Touch a Wild Heart

by Vella Munn

  Ortez laughed. “Other than leaving me locked inside that building since yesterday, it hasn’t been bad. He doesn’t know I speak English. I heard many things he wouldn’t want me to know. He’ll live to regret that. Are you up to walking?”

  “It’s better than staying here.” A gust of wind hit Chela’s face, but this time instead of closing her eyes against the dust, she fastened her eyes on the dirt road, the distant railroad tracks, the highway beyond. The wind had revived her and reminded her that she was outside. There were no walls holding her. Chela linked her hands with the man whose face she’d yet to see and laughed up at him. “Me amante, you’re a good actor.”

  “I’d do almost anything for Joe Magadan,” Ortez said as they took their first steps away from what had recently been Ortez’s prison.

  And I’ve done all he asked me to do, Chela thought. From now on everything was out of her hands. Her mind still was battering its way against the prison Kohl’s threat of exposure had placed her in, but because she could find no way out, she concentrated on finding secure footing on the uneven surface. Weeds grew in clumps along the dirt road, reminding her of how isolated this base of operation was. It had been possible for Kohl to spirit illegals into the valley without the authorities discovering him. She was straining to catch any sound from the shed when the distant rumble she attributed to a train became the unmistakable sound of tires crunching along a gravel road.

  Chela stopped and with Ortez moved to one side as first one vehicle and then another approached. The lead car bore the insignia of the county sheriff’s department; the other was Magadan’s pickup.

  For a moment Chela was blinded by headlights, then the lead car eased past her and pulled to a stop next to Kohl’s car. Magadan stopped his truck next to the two walkers and got out.

  “It’s been a long time, Ortez,” Magadan said as he shook hands with the Mexican. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m tired and hungry,” Ortez explained, his left hand still holding Chela’s fingers. “Where the hell were you? I was starting to think you weren’t going to show up.”

  Magadan grinned, the gesture sending shock waves through Chela despite her best efforts to ignore him. “We tailed Chela and Kohl here, but we had to wait until you were safely outside. Do you have any idea how hard it is to see anything through binoculars in the middle of the night? We’d probably still be waiting if we hadn’t seen you two holding hands. That’s how we knew you weren’t Kohl.”

  “You followed me here?” Chela asked, dropping her hand to her side as Ortez released her. “How? No one was at the park.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Magadan was staring at her with an intensity she couldn’t fathom and didn’t know how to ignore. “Do you remember a street sweeper in the shopping center? I followed you from your house, got the sweeper operator to get me close enough to see what was happening. Then while the two of you were still talking, I called the sheriff.”

  “Oh.” Magadan had been there all along.

  “Would you like to go back inside?” Magadan asked. “I think things might be more interesting in there.”

  Chela wanted nothing to do with the dark, stuffy storage building, but Magadan seemed to have forgotten how much she hated enclosed spaces. He and Ortez were already walking back to the building. After a moment of indecision, Chela followed them.

  The lights from two heavy-duty flashlights had been added to the naked light bulb, taking away much of the storage shed’s mystery. Chela was surprised to see that there was a telephone and desk in a far corner of the building. Kohl had called it his office, and he wasn’t joking.

  Kohl, flanked by two sheriff’s deputies, was spewing obscenities, seemingly oblivious of the fact that his hands had been cuffed behind him. When he spotted the trio coming toward him, he threw a few choice words at Chela and then Ortez. His eyes went blank when Magadan stepped up and ordered him to be quiet. “Who the hell are you?”

  “You’ll find that out soon,” Magadan challenged. “You’re in enough trouble already. Don’t make it worse by talking to Chela that way.”

  “How do you know her? What the hell is going on?” Kohl’s piercing eyes flashed between Chela and Magadan and then fastened on Ortez. “You set me up, didn’t you? It was all a setup.”

