Don't Look Back (17 page)

Her face grew hot, and she felt wetness on her cheeks. Wiping her eyes, she sniffed in a breath, and Magdaleno turned at the sound.

“I draw very well.”

“I can see that you do. What are you drawing now?”

“An alien invader.”

“That sounds scary.”

He rose and padded to his blanket fort, tucking himself inside. He picked up a Mr. Potato Head, crammed an ear into the mouth hole.
“But I’m brave.”

“You
seem
brave.”
Rain thrashed his window; the hike back would be hell. The sky strobed with brightness, providing a view across the elephant grass to the distant mud wallow and forest beyond. She spotted El Puro’s shadowy form and wondered how the boy ever got to sleep with a twenty-foot crocodile in view from his bedroom window.
“Does
he
scare you? El Puro?”

An undaunted smile.
“No. He is my pet.”

The grin faded, a microexpression flickering across his face. Fear. As a nurse she’d learned to read similar veiled tells that indicated a patient’s willingness to talk, to call out an abuser, to confess an embarrassing bit of medical history.

“Pets can scare us sometimes, too,”
she said.

“Not
him
.”
Tucking himself farther beneath the desk, he pulled one of the masks into his lap and played with it.
“The man who came to see him.”

Her damp clothes felt suddenly clammy against her skin.
“What did the man look like?”

In answer Magdaleno raised the mask to cover his face. An evil spirit grimaced at her, twisted mouth, peeled-back lips, pointy teeth and horns.

She cleared her throat, which had turned to sandpaper. Crouched to get eye level. She scooped up a well-chewed action figure and a teddy bear. One small, one large. She animated them, making them walk a bit. After a time Magdaleno lowered the mask and watched her curiously.

“This is the man,”
she said.
“And this is you.”
She offered the toys.
“Do you want to take them, show me what happened?”

Beneath the desk the boy’s dark eyes glittered.
“No,”
he said, cutting straight through the role play
. “He didn’t hurt
me.
”

She took a beat to catch up.
“Who did he hurt?”

Magdaleno shook his head and turned away, curling into his nest of blankets. The motion brought visible a crayon drawing thumbtacked to the wall behind him.

The picture stopped Eve’s breath in her throat.

In the drawing a version of Magdaleno’s scary mask had been grafted onto a stick figure in place of a head. The evil form stood with his arms and legs spread jumping-jack wide, taking up much of the page. At his feet the crocodile waited openmouthed, jagged teeth at the ready. The man’s hand gripped a much smaller stick-figure woman, stiff as a gingerbread cookie, with yellow scribbled hair.

Falling from her crudely drawn finger was a sparkling blue ring.

Chapter 24

On aching legs Will had run the entire way from the lodge to the river, and then he worked his way along the frothy bank, finally reaching the zip line. Gathering his nerve now, he leaned out over the raging water, grasping the hand trolley. He stared past his white knuckles at the dense foliage over on the bad man’s side of the river, drew in a deep inhale, and leapt. He rocketed along the line, eyes watering, spray flicking up to catch his legs.

He tumbled onto the muddy far bank and found his feet quickly, unwilling to be caught letting his guard lapse. After confirming the folding knife’s presence in his pocket, he scrambled down toward the shoal where they’d eaten lunch two days ago. It seemed like two years. Sand sucked at his shoes as he waded across, and then he trotted up the rise through a spray of storm-battered white orchids and found the camping toilet, positioned like a hallowed object on the plateau. He crept to the rotting log at the edge and squinted through the downpour into the canyon.

The house crouched below, nestled into the hillside, the windows dark.

The steak knife, once unfolded, fit the counters of his hand. Firming his grip, he began the hike down the slope.

*   *   *

The man leaned forward into the strain, dragging the American’s body through the thickening mud. His calves screamed. His bare feet padded as if across lush carpet, feeling the jungle floor. Straps sank into his broad chest, connected to the makeshift sled he pulled. Woven from palm fronds, it curled around the body like a taco shell. One of the American’s arms had come unbound a few kilometers back. It trailed behind, fingertips tumbling over rocks, grooving the mud.

