Tres Leches Cupcakes

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Benny spoke again, this time in softer Spanish. Horace said something back, and then two sets of footsteps moved toward the front of the house.

  “We’ll be back soon,” Benny said. “Do nothing until we return.”

  The front door closed, and a moment later the Cowboy chuckled. “You sure like thinking yer in charge, don’t ya, Benny?”

  Chapter 37

  So, it’s just you and me, huh, sweetheart?” the Cowboy said to Caro as the engine of a truck started up outside the trailer.

  He laughed at whatever reaction Caro had given him. The laugh once again turned into a cough.

  Sadie’s fists were balled up so tight that her fingernails were cutting into the flesh of her palms. She recognized the rustle of cellophane and knew he was getting a cigarette out of the package.

  “I’d offer you one, but I’m down to my last few. My night’s become far more complicated than I expected. Good thing it’s all about to pay off, right?” More laughing. More coughing. “Now, you best be a good girl so that I keep an open mind on what to do with you when them boys get back with our pipe. Good behavior can go a long ways with me. Man, it’s too dang hot in here.”

  Sadie leaned closer to the door, listening to his footsteps. The sound of his footsteps changed when they hit linoleum, and then a door opened, but not the front door that Horace and Benny had just left through. He was on the back porch.

  She could barely breathe as she realized this was her chance. Perhaps her only one. She’d followed her gut out in the desert and had gotten away; it gave her confidence to act quickly and capture the opportunity in front of her. She closed her eyes and prayed for enough presence of mind to use the next few minutes as wisely as she possibly could. When she opened her eyes, she put her hand on the doorknob and twisted it slowly before pulling open the door. It squeaked. She stopped. Listened. Pulled it open a little more, noting that the door opened into a hallway.

  Poking her head out, she glanced to the right, where the light was coming from. There was a small kitchen with a cracked and faded linoleum floor. She could see the open back door. A wall separated the kitchen from a slightly larger living room set at the front of the trailer.

  Sadie saw Caro in the living room portion, sitting on an old sixties-style chrome and vinyl kitchen chair. Her arms were pulled behind her back, likely tied together around the chair. Her ankles were tied to the legs of the chair. Her head hung forward, and her shoulders shook as she cried, her sobs nearly silent behind the gag—the same dirty bandana that had been shoved down Sadie’s throat a few hours earlier.

  She hadn’t seen Sadie come in, and though startling her wasn’t Sadie’s first choice, she had no time to waste. The average cigarette took seven minutes to smoke; they were well into the second minute.

  She moved as quietly and as carefully as she could into the living room, feeling able to breathe once the separating wall blocked her from the view of the open back door.

  Caro looked up, then visibly startled as she stared at Sadie with wide, scared eyes that immediately began filling with tears again. The right side of her face was red and swollen. She tried to talk behind the gag, but Sadie shook her head, nodding toward the wall separating them from the kitchen. She could smell the cigarette smoke. She had approximately five minutes before he’d come back in—assuming he stayed outside to finish the whole cigarette.

  She immediately bent down and started yanking at the knots tying Caro’s ankles to the chair—feet were more important than arms right now. Thank goodness her son had shown such a propensity for knots when he was young. She never thought she’d be grateful for all the times she had to undo rope swings or shoelaces or ropes tied just for fun. In less than a minute, Caro’s feet were free. Whoever had tied the knots hadn’t seemed too worried about them being untied, which made sense, since even with her feet free, Caro was still tied to the chair.

  The knots around Caro’s wrists were not so kind, however. Sadie worked on them for thirty seconds before just grabbing Caro’s arms instead and lifting her up, bending her arms painfully until they came over the top of the chair.

  Caro whimpered, and Sadie sent her a mental apology; she didn’t dare say anything out loud. She pointed toward the edge of the separating wall and moved forward. Caro nodded and followed after her. When they reached the edge of the wall, Sadie paused and peered around the corner. She couldn’t see the Cowboy, but the back door was still open.

