Toward the Light

by Bonnar Spring

  Tension at returning to the Benavides’ may have shown in her face because the guard only nodded, instead of chatting, when he unlatched the gate. The downstairs hall, where she often encountered Alicia, was silent and empty. Luz hadn’t thought about Alicia much. Once she’d limped out of the stairwell, the shock and her cold hatred toward Bobby overrode her speculation about Alicia that started when Luz had been trapped under Bobby’s desk: Alicia was Martin’s assistant. Martin and Bobby were feuding, possibly embroiled in a power struggle. Alicia was screwing Bobby. She also foraged through Bobby’s papers in his absence. Where Alicia’s loyalty lay was another tangle to unravel.

  Aside from its opulence, the upstairs hall was the same as downstairs, silent and oppressively empty. Until Luz opened Cesar’s door. He ran to her and jumped into her arms. She winced at the collision of boy and bruise.

  “I missed you,” he cried. Although Cesar said no more about her absence, he latched onto her hand when she let him down. His little-boy fingers, soft and warm, curled around hers.

  It was a sunny afternoon, and he begged to go play on their makeshift soccer field. That suited Luz’s stratagem to stick close to Cesar and stay in public places. Initially, as she doddered after the speedy and extremely pent-up Cesar, each footfall launched a fresh ache in her ribs and stomach. Exercise soon loosened stiff muscles, however, and by afternoon’s end, her soreness had subsided.

  Then—too soon—sunset. Back into Cesar’s room, with closed doors and lights casting elongated shadows. A quiet dinner. Cesar got out of the tub, pink and clean, wet hair plastered down. Luz re-buttoned his skewed pajama top. Five minutes until the night nurse’s scheduled arrival.

  The only drawback to having stayed outdoors all afternoon was losing her chance to boot up the old computer on Cesar’s desk to read the information on Bobby’s flash drive. While she was bathing Cesar, though, Luz remembered Evan had a laptop. Before she left tonight, she’d retrieve the drive from its hiding place to get it safely out of the Benavides’ house. Tomorrow, she’d ask Evan to bring his computer over.

  Rat-a-tat-tat—the door opened, and Bobby sauntered in. The smile stretching tightly across his face didn’t hide his derision. Cesar ran toward his father, still holding tight to Luz’s hand. Bobby laughed, sucking all the oxygen out of the room, and ruffled his son’s hair. Luz was trapped again, this time by Cesar’s pudgy fingers.

  “I heard you were out sick yesterday,” said Bobby. “Hope it wasn’t anything serious.”

  The night nurse appeared in the hall behind Bobby. Luz ran out the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  As Luz neared home, two men got out of a dark sedan and stood under the streetlight. One, a stocky man in jeans and cowboy boots, had sat with her and Toño after dinner in the mountains and recounted rambling tales of valor, stories Luz remembered from her childhood.

  The men crossed the street and walked over to her.

  “Hola, I’m Carlos,” said the one she recognized.

  “How is Toño? Are you taking me to him?” Luz hooked her purse over her shoulder and took a step toward their car.

  “We’re going into your house first.” This was the other man. He was better-dressed, a city kid with a twitchy, alert gaze. “We need to get some things.”

  “For Toño?” Surely, they didn’t require anything from her limited stock of medical supplies.

  Carlos responded with a noncommittal shrug. Luz unlatched the gate. Oh—we’re going to get my mother’s ashes. Of course. Despite his injuries, Toño hadn’t forgotten.

  Luz motioned the men inside. The message light on her house phone blinked rhythmically. One message. Evan might’ve been trying to get in touch.

  “Let me check this,” she said.

  Carlos wrenched the phone from her. “No calls.”

  “Tranquilo!” Luz took a step back, scowling. “I’m not calling anyone. I’m getting my message.”

  The men conferred. The young man who wasn’t Carlos but hadn’t introduced himself took the phone from Carlos, punched the appropriate buttons, and held it to Luz’s ear.

  “This is Dr. Hector Guzman calling for Señorita Aranda. Please phone me at your earliest convenience.” He left multiple contact numbers.

