“Easy now. Let’s be calm. They are safe and sound, Agent McCaleb. Not to worry about that. Their safety, in fact, is in your hands. Not mine.”
McCaleb made a quick study of Crimmins. He had jet black hair and a mustache now. He was growing a beard or needed a shave. He wore pointed-toe boots, black jeans and a denim cowboy shirt with double pockets and a design seam across the chest. His current look put him somewhere between the Good Samaritan and James Noone.
“What do you want?” McCaleb demanded.
Crimmins ignored the question. He spoke in a calm voice. He was confident he had the upper hand.
“I knew if anyone would come, it would be you. I had to take precautions.”
“I said, what do you want? You want me, is that it?”
Crimmins stared wistfully out past McCaleb and shook his head. McCaleb studied the weapon. He could see the safety was off. But the hammer was not cocked back. It was impossible to tell whether Crimmins had chambered a round.
“My last sunset here,” Crimmins said. “I have to leave this place now.”
He looked back at McCaleb, smiling as though inviting McCaleb to acknowledge the loss.
“You performed much better than I had anticipated.”
“It wasn’t me. It was you, Crimmins. You fucked up. You left your fingerprints for them. You told me about this place.”
Crimmins frowned and nodded, acknowledging the mistakes. A long beat of silence went by.
“I know why you came here,” he finally said.
McCaleb did not reply.
“You want to take from me the gift that I gave you.”
McCaleb felt the bile of hate rising and burning in his throat. He remained silent.
“A vengeful man,” Crimmins said. “I thought I told you how fleeting the fulfillment of vengeance is.”
“Is that what you learned, killing all of those people? I bet when you closed your eyes at night, the old man was still there, no matter how many you killed. He wouldn’t go away, would he? What did he do to you, Crimmins, to fuck you up so bad?”
Crimmins tightened his grip on the gun and McCaleb could see his jaw take on a more pronounced line.
“This is not about that,” he responded angrily. “It’s about you. I want you to live. I want to live. None of it will have been worth it unless you live. Don’t you see that? Don’t you feel the bond between us? We are tied together now. We are brothers.”
“You’re crazy, Crimmins.”
“Whatever I am, it is not of my doing.”
“I don’t have time for your excuses. What do you want?”
“I want you to thank me for your life. I want to be left alone. I want time. I need time to move my things and find a new place. You will have to give it to me now.”
“How do I know you even have them? You have a fishing pole. It’s nothing.”
“Because you know me. You know I have them.”
He waited and McCaleb said nothing.
“I was there when you called and groveled to her machine, when you pleaded for her to pick up like a pathetic schoolboy.”
McCaleb felt his anger become shaded with embarrassment.
“Where are they?” he yelled.
“They are close.”
“Bullshit. How’d you get them across the border?”
Crimmins smiled and gestured with the gun.
“The same way you took this across. No questions asked going south. I gave your Graciela a choice. She and the boy could ride up in the front and be on their best behavior or they could ride in the trunk. She acted accordingly.”
“You better not have hurt them.”
McCaleb realized how desperate he sounded and wished he hadn’t said it.
“Whether that happens depends on you.”
“How?”
“I leave now. And you do not follow. You do not attempt to track me. You get in your car and go back up to your boat. You stay by the phone and I will call you from time to time to make sure you are there and not following me. When I know I am safe from you, I will let the woman and the boy go.”
McCaleb shook his head. He knew it was a lie. Killing Graciela and Raymond would be the final misery Crimmins would joyfully and without guilt bestow on him. The ultimate victory. He knew that no matter what happened after, he couldn’t let Crimmins off the beach alive. He had come to Mexico for one reason. He now had to act on it.
Crimmins seemed to know his thoughts and smiled.
“No choice, Agent McCaleb. I walk away from here or they die alone in a black hole. You kill me and no one will find them. Not in time. Starvation, darkness… it is an awful thing. Besides, you forget something.”
He held the gun up again and waited a beat for McCaleb to reply but there was nothing.
“I hope you think of me often,” Crimmins said. “As I shall think of you.”
He started walking toward the light.
“Crimmins,” McCaleb said. “You have nothing.”
Crimmins turned and his eyes dropped to the gun now in McCaleb’s hand. McCaleb took two steps toward him and raised the muzzle of the P7 to his chest.
“You should have checked the duffel bag.”
Crimmins countered by raising the Sig-Sauer to McCaleb’s chest.
“Your gun’s empty, Crimmins.”
McCaleb saw doubt flick through the other man’s eyes. It went by fast but he caught it. He knew then that Crimmins had not checked the gun. He didn’t know that it contained a full clip but no round had been chambered.
“But this one isn’t.”
They stood there, each man holding the muzzle of his gun a foot from the other’s heart. Crimmins looked down at the P7, then up to McCaleb’s eyes. He stared intently, as if trying to read something. In that moment McCaleb thought about the photo in the newspaper article. The piercing eyes that showed no mercy. He knew then that he had those eyes again.
Crimmins pulled the trigger of the Sig-Sauer. The hammer snapped on an empty chamber. McCaleb fired the P7 and watched as Crimmins jerked backward and fell flat on his back on the sand, his arms outstretched at ninety-degree angles, his mouth open in surprise.
McCaleb moved over him and quickly grabbed away the Sig-Sauer. He then used his shirt to wipe off the P7 and dropped it on the sand, just out of the dying man’s reach.
McCaleb got down on his knees and leaned over Crimmins, careful not to get blood on himself.
“Crimmins, I don’t know if I believe in a God, but I’ll hear your confession. Tell me where they are. Help me save them. Finish it with something good.”
“Fuck you,” Crimmins said forcefully, his mouth wet with blood. “They die and that’s on you.”
He raised a hand and pointed a finger at McCaleb. He then dropped it to the sand and seemed drained by the outburst. He moved his lips once more but McCaleb couldn’t hear him. He bent over closer.
“What did you say?”
“I saved you. I gave you life.”
McCaleb stood up then, brushed the sand off his pants and looked down at Crimmins. His eyes were tearing and his mouth was moving as he labored for his final breaths. Their eyes connected and held.
“You’re wrong,” McCaleb said. “I traded you for me. I saved myself.”
McCALEB DROVE ALONG the gravel roads on the bluff over the village of Playa Grande and studied each house and trailer he passed, looking for the telltale sign of a telephone line hookup or a mounted microwave dish. He had all the windows of the car open and each time he came upon a property that fit the search profile, he pulled the ear in close, turned it off and listened.
Not many of the properties were connected to the outside world by telephone or airwaves. McCaleb assumed most of the people who lived in so remote a location chose to do so because they didn’t want that connection. They were expatriates and recluses, people who wanted to be cut off from the rest of the world. It was another reason Crimmins had chosen the place.