  She put a finger to her lips, then tiptoed toward the bedroom, pushing Caro in front of her while keeping a close eye on the open door. If he came in right now, she didn’t know what she’d do. She’d left the tire iron in the bedroom; maybe she could reach it in time.

  Caro was a picture of obedience, and they crossed the exposed area without incident. Once inside the bedroom, Sadie waved her toward the closet and closed the door carefully before hurrying to join Caro, who stood in front of the open closet door watching Sadie with wide eyes. Sadie removed the gag.

  “Sadie! I thought you were dead!” Caro whispered, but not quiet enough.

  Sadie put a finger to her lips and pointed toward the hole in the floor of the closet. She pulled the flashlight from her pocket and picked up the tire iron from where she’d left it.

  “We need to get you down there,” she whispered, pointing the flashlight beam toward the hole. She put the flashlight in her mouth again—it tasted like dirt—and used both hands on Caro’s ropes.

  She felt the vibrations of the Cowboy’s first few steps inside. She moved faster, frantically pulling at the stubborn knots. She heard the kitchen faucet turn on, buying them a few more seconds. The last knot finally loosened beneath her fingers, and she felt the rope slacken.

  “Sit,” she whispered to Caro, looking over her shoulder at the door. The faucet turned off. Any second now, the Cowboy would discover Caro was gone.

  Caro sat and managed to finish wiggling her hands out of the ropes, which fell to the floor of the closet. She scooted forward and hopped into the hole before turning toward Sadie.

  “Come on,” Caro said.

  Sadie was already scooting toward the hole, trying to take full breaths as the anxiety she’d kept tightly wrapped started seeping out of its bandages.

  “I know yer still here,” the Cowboy suddenly bellowed. “Did you forget what I said ’bout good behavior, ’cause I’m gonna remember that when I find you.”

  Sadie and Caro shared one horrified look.

  “Go!” Sadie whispered.

  Caro ducked into the crawl space, and Sadie scooted to the edge as heavy, angry footsteps shook the floor. She threw the flashlight into the hole at the same moment the bedroom door flew open. She jumped into the opening, but a hand clamped onto her shoulder. Sadie looked up into the raging eyes of a man she’d hoped to never see again. She attempted to twist out of his grasp, but she was trapped half-in and half-out of the hole in the floor.

  “You!” he shouted, grabbing her with his other hand. Light shined up at her from the fallen flashlight.

  “Sadie!” Caro screamed.

  “Go!” Sadie yelled as the Cowboy pulled her upwards, surprising her with his strength. She threw her body to the side, trying to work her way out of the grip he had on her upper arms, but he was stronger than he looked. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into the room and causing her legs to scrape against the edge of the hole; they felt like they were on fire.

  “Hurry!” she yelled toward Caro. “Get help!”

  Chapter 38

  As the Cowboy wrestled Sadie back into the trailer, she didn’t wait for her head to catch up with her situation. She had to fight back before her enemy conquered. She twisted one arm out of his grip and grabbed the tire iron lying at the edge of the opening before jabbing it over and behind her head while the Cowboy attempted to pull her to her feet.

  She was gratified to hear and feel the crack of iron against his skull, but the low-toned growl he let out in response sounded feral and angry; she ha
dn’t hit him hard enough. She swung the tire iron a second time while she attempted to pull out of his grasp by twisting her trapped hand in the direction of his smallest, and weakest, finger. She managed to break his grip, but he grabbed the tire iron from her other hand and wrenched it away from her.

  It was his turn to take a swing, but she used that moment to her advantage, doing a rather weak sweep kick that, though not good form, caused him to lose his balance and fall against the wall behind him.

  Sadie ran for the closet again, but he lunged for her ankles and she pitched forward. She turned to her side as she fell, slamming into the sliding closet door and knocking it off the track. The paneling came down on the Cowboy, but it was cheap and flimsy, and she knew it wouldn’t do much damage. It also blocked her access to the hole.

  She got to her feet and ran for the bedroom door, hoping the closet door would slow him down. It didn’t, and she heard him bellowing at her as he got to his feet, only a few yards behind her.

