California Girl (31 page)

“How will we know when they’re ready for us in Albuquerque?”
Alys murmured, climbing into the front passenger seat.

“I vote we leave here as soon as we’re done in the museum.
The way things have been working out, we could probably hide down there as
easily as here.” Elliot drew his hand through her hair, leaned in the car to
kiss her nose, and shut the door.

The day wasn’t hot, but Alys felt warm right down to her
toes.

Feeling a little safer, she appreciatively sniffed the new-car
smell and buckled up, checking on Lucia and the kitten in the backseat. With
the cooler weather, Purple should be comfortable if they left him in here for a
little while.

Elliot drove out of the lot. She’d quit fighting him for the
keys. They would probably never see each other again after today, so the fight
seemed purposeless. She tried to imagine driving off into the sunset, seeing
the sights on her own, but she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. She had
a whole future ahead of her to be alone. She might as well enjoy this moment.
Opening the local map, she directed him to the road for the Children’s Museum.

“We won’t need that. Watch.” Elliot pressed a few buttons on
a small monitor fastened to the car’s dash.

Alys watched in amazement as a street map appeared and a
computerized voice announced, “Proceed to route and turn right.”

“I rented a GPS,” Elliot said in satisfaction. “Can’t live
without one.”

“It’s amazing! I wouldn’t need a map anywhere.” She studied
the tiny computer as it flashed maps and talked them through Santa Fe, back to
the highway they’d come in on. “I could be a traveling salesman with one of
these!”

Elliot laughed and steered down the street from the museum
to locate a parking place. “You’d have to learn how to lie if you wanted to
sell anything.”

They filled Purple’s water and food dishes and left her to
explore the new car. Lucia carried her camera but was persuaded to leave her
backpack behind. Alys knew Elliot was memorizing every vehicle around them as
they walked parking lots and alleys to the museum, staying out of sight as much
as possible. His alertness frightened her. At the same time, his willingness to
look out for them warmed her already mushy heart.

As they wandered through the museum, Alys continued to
remind herself that Elliot would be gone tomorrow, that this was only a memory
she could store away to bring out in the lonely nights ahead. Perhaps she ought
to work in a restaurant in the evenings so she had lots of company and little
time to be lonely.

He held her hand while they watched Lucia diligently design
her own motif on the loom. She was a bright, active child who sparkled and
chatted when she felt safe. The arrival of other children drove her back to
watchful silence.

“I can’t believe anyone would want to harm her,” Alys
murmured a while later as Lucia held back to watch a group of rowdy toddlers
tumbling over the climbing structure.

“I’m not certain the drivers intend harm. From the sounds of
it, the old guy just wants his own way and will stoop to anything to get it.
His drivers may be a little rough and out of control.” Elliot stooped down
beside Lucia and showed her how to aim the camera to catch a picture of a
rabbit.

Fascinated
but subdued, Lucia held his hand as they walked to the next area.
He’s good with children
, Alys thought, then shook her
head to get the thought out of it again. This was just a break from his usual
routine. Driven men were not good with children.

Dead men were even worse with children.

Her mind unexpectedly rejected that equation. Mame had the
same heart problem, and she was still living after raising three boys.

Her real problem was a fear of attachments that could so
easily be torn apart by circumstances. Her head said she couldn’t handle that
kind of loss again.

The problem was that her heart knew no fear.

Walking the roundabout road back to the car after leaving
the museum, Alys recognized the instant Elliot tensed again. Surreptitiously,
she checked over her shoulder, but the sidewalk held numerous pedestrians, and
without a purple truck, she didn’t know what else to look for.

“Back to the car,” he murmured, with a hand at the base of
her spine, hurrying her toward a side street before he scooped up Lucia and
followed.

Alys checked over her shoulder again. This time, she saw a
surly-looking Hispanic man in a soiled baseball cap increasing his pace behind
them. Across the street, she noticed an equally untouristy man in denim shirt
with a cell phone at his ear cutting diagonally across the intersection.

