No Way Back: A Novel (34 page)

I looked at his face and saw it. In the pale, questioning cast of guilt that came over it; he was barely able to look me in the eyes. What had he said a few minutes before:
You walked into that hotel room. And I—

He’d been about to tell me, and now I saw it.

He’d walked through the wrong door too.

“You didn’t just sell to them, did you? You were diverting arms. To other buyers. The Gulf cartel? Or the Jaliscos? You were selling to other buyers, and the Juartes found out. But they needed you for the arms, so they couldn’t just kill you as they would normally do. So they punished you with your daughter. I’m right, aren’t I, Mr. Lasser? That’s what caused it. Your beautiful Ana . . .”

He pulled his arm away, but his look of shame and pain gave it all away. “It was how I stayed alive. The only way I stayed alive. Mexico is a complicated place, Ms. Gould, even with the United States as your protector. You think I had a choice? You don’t think the others came to me and threatened me with far worse? But yes, they needed me. Now get in your car and drive out of town, before the situation changes.”

“What situation?” I asked. His look seemed to shift.

“My largess,” he said. He tapped his palms against the truck and shrugged. “I’m afraid the friend you mentioned won’t be quite as lucky.”

Those words were like the blade of a sharp knife curling the peel off an orange. Except the orange was in my gut. And it was throbbing. “What do you mean about my friend? Lauritzia?”

“You were wrong,” Lasser sniffed grimly, “about no one knowing you were here . . . Just drive out of here, Ms. Gould. Don’t even go back to your motel, if you want to remain alive. This one’s not your fight.”

My heart grew tight in terror. “Who knows we’re here?”

“He only wants her. He doesn’t care about you.”

I saw the answer to my question reflected in his own fear that rose up in his eyes.

Cano.

Lasser dug his dead cigarette butt further into the dirt with his boot. “You didn’t think you were the only ones who ended up in Gillian tonight?”

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

L
auritzia!

A car came down our row, its headlights momentarily blinding us, and I took the chance to break free of Emmit’s grasp and took off down the row of parked cars to where I’d left the Toyota. Behind me, I thought I heard the cowboy ask if he should go after me, and Lasser simply mutter, “Let her go if she wants to die so bad.”

The panic and dread that was suddenly suffocating me made me realize how fondly I’d grown to think of her, and that I’d left her alone back at the motel in danger. And that I wasn’t going to let someone who had suffered so much, who had lost everything in life, die now, in a place I had brought her. And at the hands of that monster.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind who Lasser meant. But who could have alerted him? How could he have known we were there? And Lasser had never told me how he knew who I was. I suddenly felt both incredibly stupid and completely in over my head, a pawn in someone else’s game. Which had become my nightmare! And we’d played right into it, in our stupid search for the truth. Lauritzia was the last of her brother and sisters. And now I’d left her in danger. She might already be dead.

Please God,
I begged. I wasn’t a religious person, but I heard myself praying as I ran.
Don’t let any harm come to her. Please.

I got to the car and turned on the ignition. I threw it into reverse and did a frantic three-point U-turn to get out of the lot. Our motel was only about a mile or so away. I had no idea what I might be heading into. I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have anything to protect her with. If I even got there in time. I drove onto River Street, which led back to the main drag. I took out my phone and pressed Lauritzia’s number. It took a few seconds to connect. I felt my heartbeat bursting through my skin. It started ringing. Once. Twice.
Please, Lauritzia, answer.
Three times.

Her voice mail came on. “
This is Lauritzia. If you’ve reached this, you know that—”

I cut it off. No point to leaving a message. She had called me only an hour before to check where I was. I pulled around cars and sped up through a yellow light, unable to stop my heart from lurching.
How could I have left her there alone?

I thought about dialing the police and ending the whole thing there.

Two blocks from the motel, I was forced to pull up at a light, stuck behind a huge eighteen-wheel diesel. I pounded the steering wheel.
“C’mon!”
I shouted, my foot twitching on the accelerator.
I could run there from here!
I thought about jumping out and making the dash.

