by B. J Daniels
Just before they rounded the corner of the station, Jake called out, “Mom! We almost missed our stop! I hope you haven’t been waiting long.” Then they were around the blind corner where the guards couldn’t see them, couldn’t see that no one was waiting to pick them up. “Run!”
ABBY DIDN’T RELAX until Alpine, Texas disappeared behind them, distant as the rugged volcanic-born mountains that cradled it. The day was hot and dry. They were headed south on Farm Road 118 in the four-wheel drive Explorer Jake had rented, leaving behind grassland and commercial orchards for the rough, seemingly endless mountain country ahead, the road behind them almost empty.
“Stealing a car is too risky and it won’t buy us any more time than renting one,” he’d said a few blocks from the train station after they were sure the security guards hadn’t followed. “Not with Calderone and the FBI after us now. They’ll be on top of anything we do.”
She thought of the guards at the train station and wondered who had alerted them. They’d seemed more interested in Jake than her and Elena. Unlike the man on the train. He seemed to know exactly who he was after. The question was why? What had he wanted? By now she wasn’t sure who was actually after them. Everyone, it seemed.
She glanced back at Elena, strapped into her seat, her gaze focused on the country outside the window. The child seemed to have gotten over her earlier fear of the sudden change in her mother. Now she watched the rugged terrain flash by, her eyes large, her expression excited. Elena had never been outside the small town in Mexico where she’d been born. Nor had she ever seen mountains before. Elena always made the best of any situation. But this situation continued to get worse.
Abby felt sick to her stomach with fear for her daughter. The people after them were trained killers. They wanted the money Julio had stolen. But did they also want Abby Diaz for some reason? And her child?
Jake turned on the radio and adjusted it so most of the sound came out of the back speakers. “There isn’t anywhere we can leave Elena that would be safe,” he said quietly as if reading her mind.
She nodded, the lump in her throat making it impossible to speak for a moment. “I’m just worried.”
“So am I.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “But she should be safe with two former FBI agents taking care of her, don’t you think?” His smiled faded in an instant and his eyes darkened to deep jade. “You really don’t remember anything?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head.
He stared at her for a moment, then the road ahead. “I’ve heard of cases where there’s partial or total memory loss due to a brain injury.”
“Mine’s not due to an injury.”
His gaze ricocheted back to her face. “Then—”
“The doctors said there was nothing physically wrong with me. They think my memory loss was due to shock or repression,” she said, watching his face. “Now that I know who I am, I think it was from discovering someone close to me had tried to kill me.” She met his gaze and held it.
Jake stared at her for a moment, then looked back to the road ahead. “I didn’t try to kill you, Abby. And I’ll prove it to you. I’ll find out who did.”
“We’ll find out.”
He drove in silence for a moment. “You can’t remember what happened six years ago?”
“No,” she said, hoping she wasn’t making a mistake telling him this.
“Or remember…us?”
That was the hardest to admit. “I woke up in a Mexican hospital, burned and in terrible pain, with no memory at all. It’s as if my life began six years ago. Julio told me things, but none of the pieces ever fit. I sensed—” A lost passion? “That there was more. Something I’d lost. Something…important.”
His gaze softened, and his glance at her was almost a caress. He let out a sigh. “Abby, I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you. After what happened, I—” He waved a hand through the air. “I didn’t want to go on. Not without you.”
“But you did.” She hadn’t meant it to sound like an accusation.
“Yeah, I guess I did.” He glanced over at her. “And I guess you still aren’t sure about me, are you?”
She wasn’t sure about anything. Except that she was Abby Diaz. That Elena was Jake’s father. That she and Jake had shared a passion that made her body come alive. Her past played at her memory, bits and pieces that left her worried and afraid of what she’d find when her memory returned. If it returned.
“Didn’t you ever wonder if I might be alive? Question the idea I was dead?” she asked, hearing the hurt in her words.
