by Gayle Wilson
Seemingly there was no one behind them, but even as he got back into the car, Chase couldn’t dismiss the nagging sense that something was going on that he should know about Something that he should have picked up on. The Kincaids hadn’t told him everything, he knew, but he also was certain that they were both anxious to get the baby back and that they, at least, were convinced the ransom note was on the up and up.
Chase didn’t understand why he was so antsy. It wasn’t like him. Maybe it was just being this close to Samantha. Maybe the fact that he couldn’t take a breath without being reminded that she was sitting beside him. But somehow, as disturbing as that was, he didn’t think that was it. All the old lawman’s instincts he and Mac used to joke about were awake. And that was something you never wanted to happen, not when you were carrying a million dollars—money that someone else’s life depended on your delivering.
WHEN THEY DROVE INTO the square at Melchor Múzquiz, it was far busier than he’d anticipated. There were too many people who didn’t belong. Tourists, maybe, but this wasn’t the normal tourist territory. It took him a few minutes to realize what was happening. When he had, he began to wonder if this could be why they’d been sent to this particular location.
Anyone who lived along the section of the border where he and Samantha had grown up knew about the Kikapu. The tribe had lived in the area since the late 1700s, splitting the year seasonally between their village near here and one south of the town of Eagle Pass. During August they displayed their leather work in Melchor Múzquiz, the town nearest their Mexican settlement.
At his quiet suggestion, he and Samantha wandered through the display of goods the Indians had brought into town to sell. Playing her part, Samantha fingered the suede garments, asking questions and giving compliments in Spanish, which the Indians understood very easily.
As Chase walked beside her, his eyes searched the small crowd for anyone who looked as if he might be their contact. He had parked the car on one side of the square so he could keep an eye on it as they shopped. Neither they nor the Land Rover seemed to be attracting anyone’s interest.
His mind continued to worry at the connection between this isolated location and the stretch of border where the baby had been taken. The link of the two Indian settlements seemed too obvious to be coincidental. He’d heard that some of the Mennonites had been caught running drugs, but he couldn’t believe the Kikapu had suddenly gotten mixed up in the ransom racket.
Hell, he thought, mocking that rare naiveté. Why not? Everybody else seemed to be.
But if it meant nothing else, he finally decided, the increased activity in the normally quiet town provided a cover for their presence. They would have seemed far more out of place without the other norteamericanos who were wandering around. Maybe that was the only reason they had been sent here.
At lunchtime, which by Texas standards was closer to midafternoon, the small shops began to close and the square started to empty of pedestrians. Still nobody had made contact. Nobody had tried to make arrangements to pick up the million dollars. That wasn’t normal and it didn’t make sense. Why take the child and then not pick up the ransom? Because, Chase was beginning to believe, just as he’d suspected, what was going on wasn’t about the ransom at all.
His anger built as the crowd, locals and tourists, melted slowly away from the public area of the town. Chase and Samantha stayed in the square, their isolation providing an opportunity for the kidnappers to approach without witnesses if that was what they had been waiting for. Still nothing happened. And nothing’s going to happen, Chase thought.
He took Samantha’s elbow, almost pulling her with him, and began walking toward the eighteenth-century Baroquestyle church that stood at one comer of the plaza. Its darkened interior would at least offer sanctuary from the heat and a place for the private confrontation that was overdue.
Using a quick pressure of the hand with which he was grasping her arm, he stopped Samantha before the wooden doors, standing for a moment in the shadows of the church’s portico to glance back across the nearly deserted square. No one was looking in their direction. No one had paid any attention to them during the hours they had been here. Wild-goose chase, he thought. He had felt that all along.
Angry that he’d allowed himself to be manipulated again by the Kincaids, that his own emotions had made him agree to what he’d known was a wasted trip, he pulled Samantha into the church and up the narrow aisle. He directed her into the last of the wooden pews. He sat down beside her and then took a quick look around. It seemed they had the building to themselves. There were lighted candles, but apparently the worshipers had taken the same lunch break as the merchants.
“Why weren’t we met?” Samantha asked. She was looking toward the altar, not at him, and her voice was very hushed. Maybe that wasn’t a conscious decision. Maybe it just seemed appropriate to whisper in the dimness of the church.
“You tell me. Tell me why we weren’t met. Why we weren’t contacted. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on here?” he countered. He’d been had, had by somebody. He knew it, and it made him feel like a fool.
“What’s really going on?” she repeated. “I don’t know any more than you about—” She stopped, realizing what he was thinking. “You still think this is a hoax. A trick to get custody of Amanda. Well, you’re wrong, Chase. This has nothing to do with my husband.” The anger was clear despite the fact that she was still whispering, still facing the altar.
“Then I guess the people who took Amanda don’t really want Sam’s money after all. I wonder what they do want.”
She turned to face him at that, and even in the darkness, Chase could see the color drain from her cheeks and her eyes widen.
“What does that mean?” she asked. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that nobody’s real eager to collect their hard-earned loot. And believe me, that hasn’t been my experience.”
