Chapter 14 #2
“That’s a lot of ground,” Lucy commented, tapping her fingers on her lips. “I wonder if we can’t narrow that down. Do we have a map of the area?”
“I do, in my office,” Robert said.
“I have one in my study,” Thomas said. He got up and went to fetch it. It was a relatively recent map, which he had bought because the salesman seemed down on his luck, and he’d felt sorry for the man. Who would have thought it would come in handy?
Handing it to Robert and Lucy, he went back to his seat.
“All right,” Diane said. “He’s been badly beaten, but the good news is that only his ribs and his ankle are broken. Nothing else seems to be too badly injured. Luke, you will have to stay in bed for a few days at least.”
“But my family,” he argued with more strength than Thomas thought he had left in him.
Diane fixed Luke with one of her stern looks, and he seemed to wither.
“With broken ribs, one false move and your rib could puncture your lung. There is nothing I can do about that, and you will drown in your own blood. So, let’s not do that, all right?
You will go to bed and stay there until I say otherwise, or I will admit you to the clinic, where you will have no choice, and the beds are a lot less comfortable. ”
Luke looked startled. “Is she always like this?” he asked Thomas.
Thomas nodded. “When she needs to be. I suggest doing exactly as she says.”
Diane smiled when Luke agreed. “Good. But first you will need a wash and a change of clothes. You’re a walking infection waiting to happen.”
“I’ll go and put some water on to heat up in the kitchen,” Clary said, and she rose and hurried off.
“Right. Now, about saving his family,” Robert said. “Why is El Aguila holding onto them? You disabled the elevator.” He turned to Thomas. “Quite spectacularly, as it turns out.”
“What did he do?” Luke asked. “Hold on, you know who has my family? What’s going on here?”
“We know,” Lucy said gently. “He’s been terrorizing this town for years now.”
“And he took my family because …” Luke asked in bewilderment.
Thomas sighed unhappily and pulled the new note from his pocket. “I found this in my kitchen this evening. I was about to come and show you when Mark and Luke arrived.” He handed the note to Robert, who took it and read it, his face darkening as he did. “I have a week.”
“That man knows no bounds,” he grumbled through gritted teeth.
The note was passed around. Luke read it and frowned, winced, and then turned to Thomas. “What is this?”
“This is a madman trying to somehow control our town through my actions. He wants me to destroy the mine and this town, using me as his hands. Why me?” Thomas cried.
Luke’s expression, such as could be seen of it through the bruising, softened. “You never had the stomach for the hard stuff.”
“Yeah, you were better suited to that kind of thing,” Thomas muttered.
“Well, either way, he’s expecting to see the mine office going up in flames, I’m guessing,” Lucy said. “He’s not giving you much time, is he? Maybe he’s hoping for a show like the elevator.”
“Hang on!” Luke said, shifting with great pain. “My life has been turned upside down because this person wants Thomas to destroy things? My family is in danger for that?”
Thomas hung his head. “It’s in danger because you’ve somehow become El Aguila’s leverage. I’m really so sorry, Luke.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as Luke digested this, his anger visibly growing.
The room began to feel terribly stuffy, and Thomas, who was closest to the window, undid the latch and pushed it open.
Cool night air flooded the room, but it seemed to do nothing to ease the tight feeling in Thomas’s chest.
Luke ground his teeth. “I’m gonna grind that devil into the dirt. Who is he? Where is he?” He tried to rise from the sofa, but Diane pushed him down with her index finger. He yelped in pain.
“Sit,” she ordered.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” Robert said, looking up with a grin on his face. He and Lucy had been poring over the map. “I think we might have an idea of where your wife and children are being held.”
Everyone stared at them in surprise.
“We’ve been sending out scouting parties for months now, trying to find all of El Aguila’s properties, his bases of operation,” Robert said. “Jeff was out for two weeks scouting near San Antonio, and he came back yesterday. We have new information that didn’t make much sense until now.”
He began to explain that Jeff had seen a covered wagon heading into three of the little towns that El Aguila had taken over. “All of the other vehicles heading in or out were open carts. It might not be anything, but it’s a place to start.”
“We can send out a couple of scouting parties in the morning,” Lucy said.
“They’ll need to be more than mere scouting parties,” Clary said. “They may need to rush in and save the family if things go wrong.”
“That’s a good point,” Robert said. “We need a plan?—”
“Hold on!” Mark interjected. “We still have the little problem of the spy who slipped our net. If he sees Luke here and we’re sending out more patrols, we’ll be showing our hand before we’re ready to play.”
Thomas groaned. “You’re right.”
“You have a spy?” Luke asked. He grimaced. “No wonder you didn’t warn me that there could be trouble.”
“I didn’t think it would ever reach you,” Thomas admitted.
Luke pursed his lips. “Well, it did.”
Just then Thomas heard a noise outside the window. Moving swiftly, Thomas leaned out and, to his surprise, found a black-haired head just under his windowsill. “Hey! What are you doing there?”
The head shot upward, crashed into the windowsill, and then swore in a foreign language. Thomas frowned as he reached out and grabbed the hair in his fist.
“Ouch!”
Mark was instantly beside him, and together they grabbed the person by the arms and pulled him through the window into the parlor.
Groaning and looking a little dazed, Mr. Rossi blinked up at them.