Don't Look Back (6 page)

She moved to put her toothpaste inside when her gaze snagged on a spot of white in the corner, wedged into the gap where the middle shelf met the bracket. She stared at it a moment, her jaw tensing. Her stare didn’t waver as she dumped her stuff back on the sink.

With a fingernail she teased up a white, round pill. She set it on her palm to read the imprint code:
F L
on one side,
10
on the other. Ten milligrams, a low dose. Her nurse’s brain was out of practice, so it took a moment for her to retrieve the drug name from the imprint code—Lexapro, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, used to treat all orders of anxiety, mostly prescribed to women for moderate depression.

A pair of panties was one thing, but you’d think if you spilled your antidepressants, you’d make sure you reclaimed every last one.

The last guest had cleared out of here in a hurry.

Why did that make Eve uncomfortable? Perhaps her nerves were still on edge from the near run-in in the jungle. Or maybe being this far from home made everything seem a touch more alien and threatening.

The pill slipped from her trembling hand. Annoyed, she crouched to retrieve it, but just as she was about to rise, a small orange tube against the back wall caught her eye.

A pill bottle.

A single dropped pill
might
be overlooked, but the bottle?

She strained to reach it, her face pushing against the cool metal of the U-pipe. Her fingertips rolled it in the seam a few times, and then it caught traction and came into her palm.

The lid was missing. Stamped across the label in bold type:
LEXAPRO
10
MG.

Her breath caught when she saw the name.
THERESA HAMILTON.

Her gaze rose from the pill bottle, crept slowly across the boards to where she’d kicked off her breathable nylon pants before hopping into the shower. She reached for a cuff, pulled them across to where she sat on the floor. In the front pocket, forgotten until now, was that little digital camera she’d found by the log. She turned it over, checked the label on the back.

THERESA HAMILTON
.

Eve bit her lip. Examined the camera. Fancier than she’d thought, with night vision, high-speed action, and multiple flash options on the dial. She pushed down the top button. The camera gave a faint whir, and the screen flickered to life. She caught a glimpse of a handsome woman in her thirties with loose dishwater-blond curls, holding the camera at arm’s length to take a picture of herself before the Mexico City Airport sign. Then the camera died.

Eve stared at the black screen, chewing her bottom lip. Then she got up, walking with purpose into the main room. She scooted the nightstand out a few inches from the wall and checked behind.

Just as she’d hoped, a black power cord lay coiled in the dust. Tense with anticipation, she picked it up, plugged it into the back of the digital camera.

It fit.

She sat on the bed, turned on the now-charging camera, and began clicking through the photos, a neat chronological journey through Theresa Hamilton’s vacation. The first time stamps showed May 7, just about four months ago. From the airport to a fancy restaurant. Several tourist shots of Mexico City followed, six lanes of traffic crammed into three lanes, the Museo Nacional de Antropología, the zoo. Then a photo of a smaller airplane, maybe even the one Eve herself had taken to the coast. Flight pictures through the fogged glass down at the glorious bays of Huatulco. Next came Neto and Lulu, the Ewok paradise of Días Felices Ecolodge™, a different smiling group around the same tiki-torch-lit picnic table, same dishes on the table. Then a series of pictures of the group on a hike in the dark, everything bathed in a green, night-vision glow. One shot captured a great cat—maybe a black jaguar?—in the distance, so far away it was little more than a dark smudge with glowing eyes. Eve smiled a bit at that, imagining the excitement at getting even a
bad
picture of such a rare creature.

The next photos flashed up daytime-bright again. The white-water raft. Theresa’s group, high-fiving with paddles. Aside from Lulu, all the rafters were men.

Eve clicked to the next picture and felt a pulse start up in her temple. A view down at a familiar little house embedded in a canyon slope. Slab concrete roof. Truck tires buttressing a wall. Windows all but devoured by vines. The log in the foreground looked newly fallen, less moss along the rotting bark, but it was clearly the same one Eve herself had crouched behind just hours ago at the edge of the butterfly-rich clearing by the camping toilet.

It occurred to Eve that she was inadvertently following in Theresa’s footsteps—staying in the scarcely used hut for solo travelers, using the less trafficked women’s rest stop on the rafting trip, drawn to the same canyon to spot the same house. Well, then. What next?