“They didn’t give us a time,” she argued. “Maybe we’re just early. Maybe after lunch. When things are less crowded. Maybe they’re just waiting—”
“Why don’t you level with me, Mrs. Berkley? Tell me what’s really going on.”
“I don’t know what’s happened. Don’t you think if I knew anything that would help us get Mandy back, I’d tell you? Why would I lie to you when my daughter’s life is at stake? What the hell do you think I am? Do you think I don’t care about her? Do you really think I’d do anything to jeopardize our chances of getting Mandy?”
Her voice had risen with her growing agitation. Chase put his hand down hard on the top of hers, and the angry questions cut off abruptly. He looked around to see if anyone had heard what she’d said, but they still seemed to be the only occupants of the sanctuary.
Satisfied that they were alone, he looked at her again. The fear of the first day was back in her face. She hadn’t said much during the long morning, but he had been aware of the hope that had radiated from her tense body. The hope that he would be able to put her baby back into her arms. Whatever had gone wrong, Samantha wasn’t to blame, and he felt like an SOB for making her more afraid than she already had been.
“Look,” he began again, keeping his own voice only slightly above a whisper. “Maybe you don’t know anything about what’s gone wrong, but you and Sam haven’t leveled with me. Not from the start. You haven’t told me everything I need to know to get Mandy back for you, and I want to know why. What didn’t you tell me, Samantha? I need to know what you and Sam are hiding.”
Her eyes were on his, and they didn’t flinch before the accusation. But they didn’t give in, either. They sat in silence, his demand between them. He saw her take a breath, and her lips parted, but before she could say anything, the door of the church was pulled open from the outside.
The sudden shaft of sunlight flashed like a spotlight into the dark interior. They both looked toward the door, but the dazzle of light after the shadowed dimness was blinding. Chase had time to see the silhouette
of a man, starkly outlined against the open doorway. Then the light was gone, the heavy door closing with a small thud that echoed off the plaster walls.
Unconsciously, he allowed his gaze to come back to find Samantha’s face. Wordlessly, in response to the question in his eyes, she shook her head. She apparently had seen no more than he. He wasn’t even sure whether the man had come in or had stepped quickly back outside before the door closed.
“Wait here,” he ordered.
He slipped out of the pew and walked toward the door. The shadows were deeper here, farther from the filtered light that spilled from the stained-glass window above the altar at the other end of the nave. When he reached the door, there was no one there. He pushed it open and looked out into the brightness of the now empty square. His eyes squinted against the sudden change, but he could see well enough to verify there was no movement across the sunbaked plaza. He looked at the Land Rover, sitting undisturbed under the shade of the single tree on that side of the square.
“Do you think that might have been—” Samantha spoke from directly behind him.
“Shh,” he cautioned, still listening in the afternoon’s quiet lethargy for footsteps or for a motor starting somewhere. Listening for any disturbance of the sleeping stillness. There was nothing. Whoever had opened the door of the church had disappeared.
Samantha moved forward to stand beside him.
“A man?” he asked.
She hesitated for a moment before she answered. “I thought so. It happened so quickly, but…my impression was a man.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” Chase said, still looking out on the plaza.
“Could it have been whoever was supposed to contact us?”
“It could have been anybody,” he said.
He wondered suddenly if whoever had opened the door had had time to identify them, given the extremes of light and dark. He walked across the portico and pulled opened the church’s wooden door. He tried to duplicate the figure’s stance in the doorway, peering into the sanctuary. His eyes barely had time to adjust to the interior darkness before the door swung closed behind him. He had been able to find the spot on the last pew where they had been sitting. That was about all.
He stood in the dark church, trying to put it together, trying to think about what to do next. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Nothing like this had ever happened before. It had always been as straightforward as he’d promised Samantha, the kidnappers more than eager to make the arrangements and to pick up their money. This time somebody appeared to be playing games.
His eyes lifted to the stained-glass window at the other end of the narrow aisle. He recognized the scene portrayed easily enough, although it had been a long time since Chase McCullar had been inside a church.
Even the phrase from the story was still in his memory, one of the countless instilled in his childhood. “Suffer the little children…” Sunday school at the Mount Ebenezer Baptist Church in Crystal Springs. Ears scrubbed and face shining, dressed in clothing that he donned only on that occasion, Chase had listened, fascinated, to all the stories Mrs. Wexman had told. There wasn’t much time at home for storytelling. There was always too much that had to be done, and even before his mother’s death, she was too exhausted after the long day’s work to entertain her boys with stories.
The outside door opened, and Samantha was there before he had time to get it all straight in his head. Exactly what he thought was going on here. Exactly what they should do next.
“What are you doing?” she asked. Her gaze followed his to the window above the altar. “Chase? What’s wrong?”
Amateurs, he thought again. Maybe the guy had been trying to give them the message. Maybe he had seen them come in, but hadn’t been able to find them in the dark. Maybe something had scared him off. Or maybe he had nothing at all to do with the kidnapping.
“Come on,” he said finally, still no closer to figuring out why they hadn’t gotten the word they had waited for most of the day. “Let’s get out of here. We need to be out where we can be seen.” He put his hand against the small of Samantha’s back to direct her out the door.