  “You think we’ve done all this to be bested by the likes of you!”

  He’d left the back door open, but she’d lost her sense of direction and ran toward the front door instead, pulling it open so hard it slammed against the cheap wall behind it.

  Glancing over her shoulder as she crossed the threshold, she saw the Cowboy reach for something on top of the TV. She caught the outline of a gun in his hand, and adrenaline flooded through her as she pushed out the front door. She leaped off the front steps and landed hard on the packed dirt below. A twinge shot up her shin bone, but the pain didn’t stop her as she ran for all she was worth toward the camper she’d seen upon her first survey of the property. She could take cover there. She hoped Caro was safe and far away.

  A shot cut through the air, and a plume of dirt rose ahead and to the left of her. She cut hard to the right, which he’d likely been expecting because another bullet hit just a foot in front of her. She cut to the right again, instead of the instinctual left, and ran hard for the camper. She hadn’t thought it was that far away. The Cowboy was screaming at her, but she couldn’t sort out his words. Every ounce of energy she had was going toward creating distance between them.

  The growl of an engine caught her attention, and she looked to the side as a set of headlights came barreling down the driveway. Were Horace and Benny back already? The thought of all three men coming after her sent a much-needed rush of adrenaline through her system.

  She stared at the camper, certain Benny was about to plow her down if the Cowboy didn’t shoot her first. She tripped and fell hard into the desert grass, the engine whined with increased speed behind her. As she scrambled to her feet, she risked a look over her shoulder in time to see that the truck wasn’t coming toward her at all. Instead, it was heading toward the trailer, where the Cowboy stood on the steps with a gun in his hand.

  He turned his head toward the headlights. But Sadie had a different angle than the Cowboy did, and she could see that the truck coming toward him was jet-black and gleaming in the moonlight as it plowed into the trailer at full throttle.

  The sheet metal of the trailer wrapped around the cab of the truck, twisting off its foundation. The sound of breaking glass and crashing aluminum ripped through the night sky while one lone female voice cried out, “Rex!”

  Chapter 39

  And then Rex drove his truck into the trailer,” Sadie said, concluding her version of events. She was at the hospital, in a private waiting room, wrapped in a blanket and yet still shaking. She’d been checked out in the ER, then asked to return to the police station to give her statement, but she wanted to see Caro and make sure Rex was all right; they were still in the ER, or at least they had been when Sadie was escorted to this room with Marcus. “I thought Rex had gone to meet with Horace and Benny.”

  Marcus shook his head. “He saw that Caro hadn’t come out of the trailer with the men, and when you didn’t come back either, he snuck up on the trailer and was there when Caro crawled out from under the porch. He gave her his phone to call us and told her to get clear of the trailer. He thought he could create a distraction for you, but then when you ran outside, he had a quick change of plans.”

  Sadie was touched. No one had ever crashed into a house for her before, and she hoped it was the beginning of a new relationship between the two of them, though she’d never say so aloud.

  She thought about Rex and Caro and wondered if anything would change between them now. Maybe this little “adventure” would be a new beginning. There was nothing like facing imminent death together to strengthen a relationship.

  “He was able to give his statement? That’s a good sign, right?”

  “He’ll be all right, but those air bags pack quite a punch.”

  Sadie nodded. She knew from experience how aggressive air bags could be. “He saved my life,” she said, still visualizing those final moments.

  Marcus was silent for a few beats. “Anything else you want to add?”

  Sadie shook her head.

  “Can I get you anything before I go?”

  She shook her head again. There was nothing she needed or wanted right now that Marcus could help her find. She wanted to go home and go to bed. But where was home? Her hotel in Albuquerque which was being dusted for prints and fully inventoried since Horace and the Cowboy had searched it earlier? Or Rex and Caro’s house she’d been asked to leave? Had Rex bulldozing the trailer changed things enough that she could expect to be welcomed back?

