Sulfur Springs

  And now, in the long wait, the demon deep inside me, which was the voice of the worst part of me, kept whispering: Did she share more with him?

  Who was this man with all his queridas and mi amors and preciosas? Wealthy. Way too good looking. With an easy bearing that suggested he was used to wielding power and accustomed to the deferential treatment that came with great authority.

  And the demon whispered, but not for the first time: Who is Rainy? Do you really know this woman you married?

  She’d kept secrets from me. For important reasons, she believed. Or said she believed.

  And then the demon whispered: If she kept these things from you, things you had a right to know, what else has she kept from you?

  The food sat heavy on my stomach. I was tired, weary right down to my bones. I laid myself out on the couch with the Winchester on the floor beside me and the map Jocko had given me on the coffee table, and I stared up at the ceiling. I could tell from the cobwebs in the corners that the parsonage wasn’t often used. I rolled my head and saw that there was dust on the coffee table, disturbed by the map I’d put there. Michelle Abbott had offered the little house to us with no time to prepare, and there was dust everywhere. Except, I noticed, in the center of the shelf of the bookcase next to the couch. I got up and looked more closely. As on the coffee table where I’d put the map, the thin layer of dust had been disturbed. Books had recently been moved. I carefully slid them out one by one until I found the bug.

  The Rodriguezes? Border Patrol? The Coronado County Sheriff’s Department? DEA? Who could say?

  And then the demon spoke up, whispering: Why not Mondragón?

  Why not Mondragón, indeed. What was his interest in the situation as it stood? Making sure that his son and Rainy were safe, certainly. But what beyond that? Why should he care about me at all? What was I to him but the man who’d stepped in to fill his place? Did it matter that the place had been empty for years? It might, especially if what he and Rainy had shared in those months of helping Peter to heal was more than just parental concern.

  I wondered if this was the only device that had been planted in the house. It didn’t matter. I knew now the parsonage wasn’t safe. I could have destroyed the bug but, in doing so, would have played my hand. Better, I thought, to wait and to use it to my advantage, if that was possible.

  The text came a short time later. It read simply: Goodman. I took the Winchester and slipped quietly out the back door. I walked up the road to the mesa top where the Goodman Center stood among the scattering of new, expensive homes. So late at night there was only one vehicle in the visitors’ lot, a dark SUV parked as far back from the glow of the overhead lights as possible. I started across the lot. As I approached, the doors of the SUV opened and two figures got out. Rainy and Mondragón. They came toward me together, so close to each other they might as well have been holding hands.

  Rainy suddenly broke from her ex-husband and ran to me. She threw her arms around me and laid her head against my chest. “Oh, God, Cork I was so worried about you. And you found Peter. Thank you, thank you.”

  It felt good to have her back in my arms, but as I held her, I saw Mondragón approaching, looking as if he thought I was going to rob him.

  Rainy looked expectantly into my eyes. “Where is he?”

  “Not here,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure I know where.”

  “He’s safe?”

  “He’s alive. At least, I believe he is.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  I explained about the Lulabelle Mine and the mirror flashes.

  “It could have been anything,” Mondragón said, clearly unhappy with what I’d brought him. “The reflection of the sun off something.”

  I shook my head. “It was purposeful. It was meant for Jocko and me.”

  “We need to go to him,” Rainy said.

  “We’ll leave before first light. By the time we reach the area, we’ll be able to see where we’re going.”

  “We leave now,” Mondragón said. “I don’t want to risk being discovered before we have a chance to get to Peter. We can wait out there in the desert until sunrise.”

  Which made sense. But I didn’t like the way he said it, as if there was no room for objection, as if his word was somehow law. And I felt the demon stirring deep inside me again.

  Rainy said, “I’d feel better if we left now, Cork. I’m not sure I could stand just waiting here.”

  In the dim light, I thought I saw a smug look of satisfaction on Mondragón’s face.

  “All right,” I said. “But I left the map at the parsonage.”

  “Let’s get it,” Mondragón said.

  “I’ll get it and meet you,” I said. “Safer for Rainy.”

  He absorbed that and didn’t object. “Where?”

  “Cadiz Corners. A gas station and convenience store at the north end of town.”

  “Twenty minutes,” he said.

  I kissed Rainy, longer than was strictly necessary, then headed off again on foot.

  The moon had risen, a quarter full, delivering enough light for me to see my way easily. Which was good because my head was with Rainy. Rainy and Mondragón. The longer the two of them were alone together, the less I liked it. I entered the parsonage through the back door, still arguing with Mondragón in my head. I wasn’t completely in the moment, completely focused. A big mistake.

  The blow, when it came, caught me from behind, and I fell into a blackness that no moonlight could penetrate.

  * * *

  I came to with a splash of cold water on my face. Everything was dark, and I realized I’d been blindfolded. I tried to move and discovered I was bound to a chair, hand and foot.

  “Where is he?” said a voice I’d never heard. It was like gravel rattling in a tin pan.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Where is he?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Where’s Peter Bisonette?”

  There was no Hispanic accent to this voice. Although that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t Latino, my first guess was that he was probably white.

