Don't Look Back (29 page)

Finally she shoved her hands along her cheekbones. Everyone sat in stunned silence for a few moments.

Then Eve turned the Jeep around, the tires crackling calmly through the mud.

She expected Sue and Harry to complain, but they seemed too shocked to say anything.

Reversing course, she drove cautiously back through the draped vines, the jungle swallowing them once again. The tires found the ruts the Jeep had made on its way out. They pulled in to the clearing.

Neto’s and Lulu’s bodies were gone.

One sandal lay by the picnic table. A twisted piece of scorched green plastic remained—a surviving remnant of the Mountain Dew bomb. A dark stain on the ground marked the place where Neto had settled into his final, seated repose.

The rest of the clearing: empty.

Beyond the stable at the trees’ periphery, an aqua-blue light, no bigger than a silver dollar, swayed back and forth. A sensor for another bomb?

No.

Dread thudded the walls of Eve’s stomach, timed with her heartbeat. She eased the Jeep to a stop and climbed out.

Will said, “Hang on,” but Eve said, “No.
Now
he’s gone.”

She floated on numb legs past the stable. She reached the jungle’s edge.

Fastened around a vine, swinging languidly in the breeze, was Claire’s dive watch. Eve reached out, pulled it free. Digital numbers reconfigured rapidly on the backlit screen. The stopwatch was running.

More precisely, counting down.

Chapter 38

At the edge of the jungle, Eve held Claire’s watch, the numbers flying by, counting down, crossing the eight-hour threshold. The rain had started up again, light enough to feel like mist.

The message was clear: eight hours until he killed Claire.

The others gathered around Eve, staring at the watch face. “Why so much time?” Harry asked.

Will said, “He wants us there after nightfall.”

“Us?” Sue said.
“Us?”

“Where?” Harry asked.

“His house in the canyon,” Will said. “He took her there.”

Harry rubbed his eyes. “For
what
?”

“For bait, Harry. She’s the weakest. The easiest to manage.”

A branch snapped deep in the foliage, and they all started, Sue yelping. They drew back into the clearing and closer together. Fortunato unfolded the steak knife. They stared at the rise of green. The breeze leaked out at them, fragranced with tropical flowers.

Rustling. A footstep crackling into mud. One rock clicked against another. Throaty breathing. At head level the fronds bobbed violently.

And then a protrusion shoved its way into sight. A big brown muzzle. Broad nostrils, chisel teeth, star of white fur above the nose.

Ruffian. The burro who’d escaped last night, spooked by the thunderstorm.

Sue made a noise that stopped short of a wail. Eve did her best to unknot her shoulders. Will actually laughed.

The burro lumbered out from cover to the stable, where he stood dumbly with his nose pressed up against the outer wall, as if sniffing splinters.

Eve bent, hands on her knees, catching her breath. Will grabbed Fortunato’s shoulder to regain his balance. The sky strobed, the lightning weak against the sun’s cloud-muffled glow.

Sue sagged onto the hood of the Jeep, doubling over and pressing her forearm weakly to her gut, presumably against the stomach cramps. Her voice was dry, mostly gone. “If he’s taking Claire to his
place,
we need to get down the mountain now. We need to get her help.”

“Look at the time, Sue.” Eve pushed the watch at her face. “It’s five hours to the coast in ideal weather with an intact bridge. How long in these conditions?”

Fortunato was slow to realize she was asking him. “Road to river crossing
es muy
rough. To go there and then down
los otros
roads to Huatulco after the storm like this? Could be half of one day maybe.”

“Assuming we can…” Will’s voice faded off. Eve had seen it before in ERs and ICUs, pain snatching the words out of someone’s mouth midsentence. Will lowered himself to the ground, wiped at his forehead, continued. “Assuming we even
get
across the river right away.” He held out his palm, catching rain. “If that water level stays up, we could get stuck on the bank. Either way Claire’s dead before we reach civilization.”

“
He
knows that,” Eve said. “He knows the timing. He’s counting on it. And he’s counting on the fact that we know it, too, and that we’ll … we’ll…” The thought spiraled off into the void. There were too many variables to grasp at once. She had to keep her thoughts neat and concise, like Rick’s, or they’d balloon into panic.

