by Kim Hornsby
Later, when Tina finished nursing Kai and finally laid her sleeping baby in the crib, she heaved a sigh of relief for the day. Jamey had brought up four Toňa beers from the hotel bar before it closed for the day, and he sat waiting on the room’s balcony that overlooked the market square. The rattan chair crackled as she sat down. “I’ll have one of those,” she said. Now that Kai was down for the night and she wouldn’t nurse for eight hours, she had time to drink a beer and get it out of her system.
Jamey flipped the cap off and handed her the frosty bottle. She took a much-needed swig and looked around. All the balconies co-joined, separated by wrought iron fencing and it was a little disconcerting to see another couple two rooms down, holding hands and talking. With the park sprawled in front of them, it might be a noisy room, but they had a great view of the center of Granada. And they had air conditioning that made a whirring noise inside the room. Here, on the second floor balcony, they’d take turns watching the square during the day when they weren’t out wandering the town. Like Puerto Vallarta except they might not be able to use the video camera here.
They drank their beers in silence, Tina breathing out the worry of the day. Jamey had been able to sleep on the plane, and earlier had promised to be on duty that night with Kai if he woke so she could get some sleep. “I’ll stay up for a bit, watch the square, listen for Kai, watch you sleep,” he’d said. If she started dreaming, Jamey would jump in to see if they could get another read on where Kevin was hiding out with Wyatt.
“It’s nice here. Pretty.” The colonial architecture of the city center was stunningly beautiful and she imagined the history of the town was fascinating. She liked that each building was a different color like sunshine yellow, sky blue, even pale pink. Jamey liked history and would probably drop some information into their conversations in the next few days. Tina looked at her husband whose face looked more relaxed than on the plane. “We’ll find him tomorrow.”
“Yup.”
Wyatt would be asleep at this hour, but tourists still wandered the town. Faint music floated from a restaurant around the corner to the right, and a horse whinnied in front of them. The frigid beer went down smooth as Tina wondered how hard it would be to find a Caucasian child in this town.
“I’ll go out at dawn to pinpoint the accident site,” Jamey said wiping his sweaty brow on his T-shirt.
Tina cooled her face with the beer. “Then we’ll walk around with the photos to ask around.”
Jamey nodded. “First, I’ll take you to the site, see if you get anything, then we begin the search.”
Tina hoped her intuition, her psychic connection, was as strong as Jamey said it was. If so, she might get a clue while walking around tomorrow. “We can go in and out of all the hotels too. See if we pick up anything. Then the grocery stores and see if there’s a toy store.” Their conversations all day had been peppered with ideas of where to look and what to do.
“Gas stations too,” Jamey added, grabbing her hand. “I feel close to the end of this. How ‘bout you?”
Had her husband forgiven her for leaving her balcony post in Puerto Vallarta to rescue a crying Kai? Things had been tense between them for days. “I do too, almost like I can breathe now.”
Jamey kissed her hand and she got that familiar tingle in her belly that presented itself any time her sexy husband had that look on his face. “I love you, Tina. I know I haven’t said it recently, but I do.” She felt her insides weaken. He was just so damned sexy.
“You could prove that you know, Soldier Boy.” She gave him her most provocative smile.
His look pinned her to the chair. “I’ll take that as an invitation. Don’t have to ask me twice.” He gulped the last of his beer and slid to the edge of his chair.
“Oh, look who’s ready to go!” she teased.
“Hey, Darlin’. It’s been too long. And that dream sex the other night doesn’t count before you say anything about ravaging my subconscious self.”
She laughed. “But, in a strange way, it works when we’re too tired to do it consciously.” They grinned at each other.
“Agreed. Just don’t leave me down there, jumper.” He reached over and rubbed his thumb across her jaw. Since this search for Wyatt began, they’d been so preoccupied and exhausted that giving each other pleasure had been the last thing on their minds when they fell into bed at night.
