She scanned the far side for signs of her husband but saw nothing. So she stepped out into the open and walked toward the water. When she got up nearly to the edge of it she could see the whole lovely pool. The treetops rimmed the perimeter but directly over the water the sky was clear, and behind her, to the west, the sun angled its rays onto the surface and turned the water to gold. In this gold the reflected trees stood upside down, their trunks rooted to their sponsors at the waterline.
“Bradley?” she asked quietly. Then a little louder, “Brad?”
She watched and waited. A puff of breeze scattered the tree trunks on the water, then they reformed, inverted again. She looked back down the trail and saw just jungle. She started off along the lip of the cenote, walking counterclockwise around it. She saw a pink rubber sandal with a broken thong sitting on the rock. A small ball of foil. A clear plastic bottle cap.
The cenote was not large and in a few minutes she was standing directly across from where she had started. She squinted across the golden surface at the sun-charged jungle.
“Bradley? Brad?”
She walked the rim again. When she was three-quarters of the way around she stopped again and looked around. She felt watched. He wouldn’t let her dangle this long, would he? For what possible reason?
Her heart fluttered lightly and she had the terrible notion that he was not here and had never been here and never would be. The idea made her dizzy. Vertigo and nausea. She looked ahead and took a deep breath. Just then a wad of what looked like white printer paper flew from the jungle and landed on the rock, not twenty feet in front of her. She watched it bounce erratically along the rough surface and quickly stop. It almost rolled into the water. She looked into the foliage from where it had come and saw the palm fronds flickering in the breeze.
“Who are you and what do you want?” She waited and heard nothing. She wondered how long it would take to run back around the cenote and down the path and all the way back to the Castle. Because this was clearly not her husband. A child playing a game, maybe. A trickster taunting a leper for the fun of it. “You don’t scare me.”
With her heart banging against her ribs and her knees wobbling like a stack of empty cans, she lifted the dress and reached into her pocket. She let the dress drop back down, then took her first step toward the round white thing. Halfway there she could see that it was almost certainly a sheet of paper, wadded up tightly. She thought she saw dark markings on the wrinkled facets, letters perhaps or small portions of a larger drawing. But they might be creases. The wad teetered in the breeze.
She stood over it and looked into the jungle, but saw no one. She looked behind her. She looked up into the trees. Then she knelt and with her free hand picked up the paper and stood back up straight. She unfurled it without looking down, alert to the world around her. When it was flat and open she glanced at it and knew what it was.
“Did I do a good drawing of your map?”
She searched for the owner of the voice and it took her a moment to find him. Saturnino stood in the jungle, dressed in camouflage, his face painted like foliage. He stepped into a small clearing and she saw that he had a machete slung over one shoulder and an assault rifle over the other and a proud smile on his face, teeth yellow and lips red against the face paint.
31
Erin’s world went electric green-the man she was looking at, the trees behind him, the sky behind the trees. All a green mirage, luminescent and flickering like neon losing its charge. She thought she was going to faint. “I knew you’d been in my room.”
“As head of security. Yes, of course.”
“Where is he?”
“He is not here. Sadly.”
“Did you kill him?”
“He did not arrive. I waited and watched. Hour after hour. I brought food and water and cocaine for alertness and rum for to be relaxed. There are rumors of a battle with the Zetas and an arrest by the Army. Gringos are said to be involved. But there are rumors of everything in Mexico. Your husband has failed you again, and this is factual. That’s why I am very happy to be seeing you.”
Saturnino had powdered his hair green, as well as the bandage at the hairline of his forehead. His blue eyes shone brightly against the makeup. With the weapons and war paint Saturnino looked like some Pacific fighter left behind in World War II, she thought, or an actor in an action movie.
“They said you were damaged,” she said. “They said you were behaving strangely and sleeping all the time and speaking some language no one knew but you. They said you didn’t recognize anyone.”
“But they are superstitious, Mexicans. The flashlight knocked me out. Yes. The craneo is somewhat broken. It still hurts. I hear voices when there are not people. I hear music when there is no music. I have seen eight ghosts, one bruja and one chupacabra. But I still have my very intelligent brain.”
“Oh.”
Saturnino brushed through the trees and walked around another then onto the wide rock rim of the cenote where Erin stood. She was bad at judging distance but he did not raise his voice when he spoke and she heard him clearly in the jungle stillness.
“You don’t look so much like a leper. They wear sandals not the athletic shoes. They look at the ground and walk slow. You are very much more beautiful. The map I found easy. The bed is a popular hiding place. I took a picture of the map and put the map under the bed. So you would not alarm. Then I drew the map on the paper.”
“You’re a clever one.”
“This is a joke of me?”
“Nothing in the world about you is funny, Saturnino.”
“What is that in your hand?”
“The map.”
“No. The shining gun. What is this gun?”
“It’s the Cowboy Defender.”
“Cowboy Defender! Is very deadly?”
“So they say.”
“Do you know how to shoot it?”
“I fired it at a paper target.”
“Does it recoil very much?”
“Really jumps.”
“The bullets are what design?”
“Beats me. Big slow ones, Brad said.”
“Where did you hide it?”
“In the toilet box.”
“I did not look there. But the ammunition is now made bad from the water.”
“No. The water will not hurt the ammunition.”
“But you do not know this.”
“I’m taking it on faith.”
“Yes? Faith?”
Erin dropped the sheet of paper but kept looking at Saturnino. The gun was heavy. But the sputtering green world of a few moments ago had gone away, and although her knees felt rusted shut her vision was good again and she reminded herself of the cool place inside and tried to find it and go there.
“Are you going to apologize for what you did to me?”
“I wish to complete what I began.”
“I thought so.”
“You are much of what I have been thinking. And you are in the dreams and the visions I have when I am not sleeping.”
“Lucky me.”
He looked at her, puzzled.
“Are you going to kill me when you’re done? Or just beat me up and rape me and walk away?”
“I would not be likely to kill you.”
“Not likely.”
“But what happens is difficult to see before.”
She considered options. She could not outrun him unless she shot him first. And if she managed this, then what? Try to find the rumored villages and marinas of the east? How far east? Were there trails? Wouldn’t the people there just turn her over to Benjamin? She’d be right back at the Castle to continue where she left off, writing a song to earn another day of life? Would Hood deliver the money? Did he even know where she was? Would Armenta honor his deal with either Hood or herself? Or maybe feed them both to the now-ravenous tigers?