“Good Lord, no,” he said, reaching over to cup her cheek in his large hand. The hand of a man who worked at hard labor. There was something comforting about that. Strong and solid.
“I saw the end of the building where you’d been just moments before go up in a ball of flame,” he said quietly as he turned back to his driving. “I knew you couldn’t have survived that.”
“But when my body wasn’t found—”
“But it was. A body of a woman was found the next day. We just assumed it was yours.”
She nodded and hugging herself against the sudden chill, looked away. “I wonder who she was.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” he told her. “Frank is having the body exhumed. But Julio said it was some woman who worked with him.”
“How do you explain the evidence I found in the envelope?” she asked, wondering why Julio had planned to burn it. Could he have been trying to protect her? Or someone else?
“I can’t,” he said simply. “All I can tell you is none of it is true.”
They drove along for a few miles to only the sound of Elena singing softly along with the radio.
“Tell me about Abby, the one you knew,” she implored. “Tell me what I was like. Who I was. But first, Jake, tell me—was I raised by my grandmother?” She held her breath, terrified of the answer. If that memory hadn’t been real, then—
“Ana,” he said.
She looked startled.
He nodded. “Yes, the same name you gave Elena’s doll.”
She frowned. “Julio told me my grandmother was named Carmela. The name sounded wrong. When Elena wanted help naming her doll, I suggested Ana. I liked the name.” She looked over at Jake. “The grandmother I remember was a very kind, generous, loving woman.”
“She was,” he agreed. “You adored her.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Is she still alive?”
He shook his head. “Ana Fuentes passed away a year before you were—lost,” he finished.
She sighed, relieved to hear that her grandmother hadn’t died while she’d been held captive in Mexico. That would have been too painful to bear. “And my parents?”
He shook his head again. “Your father died before you were born. Your mother when you were just a baby.”
How odd to lose both parents at such a young age. “From accidents?”
Jake nodded, but kept his eyes on the road. Was there more to it?
She stared out at the rugged scenery. “Then I had no one.”
“Just me,” Jake said.
She realized they were nearing some sort of town. She could see a handful of adobe and rock dwellings, but they seemed deserted.
“Study Butte?” Elena said, leaning over the front seat, to read the sign.
“Stew-dy Butte,” he corrected.
As they drew closer, Abby saw that the town was abandoned, the buildings mostly in ruin. “A ghost town,” she whispered and looked over at Jake, wondering why he’d brought them here, of all places.
He didn’t say anything as he drove through the deserted town, then took a narrow dirt road that led up into the hills.
He glanced over at her. “Remember any of this?”
She shook her head. Nothing in the harsh landscape looked familiar. Just isolated and hostile.
“This is where I was raised,” he said after they’d driven up the windy road for a few minutes. “Study Butte was a mining town. M
y grandfather got in on the last of the quicksilver just before it died out.” He glanced over at her. “Like you, I was raised by a grandparent.”
She heard something in his voice she recognized. Regret. Pain. Loss. “What happened to your parents?”
“They weren’t into parenting,” he said tightly. He brought the car to a stop in front of a small adobe building. “My grandfather came to the house one night and brought me here.”
She swallowed, her eyes burning, and reached across to squeeze his hand on the seat between them.
“It wasn’t that bad,” he said, and withdrew his hand, pushing away her sympathy. “I learned to love it here. My grandfather was a lot like your grandmother. He saved me.”
“So we were both orphans,” she said.
“Yeah.” He glanced over the seat at Elena, the lines in his face softening. “Come on,” he said to the child as he shut off the engine. “There’s something I want to show you.”
Elena scrambled from the car to be hoisted up into his strong arms. He looked over at Abby as she got out of the car and tilted his head toward the steep hillside behind the house. The trail up the mountain was faint from lack of use. She glanced back the way they’d come, at the ghost town, now miniature in the distance. Then she followed Jake and Elena up the path through the rocks and cactus.