Taking the lead, she dodged behind an office building and
through a parking lot, knowing the way back to the car without taking the
direct route. With Elliot on her heels, she hurried into a small restaurant,
and ignoring the hostess at the door, led the way into the hallway with the
rest rooms. These places were tiny and the floor plans obvious. The hallway
also contained the exit to the loading alley behind the building. Alys aimed
straight for it, not caring if it set off alarms.

Fortunately, it didn’t. Outside again, they raced down the
back alley to the parking lot where they’d left the Taurus.

Alys buckled Lucia into the child seat while Elliot started
the car. She fastened her seat belt as he pulled into the light traffic on the
narrow street outside the historic district. His expression was grim as he hit the
gas.

In moments, they were cruising the crowded streets of
historic downtown Santa Fe. The narrow lanes were filled with tourists and
difficult to negotiate with all the pedestrian closures, but a semi couldn’t
follow them.

Thinking they had to be safe now, not wanting to believe
those men had actually recognized them, Alys tried to imagine poking through
the quaint shops of rocks and artwork that she could see down side streets. She
craned her neck to look up in awe at the Palace of the Governors as they drove
by. The guidebook claimed it was one of the oldest public buildings in the
country.

She might never see these ancient streets again. She’d like
to experience them, but not at the cost of Lucia’s safety. At least she now
knew downtown Santa Fe didn’t look like a cowboy Western.

They didn’t immediately encounter any semis until they
reached the main road. She couldn’t always discern the color of the cabs
drawing trailers in front of them, but she thought she spotted a purple one at
an intersection.

She was afraid to ask what Elliot saw as he drove around the
city in the direction of the car rental company. She just clenched her hands in
her lap and watched him dodge in and out of traffic with practiced ease and a
determined expression. The little computerized guidance system went crazy
trying to return them to the location he’d punched in earlier, then died into a
sullen sulk. Alys turned the radio onto a classical station and did her best to
generate positive vibes to soothe him.

When another purple cab loomed in the rear window behind
them, Elliot took a sharp left turn across traffic and zigzagged down
residential side streets. Returning to a main highway, he abruptly bumped the
car into a parking lot in a bustling shopping center, parking in between two
hulking SUVs. Alys looked at him questioningly.

He snapped off the ignition and reached over the seat for
Lucia’s backpack. “Lucia has a bug on her somewhere.”

“A bug?” Alys asked in alarm, hastily glancing at Lucia for
some sight of an ugly flying cockroach. While Elliot rummaged through the
backpack, she unfastened her seat belt and reached into the backseat to brush
hair out of Lucia’s face. The child merely looked surprised, not alarmed.

“A global positioning device, similar to the one we’re
renting. That’s the only way they can keep finding us.” He gave up sorting
through the contents and dumped them on the seat beside Lucia. Still not seeing
anything, he climbed out of the car and began ripping up the backpack.

A woman emerging from a nearby bookstore stared but didn’t
stop. A train whistled in preparation for leaving a tourist depot down the
block.

“The thing on the dash?” Not totally understanding what he
was talking about, Alys watched him examine the backpack seams.

“That ‘thing’ is a computer. There’s a device inside it that
beams up to a satellite and tracks our location so it can tell us where to
turn. If there’s one on Lucia, her grandfather would know exactly where she is
at all times, just as the satellite knows where the car is and tells us where
to turn.”

Alys stared at him in disbelief, not knowing whether he’d
lost his mind or if he was really serious. “That’s ridiculous. Only rich people
have things like that. Or cops maybe. Don’t they stick them on luxury cars so
they can locate them if they’re stolen?”

“They can stick them anywhere they damned like. And if
Lucia’s grandfather owns a trucking company, he’s likely to own dozens of the
devices.” Satisfied there wasn’t anything on the backpack, Elliot began
examining Lucia’s toys. “He could be sitting in his kitchen, tracking our
movements on a monitor, coordinating them with whichever of his drivers are
nearby. He’s only a phone call away. I might lose the nearest truck, but all
Mendoza has to do is pick up the phone and tell the next guy where we are.”