  “I put a couple of bullets into the last guys who asked me that,” I said.

  The blow came to my ribs, left side. It caught me off guard and shook me hard. But not so hard I didn’t register the thought that whoever it was, he was probably right-handed.

  “Where is he?”

  He spoke close to my face. I registered the smell of whiskey on his breath, of marijuana on his clothing.

  “Why do you want to know?” I said.

  “If we get to him before those Rodriguez shits do, he might still be alive when we deliver him to his mother.”

  “What do you want with him?”

  “That’s between him and us.”

  “I need a little information before I drop the dime on him.”

  “I don’t think so. I think all you need is a little more of this.”

  Another blow to my ribs, same spot. I was going to have an ugly bruise there in the morning.

  “So, where is he?”

  “You make a persuasive point,” I said, trying not to let the pain affect my voice. “But mostly you’re persuading me of what a bad idea it would be to give you Peter. Even if I could. Which I can’t.”

  The next blow connected with my cheek near my ear. It rattled me good, but what hurt most was the cut it left. I could feel blood running down my jaw. So—my brain registered—whoever he was, he was wearing a ring big enough to cut a canyon across my cheek.

  There’d been only one speaker, but I’d had a sense from the beginning that he wasn’t alone. Now that suspicion was confirmed because I heard whispering that involved several voices.

  “You’re a stranger here. You have no idea what’s going on.” A different voice this time, but one that seemed familiar, though I couldn’t place it yet. “It’s a complicated situation, a very bad situation, which your Peter is only making w
orse.”

  “How about this?” I said. “What if I convince him not to do whatever it is he’s doing that’s pissed you off?”

  “I think we can convince him better,” said the first voice, the gravelly one I didn’t recognize at all.

  I picked up something now, a subtle but pleasant fragrance. Something both floral and cinnamon. A cologne or perfume maybe.

  Some more whispers, then another blow, this one directly to my stomach. It punched the air right out of me, and for a long moment, I couldn’t breathe.

  When I finally gasped and sucked in air, the vaguely familiar voice said, “This will only get worse, O’Connor. You don’t want that. We don’t either. You’re not a part of this. So just tell us.”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “Burn him,” said a third voice, hushed, whispery. Female?

  Hands ripped my shirt, tearing off the buttons. I heard a match struck and smelled cigarette smoke.

  “You sure about this?” said the voice I could almost recognize.

  “Burn him,” whispered the third voice.

  I tensed, trying to prepare myself, but the sear of the cigarette ember was more painful than I’d imagined. I cried out.

  “Tape his mouth,” the familiar voice said.

  “He can’t talk with tape over his mouth,” said the whispery voice, definitely female.

  “He screams like that again, the neighbors’ll come running.” The gravelly voice.

  “We’re going to burn you until you talk, O’Connor,” said the whispery voice. “We can do this all night.”

  No idle threat, I knew. I steeled myself.

  Then I heard the shatter of window glass, and a deep cry of pain.

  “Jesus!” The gravelly voice. “I’m hit.”

  “Out of here. Now.” The woman’s voice.

  I heard a furious scrambling, and the front door was thrown open. A moment later, a big engine turned over and tires squealed, painting the street, I imagined, with black lines of rubber.

  I waited in the dark behind the blindfold. My head hurt. My chest and ribs hurt. My stomach hurt. I was as confused as I’d ever been.

  I heard the back door cautiously open, felt the air stir as someone moved past me. I held my breath.

  Then Mondragón said, “It’s clear, Rainy.”

  And she was all over me.

  CHAPTER 21

  * * *

  “No talking,” I whispered, as Rainy removed the blindfold.

  Mondragón had a pocketknife in his hand and bent to cut the duct tape that bound me to the kitchen chair. He opened his mouth to speak, but I shook my head furiously and made a shushing sound to silence him. His response was an angry look. But he said nothing.

  Rainy stared at my face in horror. She touched my gouged cheek, then put her fingertips near the cigarette burn on my chest.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” she whispered.

  I laid a finger to my lips. When Mondragón had cut me completely free, I stood up and signaled for them to follow. I went to the living room and from the bookshelf pulled the book that hid the bug. I gave Mondragón a pointed look. He shook his head.

  I mouthed Outside, and put the book back.

  I snatched the rolled map from the coffee table. Jocko’s Winchester was on the kitchen table, where my assailants must have laid it, and I grabbed that as well. We left quietly by the back door. I trailed Rainy and Mondragón to the next street, where he’d parked his SUV.

  “Do you have anything for first aid, Berto?” Rainy asked.

  “Glove box,” Mondragón said.

  He’d been carrying a rifle, the one he must have used to put the bullet through the kitchen window and into the gravelly voiced man who’d been torturing me. Probably the one he’d used to kill Rainy’s assailant as well. It was fitted with a suppressor, which explained why I hadn’t heard a shot. He laid it in the back of the SUV and hurried into the driver’s seat.

  Rainy spent a moment rummaging in the glove box, then slipped into the backseat with me, and Mondragón took off. In the first aid kit, she found a small tube of antiseptic ointment, which she applied to the burn on my chest and the cut on my face.