  Ortez grinned. “Your greed set you up,” Ortez challenged. “Are you surprised by my English? I went to college in the United States. I’m not going to forget a thing: Not how you got me across the border, not the immigration officer who looked the other way, not the name of the truck driver you paid to get me through California, nothing.”

  “It isn’t going to work! You can’t make it stick!”

  “You’re wrong and you know it,” Magadan broke in. “We have enough on you to put you out of business for the rest of your life.”

  Kohl drew his thin lips back over his yellow teeth. His eyes continued to bore into his captors’, but he said nothing as the officers began a minute search of his office. Instead of joining Magadan and Ortez as they watched the officers, Chela stood alone, her fingers wrapped around her arms. When she was in it before, the building had threatened to close in around her, but that sensation was gone. She tried to tell herself it was the improved lighting and the fact that Kohl couldn’t touch her, but one glance at Magadan and she knew she was only fooling herself. It was the man’s presence, his strength, that turned confinement into something she could accept. It wasn’t the first time that had happened to her. Magadan—he hadn’t deserted her, not once, she realized now.

  Even when Magadan turned from his study of what the police were pulling out of Kohl’s desk and fastened his eyes on her, she didn’t drop her gaze. She tried to recall what Magadan had said the last time she’d talked to him. “I’ll kill Kohl if he touches you.” Were those the words of a man protecting his investment or the words of a man who cared? There was something else he’d said that day. When everything was over, they were going to start talking and not stop until everything had been straightened out between them. Chela was beginning to think she believed that.

  An exclamation from one of the deputies distracted Magadan. As he again bent over what they’d found on the desk, Chela went back to her own exploration of the shadowy interior. She wondered how many illegals had been housed in this windowless, airless prison while they waited for Kohl to find work for them. She hoped it was possible that it would never again be a holding pen. Putting Kohl out of business wasn’t an end to the problem of illegals, but it was a start.

  “How do you feel now, Chela? Do you really think you’ve won?”

  She started at the sound of Kohl’s challenge but refused to ignore him. “I wasn’t looking for a victory,” she replied. “I don’t see it that way.”

  “I think you do. Chela Reola coming to me, asking for something? And I believed you. When you told me you had money, I believed you.” He shook his head angrily. “It wasn’t your money, was it? Whose was it?”

  “Can’t you guess?” Magadan asked.

  Kohl turned from Chela to Magadan. The little man’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you? Why would you give Chela money?”

  “You said it yourself.” Magadan laughed bitterly. “To set you up.”

  “And Chela went along with you?” Despite the taunt in his voice, Kohl was obviously puzzled. “Chela agreed to work with an Anglo? She loved Ortez that much?”

  “Ortez isn’t my lover.” What did it matter that Kohl now knew the truth? Those kinds of secrets were no longer necessary.

  “Not your lover?” Kohl frowned. Finally he ran his tongue over his yellow teeth. “But a man has gotten to you, hasn’t he? Chela Reola has fallen in love with an Anglo.”

  Chela turned her back on his cruel taunts. She wasn’t going to listen to anything else he had to say. She started toward the door, but Magadan stopped her. “Don’t go,” he ordered. “I’ll take you home.”

  I don’t want to go anywhere with you, Chela wanted to say, but Magadan’s arm around h
er stopped the words. For a moment, but only a moment, she let her body lean toward his. There had been so many angry words between them—had they erased the loving nights? Right now Chela couldn’t remember what those words had been. “Did you find what you needed?” she asked, because not talking left her with too much room for thinking.

  “It’s all falling into place,” Magadan supplied. “Along with what Ortez is going to be able to testify to, I think we’ve got enough. You did your part well.”

  “When can I go home?”

  “Do you really want to?” Magadan pulled her into a darkened corner of the building and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I saw what Kohl did to you in the park. Are you all right? I wanted to kill him.”

  “I’m fine. I told you, I knew what Kohl was capable of.” Suddenly the pain of Magadan’s secrets came back. “At least I knew what he was like even if I knew nothing about you.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Please believe me.” Magadan still hadn’t released her arm. He was massaging her wrist with featherlight sweeps of his fingers. “I’d give anything to be able to start over, be upfront from the beginning.”

