companion was sweating globs of ice as he tried to find something to say.

“Whaddya mean?”

“Well—we just figured he was the one who had her. Seeing as how he turned up at your place looking for her. And she disappeared right after. Who else would it be? But then you know he drove off and went back to Taos. Checked in on his shift, had coffee, all relaxed and everything. No girl, nothing. Then he booked off for the twenty-four hours he had owing and took off. By himself.”

“Where is he?”

“Home for Sunday dinner, probably.” He shuffled. “Or off with a girl somewhere. Not the one you're looking for—just some girl. That's all I know.”

“So find him. It can't be that hard.” Deever turned his chair around and stared out the window at the fountain. “And where's Scotty?” he asked. “He was supposed to get in touch yesterday morning. What in hell is going on around here?”

The other man looked around and decided that he had been dismissed. Ginger watched him leave and shut the door before answering. “Scotty wasn't supposed to contact us until everything was cleaned up and it was safe to move. He wasn't carrying any communications equipment, just in case, so he can't call in. If Scotty hasn't shown up it's because he hasn't finished. He told me he was going to stay behind and make sure that all the details were taken care of and then leave the bus where it was and get picked up. I don't worry none about Scotty,” said Ginger, with a delicate amount of emphasis on the name.

Deever swiveled around again. “Then who do you worry about?”

“Where's Rocco? And what does he do when he sees Scotty on that bus? And when he figures out why he's there? Which is about five seconds later.”

“Rocco doesn't know Scotty. You're the only one around here who knows Scotty. He's never been close to this place before.”

“Rocco gets around,” said Ginger. “He gets around.”

“Shit! Why hasn't he been in touch? You'd think he'd want the rest of his money.”

“I don't know. Maybe he doesn't figure it's worth picking up. He could have just taken off, leaving us here. Not even knowing where the fucking bus is.”

“Yeah. But they don't either, do they? Not yet, anyway.” He paused to run through his mental checklist. Things weren't adding up. A lot of things. “The bus has to be on the mesa road. Where else could they take it and hope to get away?”

“A lot of places,” said Ginger.

“Well—I don't think they did. They're not smart enough, none of them. Has anyone driven along the road to check if the bus is hidden? Like under some trees or something?”

“You can't hide a bus along that road. You couldn't even hide a donkey on that road. We flew over it. There's no bus down there.”

“How could you tell from a plane if the bus was there or not if the goddamn thing is hidden? Drive along the road. Take the Jeep. Go alone. And if you see it, for God's sake, just back off and leave it to me. Don't let them see you.”

“How do I do that? By the time I see them they'll have seen me.”

“Then stop the Jeep around every curve and get out and check. It's not far.”

“It's ten fucking miles,” muttered Ginger. “I won't get back until late this afternoon.”

“So—I'll live till then. Get going.”

Kate woke up from a deep, deep sleep, groggy and stiff and in pain here and there, but happy. Deeply happy for the moment, anyway. She climbed out of the trade-official size bed and went into the bathroom. Antonia had done a remarkably professional job on her hair—the result, she claimed, of those years of poverty when she had been forced to learn how to cut her children's hair—and Kate admitted it really didn't look bad. The deep, wonderful bathtub called out to her and she turned on the taps. There was a container of bath oil bubbles on the counter; she took an orange one and threw it into the hot water. Almost instantly the room was filled with the scent of orange blossom sharpened by a light underlay of orange. She climbed into the tub while the taps were still on and waited for the water to crawl up to a proper level.

She turned the taps off and slid down with a luxurious sigh into the smooth, scented water. The only intimation she had of his presence was the puff of cool air that he brought in with him. “Hi, Kate,” he said, kneeling by the tub. “How does it feel?”

“Wonderful.” She turned her head lazily in his direction. “I am rediscovering the pleasures of the flesh. First food, then sleep, and now bathing.”

He dropped a kiss on her forehead and then ran his hand delicately over her scar. “Someday you must tell me about it. When you're feeling stronger, much stronger. Not now.”

“It's ugly,” she said, turning her face away from him.

“Nothing about you could be ugly. It's sad, but not ugly. I'll even get used to your hair in time.”

“By then it'll be long again and you won't have to.” She turned to look at him again. “And maybe by then I won't be so thin.”

“I hope not.”

“What's going on out there?” Kate asked, waving her injured arm carelessly in the direction of the rest of the house and scarcely noticing the resulting jab of pain.

“My sister, Consuelo, is finally out of bed. She has had breakfast and has gone to visit a friend. My brothers arrived, and Antonia developed a passionate desire for a family visit to Uncle Jaime, who's sick. They won't be back before five, Consuelo tells me.”

“Do you think that was on purpose?”