  “No calls,” repeated Carlos.

  “Bueno, no hay problema.” At least Evan wasn’t having an emergency. And it was late. She’d phone the doctor tomorrow rather than bother him at home.

  A gun appeared in not-Carlos’ slender, well-manicured hand.

  Cold fear coursed through Luz. She was eleven years old again, and a soldier was pointing a rifle at her. Her father lay twitching, his nerves reacting but his soul already departed. Her mother knelt on the ground beside him. Luz stood between her parents and the man with the rifle.

  Shouts and gunfire came from another clearing. These men had caught Luz and her family when they emerged from their tent to join the main group. Martin Benavides had sliced twice with a machete, severing her father’s arm. He motioned one soldier to remain with Luz and her mother. As he and the other men moved on, the man with the rifle planted his feet and aimed at them.

  Now, tears blinded Luz. All that remained of her mother lay in the small jar on the mantel. No one would save her this time.

  Carlos drew so near she smelled cigarettes and onions on his breath. He stood the same height as Luz and looked straight at her. “Señorita, I swear we are not here to harm you. We came at the request of your cousin; however, he means us to ensure you do exactly as we say.” He held out a long black dress. “Remove all your clothes and put this on.”

  Luz looked mutely from the barrel of the weapon to Carlos’ face. Back to the weapon. “No—please.” They didn’t understand. She would die before she let another man violate her.

  Not-Carlos twitched the gun like a stern parent waggling his finger. “Do it.”

  They came from Toño. Like the night the men in the van abducted her. The guerrillas had learned not to take chances. They played by different rules. Without speaking, Carlos tossed the dress over his shoulder and crossed his arms.

  From Toño. Don’t be afraid. Do as they say.

  Luz began with her sneakers, bending to untie the laces, easing them off her feet, pulling off her socks. She stepped away from them, and Carlos gathered them into a plastic trash bag. Then she undid the buttons on her blouse. She shrugged out of it. Luz refused to look at the men to see if they reacted to her bruises. Unzipped her pants. They fell at her ankles. She stepped out of them. Again, Carlos gathered them. Luz made her mind blank. Bra. Panties. She was ice; she was stone; she was not going to cry.

  Not-Carlos with the gun stared impassively.

  “Your necklace, too.”

  She removed it.

  “And your ring. Okay, turn around.”

  She faced the back wall.

  “Keep turning.”

  She slowly revolved until she again faced the men. They were checking to see she wasn’t concealing anything. They suspected her of—what? She’d saved Toño’s life.

  “For heaven’s sake,” she snapped, “tell me what you want. Stop playing games.”

  “In a minute, señorita.” Carlos tossed her the dress. “Put it on and then sit over there.”

  He took out a comb and pulled it methodically through her hair while his companion kept the gun trained at her chest. He had her open her mouth and shined a flashlight.

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” she burst out when he finally released her jaw. The memory of her father’s death receded as the reality of her present situation intensified.

  Carlos said, “Exactly what were you wearing on the night you were first taken to see our chief?”

  The light of understanding dawned. “A denim skirt and my brown sweater. They’re in the closet. An embroidered blouse. Folded, in the middle drawer. The same sneakers you took.”

  These they added to the sack.

  “And your purse?”

  “Yes, I had that
with me.”

  They dumped it on the coffee table and poked through the contents.

  “Did you have anything else with you that we don’t have here?” Not-Carlos added her purse to the trash bag.

  “No, that’s everything.”

  When they left her apartment, Carlos took the bag of Luz’s belongings and departed on foot, leaving her alone with not-Carlos, which threatened Luz’s tenuous composure. He had Luz lie on the floor of the passenger seat, saying conversationally he’d prefer not to pull the trigger, but if he saw her eyes, he would. A drive of no more than ten minutes brought them to a sharp right turn. He beeped the horn twice, and Luz heard the whir of an electric gate. The car jounced over the curb, inside, and the gate clanged shut with echoing finality.