  “It’s too late for that. You said I wouldn’t understand.” Chela closed her eyes.

  “I believed that,” he whispered. “If you’d known I was an orchardist, would you have agreed to work with me?”

  Chela shook her head. “Maybe,” she relented. “If you’d let me see what kind of a man you are.”

  “What kind of a man am I?”

  “I don’t know.” A passionate man, a man like no other I’ve ever known, Chela said internally. “I called you a coyote,” she said aloud instead. “You took Lou Dye’s land.”

  “Because he was destroying it, because someone had to turn things around. That’s not what I want to talk about,” he whispered fiercely. “I want to talk about us, but not here.”

  “Where?” Chela wasn’t even sure she wanted this meeting.

  Magadan’s eyes told her he was deliberating the same question. “Not tonight,” he groaned. “There’s so much more we have to do here.”

  Lack of sleep had caught up to her, and suddenly she was so exhausted she could barely stand. “I want to go home,” Chela whispered.

  Magadan dropped her wrist and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll take you there as soon as we’re done here. Please be patient.”

  Maybe Chela could have denied him his request if he hadn’t put his arm around her, but that strong, warm blanket was her undoing. For the second time tonight she sagged toward him, let him bear the weight of her tired body. Her head pounded and her lungs ached for the clean scent of the air outside, but if she was going to find her way outside, it would have to be with Magadan’s help.

  As if he knew of her confusion, Magadan steered her toward the lighted area where the activity was centered. Chela lifted her head and focused on the deputies preparing to take Kohl from the shed. At least one thing had come to a satisfactory conclusion tonight. Kohl was going to be brought to justice.

  “You had better pray I don’t get free,” he taunted, the glitter in his eyes just as strong as it had ever been. “Because if I do, you’re going to regret the day you were born.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” one of the deputies replied. “I’ve got to hand it to you, you were a thorough businessman. You kept thorough records.” He waved one of the folders the police had found. “You’d stand a much better chance if these didn’t exist.”

  For the first time Kohl seemed to note what the deputies had uncovered. The glitter in his eyes darkened, as if his glare could incinerate the damning evidence. His eyes flashed from one captor to the other like a wild coyote sensing the extent of the trap closing down around it.

  Magadan’s body was there to shield Chela from the full impact of Kohl’s glare. “I think you’ve said enough for now, Kohl,” he warned.

  Kohl’s teeth reminded Chela of a coyote snapping at its bounds. The police might be able to put his body behind bars, but there was no way he could be silenced. “Was it all a lie, Chela? I couldn’t have used your father to silence you?”

  “Her father?” Magadan asked. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “You don’t know?” Kohl challenged, while the world buckled and burned red before Chela’s eyes.

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Chela heard the coyote’s teeth snapping down around her heart. “I was right, after all. Wasn’t I, Chela? That would silence you.” Kohl turned the full force of his revelation on Magadan. “The wild one’s father should be in prison for what he’s done. Chela’s father is Lou Dye.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Even before the words were out of Kohl’s mouth, Chela was running. She ran without thought or direction, sprinting, through the open door and diving gratefully into the darkness. She could hear Magadan behind her, calling, but she didn’t slow long enough to turn to see whether he was following her.

  Even as her tennis shoes created small puffs of dust in the parking lot, Chela wasn’t sure why she was running. The closed-in storage shed, Kohl’s eyes transmitting his loathing of her, the sudden tension in Magadan’s arm as Kohl’s words registered, all confused her and catapulted her into action.

  Chela ran lightly, taking minute pleasure in the fact that her slight, athletic body was made for running. The ground around her was flat, which meant there was little danger she would trip and fall in the darkness. Already Magadan’s voice was becoming fainter. The night had swallowed her up. Chela ran for another ten or fifteen minutes, thinking of nothing except putting one foot in front of the other, the feel of summer night air on her cheeks, the easy way her lungs adjusted to what she was asking them to do. She didn’t know how, but she felt running was a means of cleansing her mind of Kohl’s hateful words.