“Are you sure there wasn’t a note?” she asked. “Maybe he put the note where we were sitting after we went out.”
And maybe he’s a magician, Chase thought. Maybe he can disappear into thin air and then reappear somewhere else. But maybe, just maybe, she was right He didn’t have a better suggestion.
He walked to the pew they’d occupied, his footsteps echoing off the stone floor, the sound floating upward toward the high, arched ceiling to be lost in the shadows there.
There was nothing, of course. Just as he knew there would be. He looked on the floor and even on the nearby pews to be certain he wasn’t missing anything—anything beyond the central question that seemed to be escaping him.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
“There’s nothing, Samantha. He didn’t leave a note.” He walked back toward her, seeing the loss of hope reflected in her strained features.
“I just hope he’s doing what he promised,” she said softly.
“Who?”
“The leader. The one who did all the talking.”
“What did he promise?” Chase asked.
“To take care of Mandy. To care for her as if she were his own daughter. He has a daughter.”
She hadn’t told him that. It didn’t seem to have any bearing on what he’d been hired to do, but he liked to know everything that had been said and done during the abduction. Neither Samantha nor Sam had mentioned that part of the conversation.
“Samantha…” he began, and then he hesitated because he knew that what he was about to say was sheer cruelty. If she was finding comfort in the kidnapper’s promise, he should just leave it alone. Let her think whatever made it easier, but things were not going as they should, and maybe she needed to be prepared for the possibility—
“You think I’m putting too much store in that, don’t you?” she asked.
“Maybe,” he agreed. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I have to tell you—”
“You’re supposed to know,” she interrupted angrily. “You’re the one who’s supposed to have all the experience at this. All the damn expertise.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That is what you hired me for, isn’t it?”
She could probably hear the bitterness. Despite it, he wasn’t angry at her any longer. He was just frustrated because he didn’t understand what was going on. Felt inadequate.
“Where are we going?” she asked, forced to move again in response to the sudden pressure of his hand against her back.
“We’re going to have lunch. Somewhere public. Very visible.”
“To give them another chance to contact us?”
He didn’t answer the obvious, and so she asked the question he didn’t have an answer for. The one he’d been dreading.
“You still think they will, don’t you?”
He didn’t know what he thought anymore. He didn’t know much of anything except whoever was doing this didn’t give a damn about the effect it was having on Amanda’s mother. The trouble was, Chase was finding out how much he did: Five years, her marriage, the fact that she had given birth to another man’s child—none of those things, he was finding, had changed any aspect of the way he had always felt about Samantha Kincaid.
Chapter Five
They ate at a small lonchería near the square, Chase choosing a table from which he could watch the Land Rover. There wasn’t much conversation. Samantha picked at her meal, pushing the food around rather than eating it, but stoically Chase made himself eat. He worked at appearing as confident as possible, given the fact that nothing was going the way it was supposed to.
It was not until after four that the town began to exhibit signs of renewed life. They wandered out into the plaza, again mingling, again allowing the kidnappers the opportunity to make contact.
But it was a long time later, after the shadows ha
d begun to lengthen across the square at twilight, when Chase felt that instinctive tightening of the muscles along the back of his neck. This time it was a feeling that they were being watched. With Samantha’s growing tension and unspoken distress as the slow hours of their vigil passed, he sure as hell hoped that what he was feeling was valid and not just wishful thinking.
They finally wandered into a cramped little shop that sold painted animals, about the only place they hadn’t visited during the day. The carved wooden shapes on display were fantastical, portraying creatures of myth rather than reality, and the multihued, handpainted designs that covered their soaring wings and abstract bodies were incredibly beautiful, intricately detailed.
Chase watched as Samantha ran her fingers over the smooth surface of one of them, a stylized rendering of a cat. He knew she was thinking about her daughter. About how much any child would love such a toy. In a couple of years, the baby would be old enough to enjoy the carving for its bold, childlike exuberance. Old enough if…
Someone pushed aside the curtain that separated the shop from the heat of the street, and Chase’s gaze swung away from Samantha’s fingers to focus on the doorway. The newcomer was simply dressed, wearing what most of the men they had seen here today had worn—jeans and a cotton shirt. The eyes of the man who had entered met Chase’s and then widened in surprise. Their gazes locked for a second before the man nodded slightly, almost a greeting, and then moved quickly back out the doorway through which he’d entered.
It took Chase maybe ten seconds to remember where he had seen that face. It wasn’t remarkable. A southern face, more mestizos, perhaps, darker and flatter than the faces of most of the nortenos they’d encountered today. But he remembered it, all right. Someone he had dealt with before. Another kidnapping. Another negotiation. Maybe two years ago. In Monterrey, Chase thought.
The man hadn’t expected to see him here. That had been obvious by his reaction, by the shock in his eyes. And then he had disappeared. There was no one else in the shop, and if the man had been sent here by Amanda’s kidnappers, it seemed to Chase that it would have been more natural for him to have stayed. To have spoken to the proprietor. To have spoken to them. The three of them together in the small shop should have provided the perfect opportunity, and yet again, nothing had happened as it should have.