“That’s what they do,” Harry said. “Use our humanity against us.”

“Well, then,” Eve said, “you and Sue should get off scot-free.”

Harry stepped up on Eve, crowding her, and it struck her for the first time that, though he was older, he was a man with a man’s strength. “You can insult me all you want,” he said. “But don’t insult my wife.”

Will said, “Back off her, Harry.”

Eve stepped away instead.

Sue took her arm. “That’s not fair, Eve. Listen, you were willing to leave Jay at one point. What’s the difference?”

“I figured Jay was probably dead,” Eve said softly. “And Claire is probably alive.”

“What if she’s
not
? What if this is just another trick? To separate us? Because he’s
counting
on us wanting to help her.”

Eve bit her lip, watched the seconds scroll past on the watch. “We can’t leave her to him.”

“That’s what he’s
hoping
we’ll say.” Harry blurted the words, a fusion of anger and frustration. “He’s hoping you’ll be just dumb enough to make that call.”

“Well,” Will said, “then he’d be right.”

“I can’t believe it,” Sue said. “I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion.”

Eve fought for focus. “Will can’t do anything on that leg, but besides him there are
four
of us. Four against one. If we
all
go, we have a chance.”

“I can barely move with these cramps,” Sue cut in. “I’m in worse shape than Will.”

Eve raised her voice to be heard over Sue. “We can figure
something
out. Maybe talk to the guy, convince him that—”

“Convince him?” Harry said. “
Convince him?
Are you some kind of idiot?”

“That we’ll never tell who he is. Or bribe him or—”

“He doesn’t want money, Eve. He is a fucking
terrorist.
”

“I don’t know, Harry! Okay?”
She was crying with anger, with frustration, with terror, and she hated herself for it. “I don’t
know
what the answer is. I just know what the answer
isn’t.
”

They gave her a moment to gather herself, or maybe they were just speechless from the outburst. A butterfly fluttered among the vines, and she thought about how two days ago she might have found it beautiful.

Will looked up at Eve. “There’s not gonna be any talking to this man,” he said. “If you’re going there…” Again he seemed to lose the thread of his sentence. His eyes were loose, unfocused. He blinked twice, regaining clarity. “If you’re going there, Eve, it’s gonna get violent.”

She felt her resolve melting away. Her lips were quaking. She should have just kept on the road toward safety, toward her son, and left all this horror behind. She would’ve found a way to let go of the guilt, eventually. To not imagine Claire’s final hours. To let the thought of her recede into memory, to layer years and decades over it, bury it deep. She looked at the Jeep, waiting and capable. It wasn’t too late.

Harry wrapped an arm around Sue’s shoulder, curling her into him. “You all can go back for her,” he said. “But let me make it clear. We’re not. It’s as simple as that.”

No one spoke up. A laughing falcon shrieked somewhere deep in the jungle, a predator’s cry of triumph.

Fortunato broke the silence. “I will go.”

Harry’s mouth dangled open, the jagged line of his teeth pronounced. His cheeks were stubbled, jaundiced, and a sunburn had left the skin shiny and raw at the folds of his temples. “
Why?
You can just wander off right now to your … your village or fields or whatever. You’re the only one who could probably get
away
in these mountains.”

Fortunato bobbed his head, stalling to find the right English words. “Because,” he said, “Ms. Claire is a guest. And I am the only host left.” His features firmed, and again Eve could see in them the grown man he’d become.
“But…”

Her pulse intensified. She felt it flicking in the side of her neck. She sensed his head swing in her direction, his eyes find her face.

“I cannot go alone. I need someone for to look out. Or for to make distraction. And for to help with Claire if I can get to her.”

Now they were all looking at Eve.

She felt her heartbeat rev up further, a terror throb in her chest. She wet her lips, found them cracked and dry. “Just you and me? To
fight
him? I don’t think … I don’t know that I can.”

“That’s exactly right,” Sue said. “You
can’t,
honey. And no one blames you for that. None of us can. It’s not our fault if something happens to Claire. Remember that. It’s twisted and sick, but it’s
not
our fault. It’s that
man
’s fault. We have to react like reasonable people. We have to—”

“You have to,” Will said to Eve, “do the only thing he won’t expect.”