“I won’t leave you. Promise.” Tina remembered another dream where Jamey couldn’t get out or wake up. He’d been stuck down below for days. She’d almost lost him to the dream as his real body lay in Kandahar, comatose. Now, he relied on his wife to get out of the dream, a skill she didn’t really relish. Not only was it too much responsibility, but she wasn’t the expert on getting in and out of dreams. Jamey was. She still hoped that one day they’d wake up to find that Jamey was the jumper again and she’d lost everything.
When they slipped out of their clothes and quietly got into bed, Jamey’s kisses moved down the length of her warm body. Oh yes. The room was air-conditioned but the kissing heated things up quickly and it wasn’t looking like cooling off for a while. She threaded her fingers through Jamey’s hair, which was barely long enough to do this. His touch was intoxicating to her needy body and she melted into the moment. “Oh yes, like that,” she said. His tongue teased her inner thigh then his mouth found the center.
She grabbed handfuls of sheet on either side of her and writhed under Jamey.
“Like this?” he whispered.
She didn’t need to answer in words. Her husband knew exactly what she wanted, where, and how.
Chapter 9
The feeling of pending doom and then tragedy was as strong as if the horse was now lying on top of Wyatt’s small body. Jamey leaned against the small cafe’s pink wall. It was here where the speckled white horse would be scared by another horse and would stumble on the curb. The chain reaction would begin with a firecracker noise, and end with Wyatt’s death. Today was Thursday and he had until Sunday to find Wyatt.
Hotel Granada was across the street, just like Tina said. He had a slight recollection of the building front in his dream but his wife noticed details. The sign hadn’t been readable for either, but now was. The windows, the color. Two skinny dogs scrounged the street for anything to eat, keeping a wide berth from Jamey who stood at the road’s edge. Two women passed by, calling a friendly good morning to him. They wouldn’t know his pulse pounded in his ears with the intensity of the premonition in front of him. On Sunday, two people wouldn’t see the horse falling. The smaller, younger one wouldn’t see the accident unfold because he’d be turned around looking at Kevin who would be buying a beer from a vender.
In the dream, Kevin had let go of Wyatt’s hand and turned away to approach the vendor behind him. He’d never see what happened until it was too late. Wyatt’s small body would be crushed by the thousand pound monster. Someone would try to pull the old lady out of the way, but she’d fall and only her head and shoulders would escape the weight of the giant horse, the rider falling clear of the grizzly scene. Wyatt wouldn’t hear the commotion, the cries, because he had his hands clapped over his ears.
Jamey hurried along the cracked sidewalk back to the park. He needed to calm down before he returned to Tina and Kai who were still asleep in their hotel room. He’d seen a lot of dead bodies in his day as a police officer, and then as a soldier in Afghanistan, but the memory of Wyatt’s little limp body still lying on the ground, made him lean over and retch in the gutter of the cobblestoned street. He straightened, wiped his sweaty forehead, and continued on. The street was empty. It was still early. A taxi pulled up behind him, rolled down his window, and asked if he needed a ride. Probably thought he was hung over and heading home.
“No, gracias,” Jamey said. He wished that he’d brought the photos of Kevin, Rose, and Wyatt to show the driver, just in case. When they left the hotel today, he and Tina would start their campaign of flashing those pictures all over town along with Tina’s business card an
d a cell phone number. Granada wasn’t that big. Everyone said so. Someone must’ve seen them.
Unless they hadn’t arrived yet.
***
Kai pulled hungrily at Tina’s breast, drinking his breakfast. The humming of the air conditioner in the corner window drowned out the sounds of Granada waking up on this cloudy day. Outside their patio door, the sky was full of grey clouds, as the day lightened. Kai hummed as he drank, a sound that Tina wanted to remember always. Often bringing tears to her eyes, his tiny vocalizations were exquisitely dear to her. Even when this child was grown and had his own family, she wanted to always remember the sound of his hum as he swallowed and sucked. And the look of joy on his face as he stroked her small breast with his little fingers. Jamey said he looked like he was playing the violin while he breastfed.
