Haunted

CHAPTER 21

OKAY, SO I GOT IT WRONG. TO HIDE MY EMBARRASSMENT, and because anger is my normal way of dealing with being embarrassed, I lash out.

“Shit, Max, I thought he was driving us over the rim. You did, too.”

“Not until you grabbed me. What made you think he was going kamikaze on us?”

“Oh, maybe the fact that he was driving straight for the edge. And that it occurred to me he might have made a deal with Santiago. His family’s safety in exchange for his life and Culebra’s.”

Culebra half turns in his seat but before he can say anything, Ramon jumps out of the Jeep. He heads for a patch of brush that becomes camouflage netting when he pulls at it. He motions to Max and Culebra. “Ayúdeme.”

Max and Culebra join him. The three men grab the netting and pull it over the Jeep. It’s sand colored and dotted with bits of rock and brush. Ramon anchors it with more rocks and stands back to brush dirt from his hands. He glances at his watch.

“Vengan conmigo,” he says.

And runs straight toward the edge of the mesa. In an instant, bickering forgotten, Culebra, Max and I take off after him.

Ramon disappears just as we catch up. Like an optical illusion, the trail that looks, from the way Ramon vanished, like a steep drop-off actually levels off, hugging the side of a hill. It takes standing at the very brink to see that we’re not looking at precipitous drop at all. Ramon is running ahead.

We plunge after him. Ramon moves with purpose. I catch up with him, eyes scanning, senses alert. I don’t see anything that looks remotely like a house. Just a lot of brush and boulders. Once again, I wonder if Ramon isn’t leading us into a trap.

Then I catch the scent. Human. Female. Somewhere off the trail.

Ramon calls out. “Maria! Gabriella!”

From around a bend in front of us, a woman’s voice answers. “¿Ramon? ¿Es tu?”

And then Ramon and a woman are embracing. She appeared from the side of the trail like an apparition but there’s nothing ghostly in the way she clings to her husband or he to her. Culebra and Max catch up.

When the woman sees Culebra, her hand flies to her mouth. “¿Tomás?”

And then she is hugging Culebra and crying and she, Ramon and Culebra are speaking all at once and so fast, the words are a blur in my head. She is darker than Ramon, sculpted cheekbones that are more Indian than Spanish. She is short, heavy hipped and stocky, dressed in a white shirt and jeans cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt. She has a big revolver in a holster clipped to her belt.

Max and I stand apart and watch. It’s apparent she was waiting for Ramon—was this why he didn’t want to start out last night? They had a prearranged time to meet? It would explain his crazy dash across the countryside.

Another movement from just out of sight to our right snaps me to attention. Max sees the reaction. “What is it?”

Before I can reply, another voice.

“¿Papa? Has vuelto para nosotros.”

The words come from a girl, fourteen or fifteen, who steps into the path. She has a rifle slung over her shoulder. Her face is hidden by the wide brim of a hat she sweeps off at the sight of her father.

Ramon opens his arms to embrace the girl. “¿Tu prometí que, no, mi preciosa?”

Ramon hadn’t mentioned having a daughter but clearly this girl is his. She inherited his hair color and eyes, his slender build. She’s tall for her age and dressed like her mother in jeans, a white blouse.

Her mother watches, arms still around Culebra, her expression, her tears reflecting relief. Ramon turns his wife and daughter to face Max and me.

“This is my wife, Maria, and my daughter, Gabriella.” To them he says, “Son amigos de Tomás. Ilegaron para ayudarnos. Anna y Max.”

Max and I nod to them as Maria gestures for us to follow. She glances upward and I hear the drone of an aircraft in the distance. Ramon hears it, too, and his expression hardens. “Come. Quickly. It may be one of Santiago’s.”

Maria and the girl lead the way off the trail and into dense brush. There are low-growing bushes and pinyon pines that make the going slow. But they also provide solid cover. The airplane passes overhead and Max watches it through a canopy of branches. “No markings. Ramon might be right.”

“Are they looking for him?” I ask.

“Could be. Or it could be a drug run.”

Maria keeps going. Ramon catches up to his wife and daughter and takes the lead. We trek on for another twenty minutes before he stops. There is a small clearing just ahead with the remains of another abandoned cabin. I look around. The last time I remember seeing a more isolated piece of land was on a Navajo reservation. At least there, the natural beauty of Monument Valley made the isolation tolerable. Here, the emptiness presses in like deadweight. I’m overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness. This is where Ramon’s wife and daughter are forced to hide?

But neither Ramon nor his wife or daughter seems to mind. They are smiling as Ramon bids us once more to follow him with a crook of a finger. We enter a door sagging precariously in a lopsided frame. He motions us to step around a pocked wooden table set in the middle of the floor. He reaches under the rim of the table and I hear the release of a lock. Then the hum of a motor. The table tilts down and away like a trapdoor to reveal a set of steps.

Maria and Gabriella lead the way down. Ramon and Culebra follow, then Max and me. I raise curious eyebrows to Max. “What the fuck?”

But we’re at the bottom of the steps and as soon as Ramon sees we’re down, he presses a button on a panel to his right beside yet another door. The motor hums again and the table flips upright and the platform once more snaps into place.

“Slick,” I whisper to Max. “What now?”

Ramon is working the lock on the door. It’s a keypad lock and his fingers move quickly over the numbers. But not quickly enough. I imagine he has no idea I’ve just memorized the combination. One can never be too careful.

The door swings open with a whoosh of pneumatics. Refrigerated air gusts out at us—fresh and smelling like spring. Lights flicker on, turning the inside bright as day. Ramon steps aside to allow his wife and daughter to pass, and then extends a hand to Culebra, Max and me.

“Welcome to my home.”

A whistle escapes my lips at the same time a gasp of astonishment escapes Max’s.

“Holy James Bond,” I say. “Dr. No didn’t have it this good.”