Chapter 55
FIFTY-FIVE
The tiny two-door car inched forward, a small silver beetle in a line of other insects, under a sky so brilliantly blue it was hard to remember the color was probably smog-induced. Holly took a deep breath.
It felt weird to be wearing shorts, but it was a balmy eighty degrees and they were supposed to be a couple on their way to honeymooning over the border.
The low-slung blue-silver sportscar was no bigger than a postage stamp, bought for cash in Tucson and just the sort of thing two crazy newlyweds would take off in.
“Alice Hanson,” she murmured. “Of course I didn’t give up my maiden name. Alice Hanson. Thirty-six, Norbert, Iowa.”
“Good girl.” Reese’s fingers were warm. The sunglasses hid his eyes, and his half-smile was relaxed.
His pulse didn’t vary, nice and even, and she was learning to keep her own just as slow.
It was funny, the degree of control you could exercise over your own body.
She’d never thought anything like this was possible.
“In a few hours I’ll be knocking back beers, and you’ll be in a bikini. ”
“Dream on. I haven’t shaved my bikini line.”
“I haven’t shaved mine either.”
Her chin dropped, and she smiled into her lap. “I wouldn’t mind sitting by a pool. Can we...”
“Can we what?”
“Never mind.” She swallowed dryly as the line of cars inched forward again. “What if they don’t let us through?”
“We’d have more of a problem going north, babe. In a little bit we’ll both have tans and won’t stick out so much, though.”
“Skin cancer.”
“Not with the little bastards in the bloodstream taking care of things.”
Now there was a thought. “Do you really think they would?”
“Christ, will you relax? You’re a hypochondriac.”
You couldn’t even smell the cancer on me. “I am not.” She squeezed his fingers, and he laughed.
Baking-dry wind, freighted with dust and fried food, slid through the open window and touched Holly’s bare knees.
She could see the blue veins, a delicate network under the skin.
The virus was pretty amazing—she could eat pretty much anything without the nausea now.
She could run without getting winded. The headaches and exhaustion had gone away. “You should be nicer to them.”
“To who, sweetheart?” He had the two passports—she didn’t want to know where he’d gotten those. Tricks of the trade, he’d said, I’ll teach you later. For right now, leave it to me. And the careful, finicky precision when it came to settling the photos—don’t smile, they don’t want you to.
It was hard not to grin like a fool. “The virus. It helps us out, doesn’t it? Saved my life, too.”
“Mmh.” Noncommittal, but that could be because the car in front of them crept along, and now she could see the guards in their tan uniforms. Their service revolvers glinted; they looked hot, bored, uncomfortable.
The border crossing seemed a little more casual than she’d imagined—on the other side, street hawkers pressed close to the cars creeping through.
Brighter colors than she was used to, fluttering pennants flirting with warm wind, smoke-steam rising from food carts.
Holly let out a shaky breath. “I should be able to find a job. I can wait tables anywhere. Maybe I’ll... I don’t know. What are we going to do?”
“One step at a time. Let’s just get past this, okay?”
“Okay.” She couldn’t help herself. Her stress hormones were rising—she could taste them, even though Reese was cool as a cucumber. Not even his breathing changed. “Reese?”
“What?”
“What would happen if I vanished? Like Trinity?” Since I’m a handicap you probably would do better without, even though the sex is great. I had no idea you could hold your breath that long, or that I was that flexible.
“I’d find you.”
“What if I didn’t want to be found?”
“Are you saying you wouldn’t? Now’s a weird time to be having this conversation, Holl.”
Well, there’s never a good time for a conversation like this, ever. “Reese, come on. I’m just asking. If we have a fight or something—”
“I don’t ever want to fight with you.” A muscle flicked in his shaven cheek, that was all.
“I know you don’t, but things happen. And you might decide not to.
.. that you don’t...” The memories were a trifle sharper now—Phillip sitting at the kitchen table I want a divorce, Holl.
Seeing him holding hands with the other woman at the divorce hearings.
Mixed in with that was the throat-clenching panic when she realized she wasn’t alone in the small shed at the top of the tunnel’s long darkness, and Reese’s body slumping as he fell in slow motion—
“Holly. Breathe.”
Her heart kept trying to hammer, but Reese’s pulse, nice and slow, wouldn’t let it.
He squeezed her hand again, and when they pulled up to the border guards she was able to offer a tentative smile to the one at her window.
The man, stocky and sweat-greased, passed a flat judgmental look over her hips and breasts, scanned her face and straightened as Reese engaged the one on his side with a serious expression and the passports, his hand never leaving Holly’s.
The panic attack trembled just on the verge of breaking loose. Did she look nervous? Guilty? Something else?
Two stamps, a rill of liquid Spanish and braying male laughter, and Reese took the passports back. He gave a gracias, wished them buenas tardes, then they were through. Hawkers clustered the car, but he kept going, creeping forward until they broke free of the press.
Reese let out a long breath. “See? Easy. Keep breathing.”
“I’m fine.” Panic retreated. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry, it’s all good. If you aren’t at least a little nervous, they think you’re hiding something.
” His free hand on the wheel, and he was even driving differently now.
The traffic wasn’t gonzo, but other cars swooped a little too close for comfort as he navigated a tangle of streets that looked just the same as the ones on the other side of the border.
It was hard to believe they were in a completely different country.
A limonada stand crouched in a bubble of ranchero music while Reese waited to join a roundabout’s swirl, harsh sunlight glittering off paint and windows as the woman at the stand fanned herself and mouthed along to the song.
Reese was silent until they cleared the edge of the city and a long ribbon of dusty highway stretched into the distance.
Cacti clustered to either side, and the bilingual signs were in different colors.
