Latitude Zero (35 page)

60

FOUR DAYS
later, I was in Santiago’s Pathfinder, barreling down the Pan-American Highway. I rolled the window open and let the wind tangle my hair. I trailed my hand outside and felt the wind push back against me. I tried to grab on to that wind and hold it, to imagine it pulling me forward.

Things were definitely moving forward on the crime-solving front.

Preston Lane, Coach Mancuso, the three spies, the flash drive, and Preston Lane’s bike—now emptied of cash—were all on their way back to Boston. Darwin and his crew would face more questioning there. A news story in the Ecuadorian paper said Bridget Peterson, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, had done a lot of talking already and might be able to expect some leniency from U.S. authorities compared to the other two individuals. I hoped so. Even though that article she’d posted about me still stung, I hoped she’d find a better use for her communications skills and her journalistic interest, as well as a fresh start for her life.

Preston Lane and Tony Mancuso would be taken into protective custody. They faced charges for racketeering and for conspiracy to commit money laundering, as well as conspiracy and second-degree murder charges for their involvement in Juan Carlos’s death. Dylan and Jake were presumed innocent at this point, though would serve as key witnesses in eventual legal proceedings.

The FBI had swiftly tracked down and raided the homes of at least ten other businesspeople, in the United States, who were involved with Sports Xplor in some way—as investors or consultants or agents. The site was declared illegal and promptly shut down. Mari and I talked to Gage on the phone—he wanted to hear the whole story from us personally. I asked him about that Sports Xplor screen I’d noticed on his office computer. I hoped he hadn’t been implicated in the gambling scheme. “No way,” he said. “I knew it seemed fishy. I held on to the URL and password Preston and Tony had given me, and I kept coming back to look at the site and try to figure it out. I never would have spent money on it, as a player or as an organizer. And I’m really proud of what you girls did, reporting all this. My gut told me that site was illegal, but I never was sure of Preston and Tony’s roles in it. Now I wish I’d spoken up sooner.”

Next I’d had a tough video conference with my parents, where I had to tell them everything. My mom promised me “consequences galore” as soon as I got back home. They weren’t at all thrilled I’d lobbied to go to Ecuador without telling them everything I was involved in. They said it was wrong to cover up so many of my own actions, even as I was trying to do the right thing and uncover the truth. If that wasn’t enough, I then had pretty much an identical conversation with the Ruiz family, in Spanish. Not exactly how I’d planned to be practicing my Spanish verbs.

My dad insisted I stay out of the news, for my own safety, in case other gambling ring members surfaced and decided to retaliate on Darwin’s behalf. I agreed to lay low, and turned down interviews with the media, Ecuadorian and American. I promised not to talk about the details on my vlog, once I got that going again. It wasn’t hard to do. This story wasn’t about me getting famous or restoring my TV persona. It was about unearthing the truth behind Juan Carlos’s death. It was about owning up to the fact that while I didn’t directly cause that death, I’d been wrong to bandit ride, to draft a team’s paceline and pull out too fast, and to go for so long without reporting to police what I knew. It was about making sure that a handful of greedy, corrupt people like Preston Lane didn’t poison the sport of cycling. Bikes could save lives, just like Mari had said once. They weren’t supposed to end lives.

At the end of those tough conversations, both sets of parents—north and south of the equator—had told me they were proud of my courage. “It’s a rare individual,” my dad added, “who takes risks in the name of justice. I’m not saying everything you did was right, especially since you are under eighteen. But I am proud to have a daughter who’s got integrity.”

On Sunday, just two days after we exposed Preston Lane and the Sports Xplor scheme, Bianca Slade had actually called me at the Ruiz house. She wanted to tell me personally that I’d been courageous to tip her off about the bike sabotage in the first place, and when I confessed—off the record—what else Mari and I had done to crack the case, she expressed even more admiration. “My hat’s off to you,” she said. “You have the qualities of a great investigative journalist. And you know what the most important quality is?”

“What?”

“That we care enough about something to ask questions, follow hunches, and find evidence—even when it seems like no one else cares. That we keep on digging.”

“Thanks,” I’d managed to squeak.