  “Get up.”

  Luz was in the interior courtyard of a colonial house that had seen better days. Once-graceful arches had crumbled, leaving gaps that exposed rough stone. An untidy mound of damaged roofing tile lay by the main door. Cigarette butts and candy wrappers littered terra-cotta planters that once held flowering vines. Poorly lit and smelling of garbage, it could be a trap after all. Get me out of here.

  A scrawny man leaning heavily on a crutch limped out of the house. After speaking with not-Carlos, he opened the car door. “Come with me.”

  Luz squeezed hard on the door handle of the little sedan; the man bent down to touch her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “Your cousin is upstairs. He’s anxious to see you. Come.”

  So Luz followed the man as he shuffled down a dark hallway. They came to a small room at the far end where a dim light shone. High ceilings, ornate crown moldings, and marble sills attested to its former grandeur. The room itself had a thin coating of whitewash over scabrous green paint.

  Toño sat propped with pillows on a bed in the corner. He looked awful—worse, if possible, than forty-eight hours earlier, when he’d clung to life on her living room floor.

  Luz was sure her face showed her dismay because Toño said, “Don’t worry, Lulu. I’m healing. And it’s all thanks to you.”

  She rushed toward him then and hugged as hard as she dared. Tears came.

  “Oh, Toño,” she sobbed, “you know I would do anything for you. Anything.”

  “All I ask is that you answer, honestly and completely, the questions we have.” Already a line of sweat beaded on Toño’s forehead. He swallowed a few times, then compressed his lips into a tight line.

  “Sit down,” he said, indicating a spindly rush-seated chair. “First, I will tell you some things. Wednesday at dawn when the attack came, I was meeting with my lieutenants. They’d just returned from making inquiries about the information you brought. We’d come to the conclusion that the other guerrilla leaders were as much in the dark as I was. No one had made a preemptive deal.” Toño opened his hands, palms up. “You see what that means, Lulu? None of us are aware of any coup attempt. What that man told you is a lie.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The spindly chair under her creaked as Luz shifted uncomfortably. A lie. The beginning was a lie. They’d tempted her with the prospect of the Frente Popular gaining a seat at the table but never alerted the rebels to the assassination plans. They’d enticed her with the promise of killing her greatest enemy. But that couldn’t be a lie. She was meant to guarantee Martin Benavides’ death. They’d trained her, gotten her into his house. They were providing the bomb.

  Where did the lie end and the truth begin?

  “Next. I didn’t see the start of the attack, but we had sentries posted.” Toño sipped through a straw from a tall glass and set it down, grimacing slightly. “The soldiers shot from four military helicopters. Today, I learned they motored over the mountains in a straight line, not circling to locate the camp. They formed a tight box above our position, hovered, and opened fire without hesitation. They knew exactly where we were.”

  The sick feeling grew in Luz’s stomach. Toño was explaining what his men had done at her apartment. The only outsider brought to their camp, she had—somehow—led government troops to slaughter her friends and relatives.

  For the second time that night, she recalled the melee in the forest after her father died. Her mother’s screams, pelting raindrops, the salty metallic odor of blood and gunpowder. The soldier with the rifle aimed at her. His finger drifted to the trigger. His gaze focused on her chest—right where the bullet would go through her. Then he would shoot her mother where she lay next to her beloved husband. And they would all be gone.

  A movement from the trees behind the soldier caught Luz’s attention. The tumult of her mother’s wailing and the ongoing fight deadened all other sounds. Toño emerged from the underbrush swinging a bolo. He caught the rifle in its loop, and the momentum wrenched it out of the soldier’s hands. Toño yelled over the commotion, “Get out of here. Get your mother and go.”

  Luz hung her head. She couldn’t face him now.

  “I am not going to waste our time asking if you willingly helped them. I can see you did not do so—either intentionally or under duress. Since we’re certain no one followed the van, only one possibility remains: Someone tracked you. These days, devices can be so small you would not notice—in a key ring, coded in a credit card, in any kind of electronics.”

