by Jim Heskett
Omar’s story puzzled me, for a few reasons. I knew that he had insight into IntelliCraft’s dirty business, but his story almost made it seem like he’d been directly involved in it. And then there was the detail that Kareem had been in this country just a few months ago, looking for someone. Had he been looking for me?
Probably not, because I wasn’t exactly hiding.
Something crashed. Sound of crunching, or maybe glass breaking.
I threw back the covers and tumbled out of bed. Slipped on my pants, then sidled next to the bedroom door. I waited, the pulse of my heartbeats the only thing audible. I leaned out the door, and the darkness of the hallway greeted me. With a squint, I tried to bring the living room into focus.
“Candle?” Omar said. “What was that sound?”
I shushed him, then sneaked across the hall to the master bedroom, careful to let the hallway shadows mask my movement. He was sitting upright in bed, holding the sheets under his chin. Staying perfectly still, like a cat frozen by a sudden sound.
More noises, and the sound of voices. At least two, maybe three.
“Are they here for us?” Omar whispered.
“I don’t know. But get your stuff together. We might have to go out the back.”
He held out his hands. “I have no stuff.”
“Right, I forgot. Just sit tight, then.”
I went back to the hallway, found the messenger bag, and slipped the gun in my waistband. I saw some motion through the living room window. A flickering shadow.
I drew the pistol but kept the nose pointed at the floor. I crept foot over foot through the hallway and into the living room. Since there were windows on two sides of the room, I ducked down and waited for any further motion. Nothing came.
I eased forward until I was close to the front window, and carefully peeled back one of the drapes. Spanish Trail seemed quiet, lit only by the dim glow of one streetlight at the end of the block. A porch light on a house three doors down cast a small area of light, but too many shadows shrouded the rest of the street.
Omar joined me, crawling on his knees through the living room. “Do you see anything?”
“No. It’s too dark out there.”
“Why would they come for us now? Why not yesterday, or tomorrow?”
“I don’t understand anything IntelliCraft does.”
I saw something change. A pair of eyes across the street, appearing disembodied at first. Then I noticed a dark shirt and black pants in the space below those eyes. This person was crouched behind a palm tree in the yard across the street.
I squinted, taking in all the light I could. Two more darkly-dressed people joined the first. They slinked up from the bushes and knelt next to him. One of them wore a backpack, which he dropped on the ground in front of them.
I raised the pistol and pointed it at them through the window. They were too far away to get a good shot at them, but maybe I could scare them off if I caught them off guard.
Who was I kidding? I couldn’t take these people in a gunfight.
Omar panted. “Should we go?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But get ready. When I say, we’re going out the back.”
The three dark figures reached into the backpack, and each of them withdrew something white. Cylindrical.
One of them stood, raised the object above his head, and prepared to throw.
Maybe I’d have to shoot anyway. I wrapped my finger around the trigger.
He launched the white cylinder into the air, and as it flew toward the house next door to my dad’s, I noticed a long white tail streaming behind the cylinder. Was that smoke?
The other two people also stood and made throwing motions. As the objects neared the house next door, I got a better look at what they were throwing.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, lowering the gun. “Toilet paper.”
They each withdrew a few more rolls and hurled them at the house next door, and now I could hear them cheering. I chuckled.
“I do not understand,” Omar said.
“It’s just kids, Omar. They’re playing a prank on whoever lives next door.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief, and Omar seemed to catch on.
“You were brave,” he said. “I am glad you are here with me.”
An involuntary smile curled my lips. A big step from where we were two days ago, him demanding that I pull over so he could flee into a truck stop.
“Yeah, me too. Just one more day, and then this is all over.”
He grinned at me with that strange mix of fear and hope in his eyes, and I knew that whatever happened next, I was responsible for Omar Qureshi’s safety.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jed’s enormous truck got terrible gas mileage. I was burning through the money stashed in my sock quicker than I’d planned. At least when this was over, I could use my credit card to get home because then it wouldn’t matter anymore.
At least, it shouldn’t. With Omar safe and me out of the loop, I couldn’t imagine any reason for them to continue hunting me.
We entered Brownsville in the late afternoon. The town seemed to have ballooned in size over the years, now full of shopping malls, four-lane highways, and the same kind of billboards that marked the rest of Texas.
I hadn’t been there since college, when some friends and I had whirled like a tornado through Padre Island, Corpus Christi, and into Brownsville to cross the border to Matamoros for cheap beers. We treated Mexico like a playground in those days. Drove through the border checkpoint so drunk that they should have thrown us in jail. We acted as if our lives were only going to keep getting better, and we had no reason to think they wouldn’t.
I drove to the southern edge of the city and back around to the east to find this tiny little town of South Point. I hadn’t been near the border since before the big fencing of south Texas. Along the outskirts of Brownsville, a big metal fence kept the town sequestered, just north of the Rio Grande River. But as I followed the fence around, I noticed several sections missing, or replaced with shorter fencing. What good would it do if you could drive a car through it or hop over a section only tall enough to secure a yipping backyard dog?