“But there are ways to look for evidence and talk to sources without putting yourself at such risk,” she’d continued, sounding a little bit stern. “You need to get special training for this field of work. There are journalism programs with investigative tracks, and I’ll email you my recommendations. Meanwhile, I hear you’re between jobs these days. There’s an internship with your name on it at
Watchdog
, whenever you’re ready to start.”

I’d done a little dance after hanging up the phone, whooping with joy. Bianca Slade liked my work! I’d get to work with her someday! Mari and the Ruiz family had joined me in my celebratory dance. Lucia had put on salsa music—Amparo had turned it up loud—and we made our own salsoteca in the Casa Ruiz living room that night.

Kylie was less understanding at first. We had a videoconference right after my host family’s impromptu dance party and she burst into tears. She said the scholarship committee had contacted her. A stop had been put on the check while investigators looked into Preston Lane’s financial transactions in the United States and offshore. There were suspicious money wire transfers and more suspicious cash smuggling activities to look into, and the scholarship would likely be dissolved. I listened to her for as long as she wanted to talk. I let her cry as long as she needed. Then I explained to her, gently, why I’d exposed this scandal, how it was something bigger than all of us. She’d said she understood, but I could hear the hurt in her voice. Ending that video call was hard. I wished there were something I could do to help her raise that tuition money

Meanwhile, in Quito, the Ecuadorian police and some government officials were interrogating the local affiliates that Darwin had been working with in Quito. The affiliates were numerous, and included a mix of locals, police, and expats from the United States who were hiding out in Quito to avoid prosecution for various crimes. Even the nightclub bouncer I’d dealt with was fingered by Balboa. He was actually a police officer who moonlighted as an enforcer and a debt collector for the Sports Xplor gambling business.

The Pan-American Cycling Tour grand finale in Quito continued and came to a dramatic finish. Equipo Diablo won the circuit race, with el Ratón leading his team. He then went on to lead the team to victory on two of the stages of the four-day stage race that followed. But a Brazilian team came up out of nowhere and won the other two stages, and Team Cadence-EcuaBar—struggling without el Cóndor, reeling from the scandal, and in the absence of their head coach—placed fourth in the stage race event. After the races, el Ratón showed up at the U.S. Embassy, asking to talk to an FBI field agent. He admitted that he’d been paid off by Darwin to keep Juan Carlos’s secret, and he’d been appointed the team leader of Equipo Diablo in exchange for helping to identify potentially bribable riders.

As for Juan Carlos, he had emerged from all of this more of a hero than ever. There was already talk of building a statue of him and putting it in the park where the Vuelta Youth Racing Club trained, and Wilson called for a planning meeting at Vuelta to brainstorm ways to stage a fundraising ride. The money would go to a scholarship fund in Juan Carlos’s name. None of this, of course, would bring him back. But at least he’d be remembered as a person of character, as the Juan Carlos I’d known. Not just some character in a bicycle rivalry drama or a betting scheme.

And me? I still had almost two weeks at latitude zero, which I was finally free to explore. I could bond with my host family and Mari, who’d left her cousin’s apartment for good and was staying at the Ruiz house with me. I could hang with the Vuelta volunteers and soak up the culture. There were cloud forests to explore outside the city. A Vuelta-sponsored jungle trek Mari and I were looking forward to. And more bike classes to teach at La Casa and elsewhere. Even though Juan Carlos and his ghost bike would probably cast their shadow on me for a long time, I could live with that, knowing I’d taken el Cóndor’s cause all the way to the finish.

“So where’s this surprise place you’re taking me?” I asked Santiago.

He smiled. “We are here already. An
actividad
I thought you’d appreciate.”

I walked by his side through the parking lot, toward a big stone obelisk with a globe on top. The monument was surrounded by green-and-brown hills and a row of fluttering flags showing countries all over the world.

“
La Mitad del Mundo
. The official middle of the world. More or less.”

“More or less?”

“Come. I will show you. Here is the equatorial line.” He pointed to a yellow strip on the stones, leading up to the obelisk. Colorful flowers formed an
S
on one side,
N
on the other. I walked in the Northern Hemisphere, Santiago in the Southern. “It is a
turístico
thing to do,” he admitted, “but you cannot come this far and not stand with one foot in each hemisphere.”