The mat distributed weight evenly. Left a negligible signature in the earth. Hard to track. At the cascade he’d secured the body and distanced himself rapidly from the tourists. He knew how to move unseen. How to move bodies unseen.

Each breath a grunt. Humidity doused his throat, his lungs on the inhale. Vines brushed his cheeks, his shoulders. The rain constant.

He had carried many men in his past, dying and dead, some enemies, some brothers. But few this large. At one point he had been trained to sprint up mountains. But it had been years. His muscle he had maintained, but extra meat had gathered at his waist, around his bones. It slowed him. He was sled-dog strong still, but not what he had once been.

With each step a prayerlike murmur repeated in his head:
Almost home. Almost home.

Behind him a moan rose above the pattering of rain. He paused, turned. The American’s hair had fallen across one eye. The eyelids thick with grogginess. He ducked out of the straps, walked back, crouched.

The American coughed out a mouthful of rainwater. “What are you…? I— I’m not … My face is wet.…”

Weak and disoriented. He gave no resistance, allowing his arm to be gathered to his side and bound again.

After retying the torso straps, the man rested his meaty hand across the American’s trachea. Thumb on carotid artery, forefinger on vagus nerve. Gentle pressure. The American’s sclera rolled into view. His eyelids fluttered. Then closed.

The man held the compression for five more seconds, then harnessed himself again with the straps and kept on.

Almost home. Almost home.

*   *   *

It occurred to Will as he reached the bottom of the canyon that he did not know how to fight with a blade. The folding steak knife was something he had grabbed for comfort, the way one grabs a baseball bat when awakened by a strange noise in the garage.

If he were honest with himself, he didn’t really know how to fight
period.
He was fit, sure, and a gym regular, but designing basketball shoes and taking weekend hikes didn’t exactly make him Ultimate Fighting Championship material. The thought of Jay in captivity had charged him, and he’d motored most of the way here on adrenaline and vague notions of heroics, but inching closer to the house now, he had to acknowledge a simple fact.

He was fucking scared.

The concrete box of a house waited, its front windows like the eyeholes of a skull. Runoff streamed down the hillside and poured across the slab roof, waterfalling off the lip. His shoes pressed hoofprints into the mud, but within seconds the earth closed over his tracks. Through the sheet of water, the windows showed only blackness, and he detected no sign of movement inside. He blinked away raindrops, adjusted his doused shirt where it clung to his shoulders. After circling the house at a distance, he approached, ducking through the cascade and putting his face to the glass. He moved from window to window, the moonlight barely allowing him to discern the furniture and identify the tiny square rooms. Bedroom with closet. Sitting area with couch and chair. Sink with pots and a hot plate. Filthy bathroom.

No sign of life.

Or death.

He exhaled, his breath fogging the window, rainwater sluicing down his shoulders and back. Should he stay here? For what? How long? What if the man with the scarred face had gone off to wait out the storm elsewhere? What if he’d already killed Jay and cut him into pieces in the jungle? What if Jay instead was injured and lost, wandering miles away by the cascade?

If Will entered the house, his muddy footprints would be evident when the man returned. But perhaps there was information inside. Information that could identify who they were up against.

He backed out of the waterfall. Moved to the front door. Reaching through the pouring water, he felt for the knob.

It turned.

*   *   *

As was his habit, the man paused a meter back from the tree line to surveil the canyon from the dense foliage.

There was a light on in his house.

He freed himself from the harness and crouched over the American on the sled. The big man had regained energy. Fear allowed that. He bucked and flopped in the mud, to no avail. Many straps encircled him and the curled mat. Ankles, thighs, waist, chest, neck, forehead. He would not be able to free himself.

“I can’t get—will you help?—these straps off. Why are they…? My shoulder … pins and needles.”

The man stripped off his own soaked cotton shirt. Found a stone the size of a child’s fist and dropped it in the fabric. Made neat folds, forming a two-inch band.