  “You should have stitches,” she said, but she settled on a sterile adhesive bandage, huge on my cheek.

  “What happened back there?” I asked.

  From the front, Mondragón replied, “We agreed twenty minutes. You didn’t show. I figured trouble. How did you bumble your way into that situation?”

  “They jumped me as soon as I walked into the parsonage.”

  “Who were they?”

  “My best guess is White Horse.”

  “The vigilante group,” Rainy said. “What did they want?”

  “Peter.”

  “Why?”

  “Same reason the Rodriguezes want him. To stop what he’s doing. And probably to get the names of the other Desert Angels.”

  Mondragón said, “Did you get a look at them?”

  “Just heard their voices.”

  “Recognize any of them?”

  “Not sure. But give me some time and maybe it’ll come to me.”

  We left Cadiz and drove north into the night.

  Any landscape under moonlight is a beautiful mystery. The high desert of southern Arizona, with its hills and black mountains silhouetted against a star-salted sky, was no exception. I stared out the window thinking that in the great Northwoods of Minnesota the roads were walled with thick forest in a way that made you feel as if you were passing through one long, verdant tunnel. Here, the land was wide open, and in the far distance I could see the little embers of yard lights that glowed outside the isolated ranch houses of Coronado County. In the dark, too, were snakes and lizards and spiders that could kill you with poison. And cacti just waiting to pierce your skin. In the washes, sometimes, crept men with guns and drugs who might shoot you without thinking twice. And also, there were women and children lost in so many ways, desperate to be led to safety. I thought about Peter and how much I admired what he was attempting to do. And I wondered, if I were in his place, would I have the courage to do what he did?

  Mondragón, as if reading my mind, said, “When I find Peter, I’m going to make sure I put an end to this stupidity.”

  “Not stupidity, Berto,” Rainy said. “I’m scared for Peter, and I don’t like at all the idea that he’s put himself in danger this way. But, oh, God, I do admire our son for it.”

  “What’s the point, Rainy?” Mondragón shot back. “The people he helps, more often than not, get picked up later by Border Patrol or ICE and end up right back where they began, but only worse because now they have nothing. Hell, less than nothing. What good does that do them?”

  “You don’t know that, Berto.” She was quiet a moment. “There was a time when you would have understood. Maybe even have helped him.”

  “You stick your neck out only for family, Rainy. Everyone else is on their own.”

  “Your world is so small, Berto,” Rainy said. “You must be so afraid inside it.”

  “I’m afraid of no one,” Mondragón snapped. “As for my world, it’s a very comfortable place. Not like that hovel you lived in out there in Who Gives a Fuck, Minnesota. If I’d raised our son, he’d be a man feared and respected.”

  Rainy said, “Better, I believe, to be loved.”

  “You think he doesn’t love me? That I don’t love him? Then what the hell am I doing here?”

  Squabbling like an old married couple, I thought, but held my tongue.

  We pulled into a truck stop outside Tucson that sold everything: CBs, cell phones, audiobooks, clothing, knives, souvenirs, medicines, an array of drinks and snack foods. While Mondragón filled the gas tank, Rainy and I went inside. I needed to replace the shirt my tormentors had ripped, and I picked out a long-sleeved T-shirt with a big coiled rattlesnake on the front. Rainy gathered some medical supplies: sterile gauze, bandages, adhesive tape, antiseptic.

  “When we find Pe
ter and the people with him, they may need tending,” she explained.

  We also picked up several gallon jugs of water. When we went to pay, the clerk, a kid with spiked hair the color of cotton candy, eyed my torn shirt and the blood-soaked bandage on my cheek.

  “I’d like to see the other guy,” he said.

  Before we rejoined Mondragón, I asked Rainy, “Where you’re staying, is it safe?”

  “Berto arranged for a house in Nogales. We’re less than half an hour from Cadiz. Don’t worry about me, Cork. It feels very safe.” She glanced outside, where her ex-husband was seeing to the SUV, and she shook her head. “But I’m remembering now all of Berto’s bad habits.” She smiled and kissed my cheek. “I’d rather be with you.”

  Outside, we put the supplies in the back of the SUV. Under the bright glare of the truck stop lights, I rolled out the map on the hood, and Mondragón and Rainy flanked me.

  “Here,” I said and pinpointed the Lulabelle.

  Mondragón studied the map for a couple of minutes, then, without a word, walked away and made a call on his cell phone. When he came back, he leaned over the map and said, “There’s a jeep trail off the Magdalena Road this side of Sells. It will take us to the base of the Santa Margaritas within a stone’s throw of the mine.”

  “Who’d you call?” I said.

  “Friends,” he answered. “Who know the area well.”

  We took a highway west toward the desert once called Desolation. After half an hour, Mondragón’s cell phone rang and he answered.

  “Sí,” he said. “Muchas gracias, amigo.” Over his shoulder, he said, “There’s a rolling Border Patrol just after we turn off Eighty-Six. You looking decent back there, O’Connor?” Then he said, “Doesn’t matter. You’re white. But probably best we hide your Winchester and my Weatherby.”