Short Cut to Santa Fe (6 page)

It was Joe who suggested that they call Charlie Broca at the airport and ask if the children had arrived and caught the bus. Charlie stared at the telephone in absolute horror. “Your kids?” he asked at last.

“Yeah, Charlie, our kids. Did they come off the plane?”

“Sure,” he said. “They come off the plane all right. I saw them.”

“Okay. Did they get on the bus? The Archway bus?”

“Hell, Joe, what else would they do? Anyways, they sure as hell weren't there when I locked up, that's for sure.” He laughed a forced, hollow laugh. “Is anything wrong?”

“Not so far,” said Joe, sounding sick with worry, and Samantha called the state troopers.

She had explained that their children had caught the six o'clock bus from the airport, but they weren't waiting for her at the intersection where she expected them to be. It didn't occur to her to mention that it was an Archway Tour bus. Or, in fact, which airport she was talking about. The troopers instituted inquiries at the Albuquerque airport and headed out to the intersection to look for the twins.

The hotelkeeper in Taos whose seven previously booked rooms were not being occupied that night raised no alarm either. The reservations had been canceled long before the sun had set. He wouldn't have called in Linda to work on her night off if he had known earlier, but what the hell. Archway would pay anyway.

Kate Grosvenor woke up with a start. A noise had startled her—a car honking, an animal cry, someone speaking. She didn't know. She was only aware of her misery. Her neck, her head, her shoulder, her arm were all throbbing hideously. Somewhere within that pain, her stomach must have been growling with hunger, but its feeble cry was lost in the greater demands of the rest of her body. Her mouth was thick and sour-tasting with sleep. She forced herself out of the chair and stumbled over to her suitcase. She took out the Scotch, located her pills after much searching through her bag, shook two into her hand, poured herself a half-glass, and used it to wash down the painkillers.

With a gasp of pain as her upper body hit the quilted coverlet a little too hard, she curled up on the bed beside her luggage and plunged once more into oblivion.

It was clear who was in charge. Gary stood beside the driver's seat, apparently unarmed, looking at John and Harriet with interest. His stance and air of authority marked him as the leader. The other was on the step up to the passenger area, clutching the weapon awkwardly and nervously. It was not a good vantage point for firing on them, and for a moment—just one—John considered the possibility of flight.

Gary motioned the children onto the bus first. They mounted the steps, never taking their eyes off the man with the weapon. John grasped Harriet firmly by the arm, in case unwise thoughts of flight were running through her fast-moving brain as well, and followed the children.

Gary looked nonplussed at the sight of what looked like a perfectly ordinary family. Like someone who had ordered eggs in a restaurant and had been handed a live chicken. “Who in hell are you?” he said. “And why were you following us?”

“Were we following you?” Sanders said cautiously.

“Of course we were, darling,” said Harriet, in cloying tones. “You were asleep again and didn't notice. He always falls asleep in cars, don't you, dear?” She turned to Gary and went on earnestly. “We were the other people at the airport, remember? You must have seen us. Someone said your bus was going to Taos and that's where we're going and I thought you'd know the way. We've just been following right along behind. You were so easy to spot. The children made a game of it. I did wonder when you turned onto this road, but I just assumed it was a short cut.”

“Cut the crap, lady. I want to know what you're after. And give me that thing,” he added, reaching for the flashlight. “See if they're carrying anything, Wayne, and then put them back there with the rest of them. And turn those goddamn lights on again.”

Wayne paused in the face of so many instructions.

“Give me the rifle. Put the fucking lights on,” said Gary. “Then check them for weapons and put them back with the passengers.”

Wayne stumbled through the first two instructions; then with avid clumsy fingers he ran his hands over Harriet's body. Slowly and with great thoroughness. “Nothing,” he said at last, disappointed.

“Then get on with it,” said Gary. “And for chrissake, you're supposed to be looking for weapons, not feeling her up.”

His inspection of John was cursory and much faster. “Okay—git back there and sit down.”