  Finally though, Chela became confused by her surroundings and was forced to slow down. She was no longer on any kind of road or parking area. There was nothing but weeds under her shoes, weeds and rocks and mounds of dirt. Chela stopped, balanced on her toes and peered into the night. She could still hear the deep rumble that came from the train tracks and that gave her a sense of direction, but she was somewhere that was untouched by paved streets, buildings, even orchards.

  Her pulse was pounding in her head, but her headache was finally leaving her. She breathed rapidly, pulling needed air back into her lungs until they no longer demanded so much of her. Chela almost laughed. She was like a rabbit running from the threat of a pursuing coyote—but the coyote had already been trapped.

  She was running from word then. Only words.

  So Magadan and the deputies knew Lou Dye was her father. That was hardly the end of the world, she admitted. The sun would still come up tomorrow. And why should she care who was with her when Kohl let it all spill out?

  Chela glanced down at her dusty tennis shoes, kicked at the clumps of weeds at her feet, and laughed. There wasn’t anything to run from, just as there was nothing to go back to. It was fitting that she should be standing in the middle of this nothing stretch of land in darkness, broken only by a few stars, gathering her thoughts about her.

  It was still possible that Kohl would make good on his threat to expose her to anyone and everyone who would listen, but she rather doubted that. Telling the newspapers or her employers that Chela Reola’s father was ruthless and unfeeling wouldn’t save him. He would be better off concentrating on developing a defense for the case against him. He could no longer buy her silence with threats. It wasn’t her testimony that would imprison him; it was what was contained in his ledgers and what Ortez would be telling a judge and jury.

  Again Chela laughed, a hollow, aching sound that echoed through her cold body. There was no need to hide. Magadan had what he wanted—Kohl in handcuffs.

  Chela slowly retraced her footsteps. It was perhaps twenty minutes before she came close enough to the storage shed to make out the lone car still parked in front of the shed. For a moment
she toyed with the idea of taking Kohl’s car and driving back to the park but decided against it. The car was probably going to be picked up by the sheriff’s department. If she touched it, she might be tampering with evidence.

  It didn’t really matter. Although it was some four or five miles back to the park and her Jeep, Chela didn’t mind the prospect of a long walk. She’d walked like this before, when she and Magadan had argued at the Blue Max.

  A pink glow was accenting the morning sky by the time Chela reached her Jeep. She breathed deeply as she settled into her seat, acknowledging the warm air signaling another summer day. She was expected at the migrant education center later that day to select supplementary texts to be used in classrooms, but that would have to come later. Right now all she could think of was getting home and climbing into her tub. Maybe, if she shampooed her hair and scrubbed her face, the sense of lethargy would leave her.

  I’m just tired, Chela tried to tell herself. I’ve been up all night; I saw a man arrested, and I came face-to-face with Magadan. I’m having trouble sorting through that, that’s all.

  Even as Chela was trying to convince herself that a bath was what she needed to restore herself, both body and soul, she knew it was a lie. Joe Magadan had touched her life. Even though he was no longer part of that life, she would never be the same again.

  Chela started to back out of the parking lot, caught a glimpse of the sun rising over the surrounding hills, and dropped her forehead to the steering wheel. She’d never share a moment like that with Magadan. For the rest of her life, she’d have to struggle with the fact that she’d come close, oh so close, to sharing herself with a man.

  How do I go back to what I was before I met you, Magadan? she asked around her tears. How do I forget what you did to my heart? There was no forgetting. There was only coping.

  It was five minutes before Chela had regained enough self-control to trust herself to drive. Her eyes ached from the unaccustomed tears, and she still saw through a film. But she was determined not to cry again, at least not until she was home.