Choices #2
Without warning, he was completely in her space, his fingers around the nape of her neck, firm but guiding her to look him in the eye.
“I don’t expect you to believe overnight.
Hell, you may never believe one hundred percent, and I get that.
As many times as you need to hear it, I’ll say it.
It doesn’t help that we’ve skipped quite a few steps in the whole relationship sequence, but doing so suggests you trust me, at least a little bit. ”
“I do trust you,” she promised. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I wouldn’t have called you if, somehow, I didn’t innately trust you. It’s just so fucking difficult—”
She couldn’t say any more. Instead, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.
Soft lips met her forehead. The hand at the nape of her neck massaged the tense muscles beneath it. “It’s okay, little spy. You’ll get there. May take time, but I have faith.”
They stood there a few more moments, her brain racing in circles. It was too much to process, so instead, she focused on what she could see below.
From where they stood, they looked down into the valley. The trees seemed less dense here, and it wasn’t long before she realized why. A village. There were a few sprinkled throughout the gap, and they served as homes for the families of the drug runners. Not necessarily a comforting find.
As if he could read her mind, he said, “No idea who they are, but we can’t pass up the opportunity to get water. How do you want to do this?”
Sweeping aside her personal anxieties, she took out her binoculars and cataloged what she could see.
Some kids running around, playing. A dog barking, his tail up as he ran after a little girl.
Two women talking, one heavily pregnant, out in front of one of the dwellings.
“They’re certainly not farmers. I don’t see any men, so either they’re out on a run, or they could come back any minute. Odds are fifty-fifty either way.”
“I hate those odds.”
“Like you said, we can’t pass up an opportunity to get water. I think our best bet is to go in now, make our deal, then leave. We’re better off assuming the men are close by.”
“Agreed.”
Together, they continued down the trail.
The village was farther than it looked, and the trek took almost thirty-five minutes to hit the outskirts.
There were a half dozen dwellings in once-bright colors of blue, green, and others.
All had makeshift doors, usually plywood, and windows with no glass, covered with patterned materials.
The children saw them first. As soon as they were spotted, the kids ran back to their mothers, calling out that strangers were coming.
The dog, playing so happily just moments ago, his tail wagging and tongue lolling, now put himself as a barrier between them and the women, snarling and baring his teeth.
Glennon called out in Spanish, “Hello! Do you have any water for sale?”
The women, relaxed before, bore hostile expressions. Apparently, part of the reason this path was less traveled was that visitors were not welcome here. Noted. Get in. Get out.
The pregnant woman had one hand behind her back, as if protecting the boy who peeked out from behind her. She shook her head.
“We mean you no harm. I have twenty dollars. It’s yours for some water, and then we’ll be on our way.”
The two women continued to stare at her. “Fifty,” she finally said.
“Forty,” Glennon countered. “That's all we have.”
The woman made a disbelieving noise, but she shooed the little boy into the nearest dwelling.
Triumph asked, “What’s she saying? I didn’t understand it.”
“Probably a local dialect. Like a form of patois, specialized to the gap,” she murmured back. “It sounded like she was sending him in to grab water.”
Sure enough, the boy emerged a moment later with two bottles.
They were stripped of whatever original labels had been on them, and the seals broken, but it looked clear.
Triumph reached into his pocket, pulled out two twenty-dollar bills, and handed them to the pregnant woman.
She then handed over the bottles, which were slightly cool to the touch.
“Thank you,” Glennon said. “We’ll be leaving now.”
They passed through what remained of the village dwellings and found themselves back on the path. This one seemed much better traveled.
“They come and go from this end of the village,” Glennon noted.
“Think we’ll run into anyone?”
“I hope not. No clue if they had any way to contact the others. We should keep moving.” Her skin was crawling.
Something wasn’t right. Now, she wished they hadn’t come down the hill and had made their own path.
Better yet, she wished they’d waited a while, then taken the left-hand one this morning, staying out of view of the group ahead.
“Watch for another path. Anything. We need to get off this route.”
They traveled swiftly and silently by unspoken agreement. The set of Triumph’s shoulders showed that he, too, was running through possibilities in his head. His analyst brain ran constantly, but she could tell that being on edge made it run faster.
Twenty minutes later, their fears became founded.
One second, the path was blessedly empty.
The next, half a dozen men stood in front of them, and another handful behind them.
Somehow, they’d managed to circle around without being heard.
Or maybe there had been some hiding out and following from behind, while others had waited them out down the way.
Didn’t matter. They were fucked.