But when John Sanders had moved up the two steps to the passenger area, his way was blocked by two women kneeling on the floor. They were bending over another woman, who appeared to be unconscious. As he moved forward, she opened her eyes and drew a deep, sobbing breath.

The slight woman with pale brown hair turned to him. “Can you give us a hand?” she asked. “We have to get her onto the backseat. Maybe this gentleman will help you,” she added, pointing to Rick Kelleher, who scrambled at once to his feet. He was considerably shorter than Sanders, with a square, powerful build, black hair, and very blue eyes in a deeply tanned face. He looked strong and hardworking in the physical sense, like a rancher or a construction worker.

“Rick Kelleher,” he said, with a fast grin, on and off. “How do we do this?”

Kelleher seemed a good choice, although John wondered for a minute why she hadn't picked on the man sitting right beside them, who was a good ten years younger, as tall as Sanders, and considerably heftier, but the woman looked like someone who knew what she was doing.

“What do you think you're doing up there?” said Wayne nervously. He had somehow acquired a pistol since John had last looked at him, and he was waving it about like a man unsure of what he had found.

“We're moving this woman to a more suitable position before she dies of shock,” said the woman. “Any objections? Or would you rather do it yourself?” There was no response. “Right. She has a messy wound in her thigh,” she went on, addressing her remarks to Sanders. “She's lost a lot of blood. I've done what I could but we want to get her back there and lying down as gently as possible. If the three of us pick her up at the same time and move back, keeping her level, we shouldn't do too much damage. The important thing is to keep her as level as we can.”

“The three of us?” said John, looking down at her.

“I'm considerably stronger than I look,” she said flatly, “and much more experienced at moving people who are injured than you guys are. Or does either one of you happen to be an ambulance driver?”

The question was rhetorical and Sanders accepted the rebuke.

“This lady is red hot,” said Kelleher. “I've been watching her.”

The move was agonizing—not just for Diana Morris, who bore it with so much stoicism that Sanders wasn't sure how conscious she was—but for the three bearers who felt every jolt and shift in position with her. After they eased her down on the backseat, Jennifer waved them away and crouched beside her patient.

There was a general shifting of seats. The twins slipped into Diana Morris's place since it was the only empty double seat. Teresa Suarez crossed the aisle and shifted Kevin Donovan over with a single glance, sitting down beside him and leaving her double seat free for Harriet and John. Everyone was behaving as if one man with a gun wasn't standing at the front, waving his weapon in the air.

“Sit down,” said Wayne, his voice cracking and dying away as he spoke. His hands trembled visibly with the effort of holding his pistol steady.

“What my little brother here is trying to say,” said Gary in a soft, reasonable, almost friendly voice, “is that we've had enough bullshit from the whole lot of you. Okay—we have our reasons for trying to keep the lady back there alive. At least for now. And it isn't 'cause we're afraid of the law, or 'cause we like you folks all that much. Understand? The next person who moves or makes a noise without permission from me is dead and over that cliff. Nothing'll find you down there for at least five years. Nothing human, anyway. Everybody understand that?”

The loudest sound in the bus was the noise of the two brothers breathing.

“Now,” he went on, “I want to know just who you are and what you're doing here. Don't ask why. Just believe me that it's important. At least it's important to me, and I'm the one who's armed. And you'd better be convincing.” He paused to look the group over. “There's no hurry. We got all night. How about we start at the back, with you two kids?”

“Oh, but the kids are—” Harriet started.

“The hell they are,” said Gary. “They were on the plane, weren't they? And that's more than you were. I'm beginning to find you more and more interesting, lady.”

“I'm Stuart,” said the boy, suddenly and loudly. His face was chalk-white, but he seemed to have a firm grip on his reactions. “Stuart Rogers. And this is my sister Caroline.”

“Let her answer for herself. Is that your name?”