The light finally changed. I sped up alongside the truck and veered into the turn lane. The motel was just there on the left. I didn’t know what I could do, but if she was in danger . . . I was living this nightmare all over again, just like with Dave.

I turned sharply in to the motel drive and screeched to a stop in front of our wing of the building. Our room was number 304, accessible from an outside staircase. I sprinted to it, leaving the car door open, bolting up the stairs—up two flights to the third floor—in a white stucco stairwell made to look like a church bell tower. I made it up and dashed down the long hall toward our room, praying I wasn’t too late.

“Lauritzia!”
I shouted.

I swung around the corner and, to my shock, slammed headfirst into someone. Someone large and immovable, who had clearly been waiting for me there. Almost knocking me to the ground.

I screamed. The person put his arms around me, and I shouted,
“Get off! Get off me!”
needing to get by, my arms flailing to get away from him. Crying. I knew this was bad. Lauritzia might already be dead. I knew I’d failed her.

“No, no, no!”
I yelled. “I have to get to her. Let me by . . .”

And then finally I looked into the face of my captor and my heart fell off a cliff. I knew it was even worse.

Worse for me.

“Good to run into you again, Ms. Gould.” Alton Dokes pinned my arms and smiled.

I never saw what happened next, only felt the hard blow against my chin, likely with the butt of his gun. My legs giving way.

And the sinking feeling that I’d failed her. Lauritzia. That she was dead. As he held me to keep me from crumpling to the floor, the darkness swarmed over my brain.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

W
hen Lauritzia got back to the room, she was hardly able to keep her eyes open at first, thinking that it might be the long drive they’d just completed; or the endless wait for Lasser; or maybe even the altitude. They were at eight thousand feet.

She napped for a while, then she came to, looking around the small room: at the printed, western-themed curtains that led out to the small balcony; the cowboy prints on the wall; their clothes folded neatly on the one chair. Why was she there?

She was there to find the answer to the one thing that had held her prisoner.

And when she found it, she would be free. She would be able to go about life like any person. Go to school. Maybe meet a boy. Get married. Have kids of her own. Leave behind the darkness that had followed her. Rid her mind of the terrible pictures that always came to her like a horror film she would look away from.

No, she knew, this thing would never make her free.

That was what she realized in the car that had made her so distressed. Because the answer to her problems was far different from Wendy’s. Wendy’s would allow her to prove that she had not done these things she was accused of. To show clearly that she was caught up in someone else’s evil. Not hers. It would come out, the people who had done these things. She would go back to her life. Not with her husband, but maybe with her kids. Who would one day forgive. Life didn’t give you all of its blessings, only some . . . Gillian was indeed Wendy’s key.

Just not hers. She had been wrong; their stories did not lead to the same place.

It would never let her go.

This man they sought, Lasser . . . he held no answers for her.

She sat up in bed. It was after 6:00
P
.
M
. It had grown dark outside. She went to the balcony and opened the door. The cool night air hit her. She was dying for something to eat. They had not eaten any lunch.

Where was Wendy?

At first, the thought came with a shudder that something was wrong. But it was always that way with Lauritzia. A missed call, one of the kids not exactly where they were supposed to be, always came with the premonition of danger.

Maybe there was a call?

She found her phone and was relieved to see a message from her. She listened, “Hey, you must be napping. I’m at a restaurant. Lasser is here. Wish me luck. I’m going to do this now . . .”

That was forty minutes ago. Lauritzia thought about calling her back but then decided she would wait. Instead, she took the phone and called down to the restaurant. Asked for some toast and tea. They said it would be twenty minutes. She went in and washed her face.

Maybe Wendy had met with him. She knew she would find the courage. Maybe she was with him now.

She went back out and threw a sweater over her shoulders against the night chill. She flicked on the TV. The local news. She found an old episode of
The King of Queens
and sat on the bed. That always made her laugh.