A held breath hissed through her teeth.

Her thumb hesitated over the button that would bring her to the next photo. Then clicked.

There was the bearded man, stepping into view between tree trunks, his face drawn, the snarl of color pronounced at his neck and jaw. A local woman trailed behind him, her bright dress flaring in her wake. He was guiding her by the arm.

Eve’s mouth had gone dry. She realized by degrees what she didn’t like about the picture. Not just the man’s rough bearing. But his biceps was tensed and his fingers looked pale, bloodless, indenting the soft flesh of the woman’s arm.

He was steering her into his house by force.

A few pictures followed. The house façade. Nothing more.

A single-file trail of ants threaded across the floor beneath Eve’s bed, and outside, the jungle hooted and chirped. Her arms glistened with sweat.

She took a deep breath, unsure if she wanted to continue. But of course she had to. Pictures of breakfast, smiling group members, huevos rancheros and some Pan Bimbo packaged cinnamon rolls. A shot of Lulu with her arm around Theresa, Theresa clutching a thin sheaf of papers to her chest, looking distracted, her smile flat, her strong jaw tensed.

Eve moistened her lips. Clicked again.

A picture taken with the night-vision setting. That little canyon house, same angle down from the clearing.

Theresa Hamilton had gone back there at
night
?

Alone?

Eve wiped the sweat off her neck. Brought up the next shot.

The house, closer. Theresa zooming in.

Then zeroing in further on the maw of a shoved-open window, vines and leaves crowding the aperture, blackness beyond.

Same image, time-stamped a few seconds later.

Same image, time-stamped a few seconds later yet.

The next picture came up, and Eve inhaled sharply.

A blurred photo—obviously, Theresa had been startled, as well.

In the window now, looking up, a ghostly face. The movement of the tumbling lens had pulled the features into a streaked oval, the mottled jaw stretched as in a fun-house mirror, the eye sockets elongated like holes in a Halloween mask.

Eve tried to swallow, with little success.

The man had spotted Theresa Hamilton up in the clearing.

Had he spotted Eve too?

Chapter 8

Bamboo planks creaking underfoot, Eve crept toward the adobe shack behind the cantina. The torches had been extinguished for the night, and jungle sounds reigned. Theresa Hamilton’s camera, zipped safely into a cargo pocket, tapped reassuringly against Eve’s thigh. She came around a bend, confronting a bullfrog the size of a coconut, and she stepped off the path, ceding right-of-way.

Continuing on, she glided into the dark embrace of the shack, which housed the admin office. File cabinet, wooden desk, computer and battered printer, credit-card scanner. For the fifteenth time in the last two minutes, she wondered what the hell she was doing.

Looking into Theresa Hamilton.

Why?

Because something’s wrong.

At this late hour, wouldn’t logic make a better ally than instinct? After all, there was a simple explanation to be had. Theresa’s concern had been aroused on the rafting trip when she’d spotted an
indígena
being manhandled into the little house. She’d gone on a spy mission to the canyon at night. When she’d seen the man looking up at her, she’d spooked, dropped the camera, rushed back to the lodge, packed hastily, and left. Any dark fantasies or nightmare scenarios beyond that should be sliced away by Occam’s razor.

And yet now Eve watched her hand curl around the handle of the file drawer, watched her fingers walk across the alphabetized folder tabs. Bills and licenses, brochures and supply invoices. Nothing about guests. She closed the last drawer in the cabinet, glanced over her shoulder like a low-rent cat burglar.

She fired up the computer, which took an ungodly long time. As she waited, she clicked her nails against Theresa’s camera through the thin fabric of her pants. The home screen loaded, and she snooped around until she unearthed a reservations file, only to find it code-protected. Frustrated, she moused over and tapped an Internet icon. Little xylophone bars filled in one after another, and then an error message read
INTERNET INACTIVE
.

“What are you doing here?”

Eve jerked back in the chair, grabbing at her chest. The dark form in the doorway reached over, clicked a light switch. Leaning against the jamb, Neto glowered at her. He held a cup of tea, the string curled around his forefinger.