“Probably. To keep the house quiet enough for you to sleep was what she told Consuelo, who may or may not have believed her. And so we're alone.” He caught Kate by the wet hands and began to pull her toward him. Her hands slid out from his grasp and she fell back, laughing. “You're too slippery,” he said. “If you don't get out of that bath soon, I'm coming in after you. Boots and all.” He stood up, grabbed a huge towel from the stack on the counter, and held it out to her. As she stepped out of the bath, he enveloped her in the towel and began, very slowly, to pat her dry.

Long before she was half dry, she had pressed her damp body against his and wrapped her arms around his neck. All during the years she had been working around the world she had been pushing men away in self-preservation, telling herself she was being professional. She had seen enough messy liaisons between journalists and idealistic guerrilla fighters in areas that were minefields of political intrigue, and the weary frustrations of those who formed lasting bonds with colleagues who always seemed to be instantly transferred to God knows where. Slowly she discovered that men no longer tempted her enough to break her self-imposed rules, and she began to doubt her own sexuality. But now endless years of contained desire exploded and burned right down to the soles of her feet and she clung to him like a starving creature.

“Just a minute,” he murmured, and went into the bedroom. She leaned dizzily against the counter, trying to catch her breath. She could hear the rattle of curtain rings and the clump of boots hitting the floor and then almost at once he was back, as naked as she was. He picked her up and carried her to the bed; he dropped her gently down but she held onto him tenaciously, pulling him with her, preventing him from drawing away. “Don't be so anxious,” he said, laughing, as he awkwardly maneuvered himself into the bed beside her. “We have all afternoon.”

“Ssh,” she said, and pulled him on top of her, wrapping her long legs around him. “Don't tease me,” she murmured, “not this time. For once when you put me down on a bed I want you to stay right here. I can't wait any longer.”

When they finally fell apart, sated for the moment, Fernando tickled her belly. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished,” she said. “Whimpering with hunger.”

“Just a second.” He got up and walked over to the work table in the corner and came back with a cold shrimp on a toothpick, covered with hot sauce.

“Food,” she said, and demolished it. “Where did you find that? And is there any more?”

“There's lunch,” he said. “Antonia put together some lunch for us. It's sitting there on a thing of ice, keeping cold, but we'd better eat it now, I think.”

On the table were the shrimps, some olives and tomatoes, a dish of guacamole, a basket with bread and rolls, a cold lentil salad, a plate of cut fruit, and a pitcher of lemonade, its ice cubes rapidly disappearing. “My God,” she said, awestruck. “This is unbelievable. Not only are you fabulous in bed, but you produce a banquet to go along with it.”

“I like the way you put that, but I'm afraid Antonia is responsible for the banquet. She sent it up as a test,” said Fernando. “To see if you meet her standards in eating. I told you you'd have to watch her.”

Their progress was hideously slow. Diana Morris leaned more and more heavily on Harriet's shoulders; her legs ached under the strain of holding up both of them. Then the injured woman lapsed into semi-consciousness, dragging one foot after the other, her head drooping, until she buckled at the knees. Harriet caught her around the waist. “She's passed out,” she said. “Give me a hand, John. Quick.”

He set down the water and grabbed her from the other side; together they eased her down by the side of the road. “Jesus—now what do we do?” whispered Harriet.

“Try water. Hold her head up a bit.” He poured a little water into his cupped hand and splashed it on her face. She opened her eyes groggily and he held a cup to her lips. “Drink that. Goddammit—don't pass out on me. Drink.”

“Five minutes,” she gasped, “and then I'll be fine.” Her eyes closed and she was out once more.

They waited ten, splashed more water on her forehead and pulled her to her feet again. “Can you manage her?” asked John.

“Better than I could manage that cumbersome thing of water and those knapsacks.” And they set out one more time. The wind blew fine dirt and sand into their mouths and eyes, and the sun, almost tropically high, beat through to their brains. They tied bits of clothing over their heads and kept going. The children had treated the exodus as an adventure in the beginning, but now they trudged wearily as well, too tired or perhaps too stubborn to complain. Diana's knees buckled again; Harriet let her down to a sitting position and they poured more water down her throat. They gave some to the children, and forebore themselves.

“Listen,” said Stuart. “Do you hear that?”

“No—what?” said Harriet.

“It's an engine. A car engine,” said Caroline, her voice rising in excitement. “Someone's come to rescue us.” She ran ahead, demonically energized. John took off after her like a greyhound after the rabbit.

“Caroline, no,” yelled Harriet. “Wait.”

The child stopped and turned. “What's the matter?”

“Get back,” said John. “Let me look first.” And he loped off with his economical, long-legged stride, running easily up to a rock formation that blocked their view of the next stretch of road. He began to climb, moving quickly until he disappeared from view.

“We don't know who it is,” said Harriet quickly. “It might not be someone who wants to rescue us at all.” And clutching Diana tightly around the waist, she hustled everyone into the thin shelter of the forested slope beside them.

