“I’m going to the marina,” she said. “The only way you can stop me is to shoot me. It was nice seeing you again, Saturnino. Goodbye.”
He unslung the rifle. “I will not shoot you. But I shall now explode the Cowboy Defender from your hand!”
He brought the gun to his shoulder and his eye to the rear sight and she saw the barrel roving in a low tight circle. The rifle spat and she heard the bullet whirr past her leg and crack into the jungle behind her.
“Ohhh,” he groaned. “I have the miss!”
He fired again and this time she felt the tug of it going through her dress and when she looked down there was a small hole in the cotton not one inch from where her right hand dangled, holding the Cowboy Defender.
She raised her gun-hand out straight to her side, then lifted it over her head and held it there for just a moment before letting it fall waist high. It was like the routine she did as a high school flag twirler but nobody was shooting at the flags back then. She could see the barrel of Saturnino’s rifle tracking her movements and again it barked sharply and she heard the buzz and sensed the shock of the bullet as it screamed past the back of her hand.
“You play with me, Erin McKenna!”
“I do not play with you!”
She guessed his distance at thirty feet and she remembered more than ten feet away just forget it but she pointed the derringer at him anyway. And she remembered squeeze the trigger, never yank it but she yanked the trigger hard in spite of herself.
The blast screamed through her ears and her hands jumped into the air. Saturnino flinched and lowered his rifle and looked at her. “You?” he gurgled.
“Yes, me, Erin McKenna Jones.”
He raised the rifle but as he tried to set the stock to his cheek he somehow missed, and the barrel circled wildly. A bullet whistled far over her head. His torso swayed and she tried to track it with the barrel of the derringer but she couldn’t get the timing right and keep the little barrel on target. Suddenly, Saturnino rocked back on his heels and his weapon clattered to the rocks. He righted himself clumsily, overcorrecting, then he reached down to pick up the rifle and toppled into the cenote.
The gun smoke hovered in front of her in the humid air. Her ears rang as they had never rung, not on a stage or in an audience or a studio.
Saturnino floated facedown and he raised one arm as if to freestyle but the arm fell and smacked the water and did not come up again. He tried his other arm but he wasn’t able to pull it free to begin a stroke. He was close enough to her that she could see the green dye from his hair mixing with the water, and the blood billowing up around his neck, and the dull twinkle of the machete strapped to his shoulder, blade pointing down at the depths into which it was eager to go.
He stopped moving and she watched him for a minute. Two. The breeze pushed him toward the middle of the pool. The terrible weight of her circumstance came over her at once and she wondered if she could even move. She looked down at the Cowboy Defender, then back at Saturnino. His body bobbed gently and rotated slowly clockwise like a compass needle finding north.
She summoned her strength and concentration then stumbled across the rock rim of the cenote and knelt. She set down her derringer and picked up Saturnino’s gun. It was very heavy and slick with something and it felt foul against her skin. She had no idea how it worked. After a long struggle she finally got the breech to stay open. When she managed this she tilted it over and got a cartridge to fall out. Tears ran down her face. She picked up the Defender and broke it open and the empty shell unseated itself. She pulled it out and tossed it into the jungle. But when she tried to reload the derringer with the shell from Saturnino’s gun there was no way the much longer rifle cartridge would fit her trusty companion. The tears poured off her cheeks and chin and hit her hands as she fumbled with the guns and ammunition, and she realized how utterly nonsensical she was being, and she knew that she was only doing this desperate exercise so she wouldn’t have to face the choices that she would now have to make. You still have one bullet. The cool place. Go there now.
She dropped the gun and cartridge and walked a few feet to an ancient rock bench and sat. She straightened her back and unwound the rebozo and wiped her face with it, then dropped it to the slab. A bird twittered and another answered. When she saw that Saturnino had vanished she stood with a gasp then caught herself. She climbed onto the bench seat and stood on her tiptoes. With the sun off the water she could see his body out near the middle, suspended in the clear water a few feet down.
She sat and stared and took stock. Bradley was gone, perhaps arrested, perhaps worse. He had ordered her to continue walking east toward the lagoons and the ocean if he was not waiting for her at the cenote. She felt betrayed by him but when she pictured him and the memories flashed across her mind’s eye, she missed him terribly too. By now Benjamin Armenta was either aware of her escape, or soon would be. Men would be coming. Hood and the ransom money were God knew where, apparently foiled by the weather. She loved Hood but she felt betrayed by him too. She was hungry and thirsty and her soul was damaged by the killing. She tried to keep these truths from crushing her spirit and her baby. She placed her hands over him and closed her eyes and whispered sweet things to him and she willed her blood to find and fill him with oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and all those elements and molecules she could never quite understand in chemistry class. Make him strong, she ordered her blood. Give him energy and power and most of all, durability.
She took the rebozo and walked over to the guns. Ugly things, she thought. But she picked up the Cowboy Defender and closed it tight on its one bullet and slipped it into the pocket of her shorts. Then she rearranged the rebozo to cover her face as much as possible. Sighing, she lifted Saturnino’s heavy assault rifle and pointed the barrel to the ground and pushed the live cartridge back into the breech. She pushed a button and the action closed with a metallic clank and she saw the slide switch with the red showing and she was not positive, but she was pretty sure, the weapon would now fire.
She picked up the trail on the far side of the cenote and entered the thick jungle. The late afternoon sunlight had waned and the birds and monkeys had started sounding again. She came to a fork and tried to choose the widest, most popular route. She scraped her toe across the untaken path in order to recognize it on her way back should she need to. A good Girl Scout. But why would there be a way back?
She stepped high over a big root that was a snake and when she put her foot down on the other side of it the serpent coiled and struck. The snake’s teeth caught in the loose weave of her dress and when she broke into a run the snagged snake came bouncing along beside her. It was surprisingly heavy. Its body writhed and struggled and slapped against the pathway. Finally Erin stopped and dropped the rifle and grabbed the animal behind the head with both hands and she wrestled the hissing thing free from the fabric and with a scream flung it into the thicket. She picked up the gun and ran on, looking back every few steps to make sure it wasn’t coming after her.
The path ended suddenly and absolutely. She stood panting. Before her the trees towered high and choked out the light and the spaces between them were so small she would have to turn sideways and try to squeeze through. Even these openings were owned by vines and branches and flowering tendrils and a leaf-mounted gecko that looked at her unblinkingly.