Harry turned to him, exasperated. “Which is?”

Eve couldn’t look up but felt Will’s gaze on her. He said, “Not be scared.”

Fright clawed up her throat, black and thick, threatening to choke off her air. She swallowed hard, swallowed it down.

She looked at Fortunato.

She nodded.

Chapter 39

Muffled noises carried across the front room to Bashir. The cripple. He sat with his back to her, removing a seed-case bur from the dead skin of his heel. The sun had dropped out of view, the jungle cast in burnt orange. A dying light.

She was tougher than he had imagined. Although he should have known. The sturdy ones, like Jay Rudwick, break at the sight of a machete. But the weak and the compromised? They cultivate in themselves ferocity and daring.

Still, with her useless legs, she’d been easily contained.

A groan now, pain and frustration filtered through dense fabric. Then the sound of gagging.

The bur came free from his heel, disintegrating into dust when he rolled it between thumb and finger. The bur—sharp if received head-on, easily powdered if massaged. Every weapon, every strategy, had its advantages. And its flaws.

He rose and moved to the doorway. Let the wind blow through the thin cotton of his shirt. It chilled the perspiration on his ribs. Should he wait here or slip into the jungle and intercept them? What was that American phrase he liked? Ah, yes.

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

*   *   *

With a tire iron swinging at her side and a heart full of abject terror, Eve soldiered on. Ahead, Fortunato navigated the trail through the final shades of dusk, leading Ruffian by the reins. They’d brought the burro for Claire so that she wouldn’t have to stumble her way back through the jungle at night on her braces. Eve stayed close and tried to steady her breathing. Claire’s dive watch clung to her wrist. Though she’d turned off the backlight, she still sensed the numbers counting down. Less than five hours to impact—of one kind or another.

Coos, trills, and chirps issued from all around, the wildlife symphony adding to the texture of the wet, heavy air. She’d doused her ankles, neck, and arms with bug spray, but it might as well have been a condiment for the mosquitoes and no-see-ums. She swatted at her sticky skin constantly to keep from being feasted upon. Progress was uneven. The storm had washed away whole swaths of the path and obliterated other runs with crashed trees or piled-up mounds of debris, forcing Eve and Fortunato to veer around and fight their way through the undergrowth step by step.

Their plan was worryingly straightforward. Rather than drive the Jeep on the winding road to the demolished bridge and hike downstream from there, they’d take the more direct route on foot through the jungle to the zip-line crossing. The last thing they needed was headlights and engine noise announcing their approach. If they didn’t make it back by dawn, Will, Sue, and Harry would take the Jeep and get out. Will had done his best to push back the deadline, but it had been a tooth-and-nail fight just to get Sue and Harry to agree to wait through the night, and they would budge no more.

Eve and Fortunato had left the phone with Will. They had taken no flashlight, figuring the beam could give them away and get them killed. Since Will had jogged to the canyon in an hour and a half, they allotted more than double that to hike in post-storm conditions, timing it so they’d arrive just after full dark. To have any chance at all, they’d need cover of night. That Bashir Ahmat al-Gilani also preferred the dark was not lost on Eve. Once they arrived, they would observe invisibly, ascertain what hideousness al-Gilani had planned for them, generate their own plan or counterattack, and emerge victorious. That left plenty of holes to fill and innumerable contingencies to cover, but if they didn’t take it one step at a time, they wouldn’t take it at all.

An animal screech carried to them, stilling Eve in her tracks, the tire iron raised defensively by her ear. The burro shuddered, sending off a wave of warm air scented of hay, leather, and dung. The screech echoed back off the cliff walls once and then again. Something out there was angry.

Fortunato paused near a halved boulder.
“Jaguar.”

“Fighting?”

“No. Happy. A successful kill.”

The air shifted darker yet, the back end of dusk yielding to night. The canopy was like a blanket pulled overhead, drowning out the stars, dousing Fortunato in overlapping shadows. Only the glint of his eyes was perceptible. If not for those floating Cheshire-cat eyes and the stink of the burro, she might have been standing here alone in the darkness. Fortunato’s invisibility was reassuring. His feet knew these trails. Somewhere within arm’s length of her, his invisible hand gripped a blade. Because of him, perhaps, they stood a chance.