“What are you doing? Wait. Wait. What are you—”

Straddling the American, he forced the makeshift bit between his teeth, put his weight on either side of the bridle, and shoved, seating the rock hard in the rear of the man’s mouth cavity. A faint cracking. Blood dribbled at the corners of the American’s lips. He made an animal grunt, shuddering like a speared fish. It was no use. He would learn. Sure enough he fell silent.

The man left the bound body behind, circling his house, remaining several paces back from the tree line. He approached from the east. Leaning against a tree, his plywood target. The machete embedded. He freed it.

Rainwater streamed across the roof, down his arm, off the tip of the steel blade. It blurred his view of the window, but he detected a man’s shape inside, on all fours, his torso bare. Wiping mud from the floor with his shirt. As if that would be sufficient to erase his tracks.

Lifting the machete, he split the stream, opening a thin vertical slat to see through. It was the other man. He’d heard his name used last night in the hut. Will.

Will started to look up, so he withdrew the machete. The cascade turned him invisible outside, in the dark. The fuzzy form inside stayed frozen for a time. The oval of the face looking right at him. Him looking right back. Only one of them could see the other, and seeing was a great advantage right now.

He eased away. Stood to the hinge side of the front door. Waited. There was no risk that the bound American would be heard. Not from this distance. The sound of the storm drowned out all else.

He turned to a statue, Soldier with Sword. Waited.

Did Will
know
or merely
suspect
?

That he would find out. The big man, the spy, would tell him everything, but that would require time and focus.

The front door opened, blocking Will from view. He backed through the stream, shut the door, turning as predicted. Away.

The man stood behind him, so close he could have rested his hand on Will’s shoulder without straightening his arm. Will fought his filthy shirt on over his head, tugged it into place. When he pivoted another quarter turn, the man sidled to keep squarely at his back.

He drew back the machete.

Paused.

Better to eliminate Will now? Or would
two
missing Americans cause too many complications?

Perhaps he should allow Will to go back to camp. Report that there was nobody here. The tourists could refocus their efforts elsewhere. Perhaps it could still be salvaged, his place here in these mountains. His home.

Unless Will knew already. Unless he, too, was a spy.

Rain battered them. Washed over his bare torso. Beaded in the hair of his arms, chest, shoulders. Ran down the arc of upheld steel.

Will started away. Blade raised, the man followed, his steps silent in the soft earth.

His hand tensed around the wooden handle.

He stopped. Watched the American move away. Five paces. Now ten.

He sidestepped and disappeared between two trunks.

When Will shuddered and cast a glance over his shoulder, only trees stared back through the downpour.

Chapter 25

Gales ruffled the canopy, letting through blasts of rain so dense that at intervals Eve felt underwater. Stumbling downhill, she wiped at her eyes, struggling to see. The drops stung like grit flung against her cheeks.

Fortunato pointed downslope.
“Look!”
he shouted.
“See?”

Through a jagged veil of trees, she spotted movement. A vinyl banner flapped loosely against a thatched palm roof, the cheery yellow letters undulating into view:
DÍAS FELICES ECOLODGE
™. The cantina.

A screech of rent wood blasted her eardrums. Fortunato leapt at her, knocking her aside as a bough crashed to the ground, obliterating her last footprints.

She pulled herself up on throbbing legs.

They leaned on each other, half skidding, half falling through the brush to the sturdy bamboo boardwalk. As they reached it, a figure staggered out of the haze toward them and Eve yelped, grabbing Fortunato’s sleeve and backing away.

Will.

She hadn’t allowed herself to register just how worried she was until she recognized his form, stooped and winded. They embraced, his cheek cold and stiff against hers.

“Jay?” she shouted in his ear.

He shook his head, steering her down the walkway after Fortunato. As they neared the center of the lodge, Neto stepped out from Harry and Sue’s sturdy two-story hut and flagged them down, his mouth moving but the words lost to the storm. They barreled through the door and shut it, the roar dropping by a factor of five. Given the fancier hut’s solid adobe walls and actual roof, it was clear why the others had herded in here.