  “There’s someone else who’d like to talk to you,” Marcus said as he got to his feet. He glanced at his watch. “I’ll call Pete and see where he’s at. I expect he’ll be here within the hour. He should be in cell phone range by now.”

  Sadie nodded, and a new kind of longing washed over her. She would be fine once Pete got there. He’d hold her and let her cry and assure her that everything would be okay. She’d do her best to believe him, and he’d help her find somewhere to sleep. She was so tired.

  She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. It wasn’t that she was cold, rather she just needed the comfort and this was the closest thing to a hug she could get right now.

  Marcus left, and Sadie’s eyes got heavier but she jolted awake when the door opened again. Blinking, she looked up, then jolted again when she recognized the person standing there, grinning at her with nice white teeth set in a round, brown, pockmarked face.

  “Lily?” Sadie asked. But it couldn’t be Lily. This woman was dressed in a black suit, cut to accentuate her curvaceous figure, and she had hair—a sleek black bob that curled beneath her ears. The woman approached the table and held out her hand for Sadie to shake.

  Sadie stared at the faded tattoos on the backs of the woman’s fingers, then up into the familiar and yet unfamiliar face of her former cellmate, Bald Lily, who wasn’t bald anymore. She also had eyebrows, though upon closer inspection, Sadie could see they were penciled in.

  “Agent Lillian Shannon of the Bureau of Land Management, artifact recovery division,” she said, withdrawing her hand and sitting down across from Sadie. “I’m afraid we haven’t been officially introduced.”

  She didn’t sound like Lily either. Lily had a propensity for using improperly conjugated verbs and dropping her consonants.

  “Agent Shannon?” This was Sadie’s contact at the BLM? “What . . . ?” She couldn’t even formulate a question, but her eyes were drawn back to the woman’s hair. Lily had been bald. Could there be two of them? Perhaps identical twins with matching tattoos and very different ambitions in life?

  Agent Shannon reached up with both hands and removed the wig from her head, revealing the completely hairless scalp Sadie remembered all too well. Sadie gasped but tried to cover it with a fake sneeze. It was Lily.

  “Alopecia,” Agent Shannon said, rubbing one hand over her scalp. “It’s an autoimmune disease that kills off hair follicles. It also makes me look like an instant criminal when I’ve got the mind to play that part. And thanks to being a stupid eighteen
-year-old with lots of school spirit, I’ve got the art to fit the part too.” She laced her fingers together and the tattooed letters spelled out “Go Lobos!”

  Sadie looked from Agent Shannon’s large hands to her face. Art? Autoimmune diseases? What did any of that have to do with her having been in Sadie’s jail cell Monday night? “I don’t understand.”

  Agent Shannon—Sadie couldn’t think of her as Lily anymore—smiled a little wider. “Your reports impressed me from the start, and the fact that you not only verified your subjects but had conversations with them was beyond what most of our trained informants do. After those bodies were found, our interest in the site was officially halted, but I pored over your reports and took note of a few details regarding Kyle Langley. We knew someone had sold artifacts from D&E sites, and he’d worked on three of them. A little more research piqued our interest in him even more, and then we found out you’d been arrested, which got me worried. I wondered who exactly I was dealing with, and so I called in a favor with a friend at the police department.”

  “You were spying on me?” Sadie asked.

  “I was making sure we could trust the information you’d given us, that’s all. I didn’t get to ask many of the questions I had, but the ones I tried you didn’t even begin to answer. It validated our trust in you.”

  “Oh,” Sadie said, not sure how to feel about that. “Did Marcus know you’d done that?” She thought of how angry he’d been when he found out Sadie and Pete had kept her BLM connection a secret.

  “Not until he had to, but he took it pretty well. We’ve been working hand in hand since then, combining our knowledge, and, in the process, finding Kyle Langley’s line.”

  “Line?”

  “A chain of brokers and traders, pothunters and experts. He had a pretty extensive ring of people, which made him the ideal contact for Mr. Benito Ojeda, who was looking for a buyer for the pipe that would take down Ethan Standage’s art career.”