When we entered South Point, the fence devolved into a series of rusted metal girders. There were breaks for gravel roads. The compact suburb of South Point was little more than gravel and dirt roads and the occasional house, jutting up against what looked like a vast jungly forest.
I found Alaska Road and the turnoff for the pond, along another break in the fence. Made me wonder the point of spending five grand on this coyote. We could just drive south, wade across the river, and be done with it. I hadn’t seen much in the way of border patrol. Or maybe they were hiding, hoping some dumb illegal would think the same thing.
Yellow fields of corn blanketed our approach. I parked the truck where Alaska ended, at the edge of a thick collection of trees. I assumed the pond was beyond it.
“Do we get out now?” Omar said.
I turned on the prepaid phone and checked the time. We had an hour or so until sunset. “Not just yet.”
I got the feeling that parking along this road wasn’t the smartest thing to do, so I drove the dirt road a bit to the north and found a more secluded spot to wait between the trees.
Then we sat back and stared at the dashboard. Each minute, I felt my heart rate scratch a little higher on the chart. “Back at Palm Grove, you told me we had to escape, but we could have walked out the front door, right?”
He cast his eyes at the floor of the truck. “Yes.”
“Why did you make me go through that crazy escape plan with the faking-seizure guy and everything?”
Omar turned his head away. “I am embarrassed. I do not wish to speak of it.”
“Embarrassed?”
He sighed. “I forgot.”
“You forgot what?”
“I forgot that I was allowed to leave at any time. The seizure medications they give me confuse my head at times. So, I forgo
t.”
This answer satisfied me, or at least it made sense. I didn’t feel the need to interrogate him any further, so we sat in the car as the crickets chirped and the sun drifted across the sky and dipped below the horizon. The red flame of the sunset blazed across the flatlands for a hundred miles in every direction.
Finally, when the sky started to darken, I cleared my throat. “Okay, let’s go find this pond.”
Omar reached out and grabbed my hand before I could open the door. “Thank you,” he said. “I could not have done this alone.”
“Just watch out for yourself down there. Wherever you end up, you’re going to have to keep looking over your shoulder, all the time. If you get complacent, Omar, they’re going to catch you.”
“I understand.”
We got out and waded through the thick vegetation for a couple minutes, until we came to a break in the trees. Mosquitos, something I was unaccustomed to experiencing in winter, buzzed around my head and tried to steal a bit of blood from my exposed neck.
After a break in the trees, we came upon the pond. It wasn’t much of a pond, actually, more like a section of the Rio Grande that widened and slowed before continuing on the other end.
There was no one here. Omar pointed at a fallen log, and we sat.
As the sun left completely, I caught a pair of headlights pointed in our direction. My breath caught in my throat.
“Is that him?” Omar said.
“I think so. Yes. It has to be.”
The headlights shut off and a car door opened. Then the beam of a flashlight lit the trees, and a few seconds later, a short Hispanic man in overalls emerged into the clearing. He wore an unmarked baseball cap, pulled low, but I caught his eyes locked onto mine as he climbed over the stump of a tree.
“Are you waiting for me?” he said.
“I think so.”
“And your friend here, he is with you?”
“Yes, this man needs to cross the border.”
The Hispanic man killed his flashlight and stopped a few feet from us, a big grin lighting up his wrinkled face. “You are already almost across the border, amigo. You need to get him to a city.” He flicked his head at Omar. “You, where would you like to go?”
Omar kept his eyes on the ground and shrugged. “I don’t know, somewhere I can be safe. Somewhere no one will find me.”
“I can think of a few options,” the man said. “We can settle that later.”
“How do we do this?” I said.
The coyote rolled back the sleeve of his shirt and checked his watch. “We’re not ready quite yet. Do you have something for me?”
I took the collection of ATM envelopes and passed them to him. He flicked through each one. The exchange had already taken too long for my liking. My mouth felt dry, and swallowing made my throat sore.
“You’ve got your money. Can we get this started now?”
The man laughed as he shoved the envelopes in a pocket. “Easy. You seem nervous, but I can assure you there is no cause for worry.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
He checked his watch again. “We need to stay just a little longer. You should relax. I am going to take Omar somewhere safe, somewhere he can disappear if he likes. Mexico is a big place.”
Fear gripped me like a cold hand, and I felt woozy for a second. The coyote had just used Omar’s name. I thought back to our phone conversation in Three Rivers, and I’d never mentioned Omar by name. Had I? Maybe Vanessa had told him Omar’s name already, but I hadn’t.
“If you like,” he said, “we can go wait in my car. You will maybe be more comfortable if you can sit down until everything is ready.”
A pair of headlights lit up the trees.
“What the hell is that?” I said.
“That’s nothing,” the man said. “No cause for alarm.”
Something was wrong. The coyote’s chest pumped up and down, and I could hear his heavy breathing. His hand inched toward the back of his overalls.
“Run!” I shouted.
