Canyon Sacrifice (11 page)

“No. He'll hole up here with her. Carm will go along with whatever line he's feeding her, but only as long as he stays at the canyon. She'll go ballistic if he tries to take her away anywhere. His whole idea will be to make this happen fast, get what he wants and get out.”

“You sound like you know what you're talking about.”

Janelle hesitated.

“He's done this before, hasn't he?” Chuck prodded.

“Yes,” Janelle said, her meek, one-word answer explaining why she wasn't absolutely beside herself with worry, why she was willing to sit here and wait for Miguel's call.

Chuck gave her time to continue.

“It was right after we got together,” she said, speaking softly. “His cousin's daughter, Shanti. She was a little older than Carmelita, eight or nine. It happened so fast, it was over before I even knew about it. He made a quick five hundred bucks. His cousin never found out it was him. I don't think Shanti ever knew what was going on either.” Janelle looked at the tabletop. “The only person I ever told was Clarence, nobody else.”

Chuck groaned, but Clarence came to Janelle's defense. “Like you've never done anything in your life you're ashamed of.”

Chuck glanced away, thinking of how he'd goaded the guy on Maricopa Point, and of the ultimate result of what he'd set in motion. “Okay,” he said, turning to Janelle. He waited until she looked at him. “You agree with Clarence? That this time it's about more than just money?”

“Yes.”

Unless, Chuck realized, it had in fact been Miguel he'd
punched in the gut—in which case the woman from Albuquerque was running things on her own now, and money would be her sole focus.

But the pieces of that puzzle didn't fit. For one thing, someone had come inside the camper while they'd slept to leave the “NO COPS” note—and likely to lure Carmelita away as well. Miguel, from what Chuck now knew of him, could conceivably have pulled off such a feat. But not the woman from Albuquerque. If nothing else, the lightweight camper would have swayed so much at her step that Chuck and Janelle surely would have awakened.

No, this was Miguel's doing. The girls' father must have come into the camper armed and ready to be caught—perhaps
looking
to be caught, looking for the opportunity to face off with Chuck in some sort of perverse showdown.

There was only one thing that could explain Miguel's willingness to take that sort of risk. “He still loves you, doesn't he?” Chuck said to Janelle.

“Yes,” she replied, her eyes downturned.

Clarence confirmed: “And everybody in the South Valley knows it.”

“Can't say as I blame him,” Chuck told her.

She sobbed silently, her shoulders shaking. She rose from the table and buried herself in Chuck's arms. He held her close and watched as Donald's ranger sedan approached through the campground and pulled to a stop at their campsite.

Janelle peered over her shoulder at Donald's car, then up at Chuck in confusion, sniffling and wiping her nose.

“Ready for your tour?” Donald called over to them as he climbed out.

Janelle stiffened. “What's he talking about?”

Chuck waved at Donald, who saw Janelle and wisely remained at the side of his car.

“Look at this as an opportunity,” Chuck told Janelle, holding her at arm's length. “Donald knows every nook and cranny on the South Rim.”

“You think we're going to go off on some joyride when Carmelita's just been kidnapped?” Janelle asked in disbelief. “Besides, what makes you think Miguel's crazy enough to be out in the open somewhere with her?”

She was correct, of course. Chuck never should have arranged the tour with Donald this morning. But from what he'd learned, he was certain the phone call from Miguel would come to him, not Janelle. Despite the additional stress he knew he was putting on his and Janelle's already strained relationship, his overriding goal was to free himself of Janelle and Clarence before Miguel's call came through. That way he could deal with the girls' father on his own, the way he preferred.

“Donald doesn't know anything about what's going on. We're waiting for Miguel's call. We might as well poke around some in the meantime.” Chuck patted his phone in his jeans pocket. “Call me the instant you hear something. I'll do the same.”

“You're not coming with us?” Janelle asked incredulously.

“It's me he wants. We all agree on that. And if it's me he wants, it's me he'll get.” Janelle stared at Chuck, her eyes wide, prompting him to continue quickly. “I agree he's keeping Carm here at the park somewhere, that he hasn't left. Let's poke around, see what we can find. I'll work the village on foot. I can cover lots of ground that way. But you shouldn't be alone, especially with Rosie. Better to go out with Donald.”

“What if she comes back or Miguel brings her back while we're gone?” Janelle asked.

“This won't take long. I'll keep swinging by here. We can't just sit around and do nothing, Jan. Carm deserves more than that from us.”