“Yes. Caroline Rogers.” The girl stared at him the way birds are supposed to stare at snakes, but her voice was steady enough. “Our parents run the Hotel Sans Souci. It's between Santa Fe and Taos. When we come home we usually catch a ride with the Archway bus. There's always room because regular passengers never sit on those backseats. But this time we missed it, and these people gave us a ride. They were just trying to catch up to the bus, so we could get home.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes,” said Harriet. “I figured you'd pass by their intersection and they'd be able to recognize it. Then I could drop them off.”

“Where were you coming from?” Gary didn't seem to be as interested in the story as in the twins.

“From Dallas. That's where we live.”

“You said you were going home,” said Gary.

“We are. Our parents live here,” said her brother. “We live with Aunt Jan except during vacations. We go to school in Dallas. Our parents know the man who owns Archway and they let us fly home for the weekend on the Archway plane.” The child sounded desperately tired and Harriet's eyes suddenly filled with tears for an instant, quickly suppressed.

“The hell you do.” Gary's voice was flat and without expression. “That sounds crazy to me.”

“It's not crazy,” said Caroline. “We do it all the time.”

“Your parents rich? Do they own the hotel?” asked Gary.

Stuart shook his head. “It's owned by the Marenda Corporation. They manage it for them.”

“Shit. That's no use,” said Gary, and lost interest in the twins. “Anyone know the woman back there?”

The sudden shift in topic caught them off-guard. There was silence.

“Who is she?”

Karen Johnson intervened nervously. “Her name is Diana Morris and she's from Virginia. That's all we know about her.”

“She's a librarian,” said Caroline Rogers suddenly. “We were talking to her at the airport and on the plane, and she told us she was a librarian. She said it wasn't a very exciting job but she really liked it. We were talking about books.”

“A librarian? I thought this was some sort of posh tour,” said Gary.

Teresa Suarez turned slightly in the direction of the gunman. “She told me on the plane that she was in lousy shape after a nasty divorce, and had heard that the mystic powers of the sacred places would heal her. A very chatty woman.” The voice was low-pitched and cultured. “I said I didn't know about mystic powers, but I thought getting away from home would help. Clearly I was wrong.”

“Who are you, lady?”

“My name is Teresa Suarez,” she said. “I work for an advertising agency, I live in New York, I'm single, and I make enough money to afford a holiday like this. Does that answer your questions?” She managed to sound faintly amused by the situation and by the two men.

“You don't look like someone called Teresa Suarez,” said Wayne, dragging himself back into the dialogue now that it had hit a point he was sure of.

“Don't I really? And what does someone called Teresa Suarez look like?” she asked.

“Like a Mex,” he said. “More like her.” He pointed back at Diana Morris.

“How fascinating,” said Teresa, raising one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “I'm truly sorry. I have a nose very like my father's,” she added, as if this would explain everything. “And his name is Pedro Suarez.” Wayne stopped, baffled, like a dog who suspects that people are laughing at him.

Harriet looked at the disciplined blond hair, the cool blue eyes, and that long, thin, curved aristocratic nose with its flared nostrils and was impressed. Teresa Suarez was someone to reckon with.

Gary ignored his brother's discomfiture. He was looking straight at Brett Nicholls, the man built like a football player, who returned his look with eyes hot with rage. But he sat quietly, and in a steady voice said he worked for his father's insurance agency, and that his wife, Jennifer, was the nurse. They were taking a vacation. Gary turned abruptly away from him, as if he found him a hostile species.

He wasn't interested in Rick and Suellen Kelleher either. Rick, who looked as if he could wrestle a bull to the ground, told them in his soft, unworried voice that he was a computer person, associated with a small software company, and that he worked at home in Amarillo, Texas. This trip was his and Suellen's fifteenth-anniversary present. They had left the kids with his mother and blown the bank account. He didn't go in for all this mystic sites stuff much, but if Suellen did, he was proud and happy to go along with her. She smiled in nervous agreement.

The brothers ignored Mrs. Green and Karen and turned their attention to Kevin Donovan. “Now you,” said Gary. “You interest me. Who are you, besides a loudmouthed son of a bitch?”

“Not a particularly interesting person,” said Donovan casually. “Not to you, anyway.”