She could hear Jake pointing out mountains and flowers to Elena.
“What is that smell?” Elena asked, wrinkling up her nose.
He laughed. “Creosote bush,” he said pointing to the short evergreen with tiny yellow flowers on it. “That is the smell of the desert.”
They topped the ridge, stopping in the hollow of a rock outcropping. Jake moved to the edge where the rocks opened. She joined him and caught her breath at the sight before her. The landscape was honeycombed with canyons and caves against a backdrop of jagged mountains, some reddish with the cinnabar that had contained the mercury, the substance that had given the town life—and killed it. Beyond Study Butte, she could see the river that marked the boundary between Texas and Mexico.
“The Rio Grande,” he said proudly as if it was his.
In some way, she realized it was. This was Jake’s home. That place he could always come to that resonated with another time. Did she have such a place?
“The Rio Grande is one of the longest rivers in North America,” he was telling Elena.
She felt his gaze on her.
“You should see the sunsets up here,” he said quietly.
She met his eyes and felt a heat hotter than even the fiery sun hanging in the endless blue overhead. And she knew they’d seen a few sunsets up here, that they’d made love in the hollow of these rocks.
He seemed lost in her eyes as if he could see things she couldn’t, feel things she could only imagine.
“I’m hungry,” Elena said. “Is this where we’re going to eat the food we bought?”
He dragged his gaze away and laughed. “This is the place.”
He started back down the mountainside, but Abby stayed behind for a few moments, trying to see Jake Cantrell as a boy here, wanting to feel the strong roots that had helped form the man.
Something caught her eye. She leaned closer and saw the small hollow in the rocks where the sun glistened off one side. Initials had been laboriously dug into the stone. J.C.
JAKE TOOK the trail down to the house, surveying the dirt road and the familiar hills around it. Elena was at his side. He knew he hadn’t been followed from Alpine. Traffic had been light, and once he’d turned at Study Butte, he’d had the road to himself.
Nor did anyone know about this place. Not even Mitchell. Or the FBI. The only person he’d ever shared it with was Abby. And now his daughter.
As he pointed out the different mountains in the distance to Elena, he felt himself beginning to relax. He hadn’t been back here in years. But he had kept the place after his grandfather died. A couple from town took care of the upkeep and he kept his name off the title, burying it under a variety of company names and addresses.
He hadn’t done it out of paranoia, but the simple desire for privacy. Study Butte was too much of himself. He hadn’t wanted to share that part of him with anyone. Except Abby.
He turned to look back at her. Her dark hair shone in the sunlight. It swung around her shoulders as she moved toward him, her hips swaying, thighs strong and muscular against the denim of her jeans, the soft hint of her breasts beneath the embroidered top.
“Did you see the mountains?” Elena asked excitedly. “Daddy says they named a canyon in Big Bend just for me. Santa Elena Canyon. He says the walls of the canyon are so high and narrow that the river roars through it. The Apaches used to believe that anyone who went into the canyon would never be seen again.”
Abby laughed, the sound heartrending.
Jake wished there was a place that the three of them could go and never be seen again.
“Can we go there someday? Can we see it?” Elena pleaded.
Abby ran a hand over her daughter’s dark hair and smiled. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I suppose we could someday.” She looked up at him for confirmation.
“Definitely. The three of us.”
Elena squealed in delight and ran to the car to help with the groceries.
He could see the doubt on Abby’s face. “No one knows about this place but you and me. It’s going to be all right.”
She nodded.
“Or is it me who has you worried?”
She seemed to study him for a moment, then shook her head.
He stepped closer to her, his fingers caressing her smooth cheek as he brushed back her dark hair. Her body came to him as if drawn by magnetism. Or something much more powerful.
He turned her, spooning her body to his as he wrapped her in his arms so they were both facing east. “That’s Big Bend,” he whispered. “And someday we’ll take our daughter there to see her canyon.”
