“No,” I said. “I spent much of the day talking to law enforcement. Where’s Jayne?”
“She couldn’t take it, seeing Jocko this way, the waiting. She had to go home. She has no stomach for this kind of thing.” He laid his head back against the wall. “I should never have brought her out here. She’s a businesswoman. To her, this is all the wild west.”
“You both seem to be doing all right,” I said.
“Thanks to her.”
“What do you mean?”
“We lost more than half our vines to disease two years ago. We weren’t alone. The other vineyards on the south end of the plateau got hit, too. They sold and left. But Jayne’s made some really savvy investments that have kept us afloat. Sonora Hills is coming back. Some of it’s me, sure. I’ve been working with some guys in California, and I’ve got new vines growing now. More disease resistant. But it was Jayne’s doing that bought me the time.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It’s not just God we fight with out here. It’s people like Rodriguez.”
A nurse passed us and went into Jocko’s room. She came out a few minutes later. “He’s awake, Mr. Harris, and asking for you.”
“May we see him?” Harris asked.
“Just for a minute or two. He needs to rest.”
Jocko’s face was swollen. His eyes were at the centers of purple circles. Both lips had been stitched. Above the sheet that lay over him, I saw white bandaging across his chest. An IV ran into his left arm. Monitor wires had been attached to him like the strings of a puppet.
“Jocko, I’m so sorry,” I said.
When he spoke, it was little more than a mumble. “They tell me I’ll live.”
I think he tried to smile.
“What did they want?” Harris asked.
“To know where I flew Cork yesterday.”
I could barely hear him, his voice was so soft. I leaned closer. “Did you tell them?”
He was quiet, then his head rolled a little. “Don’t remember. Sorry, Cork.” His eyes focused. “Find him?”
“He wasn’t there, but I think I know where he might be.”
“Good,” Jocko said. “Bring him home safe.” He closed his eyes and I thought he was out again. But he said one more thing: “Hate to think I got beat to hell for nothing.” His lips twitched, and this time his smile was definite.
Out in the hallway, Harris said, “Where do you think he is? Peter, I mean.” When I didn’t answer, he raised his hands. “That’s okay, I get it. Better I don’t know.”
While I drove to Cadiz, the moon rose at my back. It had been filling since I’d left Tamarack County and was beginning to look like the belly of a pregnant woman. For some reason, I found that promising. I parked a block from the parsonage, walked a roundabout way past the church, and checked the finger of the angel. The ribbon was still there. I wanted to get back to the Santa Margaritas as quickly as I could, but there was nothing I could do in those mountains at night. It had been a long day, and I was tired and needed sleep.
I returned to the parsonage and checked it carefully. No one was waiting to jump me. I brought the hydration pack in from the truck, then propped chairs beneath the knobs of the front and back doors and made sure the windows were locked, although there was nothing I could do about the pane in which Mondragón’s bullet had made a big hole. I thought about showering. I hadn’t cleaned up good in a couple of days and figured I smelled pretty ripe. But bed sounded better, so I lay down with the Winchester for company.
I wondered where Rainy was laying her head that night and tried to trust that she was safe in Mondragón’s keeping. I wondered what they were up to in their long absences, but tried not to wonder too hard. Before I drifted off, I whispered a part of the Pueblo prayer she’d taught me, “Across the dark night, we are not afraid. Our love is the star that guides us.”
And then I was asleep.
CHAPTER 27
* * *
I woke early, still in the dark, and with an idea in my head. Sleep does that sometimes, clears the fog so your brain, which never really shuts down, can see things more clearly. I’d been trying to figure how Sprangers had been able to track me, and now I had a speculation. I knew Customs and Border Patrol in Minnesota were using drones to patrol our border with Canada, which often ran through long stretches of remote wilderness. It made sense to me that they were probably using drones along the Mexican border in the same way. If that was true, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that Sprangers had one monitoring me. It seemed extreme, yet the sense I’d got from Sprangers was that he and everyone else in law enforcement in Coronado County were desperate to net Carlos Rodriguez. If they thought I was good bait, they might well figure the allocation of a drone to track me was justified. I didn’t know much about drones, so I turned on my cell phone and Googled them. There was a lot of technical information, but it took some time to find what I was looking for, which was how to elude detection.
Drones flew at great heights, I read, and a primary method of tracking was thermal imaging. Several websites devoted to foiling government plots suggested trying to mask my thermal image.
Along with the other supplies I’d got on my way out to the Lulabelle, I’d bought a thermal blanket in case I was forced to spend the night in the desert. Although it was a long shot, I thought that if I covered myself completely with the blanket, kept all my body heat from escaping, I might be invisible, or nearly so, to a drone. Worth a try, I figured.
The other possibility was that if they’d actually put a drone on me, they couldn’t keep it in the sky 24/7. Maybe in the dead of night, the thing returned to base.
I left the lights off. If someone was watching the house, I didn’t want them to know I was stirring. I shouldered the hydration pack, wrapped myself in the thermal blanket, covering everything head to toe, grabbed my Winchester, and slipped out the back door. I felt a little ridiculous, like a character from Lord of the Rings in some sort of cloak of invisibility. I’d continued parking the pickup a distance from the parsonage, in case someone had staked out the little house, and I made a dash for it. The streets were empty, no one to spot a crazy man wrapped up in what probably looked like Christmas foil. I drove to the main drag of town, parked, then walked back to the church and checked the statue. The ribbon was still on the angel’s finger.
Where the hell were Rainy and Mondragón? Why hadn’t they visited the statue?