They waited silently. The engine noise grew louder and then died abruptly. The ignition had been switched off. An ominous quiet was restored to the mountain. A rustle behind them heralded John, moving like a ghost from tree to tree until he was crouched by their sides. “Don't budge. I don't know who it is, but he isn't from the bus and he doesn't look like a rescue patrol. He's carrying a rifle and trying very hard not to make any noise. He was about to climb those rocks when I made my tactical retreat into the woods.”

At that point, the driver pulled himself silently into view, and checked out the half-mile or so of road that could be seen from his vantage point. It was impossible to read in that impassive face whether he had found what he was looking for. Then he disappeared as abruptly as he had appeared. They heard the sound of the engine starting, the whir of wheels against dirt and gravel, and a dusty Jeep came around the bend and drove past them without slowing down. As it reached the next curve, the driver stopped and began the whole process again.

They stayed where they were until the vehicle had gone again. The children, rested and impatient, raced off as the adults pulled themselves up to continue on. Diana Morris waited until they'd left before commenting. “It's not a good sign,” she whispered. “He's looking for me, and if he finds me on his way back, he won't leave much of any of us.”

“You know who he is?” asked John.

“He works for a man named Carl Deever. His name is Ginger,” she said laconically. “Shall we carry on?”

At the next curve, the road plunged down alarmingly. With any luck this was the steep slope they had driven up when Harriet first turned into this road, a lifetime ago, it seemed.

“We're almost at the intersection,” she said, trying to sound cheerful as she wondered how in hell they were going to get Diana Morris down anything that steep. “I remember this stretch. It's not very long. And we're bound to find a car on the other road.”

“Sure,” said Diana, “there'll be a car,” and collapsed again.

This time they let her rest for a while, and walked to the brow of the hill to consider their next move. “How do we get her down there?” asked Harriet. “She can barely walk on relatively level ground.”

“We can carry her,” said John. She wasn't tall or heavy, but the thought of carrying her down that hill made him realize how tired he was. “After all, it's downhill. That's better than up.”

“Not much,” said Harriet. “As you ought to know. Not on a hill that steep. And who carries the water and all the rest of the stuff? The kids?” She sat down and studied the road. At this point it left the edge of the canyon, and twisted and turned through an ancient dry streambed, offering little in the way of resting places, or, in fact, hiding places. Certainly not ones that were easily accessible to someone carrying a half-conscious woman. “We could do it in stages,” said Harriet at last.

“What kind of stages?”

“Short ones. We stash her and the kids up here, carry the water and equipment down until we find someplace to hide them, come back, and the two of us carry her down. Stash her there and do it again.”

“What if we don't find that someplace?”

“So be it. We improvise. It's that or leave her here, John.”

He stared down at the road for so long that Harriet decided he had fallen asleep. “No,” he said suddenly. “We can't do that. She's too helpless to fend for herself if anything unexpected happens. We improvise. Can you hear anything?”

“No,” she said. “But we'd be better off asking the kids. They have ears like bats. Caroline? Stuart? Can you hear the Jeep?”

They stopped their conversation and listened, with great concentration. Caroline turned to her brother and shook her head. “We can't,” said Stuart. “But if you want us to listen for it, it'll be easier if we stay up on the rocks. You can hear everything up there.”

“Can you follow us from up there?” asked John.

“I think so. Most of the time. We're quite good at climbing,” said Caroline. “Sometimes we may have to come down to the road, but then we can go up again. So as long as you're not going too fast—”

“We won't be,” said John. “Now—this is what we're going to do.”

Ginger stopped the Jeep at the path to the cabin. Because if they had brought the bus up the mesa road, and if they hadn't made it to the plane, then they had to be at the cabin. It wouldn't have hurt Scotty to call from there and let people know what the hell was going on, but maybe he felt he couldn't risk it. Scotty had always been a very cautious sort. Ginger took the rocky path with the long and powerful strides of someone who has lived in mountains most of his life, and has been forced to walk more than he ever drove. It was less than a mile to the top at this point, and in comparative terms, a gentle climb. He crested the hill and stopped to observe the situation. There was, as Rick and Suellen had discovered, very little to see.

Then he let himself half-run, half-fall down the path on the other side, until he came to an almost invisible fork. The right-hand side would take him, after a long and thirsty walk, back to the main road. He took the left.

It wasn't more than a hundred yards to the cabin from the fork in the trail. Carl Deever's really hidden hideaway. One could get to it by knowing the trail and walking, either from the mesa road or the highway; or one could fly in and walk a much shorter distance. That was how all the supplies and equipment came in. But no matter which side you approached it from, it blended with the mountainside and the trees, invisible.

He knocked on the door, not expecting a response, but knocking all the same. No one answered. He drew a fistful of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door.