Abby leaned back against him. Her scent mingled with the desert’s. He closed his eyes, breathing it in, letting himself believe for that moment that she was finally starting to trust him and that they were safe.
THE ADOBE DWELLING was small but cozy—and almost familiar, Abby thought, with its tiled floors and wood and wicker furniture.
Jake motioned to the huge claw-foot tub in the bathroom. “If you ladies would like to get a hot bath, I’ll get dinner started.”
A bath. At that moment, Abby couldn’t imagine anything she wanted more.
“Can we have bubbles?” Elena asked excitedly.
Jake produced a bottle of purple bubble bath from the bag of groceries. “Just for you,” he said handing it to Elena. “I thought a girl like you would appreciate a bubble bath.”
Elena giggled as she took the plastic bottle and ran into the bathroom. Jake handed Abby the other supplies he’d bought while she was purchasing clothing for her and Elena. Their fingers brushed and she felt a rush both chemical and electrical. Her breath caught in her throat as a memory flashed bright as Texas sunlight.
“What is it?” Jake asked, suddenly wary.
She stared at him. “I…I think it’s a memory. You and me on a…train? Just the two of us.”
He smiled, relief softening his strong, masculine face. “What do you remember?” he asked gently, seductively.
She felt her face flush with heat, the images so provocative, so sensual, so…sexy. She swallowed. “Just that we were on a train together before today.”
He nodded, studying her as if he didn’t quite believe that was all she’d seen.
“Mommy! Come on!” Elena called from the bathroom.
Face burning, she hurried in to join her daughter, closing the bathroom door behind her. In the mirror over the sink, she saw her high color and knew he’d seen it as well. The images of their lovemaking had burned into her brain like a brand. Her skin tingled with the memory, her breasts heavy and aching, need making her weak. How odd to remember such intimacies with a man who was still a stranger
to her! Worse yet, to want him so desperately.
She filled the tub, bathing Elena first, then shooing her daughter out to help Jake with dinner so she could be alone. She poured in the purple bubble bath. It smelled of lilac. She stepped into the warm water and cool lilac bubbles and slid down with a satisfied “Ahhhhhh.”
Closing her eyes, she reclined in the tub, bubbles up to her chin, and tried not to think about the man in the next room. Impossible! She opened her eyes, remembering the two of them on that other train, remembering enough to make her ache with unbearable longing.
Over dinner, Jake talked about his childhood while they ate fried catfish, hush puppies and coleslaw. Then he told Elena about her great-grandmother Ana. Abby listened, her eyes tearing. She wished Ana could have lived to see Elena, but more than anything, she wished Elena could have known her great-grandmother.
Elena listened, eyes wide, to Jake’s stories, giggling one minute, bashful the next when he turned the full power of his smile on her. Abby’s heart ached watching the two of them.
After dinner, Jake carried a tuckered-out Elena up to one of the two bedrooms. Abby stood in the doorway, listening to the two of them talking quietly, their voices blending in a sweet lullaby.
She watched him lean down to kiss the child on the cheek. Elena grasped him around the neck with both of her small arms and pulled him close.
“Good night, Daddy.” She kissed his cheek.
Jake straightened. Abby could see the effect the words had on him. The effect his daughter had on him. He cleared his throat. “Good night, chica suena.”
Elena giggled. “That’s what Mommy calls me.”
“I know. It’s what her grandmother called her.”
“Good night, Mommy,” she called out as she circled an arm around Sweet Ana, snuggled down under the comforter he pulled over her, and smiled up at him.
Abby had to turn away. She walked out onto the portico and stared up at the magnificent sky. Earlier, the purple tint of twilight had softened the rough edges of the mountains. Now they were etched black against the vast Texas horizon. Stars shimmered in the deep dark blue overhead, dusting the quiet evening in silver starlight. The breeze was warm and dry, perfumed with a mixture of desert scents that pulled at her memory.