Ethan grinned and shrugged.
‘You’ve got to be in the draw to win it. For all you know, one of them will come walking right to us out of this town.’
‘Ten bucks says no way,’ Lopez said, extending her hand, her eyes dancing with the unfettered joy of a sure bet.
Ethan chuckled and shook her hand as they cruised through the small town of Algodones. They crossed the railway line and passed a small diner, an elementary school and scattered houses that gave way to open scrubland, the railway line now to their left.
‘Looks like you’re ten bucks down,’ Lopez said as they left the town behind. She settled down deeper into her reclined seat and closed her eyes. ‘Win some, lose some.’
Ethan didn’t reply as he eased off the accelerator, indicated and pulled into the side of the road. He leaned out of his window as the man he’d seen flagging them down staggered over, his face and shaggy hair a dusty mess and blood trickling from a badly broken nose.
‘Need a lift, stranger?’ Ethan asked with a smile.
‘You goin’ Santa Fe way soon?’ the man asked, his voice thick with pain.
‘Sure,’ Ethan said.
Lopez opened her eyes, curious now. Ethan said nothing as the back door opened and Colin Manx slumped into the rear seat in a cloud of dust, slamming his door and looking at them.
‘Thanks, I really appreciate this.’
Lopez’s jaw dropped as Ethan, his face aching from trying not to smile, reached out and pressed a button on the dash, instantly locking all the doors.
‘So do we,’ he said, turning in his seat to face Manx and showing him his bail bondsman badge. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’
Manx stared in confusion at the badge, then at the image of himself taped to the dashboard.
‘I’m not on bail.’
‘Nope,’ Ethan said, ‘but you’re wanted by the sheriffs office so we’ll be taking you in.’
‘Fine by me,’ Manx said sulkily, folding his arms. ‘What I was coming here for.’
Now, it was Ethan’s turn to be surprised.
‘You’re turning yourself in?’ Lopez asked, finally overcoming her disbelief enough to speak.
‘Damn right I am!’ Manx snapped. ‘They’re insane, all of them, especially that bitch Saffron. She’ll kill somebody before she’s done, and I don’t want any part of it.’
Ethan eyed Manx. ‘You know where she is?’
Manx nodded, jabbing a thumb out the window up in the direction of the nearby hills.
‘Up there, a couple of miles north of the reservoir with about thirty others. They’ve got the animals with them in an old GMC. God knows what she’s going to do next.’
Ethan looked at Lopez.
‘They can’t go off-road in their truck, it won’t take it, and there’s only one way up or down.’
‘One on the high ground, the other on the road,’ Lopez agreed, sweeping her long hair back behind one tiny ear with her hand. ‘They’ll be forced out on foot.’
Colin Manx looked at them both in alarm.
‘What the hell are you two talking about? I want to go to a police station, turn myself in.’
‘We need to find Saffron,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s important.’
‘I need to make a statement first,’ Manx complained. ‘I want the police to know I turned evidence for all of this. I don’t want to go to jail.’
‘You’ll be going to jail anyway,’ Lopez snapped. ‘It’s too late for that, but we can tell the police everything.’
‘Then tell them now!’ Manx shouted and began yanking desperately on the door handle beside him.
‘Sorry,’ Ethan said, pulling onto the main road and accelerating the Mercury south. ‘We need to get to Saffron before the police do.’
Colin Manx quivered with futile rage and thumped the seat beside him.
‘You can’t do this! This is abduction!’
Lopez reached back and grabbed Manx’s throat with an iron grip.
‘It’ll be goddamned assault if you don’t quit whining.’
Lopez shoved Manx back into his seat. He massaged his throat, tears in his eyes as he shook his head in despair and looked at Ethan’s reflection in the rear-view mirror.
‘Jesus Christ, has every woman on earth gone insane?’
‘No,’ Ethan murmured, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘This is fairly standard behavior.’
‘She’ll likely resist arrest,’ Lopez said as she pinned her hair back into a ponytail, clearly anticipating a fight, ‘and she’s tooled up with at least a shotgun. We’ve got nothing and we don’t know the terrain.’
Ethan glanced in the rear-view mirror at Colin Manx’s sulking face.
‘We’ve got a guide.’
‘Like hell,’ Manx spat. ‘I’m not going anywhere near that bitch again.’
‘Didn’t say you had a choice,’ Ethan shot back. ‘Besides, the more you do to help us the more likely you are to get leniency from a judge and jury. Course, if you go against us…’
Ethan let the words hang in the air between them. Manx huffed and puffed, but as they approached a junction where a road led off to the right round the edge of the huge reservoir, Manx pointed gloomily for Ethan to follow it. Tamaya Boulevard wound its way for almost two miles out of the town of Bernalillo before ending at a small campsite on the edge of a large dam. Scrub and thorn bushes peppered the slopes of hills stark against the hard blue sky, the canyon scored by deep and ancient gullys.
‘They’ll stay close to the reservoir,’ Manx muttered. ‘The animals need a lot of water in this heat.’
Ethan nodded.
‘So will Saffron and anybody with her. It must be at least an hour’s walk into Bernalillo.’
Ethan climbed out of the car, peering back down to look at Lopez.
‘You hold the road in case they make a break for it in their truck,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can’t get hold of her or flush them all out.’
‘How come you get all the fun jobs?’ Lopez complained.
‘Because I want to bring her in alive.’
He was about to leave when Manx grabbed his arm.
‘Be careful,’ Manx urged. ‘She knows some kind of kung fu or something.’
Ethan nodded, eager to get Manx’s grubby hand off his arm, and set off up the track that led around the edge of the reservoir.
The heat was already intense with only the merest wisps of white cloud drifting above the distant peaks of the mountains. He knew the temperature here could easily break ninety degrees on most days, and summer still had a few more weeks to go. It crossed his mind that he had no water on him, but he consoled himself with the fact that he would find some soon enough, given the obvious tracks left in the desiccated soil beneath his feet.
Ethan had never been an expert tracker, and as an officer in the United States Marines he had left point duties on patrol to those more naturally gifted. However, following a pair of eight-inch-wide tires was a sight easier than tracking footprints through a mangrove swamp, and after only twenty or so minutes an unnatural shape ahead caught his attention. A mound of thick brush loosely concealed the sharp angles of a man-made object, almost certainly the vehicle used by Saffron Oppenheimer. Ethan slowed as he crossed a ridge, crouching down to avoid exposing himself against the horizon to anyone out on his flanks. Old habits die hard, he reflected, as he found himself tapping his waist with his right hand, searching for the long vanished webbing pouch containing his ammunition. Right now he would have felt a great deal better with an M16 cradled in his grip and a rifle platoon behind him.
Ethan huddled against the side of a low ridge of bushes some fifteen yards from the concealed vehicle and peered over the top. Nothing moved, and there wasn’t a sound. He gently levered himself up off the ground.