The scent of spicy tacos drifted from a nearby restaurant.
Lucia hugged the doll Elliot had given her and retreated to a corner of the
seat.

Alys couldn’t think of any way that a computer could stick
to books or dolls. She’d given Lucia a bath, and there hadn’t been anything
strapped to her body. She’d like to believe it was something mechanical that
allowed their routes to be traced, and not coincidence or paranoia, but it
seemed too much like a movie script. She’d lived too long in her own narrow
world to believe the outside world had gone that crazy.

Just as Elliot searched the last piece of clothing, the same
idea occurred to both of them.

“The camera!”

Alys dug the hot pink child’s camera out of the console
between the front seats and offered it to Elliot. He flipped it open, threw the
film cartridge to Alys, and examined the camera’s insides. With a curse, he
snapped the back closed and glanced around.

The train rumbling out of the depot drew his attention, and
his long face lit up as if a thousand-watt bulb had turned on inside his head.
With the set expression of a man on a mission, he raced across the shopping
center parking lot in the direction of the restaurant and train station,
carrying the camera.

Alys watched in astonishment as Elliot jogged through gravel
alongside the moving train until he came abreast of an empty open-air
sightseeing car. With a powerful swing of his arm, he lobbed the camera onto
the flatbed as the train rumbled down the track.

Alys wanted to scream in glee and pump her fists in the air
in triumph. He’d done it! He’d thrown the bad guys off course and saved the
day. She hoped.

Which meant they might only have a few more hours together.

He wasn’t even breathing hard when he jogged back to the car
and slid into the driver’s seat. With satisfaction, he turned on the ignition
and drove straight for the rental agency.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Alys whispered in awe. Over
her shoulder to Lucia, she said, “We’ll buy you another camera in Albuquerque.
What color would you like?”

“Purple!” Lucia yelled with glee, apparently unfazed by the
loss of her toy.

“It’s all beginning to make a crazy kind of sense.” Elliot
checked the rearview mirror and side streets they passed. “The trouble didn’t
begin until we picked up Lucia. Mame must have assumed Mendoza knew what she
was driving, so she left Lucia with us, and hoped to lead the trucks on a wild-goose
chase. She didn’t know about the GPS. She thought they’d follow the Rover.”

“Do you think they might be following her anyway? Just to
cover all bases?”

Elliot winced and drove a little faster. “I think we’d
better find out.”

“Before grandpa figures out his thugs are following a
train,” Alys agreed.

Elliot hit the gas.

“Look!” Alys pointed at a group of motorcycles parked at a
restaurant on the road leading out of Santa Fe after they’d picked up Elliot’s
phone. “I think that’s the Harley club we met. Stop!”

Elliot glanced at her to see if she was insane, but she was
unfastening the seat belt before he’d even applied his foot to the brake,
obviously confident that he would follow her request. He wasn’t certain he
trusted Harley drivers anymore than truck drivers right now, but traveling with
a woman and child he had to protect, he was operating on paranoia mode. Still,
he braked and turned the rental car into the parking lot.

At least Alys was wearing a sweatshirt and not one of her
formfitting bodysuits. He really didn’t want to have to pop any noses for smart
remarks.

She ran ahead while he helped Lucia out of the child’s seat,
keeping an eye out for purple semis passing by. These roads out here were too
sparsely traveled and open for him to feel comfortable.

As he entered carrying Lucia, several of the bikers were
shouting comments to Alys. The child retreated into her cocoon of silence while
she studied the big, loud men, but Elliot was more immediately concerned about
Alys. She had slipped into a booth next to a guy with a dragon covering his
huge bare bicep and a scarf wrapped around his straggly brown hair. The two of
them had their heads bent over a map.

Elliot suffered the unreasonable urge to strangle her, but
he couldn’t tell if that violence came from jealousy or fear. He didn’t have
much experience with either. He had been a reasonably fearless sort of guy
until he’d taken on the responsibility of safeguarding an irresistible force.