Was her son’s safety compromised in this third world country while they searched for Wyatt? If she believed that to be true, she wouldn’t be here. Jamey would have had to try to find Wyatt without her. The trouble was, her psychic abilities were intertwined with Jamey’s, connected in such a way that the ability worked much better if they were together. She had to be here. As long as her baby had a comfortable place to sleep when he was tired, food, diaper changes and attention and love from his parents, she believed it didn’t matter where they were as long as they were safe. With the stroller/car seat they could take Kai almost anywhere in their search. And, Jamey was a master at co-diapering his son on the run, able to hold him in his strong arms, while Tina wiped, bundled up the dirty one and slapped a fresh diaper on Kai’s round little bottom. Only once had their son squirted into the air before the new diaper reached him and now Jamey aimed the baby away from Tina’s face. Kai loved being dangled from Daddy’s height.
She’d brought baby food and boxes of dried cereal powder from Puerto Vallarta, not sure if they’d have time to find jarred veggies and fruit. The one thing that tugged at Tina’s guilt was that her plan had always been to make her son’s food from organic produce. Fresh food blended in her food processor wasn’t possible while they traveled this way. Tina reminded herself that Kai favored her breast milk to solids, even at seven months, and as long as she kept producing that, she was doing the best thing for him.
After a couple of good burps and some happy smiles, Tina made a fortress of pillows on the king-sized bed and propped her son in a sitting position with his favorite rattle in his hand while she dressed in her navy blue cotton cargo pants and a T-shirt that read “Tina’s Dive Shop” with a sea turtle under the logo. She’d been wearing the same two outfits for ten days now. She’d be glad to get into different clothes once life was back to normal. Buying a new T-shirt seemed needless and almost selfish when they were frantically searching for little Wyatt before he got trampled by a horse. Their condo in Puerto Vallarta had had laundry facilities so at least they’d been able to wash their few clothes every couple days.
As she pulled a brush through her long brown hair and fastened it in a ponytail, the door to the room opened and Jamey walked in. “Hello, my little family,” he said in a baby voice to Kai on the bed.
Tina searched her husband’s face for a clue to his mood. “Any luck out there?” They no longer used conversational niceties, going straight to news of finding Wyatt instead.
Jamey reached for his son and lifted him into his arms. “I saw the accident again, on the street in front of the restaurant.” His voice was monotone, an eerie contrast to his words to Kai. “Good morning, Kai Kai,” he said, kissing the folds of his son’s neck, then clutching him to his chest in a needy way.
When Jamey finished the hug, Kai shook his rattle and smiled, reaching for his Daddy’s sunglasses hanging on a neoprene fastener around Jamey’s neck. The baby dropped the rattle and tried to put the Maui Jims in his mouth. “Didn’t Mommy feed you?” Jamey crossed the room to kiss Tina on the lips and smile at her. “Seeing the accident was good news, I guess.”
Tina nodded. In a normal situation she would make reference to the fantastic sex last night, but when she imagined saying something out loud, it seemed too crass in light of their mission. Especially when Jamey just said he saw the accident. “Is the town waking up? Should we eat something and head out?” she asked.
Jamey stood at the glass door leading to the balcony, looking out. “Yup. We’re going to find Wyatt today if I have to search every house, hotel, and building in this town myself. And if we don’t, I’m going to the police. I don’t care what Carrie says. This has gone on long enough. Let’s see if we can get the police involved in this third world country. Maybe they can scare up a child abductor. The worst mistake Carrie has made so far might have been not calling in the police. Protecting that mother fucker.”
After coffee, eggs, and toast at the hotel coffee shop, they took off to wander the town of Granada. If they hadn’t had a dire mission, Tina would’ve loved to be a tourist in this town. It was charmingly picturesque with the old-world, colonial look. The yellow church, the pastel-colored buildings, stark white trim, and dark wood pillars. The square park in front of the hotel was filled with shade trees, hiding the craft vendor booths recently set up for the day.