“We’ll make Santa Ana in an hour. I know a place, you can have your first real tequila there. That should settle your nerves some.”
“I’m sorry.” She could’ve given the whole thing away.
“Don’t be. I’m not going anywhere, Holl. Sooner or later you’ll get used to me.”
“I already am,” she said, and that shy, sweet smile of his appeared. The knot in her stomach eased; Holly settled on the seat and watched a different country roll by.
* * *
Two weeks later
From the balcony she could see the cathedral of glowing biscuit-colored stone, floodlit against the night.
From here you could believe it wasn’t Sinaloa, where people vanished so easily.
Every time Reese left the expensive hotel alone she was on tenterhooks until his return, and tonight was no different.
The weather was beautiful, though he told her in summer it would be too humid to breathe.
By then they would be somewhere else. For right now, though, this quiet place was home, its courtyard full of frangipani and a murmuring fountain.
There was a pool in the basement, and the food was incredible.
Apparently one of Reese’s identities was a gringo businessman who knew his way around, and tonight he was “making contacts”.
So when the sound came from the balcony, curtains fluttering white in slow, highly scented wind, Holly leapt from of the chair, her water glass almost hitting the floor before her hand arrived to catch it. She was still getting used to the new reflexes.
Under the heavenly aroma from the courtyard came another thread of familiar scent, and Holly actually sagged with relief.
“It’s just me,” Trinity said, peering between the flowing, sinuous curtains. A shadow among shadows, vines growing up the building thick and juicy. She’d probably climbed them—there was a reek of sap and crushed green. “Nice place.”
“Temporary.” Holly straightened. “But yeah. I’m glad you’re okay. How did you—”
“Don’t worry, nobody else could. I wouldn’t blow your hide.
” The other woman fearfully gaunt, and had dyed her hair to a washed-out chestnut.
Her gaze was still flat and dark as ever.
Jeans and a gray tank top, muscle moving smoothly on her tanned arms, she took a cautious step inside. “I did have to wait until he left.”
“Why?”
Trinity shrugged.
Oh, for God’s sake. “So why are you here?”
“I...” A long pause. “I wanted to... check on you. To see if you were hap—I mean, safe.”
“I’m okay.” Holly set the glass down on the mosaic-tiled small table next to her chair. “I was just sitting here thinking about a book I left behind.” It was a great one, too. I can buy another copy, though.
“I also wanted to apologize.”
“For?”
“He almost liquidated you.” Trinity made a restless little movement. She really was awfully thin, almost as thin as Holly had been. “And after that, well. If I had calculated better—”
She means Bronson. Holly quelled a shudder. “It’s fine. Reese says Cal’s looking for you.”
“To tie me off, no doubt.”
You guys and your euphemisms. It helped them cope, she supposed. If you could say liquidate instead of murder, target instead of human being, you were halfway to believing it wasn’t such a big deal. “No. Just to talk. Cal says—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Trinity took another half step into the room, a feral cat testing the ground, alert and disdainful.
“Tell Six that the program is shelved for now. They still have the data, though, and they will eventually find out how to take emotional noise from the agents. When that happens, the orders for all of us won’t be capture. They’ll be kill.”
Reese already thought about that. “I know. Look, we’re safer if we stick together. You could stay with us. Another agent will help—”
“I am not a help.” It was the first time Trinity’s tone was anything but flat, and it was shocking. Her lips skinned back, a startling toothy grimace. “They know it’s possible to cut the emotional noise out, because they did it to me.”
Well. That answers that. Induction, she said. I’d better tell Reese. “Then why are you here checking on me?”
The almost-snarl vanished. Trinity hesitated, her weight balanced just so, and Holly sensed something.
Maybe it was a subtle change in respiration, in the other woman’s sweat-chemicals, or maybe it was just the sure instinct that came with years of waiting tables and seeing people in every possible shape, size and mood while they ate, hearing their conversations and predicting the size of the tip.
A realization, or perhaps even a struggle inside the other woman’s contained, impenetrable shell.
“I had to.” The words were almost lost under the susurration of night breeze. “I had to,” Trinity repeated. “Perhaps my calculations are in error, and I am degrading. Be... safe, Ms. Candless. Goodbye.”
“Trinity, wait—”
But the other woman was gone, stepping out onto the balcony. By the time Holly arrived, there was just a fading smear of agent-strong scent, and it again reminded Holly powerfully of Cal’s.
Was that why he was looking for her?
Outside, the city growled, and a sharp spatter of gunfire sounded in the distance. The songs in this part of the country sang about the narcos and forbidden love, corridas and muerte. Was the violence any cleaner because it was out in the open?
Footsteps in the hall. Holly recognized them, and relief poured through her. The key rattled at the lock, and she rushed to unbar the door—because you couldn’t be too safe—and Reese’s smile as he saw her was a balm. He stopped, his nostrils flaring, and she pulled him inside.
“Trinity was here, she just left. Reese, she’s—”
“Good.” His grin widened. “Cal’s in town, too. He’s determined, I’ll give him that much. Were you waiting up for me?”
“Of course. Reese—”
“Let me just be happy to see you, baby. We’re moving on tomorrow.” He barred the door and took her in his arms. “But that can wait. I, um, found you a ring.”
What? “A ring?”
“Crap.” Now he looked rueful. “I thought I’d get down on one knee, but I blew it. There’s a place farther south, I know a priest—they’re all Catholic here, I forgot to ask if you—”
Oh, good God. “You’re asking me to marry you?”
“Well, we’re running for our lives, I suppose I might as well, you kno—”
He might have said more, but by that time, Holly was kissing him, and for that night, at least, the outside world didn’t matter.
finis