Or perhaps he did. After all, he decided to allow me on the trip to the ranch in the end. But it had been Esteban who told me that this morning, not him, and I was starting to think it had been Esteban’s idea as well.
I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t noticed his roving eyes on me, either. Just this morning as I sat outside on the front bench and sipped my coffee, wearing just a camisole and shorts, he couldn’t keep his eyes off me as he told me the news. Same with on the helicopter. Esteban had been ballsy to do it in front of my husband as well. Not that I felt bad about it — Javier deserved that and then some — but it made me a little uneasy about being around Esteban now. He’d been my closest companion over these last horrible months, but the sexually charged looks threatened to push our relationship in another direction.
It scared me. It also made my heart flip and my thighs clench, just a little bit. Enough that I noticed. Enough that I liked it. And that scared me even more. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to handle any sort of temptation like that.
I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to handle anything. And now I was in the middle of Mexico, in a hot, unyielding desert, wondering if it had been the right decision to come here, even though it’s what I had wanted. I had felt trapped and isolated at home, but at least it was still my home. This place was a stranger to me and I felt like I was at its mercy.
“Here we go,” Evelyn said, pushing open another door further down one of the halls. It was much smaller, but it had an en suite bathroom, and the heavily locked French door looked like it opened to the wraparound porch. I could already see myself having my morning coffee here and watching the horses run in the distance. At least there was that.
“Thank you, it’s perfect,” I said and her face lit right up. Minutes later she returned with my bags — I didn’t know how to pack light but she was surprisingly strong — and I shut the door behind her, collapsing onto the bed. The mattress was on the firm side but I found myself drifting off within minutes.
I’m not sure how long I was out but the screaming woke me up. I knew it had been coming — I’d learned to accept the screams as progress — but they still rattled me. I lay there, breathing hard, having a hard time seeing the progress in any of this. I felt like I was just spinning my wheels.
And the screaming didn’t stop, no matter how long I tried to wait it out. I’d been filled in by Esteban about the man in the tunnel, federale agent Evaristo Sanchez, and I still thought the risk we were taking was too great. I didn’t take any pleasure in this, because whatever horrible things Javier and his men were doing to the young agent, I knew that it would be used against us one day.
Finally, I’d had enough. I couldn’t fall asleep, and my heart would not stop racing. I got up, slipping on a pair of suede, low-heeled boots and hat, and headed out into the hallway. I passed by the spacious kitchen with white-washed walls and exposed wood beams on the ceiling.
Evelyn was busy chopping vegetables and cheerfully humming a corrida tune to herself. I told her I was going for a walk, and she warned me to be careful about rattlesnakes. I merely pointed at my boots. The desert hills around San Jose del Cabo where I grew up were equally as dangerous and I knew how to handle myself.
The moment I stepped outside, the thick air blanketing me like an open oven, and the screams began to fade. I headed straight over to the peeling wood fence that housed the horses. The fence seemed to go on forever, dipping over a low hill and fading off into the distance.
I leaned against it, careful not to get splinters on my arms, and a breeze swept off the hills, hot but smelling of hay. A dapple grey horse grazed on tufts of dry grass, its tail swishing. I smiled despite myself. For a moment, I imagined what it would be like to hop on its back and get the hell out of here. Just me and the horse and the desert, no fear, no constraints. Just freedom.
I knew I wouldn’t get far. If I didn’t succumb to the relentless heat and the fact that my cell phone didn’t work out here and I had no idea where I was going, Javier and his men would find me in minutes.
Unless he didn’t, I told myself, and before I knew what I was doing, I was stepping through the fence. Unless he couldn’t care less where you went. Don’t be so na?ve.
I picked up some hay that was gathered near a shanty at the gate and headed across the paddock, hoping I wouldn’t scare the horse. There were other horses here, spread out in small herds, maybe twenty in total, but this horse was the closest. And alone.
“You and me both,” I said under my breath as I quietly approached him.
He kept his eye on me as I came close, but only raised his head at the last minute. I held out the hay, perhaps too fast, and the horse took off, spooked.