Dance of the Bones

“Because he used the same stuff on me,” Gabe said. “It’s like you’re paralyzed or passed out or something.”


“Yes, all of a sudden it was like I couldn’t move. He picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, carried me outside, and threw me into the back of his Border Patrol SUV. Paul was already there. He wasn’t moving, either. And just like that, I was out.”

“What happened next?”

“I woke up when we turned off the highway onto Coleman Road. By then he had put tie wraps around my wrists and around Paul’s, too. I could see that Paul was already awake. Henry stopped the car in the road by a charco.”

“Rattlesnake Skull,” Gabe supplied. The knife cut through the last of the tape on Gabe’s right wrist. It was a huge relief to finally be able to move his arm. “Close the knife and give it to me,” he said. “I’ll cut my left hand loose and then work on your right. But first I need your phone.”

It took some maneuvering for Gabe to wrestle the phone out Tim’s pocket. When he did, it wouldn’t turn on. The battery was dead. Hiding his disappointment, he got back to the task at hand.

“Go on,” he urged as he went back to working on the tape. “Tell me what happened.”

“When Henry got out of the SUV,” Tim continued, “he went around to the tailgate and came up with something that looked like an automatic weapon. While he was out of the car Paul whispered that I should run. I was scared. I didn’t know how I’d be able to do that. I didn’t even know if my legs would work. When Henry opened the door and pulled Paul out, Paul pretended like he was still asleep, but as soon as he was on the ground, he started to struggle and managed to knock the gun out of Henry’s hands.

“The door was still open. I got out and ran as fast as I could, but running in the dark with my hands tied was hard. Then I remembered that YouTube video we watched, the one about that girl getting loose from a tie wrap by bringing her arms down from over her head. That’s what I did, and it worked.”

“But he caught you anyway.”

“He had night--vision goggles. He followed me from the highway and nailed me later when I showed up on Kitt Peak Road. I knew Carlos and Paul were dead by then, and I thought he was going to shoot me, too. He fired one shot just to scare me. He asked about the peanut butter. I told him I left it in a bag on your porch, but by the time we got there, it was gone. You must have already taken it inside. He had to wait awhile before he could get it, and he told me that if it wasn’t there, I was dead. But I never thought he’d take you, Gabe. Never.”

Even in the dark, working with a freed right hand was incredibly easier than what he had done before. Soon Tim’s other hand was loose as well.

“Well, he did,” Gabe said. “And just because he has the diamonds doesn’t mean he won’t kill us anyway.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Henry never thought we’d be able to get loose from the tape, but we did. Now we need to find a way to keep him from killing us.”

“He has guns,” Tim objected. “All we have is a stupid little knife.”

“Then we’ll need to make that knife work for us.” When Gabe heard those determined words come out of his mouth, he wondered where they had come from. The person speaking them sounded brave, and if there was one thing Gabe Ortiz knew about himself, it was that he wasn’t brave.