Chapter 39
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El Paso
An hour from El Paso, Scarlett flexed fatigue from her shoulders while keeping her hands on the steering wheel and the rental’s speed above the limit. She hadn’t seen another vehicle for more than ten miles.
Patterson had the seat back a notch, watching for hitchhikers as he had been since they left Houston.
“Guess we’re going all the way to Beto’s Bar,” Scarlett said. “We’d have found her long before now if she didn’t catch a ride.”
“Driving was the right call,” Patterson said. “Woman alone with her limited resources doesn’t have a lot of options. She got from Mexico to Langford on her thumb and the kindness of truckers. Makes sense she’d keep doing it.”
“Except we didn’t find her and we’ve now wasted a lot of hours.”
They’d worked every stop a person on foot might use along the way. The truck plazas, bus shelters, and cheap diners off the exit ramps. They’d shown her photo every time, but no luck.
“Which means we passed her in the dark, or she got a ride.” Patterson paused. “Or she went somewhere else.”
“The man with her at the motel had a vehicle. If they’re together, they could be in El Paso already,” Scarlett said. “We can’t call Beto from one of Gaspar’s satellite phones. It’s too big a risk.”
“Talking to Beto in person is all we’ve got,” Patterson agreed.
Scarlett eased off as a truck drifted into her lane ahead. “Agreed.”
Patterson brought the seat up. “Still nothing from Flint?”
She shook her head. “They’ll call when they can. Until they do, safest to stay off the phones.”
When she reached the side street, she parked up the block, and they walked through the cool evening to the small adobe building.
Inside, Beto’s Bar seemed unchanged for the past thirty years. Maybe more. The regulars sat along the stools as if they were permanent fixtures. They probably were.
Beto stood behind the bar with a towel over his shoulder.
Patterson stayed back by the door while Scarlett took the stool across from Beto.
“I wondered if you’d come back,” he said.
“I need to find Carla. Is she here?” Scarlett used the name Beto was familiar with. No reason to complicate this name issue any more than it already was.
Beto continued polishing his glasses as if he were thinking seriously about the question. “Why are you so interested?”
“It’s important, Beto. Carla is in real danger,” Scarlett said seriously. “People are looking for her. If they find her before I do, you might never see her again.”
“Why? What did she do?” Beto frowned.
“At this point, I don’t think she’s done anything wrong. I think she saw something they did.”
“She’s a witness to a crime?” Beto asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s my working theory at the moment. I need to find her. Because these guys are killers. They blew up my house. It’s a miracle I’m even sitting here,” Scarlett said. “Tell me where she is, Beto. While there’s still time.”
The regulars had gone quiet, eavesdropping. A noisy old fan rattled in the kitchen. Beto worked the towel and looked at the glass like the decision was down in there.
Finally, he reached under the register, wrote on the back of a coaster, and slid it across the bar.
“Lower Valley. End of the street. Blue door,” he said. “There’s a man with her now. Hope he’s not the one you’re worried about.”
“What does he look like?” Scarlett asked. “Did he have a bandage on his forearm?”
Beto shrugged.
He kept his fingers on the coaster a second after hers came down on it. “Carla’s had some hard knocks in life, but she’s a good kid. Tell her she’s welcome here any time.”
Scarlett took the coaster and was already turning for the door. Patterson fell in beside her and they returned to the rental.
She punched the address Beto gave her into the rental’s GPS unit. The display showed it south and east of downtown, where the streets ran out toward the river and the cotton fields.
They drove directly into a neighborhood of small stucco houses and yards surrounded by chain-link fences. Most were well kept but a few weren’t.
The one she wanted sat at the end of a dead-end street with a blue door and a low wall around a patch of dead grass.
A white sedan with a film of dust over it was parked in the driveway. Heavy curtains were closed across the front window. Scarlett saw nothing suspicious near the house or along the curb.
Scarlett parked across the street and three houses down on the far side of a cottonwood tree.
A man came out two doors down, got into a truck, and drove off without a glance at anything. A dog barked somewhere and quit. She saw nothing to worry about in the quiet neighborhood.