Someone had been here. Scotty, of course. He had detailed contour maps of the entire region with him—and the keys. Ginger turned the handle on the tap and water came out. Someone had been here long enough to bother turning on the water system. An empty beer can stood on the counter; there was a dirty plate in the sink, along with a fork and a cup. The coffee on the stove was cold, and so were the beans still in the pot. He sniffed the beans. They hadn't been there all that long. And Scotty must be coming back. He knew Carl hated a mess.

He washed the dust off his face, drank a couple of glasses of water, washed the dirty dishes in the sink and the pot on the stove, and headed back to see if he could find the bus. Or Scotty.

He whistled cheerfully as he climbed back up the mountain and headed down the other side. His legs always felt cramped walking on flat ground, and his feet hurt walking on pavement. Someday, maybe, he'd have money, and he'd go back home and buy a little place— Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed something that shouldn't be there over to his right. He stopped to listen. Satisfied, he turned his head to see.

Something multicoloured—white, brown, blue, rust-coloured—lay in a heap under a tree. He stepped cautiously in its direction to have a look. The blue blanket that had been decently shrouding Kevin Donovan's remains had been pulled aside by inquisitive teeth and paws during the night. “Jesus,” said Ginger, looking down at the mangled face. No point in looking for Scotty anymore. Mr. Deever wasn't going to be pleased.

Instead of continuing on to the Jeep, Ginger moved quietly across the wooded slope until he heard the sound of voices coming up from the road below. He slipped closer and then gently crouched down. Directly below him, largely hidden under a jutting piece of ground, he could see the edge of a dark blue bus. He had been wrong. There was a place to hide a bus, and by God, those local boys had found it. He rolled quietly onto his belly and crawled as close to the edge as he could. He lay there in silence as people walked back and forth, chatting, lying stretched out in the sun, and even reading. A tall woman, wearing a hat tied on by a scarf, came around the curve of the road and walked up to the bus, where she disappeared from his view. Ginger nodded in satisfaction and began to crawl backward until it was safe to stand.

The first two stages in climbing down the hill had proceeded successfully enough. Finding a place to stow their goods that would also hide Diana proved more difficult than carrying her down. Although that was hard enough. Every footstep on the uneven, gravelly surface of the track was potentially treacherous. Coordinating their movements sufficiently to carry such an awkward burden was almost impossible. And so sometimes they both carried her; sometimes John did. Sometimes she tried to walk, but that was the least efficient of all, never lasting more than a few steps. The children drifted above their heads, scrambling silently over the rocks above, occasionally appearing beside them and climbing back up when their high road temporarily disappeared into another gully.

The third stage looked as if it might be the next to last. “There's a very bad patch of road ahead, but I could see the intersection,” said John, when he climbed back up to get Diana. “Unless I'm suffering from highway mirages. I didn't quite get to it, although it was very tempting. Let's go.”

They rounded the next curve and faced another precipitous drop. “Shit,” said Harriet.

“It's not so much that it's steep,” said John. “It's that the surface is terrible. But if I take her shoulders—”

“We'll fall,” said Diana. “I'll walk. If you can hold me up on each side—”

“It's the only way we can do it,” said Harriet.

John set her down and the three of them began the slippery descent. Abruptly, their painful concentration on the placement of every footfall was interrupted by a cry from above their heads. “It's the Jeep,” said Caroline. “Hide.”

Ginger was driving along the track with considerable care, trying to decide whether Carl Deever would be more enraged that the bus had been sitting precisely where he had said it would be, and that in two days no one had found it, or that someone had murdered Scotty without his permission. And to what extent would that rage be mollified by the knowledge that his wife, whom he had assumed was long gone, was still with the bus? Hell—why was she still with the bus? At that thought, he speeded up involuntarily, and the Jeep skidded around the next curve. Shaking his head, he slowed to a much more conservative pace.

A rattling of stones on the edge of the road behind him made him slow even more, craning his neck around to the right in order to peer back into the canyon. Nothing. Probably an animal escaping from the menace of the vehicle. While his attention was directed toward the canyon, he failed to notice three adults plastered against the ground at the foot of the little gully wall. He drove on very carefully down the last steep, twisting section of road and onto the secondary highway.

It seemed to take them only minutes to get to the intersection once the Jeep had passed them by. The children forgot their exhaustion, thirst, and hunger in their elation and triumph.

“I threw an enormous rock,” said Stuart. “I thought he'd never notice.”

“That's because it landed miles behind him,” said Caroline. “I threw two huge handfuls of stones. Right beside the Jeep.” She giggled. “I almost hit him. Then we both ducked down.”

“I read about something like that in a book,” Stuart went on, managing to combine becoming modesty with looking extremely pleased with himself. “Where someone hid an elephant just by getting the bad guys to look the other way as they were walking by. He did it by throwing rocks, too.”