At the steps to the obelisk, he took my picture with one foot on each side of the line. Then we climbed the stairs inside the obelisk and looked out at the view. At Quito in the distance, and the ring of velvet hills, and the line stretching out in either direction.

“So what do you mean by ‘more or less’ the middle of the world?” I asked.

“This isn’t really the equator. The first navigators got the location wrong.”

I stared at him.

He laughed. “This is the true! Modern GPS technology now shows the early explorers were off by about a hundred meters. The line has been redrawn. Over there, by that museum.” He pointed to a building a few yards away. “They will need to build a new monument, too.”

I thought about this. “You know what? Maybe it’s not always easy to figure out where to draw a line. Like, what’s good or bad, what’s wrong or right.”

He considered this idea for a moment, then nodded. “We have to redraw our lines all the time, depending on situations.”

“But I don’t like that. How can we make good decisions and do the right things if our values aren’t fixed? If our lines about what’s right or wrong are always shifting?”

We’d come full circle around the observation deck of the globe. As we looked at the sprawling view below us—hills and homes and a network of narrow meandering roads—I realized Santiago had taken a step closer to me. Then another. And another. Before I knew it, he had slipped his arm around me and lowered his face toward mine. I lifted mine to meet him. Somehow, in the middle, our lips found each other.

His kiss was warm. A perfect mix of gentle and firm.

I wanted to lose myself in it. Jets of emotions that I’d turned off after Jake suddenly turned back on.

He cupped my face in his hands and looked at me. “I do not know what to do with these feelings,” he said in a husky voice. “I do not know if it was right or wrong to do that just now. Maybe I hope for too much.”

“I don’t know, either,” I whispered. I felt disoriented. Dizzy. Confused.

“The timing is terrible.” He sighed. “You are returning to Boston soon. And I do not know if I will successfully get into a school in the U.S. If I do, it will not be for one more year.”

“And you still have to pass that TOEFL exam.”

“I will! I have been studying hard! And I have many new action
verbos
I can use.”

We both smiled.

Then he grew serious again. “Tessa. I know things are complicated. But I wanted to express my feelings to you. You are the most exciting person I’ve ever met. The most adventurous and amazing girl.”

I took a step back. I studied his face. Open, inviting. His body warm and welcoming.

I’d thought Santiago wasn’t my type. But did that really matter? This was a really good guy. He’d gone out on a limb for me, from the first day we’d met. He’d gone along on my ride. And the more he revealed about himself, the more sides I saw to him. And liked.

Santiago smiled, almost sadly. “You are quiet. I understand. You are an independent American girl. You do not need a boyfriend. Especially one in another country. You do not need more complications.”

He was right. I didn’t need complications right now.

But maybe it didn’t have to be so complicated. My future, his future—they weren’t entirely charted out. Maybe what mattered was this moment, right now, and following my own heart to see where it might lead me.

As he let his hands fall to his sides in a gesture of resignation, I reached for them. I held them. Tight.

We exchanged a smile and walked back to the car together, the yellow line running between us, the strong sun warming our backs.

/////

THE NEXT
morning I woke up early, before the rest of the Ruiz house. An email from Sarita made my day right away—she told me that Cadence Bikes had heard about the frozen scholarship fund, and Chris Fitch had come through for Kylie. She’d graduate with us after all, with the gift of money from a company. A good company.

I was about to shut down my computer when another message came in.

I stared at the sender’s name. Jake Collier. The subject line simply said
Hey
.

I thought of Santiago’s kiss yesterday. I’d felt so free at Mitad del Mundo. Free to kiss a different guy. To go with my feelings, in the moment, and not have to second-guess everything.

I didn’t want to give up that freedom.

I opened the message. It was short.

Guess you heard they got the guys behind Juan Carlos’s murder. Wild stuff. I knew there was something up with that team. Hope I can get my life back now. Started packing up for UMass this weekend, and found one of your cycling jerseys. It smelled like your soap. Made me miss you. Hope you’re doing well at the middle of the world. Maybe I can see you one more time when you get back? Would be good to talk again. Like we used to.