  His equanimity was more than Luz could bear. She burst out crying.

  “Stop it.” Where sympathy would have reduced her to jelly, his harshness braced her. It took a few sniffles for her to wind down.

  “That’s better,” he said. “I have a plan to determine if this is the case. For it to work, you’ll have to remain out of sight tomorrow. It’s still your day off, yes?”

  Luz nodded. Evan will have to cope on his own.

  “Good. You will be our guest until Monday morning.”

  “The idea is for no one to be sure exactly where I am?”

  Toño’s head bobbed in approval before she finished. “Yes, you catch on fast. My good friend Carlos has begun a circuitous journey to the mountains with your belongings. He’ll spend the weekend—not too far from where you were before—in an area we will monitor from nearby. If there’s a nibble on our line, we won’t be trapped this time. Instead, we’ll turn their certainty against them.”

  Toño rapped twice on the wall by his bed. Instantly, not-Carlos and a distinguished man in a dark suit came in and took seats at a table.

  Toño took another sip of water. “So now, my cousin, we come to the part where you tell us everything about how you come to be here.”

  Everything. That was going to be tricky.

  “You know about my mother,” Luz began. “She died in April. Then, last summer, I started having headaches and trouble with my balance.” Luz told them about her deteriorating health, the diagnosis, how she’d decided on suicide, how Richard had caught on to her plans, failed to change her mind, and then, realizing her determination to end her life, had offered her a tantalizing opportunity.

  Toño’s expression became grim as Luz recited the bald facts that had caused her so much pain, but no one interrupted until this point.

  “Who is this Richard Clement?” asked the man in the suit.

  It was a question she’d been reluctant to ask herself until now. When she’d visited Toño in the mountains, Luz had referred merely to “the U.S. government” and “a man from the State Department.” Now Luz backtracked, trying to be thorough. She explained about resettlement in the U.S., how the man in charge of their welfare remained friendly with her and her mother.

  Toño’s men took her slowly through meeting with Richard and John—when, where, what each man said—the stay in Miami—more who, what, when, where—her arrival in Guatemala and getting information from Evan on the bus, her interview.

  Not-Carlos asked, “So it was your impression the job at the Benavides’ had been arranged ahead of time?”

  “Yes, almost certainly.”

  A look passed between the two men. The suit said to not-Carlos, “I told you.” And to Luz, “Then wh
at happened?”

  Luz described meeting Cesar, explained her duties. She went on to the second meeting with Evan at the market, faltering a bit when she spoke of her first upsetting encounter with Martin Benavides—and its aftermath of sex with Evan.

  “That’s where things stood last weekend when I visited you in the mountains,” she told her cousin. “Your not knowing the plans was perplexing enough, but since I’ve been home, things have become really confusing.”

  “Like what?” asked Toño.

  Reluctant to admit her wavering resolve to men who’d been at war for decades with Martin and the government he controlled, Luz started with “Like Richard sneaked into my apartment yesterday afternoon.”

  “Wait.” The man in the suit held up a hand. “He’s in Guatemala?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, her body slumping. “He first came to my place yesterday morning.”

  The silence in the room at her revelation was so absolute Luz imagined she heard shifts and creaks as the old house settled into the ground.

  “While I was there?” Toño asked finally, not voicing the obvious while I was totally helpless.

  Luz described how she’d spirited Richard off to a café but had been too flustered to keep her story straight, leading to his suspicions. When she mentioned her worry about electronic bugging, her interrogators slowed way down. Then, since she couldn’t recap everything without revealing Evan’s role, she had to explain how she’d complied with Toño’s request—command—to break things off with him, but that Evan had returned to offer his help. His report about Richard’s interest in her kitchen and Luz’s early-morning discovery of the sugar only confused them.

  “Will this Evan become meddlesome if he can’t reach you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Luz said, praying she was right. “Because Richard is staying with him and we aren’t positive my apartment is, you know, private, we agreed not to meet except at the market. I don’t normally go on Sundays, but he—they—might wonder if I miss Monday.”