Omar took off just as the man drew a pistol. I threw my shoulder into his chest before he could point it at me, knocking him to the ground. The pistol fell from his hand, and as he scrambled to pick it up, I drew my dad’s gun from my waistband, pointed the barrel at his chest, and pulled the trigger.
Blood sprayed my face as the weapon’s recoil vibrated up my shoulder. I’d just killed another man, and I didn’t even think about what I was doing this time. Pure reaction.
My heart was beating so fast I thought I might pass out.
Get the money, my brain shouted. But as I leaned over to find the ATM envelopes, a car door shut, and a shotgun blast echoed through the trees.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I scrambled through the tropical brush in the direction I thought Omar had gone as a voice called out behind me. I couldn’t make out the words over the sound of my own labored breathing, but whoever was behind us wasn’t happy.
I spotted Omar on the other side of the pond and ran as fast as I could around it. My feet sunk into the marshy edges, making loud sucking sounds with each step. “Omar, wait up.”
He turned and I could barely make him out. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but a little residual light silhouetted him. He ducked down and I leaped over tree branches and shrubs to catch up with him.
“What do we do?” he said.
“We run. We run until there’s no other choice.” I raised the pistol. “And then we make a stand if we have to.”
I should have expected the coyote’s betrayal, but maybe I thought I could catch a break, just this once.
We dashed back into the trees, but the collection of gnarled roots and hanging vines made movement too slow. A pointless wish for a machete occurred to me.
We kept slogging through the dense brush as another shotgun blast echoed through the trees, and more indistinguishable shouts echoed around us.
We pushed through to the other side of the trees into a vast cornfield. Stalks as high as my waist swayed in the breeze, swishing back and forth like one symbiotic organism. About a thousand yards away, a rooftop poked out above the stalks of corn.
“There,” I said, pointing at the structure. “We have to get inside there.”
As we ran, I turned to catch yet another set of headlights bounce around the trees behind me. Then the shouts resumed, and the now-closer voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t pay attention to that. I focused all of my energy on running and pushing cornstalks aside, with everything I had. Damn this sympathy pregnancy weight for making me so slow, like trying to run with a bag of sand strapped to my belly. Everything in me jiggled, and I had the distinct feeling I was about to barf up the tamales we’d had for lunch.
Through the cornstalks, the house came into view. It was more like a shack, a one-room structure that reminded me of park ranger cabins at Rocky Mountain National Park. Wooden, with a porch and a brick chimney jutting from the angled roof.
We ran up to the house and I tried the door. It was unlocked. I burst inside to total darkness, and only then it occurred to me that I might have just stumbled into someone’s home.
But nobody came at me. In a few seconds, my eyes adjusted. I took stock of a front door, a back door, and a skinny door, which I assumed was the bathroom. It stayed shut as I slammed the front door behind us.
“What do we do?” Omar said, panic stuttering his words.
“Hide.”
Inside, there was a small kitchen in one corner of the room, and a table. No bed or couch to hide behind. A stark one-room home, or way station, or something similar.
I slid against the wall next to the window facing the direction we’d come from and pointed at a spot next to me. Omar sat on the other side of the window.
“We are going to die,” Omar said.
Maybe. Probably.
“We’re not going to die,” I said as I checked the clip in the pistol. Six bullets left. I reached into my back pocket for the spare clip, but it was
n’t there. Probably fell out while I was chasing Omar. Would six be enough?
Shuffling came through the sound of the cornstalks outside. I lifted the dirty windowpane a couple inches and fired a shot out into the field.
“Hey you motherfuckers!” said a familiar voice. In a second, it registered. Jed. “Did you think I wasn’t gonna find y’all? I got a Lo-Jack on my truck, you stupid sons of bitches.”
I tapped the barrel of the pistol against my forehead. Why hadn’t I thought of that? But then, the other question was, if Jed found us by tracking us with the Lo-Jack, who was the coyote waiting for? Who had he sold us out to?
But the answer seemed obvious.
“We are going to die,” Omar said.
“Stop saying that. It’s not helping.”
“How many bullets you got in that gun, Candle? Cuz I got a whole box of shells with me. I can sit out here in these cornstalks all night and poke a million holes in that little shack you’re sitting in. I ain’t using birdshot no more, and one of my slugs is going to get you, eventually. Why don’t you toss that gun outside before I have to come in there and take it?”
He was right. Taking him on directly was not going to work. The best thing to do would be to bolt out the back door and keep running. Maybe we could get lost in the cornstalks if we kept low and didn’t stop. But then what? Where would we go without safe transportation south?
“Take the truck and go,” I shouted. “If you try to come in here, I’ll put a bullet in you.” I didn’t think he’d go for that option, but it was worth a try.
“Because you still got the keys, asshole.”
I felt my pocket, and I did have the keys.
“But I don’t just want the truck,” Jed said. “I want me a little payback. Carl’s dead, Vanessa’s dead, our little guest staying in the garage is dead. I got nothing to go home to because of you assholes. Did you think I’d just take the truck and leave empty-handed?”
Before I could come up with an answer to that question, another voice joined Jed’s outside.