After about ten minutes there was a knock. “Room service. You ordered tea.”

“Sí.” Lauritzia went to the door and opened the latch just a crack. It was a blond young man in a red waiter’s vest. She opened the door and he came in, with an amiable “Evening” and a cute smile, and set out the tray on the small table, clearing all the magazines. “There’s milk in the container. Butter and jelly for the toast. Need anything else?”

“No, that will be fine,” Lauritzia said. She signed the bill, leaving him a couple of dollars as a tip.

“Call down when you need it picked up.”

“I will.” He was cute, Lauritzia thought. He was probably in the local college here. She let him out, closing the latch on the door again. She poured herself some tea, which felt good going down and made her feel stronger. She took a couple of bites of toast and watched the end of the show, giggling amusedly at the father-in-law, who had spent the last of his money on some get-rich scheme.

She glanced at her watch. It was now 7:15
P
.
M
.

She picked up her phone again. It had been an hour since her message. This time she would call. The room suddenly seemed to have a stillness to it. And a chill. She got up to fully shut the outside door, pressing Wendy’s number on the phone.

There was another knock on the door.
She’s here!

“Room service again,” the voice from outside said. “Forgot something.”

Lauritzia went to the door, this time opening it without hesitation, and there was the same cute boy. “What did you forget?”

Except this time his smile was more like a deadened slate and his eyes contained an empty, blank glaze.

She gasped. “Oh God . . .” She tried to jam the door shut.

The door flew open, nearly clipping her face, and the boy in the red vest seemed to crumple right on top of her, like some gangly, red spider, his legs buckling to the floor. His eyes—those cute boyish Colorado eyes—now staring at her like motionless pools.

Behind him, someone pushed into the room. Lauritzia stepped back and went to scream. But she couldn’t scream—her voice was trapped; and by that time it was too late. She stared in horror at the person who had come in, as if he was the Devil himself.

Because he was the Devil to her.

“Buenas noches, Lauritzia Serafina Velez.” Eduardo Cano smiled. “I am very sad to disturb you in this way,” he continued in Spanish, pushing the waiter’s body farther into the room and kicking the door closed behind him. “But I think we have an appointment, no? And I have waited a very long time to make your acquaintance face-to-face.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

S
he would not allow herself to show him fear.
Please, Lauritzia, be strong
. She steeled herself. For Eustavio and Nina and Rosa and Maria. Though her body shuddered like an earthquake, her heart felt three times its size.

She stood straight up to him, this Satan she reviled, who had taken everything from her. Small as she was, she stood up tall. She would show no fear. She held back tears, tears of anger and of acceptance, knowing her time had come, her gaze darting to the body of the boy crumpled on the floor. Another innocent victim.

“Why?”

“I’m sorry, my dear, but it had to be done.” Cano wiped the short blade of blood on the side of his pants, then slipped the blade into its sheath hanging from his belt. “Would you have actually opened up for me? That makes me feel so nice. Anyway, what is one more? So many have already died. But you know that so well, don’t you? I just couldn’t hold back when I heard you were here. To come and have the pleasure of finally meeting you myself. In person. You have shown a lot of guile, girl. Twice, I had the hangman ready to take you in his cart, and twice fate intervened.” He scanned the room, checking the bathroom, the windows. “But I’m afraid that will not happen again.”

“Do what you have to do.” Lauritzia glared at him with spite. “I’m not afraid. I am only ashamed I cannot kill you myself. With my own hands. You are a monster.”

“A monster, huh? You think so?” Cano stepped around the room. “You think this is all just some spectacle to me? A spectacle of blood. Like in the arena. You have no idea. Your father understood what he would bring on the moment he did what he did. It is
he
who has brought this fate on you and your family. Not me. I am only the person who carries it out. Someone has to. Look to you own father when you see him in the afterlife. Though I doubt the two of you will ever meet, unless God grants you a day trip into hell.”