Jamey pushed Kai’s stroller through the park while Tina flashed photos of Wyatt and his abductors to everyone, giving out her business card with her cell phone number. Knowing that the Spanish culture adored children and valued family life with a fervor comparable to the catholic religion, she and Jamey had agreed to say that the child they were searching for had been abducted by the two adults in the picture. Call the number if they saw the threesome. If anyone wanted to converse in Spanish, Jamey had to do the talking, but the plan had been for Tina to not correct anyone who thought Tina was the boy’s mother, as she spoke with sympathetic listeners. Jamey remained available, but a mother’s grief garnered more help than a father’s anger. They hoped to remain undercover if Kevin and Rose were nearby. Kevin had only seen Jamey running after his truck in Puerto Vallarta. Not Tina. He had no idea that Tina was with him or that they were traveling with a baby. If Kevin was looking for Jamey, which was highly unlikely, he wouldn’t suspect that the couple wandering around town with a stroller was on his trail. Jamey wore a baggy T-shirt to hide his toned physique, along with sunglasses and a local straw hat. Although Kevin didn’t know Tina except for a brief conversation with her at the wedding, she wore a loose dress and a hat like Jamey. Tina hoped they looked like Joe and Judy Tourist.
They travelled the planned hipica route down Xalteva around the park to Calzada, a street that was more like a wide promenade to Lake Nicaragua at the bottom of the route. This was the accident street. Taking turns, Jamey and Tina ducked into shops, restaurants, and businesses to ask if anyone had seen the couple in the picture. When Jamey showed her the accident site, she confirmed the look of the Hotel, juice bar, and the shops. “This is it.” She took a deep breath hoping that the horse never fell on Sunday. “If we find Wyatt before then, we have to try to keep that horse from falling on the old lady,” Tina said.
Jamey agreed.
By one p.m., Kai was cranky from being in the stroller too much and Tina headed back to the hotel with him in her arms, pushing the stroller. She’d let him sleep in the air-conditioned quiet of the hotel room. Jamey’s plan was to finish the parade route, then branch off to the restaurants and hotels off the beaten path. He’d then catch a taxi to the grocery stores and gas stations.
When he arrived back at the hotel at four o’clock the look on his face said it all. He hadn’t found a single soul in the town who’d seen Kevin, Rose, Wyatt, or the truck. “Maybe they haven’t arrived, Jamey.”
“Entirely possible. It’s a four day drive, six if you stop to sleep.” He carried two beers he’d probably bought downstairs. She wished she could have one, but it wasn’t a good idea. Too early. They took Kai out to the balcony to watch the street. Jamey chugged the beer and then took Kai from Tina’s arms. “Have you been out here watching?”
“The whole time, except for wh
en I had to pee.” She’d seen plenty and had even been called to by some American guys from Boston to come down and have a drink with them. Tina was sure they’d have never been interested if she’d had Kai in her arms. There’d been no sign of Kevin, Rose, or Wyatt. “If you want to stay with Kai, he’s had his cereal and a good feed. I can go out and ask around for a few hours before dark.”
Jamey drained the bottle and reached for the water on the little table between their chairs. “I probably needed to hydrate on this first, not the beer. Man that was good.” He bounced a giggling Kai on his lap and smiled at his baby. “Okay, but don’t stay out late, and be careful out there. I think this town is safe for an American tourist girl, but you know.”
She did know. He worried. Especially now. Since the birth of their son, Jamey had taken on an almost manic protectiveness. Not just for the baby, but for her too, and she’d had many conversations with her husband about how capable she was and how she’d existed just fine before she’d met him. He’d told her it was something he couldn’t seem to completely control. “Don’t go into any seedy neighborhoods.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said kissing both her boys. And while Jamey distracted Kai, Tina slipped quietly out the door of their hotel room. Daddy and Kai would have some quality time together while she wandered around to see if she could pick up on anything. If Kevin and Rose hadn’t arrived in Granada yet, that would explain why they weren’t getting any intuitive feelings and why no one in town seemed to have seen them.
Tina walked around the town for an hour without any hints of Kevin or Rose coming through, then took a taxi to the road that led to Managua, asked the driver to wait for her and got out. She stood staring at the traffic that drove in from the capital city, took a deep breath, and concentrated on the black truck and the threesome that would drive along this road to get to town. Nothing. After five minutes, she got back in the taxi and told the confused driver to take her to the grocery store.