Time seemed to fracture as she was spun back round so that she was alongside the man, the fingers of his giant left hand grasping her elbow as he moved her back towards the road, circling wide where Hector had been only moments ago. She didn’t struggle against him but she was hobbling as he covered the ground in long, loping strides. He stopped for a second. ‘Are you okay to keep going?’ he asked, his tone, like his movements, strikingly relaxed, as if he had saved her from being pushed over in the playground, rather than from a midnight execution in the middle of the desert.
She nodded. ‘I twisted my ankle.’
‘Here,’ he said, picking her up as if she weighed nothing, and tucking her over his back with one hand while he held the gun in his other and broke into a run. ‘We gotta get you out of here.’
Fifty-three
Charlie Mendez opened the glove box of the Escalade and rifled through the contents, hoping to find a spare set of keys or, better yet, a gun. There were wads of receipts, and an owner’s manual for the vehicle, but no gun. There was no Hector either: he had disappeared. He slammed the glove compartment shut, panic threatening to overwhelm him.
He had to get the hell out of there before the cops showed up. If he was picked up it would complicate an already difficult situation. To take him from custody would involve a lot of explaining and there were limits — he had been told so when he’d got here. There was only so much the cartel could do to protect him, and there would surely come a point where he was more trouble than he was worth — even though he was worth a lot.
He climbed back out of the vehicle and looked around with pinprick pupils. On the other side of the highway, the trailer was lying on its side. Behind it a white SUV was inching its way through the debris. Hector still hadn’t appeared. There had been two gunshots a minute or so ago but then nothing. For all he knew Hector could be dead and he could be stuck in the middle of this mayhem, a sitting duck, with no idea where he was, never mind how to get away.
He was still debating with himself whether to sit tight or get out of the Escalade when he saw the girl being hustled towards the SUV by a tall man, who opened the vehicle’s back door for her. She got inside.
Charlie felt a breath of relief. The girl was gone. Alive. Whoever the guy was, he was obviously there for her, not for him. Charlie would wait for one more minute to see if Hector came back. If he didn’t, he would leave the vehicle and get out of there. There were plenty of hours until sunrise. If he stayed off the road there would be little chance of anyone spotting him. At daybreak he could flag someone down and offer them money to take him back into town. There, he could make a phone call and arrange for someone to pick him up.
Making his plan calmed him. Everything was going to be okay. He opened the driver’s door and that was when he saw him. A guy standing next to the man who had just put the girl into his vehicle. They were talking: the conversation was animated — a disagreement. From the look of him, the second guy was almost certainly an American. He was tall, over six foot, and more than wiry but a long way short of muscle-bound. And there was an intensity to him that crackled, like the air before a flash of lightning.
A sedan had pulled up next to the Escalade and an elderly man had got out to take a look at the accident. Charlie didn’t recognize him, but by the time he looked back across the highway, the vehicle the girl was inside was pulling away. The second guy was still there, standing at the edge of the highway, staring straight at Charlie, even though the tinted windows and interior cabin of the Escalade must have blocked his line of sight. It was as if the Escalade didn’t even exist. Charlie felt himself meet the man’s gaze, and shuddered. He had seen that look before, in the eyes of the lead prosecutor at his trial. It was the look of someone who had already weighed and measured him, delivered his own judgement and was now set to carry it through.
From the chaos of grinding metal and gunfire, fear rose in him. He turned and ran. Across the barrier, down the slope and into the barren desert.
He didn’t look back. He didn’t have to. He already knew that the man was coming after him.
Fifty-four
The smell of sweat and vomit came at Lock like heat from a blast furnace as he opened the door of the Escalade. He took a deep breath, drawing the fetid air into his nose and down his throat, searching for the coppery tang of blood. There was none.
A five-second check of the interior revealed no one balled up in a footwell, only empty space. He got back out, opened the rear tailgate, made sure it was clear and ran to the barrier.
About a hundred yards out there was movement. Mendez. Or maybe the bodyguard. He vaulted the barrier and watched the person make a final break from the cover of a juniper tree. From the figure’s outline, he was sure it was Mendez.
He skidded down the slope, letting the gradient and gravity do the work as Mendez took flight, heels kicking up in a steady pulse. He was moving at a good pace, while Lock was going about as fast as he could manage. Mendez was a surfer, young and fit. It would be no easy foot chase but maybe he’d have an edge when it came to stamina. He settled into his stride, hoping that his quarry would overreach himself and tire quickly.
The decision to go after Mendez, rather than stay with Ty and the girl, had been a snap one. Something that defied his own logic. Ty’s gambling instinct had suggested they rescue the girl and take Mendez. Lock had argued that to split the mission reduced the chance of attaining either goal. Cold calculation said the same, even by the roadside. Getting Julia back to her parents, or better yet straight across the border and to sanctuary, was hardly straightforward. An extra body would always be useful — not fundamental, but useful. Throw an entirely separate and ongoing hostile extraction of Mendez into the mix and things got very complicated. In short, it was a bad idea.
That was still Lock’s thinking as they had watched the Escalade pull over. Assuming they might have been spotted by the bodyguard, they had kept moving. They were on a highway. Unless the bodyguard was going to drive back down it the wrong way, he had nowhere to go and no way of losing them. They had coasted along until they were out of sight.
Ty had got out and moved back down the road on foot. He had watched as the occupants had popped out of the vehicle, happy that they hadn’t been following a decoy. He had jogged back and relayed the news to Lock, who had decided that this was the best opportunity they would get. But by the time they had found a gap to cross to the other side of the highway, the girl had already made a run for it.
Lock had been there to see her dash for freedom. The echo of Carrie’s death had brought his heart into his mouth and a fresh rage to his heart. Julia had made it, but all of a sudden, standing at the edge of that dark desert highway, ghosts had been all around him, popping up like so many plants after a summer storm. He looked back to the desert and they were everywhere, completely real. The men who had pursued his fiancee to her death stood like gunslingers, staring at him. At their feet, Carrie lay dying. Melissa Warner was there too. The girl whose rape and subsequent death he had come to avenge.
As Ty had put Julia into the RAV 4, the pull of the dead, and the rage he felt towards Mendez, had sucked his heart into his boots. His decision was made. There was no time to do anything other than tell Ty to get the girl out of there and that he was going to find what they had come down here for: justice for Melissa Warner.