“God, you scared the
hell
out of me,” Eve said. She shot a glance at the monitor. “I thought I’d Skype my son.” She twitched the mouse, closed the window showing the locked reservations folder. “It’s an hour earlier in L.A.”

“Why are you in the dark?”

“Didn’t want to disturb anyone. And to be honest, I didn’t look for a light switch, this being the jungle and all.” She pretend-frowned at the screen. “Internet’s out.”

“It is the HughesNet dish. It relies on … atmospheric conditions, yes? Strong wind drops service. Weeds in front of the dish drops service.
Breathing too hard
drops service.”

Eve rose. “Guess I’ll try tomorrow.” She stood, pausing behind the desk, trying for casual. “Hey, what do you know about Theresa Hamilton?”

Neto’s eyes drilled into her as he took a sip of tea. “Theresa…?”

“A guest here.”

“Ah, yes. Blond-hair lady. Why do you ask?”

“She left some things in my room,” Eve said. “I found a prescription pill bottle with her name on it.”

“The other items? They are valuable?”

“Nah. Nothing important. It was curious, that’s all. Why she left so much stuff behind…”

Neto’s finger flicked, and the tea bag rose and dunked. “She was a nervous woman.
Loca.
She got impatient, ran off early back to Mexico.”

“Mexico?”

“That’s what we call Mexico City here.”

“Why was she crazy?”

“She was on the medications.”

Eve felt an instinctive defensiveness for Theresa. Ten milligrams of Lexapro hardly qualified someone for the asylum. The average Calabasas housewife probably downed twice that in her Escalade before morning car pool.

“Any idea
why
she ran off?” she asked.

“Like I said.” Neto gave a dry smile. “She was crazy.”

Chapter 9

Eve crawled into bed, lowering the mosquito netting around the frame until she felt encased, a zoo animal awaiting display. Reaching through a gap, she turned up the gas lantern on the nightstand and grabbed
Moby-Dick.
After a ceremonious recracking of the spine, she thumbed through the front matter.
List of Plates and Acknowledgements, Biographical Notes, Introduction
. Christ, no wonder she’d put this off so long. She had to wade through a Ph.D. just to get to the first chapter.

Her attention wandered back to the odd standoff she’d just had with Neto in the admin shack, questions leading to more questions. Realizing she was making little literary headway, she thunked the book back onto the nightstand and cranked the old-timey lantern knob down until the wick alone faintly glowed.

She looked across the expanse of the bed, realizing that she’d kept neatly to her side—the
left
side—as she did at home. Months since Rick’s departure and still she stayed in her marital lane. She slid a hand across to the unexplored terrain. A strand of hair beneath the pillow caught between her fingers.

She raised it to the faint light. Long and curly and blond.

Theresa Hamilton’s.

She stretched it straight before her face, let it corkscrew back. Then she slipped her hand through the mosquito netting and dropped it onto the floor.

After a moment’s consideration, she scooted to the center of the bed, reluctant at first, as though she were doing something wrong. Relaxing, she unfurled her limbs. Sprawled. Then thrashed around, mussing the sheets.

She fell asleep with a contented half grin.

*   *   *

A faint cry awakened her.

Eve froze in the middle of the bed, unsure if she’d dreamed it.

But no, there it was again, a feminine whimper.

As her eyes adjusted, she noticed that the mosquito netting seemed to have turned opaque. But then a large moth lifted off with a leathery brush of its wings, letting through a mosaic tile of less pronounced darkness.

The other tiles, they were squirming.

Slowly, Eve pushed her fingers through the slit in the netting, feeling the screenlike fabric whisper along her wrist, her forearm. She reached the lantern and cranked it up.

Clinging to the netting, a living film. Stick bugs and moths and mosquitoes, a few spindly spiders for good measure.

Another high-pitched moan carried in from outside—a woman crying?

Eve took a deep breath, lowered the lantern to the floor, and heard the carpet scurry away, hard shells rasping against floorboards.

She slithered from the embrace of the netting, shook bugs from her sneakers, pulled them on. Her sweat bottoms and T-shirt would suffice in the humid night. Carefully picking her steps, she forced herself across the threshold and onto the bamboo walkway before allowing a convulsive shudder to move through her.