Scarlett put the rental in park and shut the engine down. She opened the door. Patterson reached up and flipped off the dome light.
“You’re going inside alone?” he asked.
“You should hang back. Let me check things out. She’s never tried to harm me. No reason for her to start now,” she replied as she put one foot on the ground.
“She ran from your safe house. That doesn’t suggest she’ll be all that happy to see you, either,” Patterson replied as he stepped out on the passenger side.
They crossed the street and walked along the sidewalk toward the house. When they reached the concrete step leading to the small concrete landing in front of the door, he said, “I’ve done this a million times. I’ll take it.”
He stepped onto the landing, stood flat against the side wall closest to the doorknob, pulled his weapon, and rang the bell. Scarlett took the hinge side of the door, readied her pistol, and stayed on the patchy grass.
The bell rang somewhere inside the house. Patterson kept his back to the wall and his eyes on the door. Scarlett watched the dark seam where the curtains met the window frame. She saw no one moving inside at first. Then the curtain over the front window shifted an inch and dropped back.
The deadbolt turned. The door opened the width of the chain and stopped.
A slice of Oakley’s face showed in the gap. One eye, part of her mouth.
“It’s Scarlett. Let us in,” she said.
She glanced toward Scarlett, then stared past her to Patterson, still with his back against the wall.
Her expression was mixed fear and relief. She’d been waiting a long time for the wrong knock at the door. Scarlett couldn’t tell if she was relieved of anxiety or resigned to her fate.
“It’s all right,” Scarlett said. “We came to help you. Let us in. We’ll tell you what we know and then we’ll figure out what to do.”
She eased the door shut, rattled the chain loose, and opened it all the way this time.
“Come in,” she said. “Quickly. Before somebody sees you.”
Scarlett went in first and Patterson came inside behind her, watching the street until the door was closed.
The front room was dimly lit, the curtains blocking what was left of ambient outdoor lighting. She kept the pistol in her hand and her back to the wall.
“How did you find me?”
“Beto.” Scarlett kept her own weapon down at her side. “He’s worried about you. I had to convince him I was worried too before he’d say a word.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Believe what you want. He said to tell you you’re welcome back to work any time,” Scarlett replied. “Beto strikes me as a “salt of the earth” type. You trust him. I’d say that’s a good call.”
She said nothing, but she lowered her weapon an inch.
“We know what’s really happened to you now,” Scarlett said. “When you approached me in Houston, I didn’t have the whole picture. I thought you were running a con.”
“You don’t think so anymore,” she said flatly.
“That’s right. We have a lot more facts now.”
She was still wary. Worried. Afraid. “You said you’d turn me over to HPD. Why should I trust you?”
“You’d shot a man. I saw you kill him. Calling the police was the right thing to do. I’m obligated to do it if I want to keep my license.” Scarlett held her gaze. “But I have more facts now. I understand why you did it.”
“Okay, well good for you, I guess. I’m not going to jail,” she said. “If that’s what you came for, you can turn around and go back to Houston.”
“No. I’m not here for that.”
She searched Scarlett’s face for a long moment. “What about Flint? And Drake? You were all ready to lock me up and toss me in a dungeon somewhere. Where are they?”
“They went to Southeast Asia. To find the men who failed to kill Nancy Keane,” Scarlett said quietly.
Nancy’s breath whooshed from her body as she plopped onto the arm of the sofa. “How long have you known?”
Scarlett said, “A long time. I traced Nancy Keane to the clinic in Europe. After that, she ceases to exist on the same day the Gulfstream exploded. The news reports you sent me said Nancy Keane died on that plane. But she didn’t.”
“We’ve learned quite a bit more. Let’s all holster our weapons and talk about it,” Patterson spoke up, sounding like a cop who’d talked people down from the edge his entire career. “Maybe you’ve got some coffee, too. How about it?”
Nancy gave him a glazed look, but she nodded and placed her pistol on the chair cushion. Patterson picked it up and offered his hand. She took it, rising to her feet.