The bed frame was dark hardwood, the bedding high and plump. A handsome leather armchair sat with its back to a window and a hardbound copy of Garcia Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons propped up on its seat. It was the English translation. There were two hand-carved wardrobes and between them an oval full-length mirror in a swiveling frame. She pulled open one of the wardrobes and found it full of women’s clothes, her size, new, with the tags on. She felt a ripple of invasion down her back and closed the door.
Along one wall were a long table and chairs and on the table was a basket of fruit and bread and bottles of wine and water and juices. She lifted the white envelope that was propped against a wine bottle. Her first name was written across the front of it in crude longhand. Inside was a card with the letters BJCA embossed near the top. More of the longhand: Welcome to my home-Benjamin Juan Carlos Armenta. Another unpleasant ripple went down her back and she dropped the card and envelope to the table.
In the far corner stood a desk and chair. There was a lamp and a DVD player on the desktop, and a yellow legal pad with what looked like an expensive pen lying across the top sheet. She thought of her mother, who had always laid out pads of paper and freshly sharpened pencils on her desk at home, to encourage her to write and draw. Between two gray onyx bookends carved as crocodile heads were a Spanish-English dictionary, Rock ’n Roll in L.A., and three Harlequin bodice-rippers.
The bathroom was large, with a red marble tub and aged copper fixtures that had taken on the same deep patina as the ceiling. She looked at her face in the mirror and saw the exhaustion in it. Find strength. Create strength. Come to me by moonlight, sugar! You’re going to have to do better than that, she thought. A whole lot better.
She sat down heavily on the edge of the tub and reached under her nightgown and slowly worked the derringer away from her upper calf. She felt the air hit the chafed skin and she rubbed the raw and painful indentation the weapon had left. It was one of the hideout options: take it if you need it. Bradley had shown her how to operate the gun but she wasn’t too good. Two big bullets. Loud and lethal. Intended for pocket or purse.
But fifteen hours ago Erin had had neither pocket nor purse as she heard the men in the next room, their voices urgent. So she used tape from the first-aid kit, and grabbed some fifties off the roll and folded them over twice and taped them along with the gun to her calf. She had barely gotten it all secure when the floor began to move and she grabbed the shotgun off the rack and plopped into the recliner as it swung out. When she looked at the eight armed men who had invaded her home she realized she was at least a captive and likely a corpse and her husband was almost certainly dead and her son would die unborn. She couldn’t remember quite how the shotgun worked and they quickly got it away from her. She had hit at them and burst into tears and clung to the chair arms kicking as they dragged her away.
Now she stood and without counting the money she slipped it into the stack of fat white bath towels on a shelf. Then she lifted off the lid of the toilet flush box and set the gun underwater, down near the float assembly where it was difficult to see. Bubbles hurried up from the barrel. The water wouldn’t damage the gun or the ammo, Bradley had said. He’d told her that a toilet tank was a good hide for a gun for a few days, even a week or two, if it ever came to that. Just remember to shake the water out of the barrel before you used it. Easy.
She stepped back into the room and went to the left wardrobe and set the tape carefully in the pocket of a light jacket. Through the glass and the vine-wound bars of one window she could see the balcony with its profusion of pots and flowers, and beyond the blossoms a swath of jungle, and a sliver of white-sand beach and pale-green water. Prisoner of flowers, she thought, prisoner of paradise.
Propped upright in the corner between two casement windows was a guitar case with its lid open. When she stepped closer Erin saw that it was a Gibson Hummingbird not unlike her own back home. She felt a powerful stab of sorrow and grief as she looked at this beautiful instrument and wondered if she would ever see her Hummingbird again, or her home or husband or even just one thing from her former life.
From behind her Erin heard the electric buzz, hum, and clunk of the door lock opening and she turned to see a young man step into the room. He was tall and sandy-haired, solidly built, and wore a clean white Guayabera shirt and jeans and polished black cowboy boots. The door closed decisively behind him.
“I am Saturnino.”
“Erin.”
“You are in good condition?”
“Very good.”
He smiled at her. He was handsome. “I am the boss of security here. I want to welcome you.”
“I feel kidnapped, not welcomed.”
“You are here. Everything here is my duty to protect. I am in command. Only my father is more powerful.”
He walked close to her and she looked up into his eyes. They were tan, small-pupiled, catlike. She could smell the scent of his body and breath. “You are more beautiful than the many pictures of you I have seen.”
She stepped around him and hooked the serape off the floor with her bare toe and caught it and wrapped it around her shoulders again.
“You are amusing,” he said. “You cannot protect yourself. I will take you when I want you.”
His smile is the devil’s, thought Erin. “I’m Benjamin’s guest.”
“And there is nothing you can do. Or anyone can do.”
“I’ll be sure that Mr. Armenta knows that.”
“He does not control everything, pinche gringa. You are far away from what was real to you. You are nothing in Mexico. Not even a person. You are entirely invisible and entirely alone. You are like the air. You need a strong friend.”
Saturnino smiled again and came up close to her. When he leaned in to kiss her she slapped him hard across the face. In the silence that followed she watched his rage flash and hover, then slowly retreat.
There was a knock at the door. Saturnino unleashed a rapid-fire string of Spanish curses, of which Erin understood most.
“Edgar Ciel,” said the voice behind the door. “In nomine patri et-”
“Go to hell you filthy goat!” yelled Saturnino. He looked at Erin then swiped his card key and pushed open the door.
In stepped a tall slender priest and two young novitiates-a boy and a girl. The priest was very pale, with a sharp nose and ears and thinning light-brown hair. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses his eyes were blue and luminous. He looked sixty. The boy and girl looked to be twelve or thirteen and they stood behind him, hands folded before them, looking at the floor. The priest looked at Erin, then turned his gaze to Saturnino. “What are you doing here, my vile child?”
Saturnino made the sign of a cross with his fingers and held it up to the priest as he circled around him and toward the door. When Saturnino went by he stomped the boy’s foot with his boot and backed out of the room with a nod to Erin. Edgar Ciel pushed the door closed on him. The boy hopped wordlessly on his good foot four times then put the hurt foot back down tentatively.
“I am Father Edgar Ciel.”
“I am Erin McKenna.”
“Did he harm you?”
“He would have.”
“Never be alone with him.”
“He has a key to my room.”
“I will speak to Benjamin.”
“Can he control his son?”
Ciel studied her with his blue eyes. They had a light in them that was cold and possibly wise. Father O’Hora had had that light. “Of course.”