Chuck motioned Donald over before Janelle could object
any further. He made introductions and explained, after sending Rosie to Janelle's car to fetch her cap, that Rosie's sister was still asleep in the camper. He told Donald he was staying behind to look after Carmelita and work on the transmission-line report. “I'm on final for the tribe,” he said. “They're making lots of noise.”

“For the first time in history the Navajos are in a hurry for something?”

“Marvin Begay's the contract administrator. The elders have him on a short leash.”

“And he's leaning on you to prove himself.”

“More or less.”

“Using others to make himself look good. Sounds like his uncle.”

“I'm just doing my job.”

“Aren't we all?”

“And yours, this morning, is tour guide.”

Janelle scowled at Chuck as she climbed into the back seat of Donald's sedan with Rosie. With a glare of his own, Clarence joined Donald up front and they drove out of the campground. Chuck pulled his phone from his pocket. He was anxious to find out if Rachel knew the whereabouts of the woman from Albuquerque, but his phone rang before he could make the call. The incoming number, listed as an Unknown Caller, began with New Mexico's 505 area code.

“You're alone now,” the caller said, a statement, not a question. The voice was unrecognizable, a synthesized computerization made possible by some sort of smartphone app.

Donald had driven away less than a minute ago. Was Miguel somehow monitoring the campsite? Or was the timing of the call just a coincidence?

“Put on your boots,” the computerized voice commanded. “You're going for a hike.”

“Where to?”

“Catch the shuttle to Hermit's Rest. Call when you get there.”

“If you think I'll just—”

But the caller was gone.

Chuck looked around uneasily. The campground appeared as before, campers going about their business, no sign of Carmelita, no sign of the woman from Albuquerque, no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

Chuck climbed inside the camper. He rooted around among the girls' toys and clothes but came up with nothing more of interest. He slumped on the edge of the sleeping platform. Bowing to the demands of some unrecognizable voice didn't suit him. But what choice did he have?

He swiped at dust motes afloat in a shaft of sunlight angling through a slit in the canvas wall.

“Wait a minute,” he said aloud.

He
did
have a choice. He could walk away. In fact, walking away was exactly what he should do.

Chuck preferred American-style boxing to any other form of fighting. Straight-ahead, take-matters-into-your-own-hands pugilism had been a mainstay of his workouts for as long as he could remember. But there was another way to fight, the Eastern method of feint and counterattack embodied in the disciplines of Judo, Tai Kwan Do, and Karate. The Asian technique of meeting an opponent's strength with weakness never had appealed to Chuck. Yet that was precisely what this situation called for, wasn't it?

He looked at his hands in the shaft of light. His knuckles were knobby and misshapen from years spent pounding the light and heavy bags at the gym. The blue veins that cobwebbed the backs of his hands had become increasingly pronounced over the years as he'd imagined himself, day after day, punching not the workout bags but the face and body of the father he'd never met.

The best way Chuck could assure Carmelita's safety, the
very best way, was to let Miguel win. Carmelita's kidnapping was about punishing Chuck for taking Miguel's place in Janelle's life. Chuck had simply to remove himself from her life, and the struggle with Miguel would be over. Janelle would be free to pay off Miguel, and Miguel would release Carmelita.

By taking himself out of the situation, by walking away, Chuck would accomplish the return of Carmelita to Janelle more quickly and safely than any other option. But if he walked away now, there would be no coming back. If he let Miguel win this first time, there would be no second, because Janelle never would take Chuck back into her life. This guy she was still getting to know who had cleared out as soon as the going got tough? Why should she?

Besides, even if Janelle did take Chuck back, Miguel would come after him again, and again and again, for as long as Chuck and Janelle remained together. If Chuck wanted a future with Janelle and the girls, he had to deal with Miguel now, or he would have to deal with him later. It was one or the other.

Chuck balled his hands into fists, thinking of how Janelle had clung to him just a few minutes ago as her tears had flowed. She was counting on him—
him
—to win Carmelita's release. He pushed himself to a standing position from his perch on the edge of the sleeping platform. It was true he was still getting to know Janelle, still coming to terms with the idea of their quick courtship and quicker marriage. But it was also true that he was deeply in love with her all the same. The last thing he could do, the very last thing, was walk away from her—and from Carmelita and Rosie.

“The deal with being a parent,” a friend once told Chuck, “is that the instant your kids are born, you find out you're perfectly willing to step in front of a speeding truck if that's what it takes to keep them safe.”

Chuck looked around the camper at the girls' scattered belongings.
He had been their stepfather for only three weeks, but already he was fully prepared to do whatever it took to make sure Carmelita and Rosie were safe, including, in this instance, stepping in front of an oncoming truck driven by Janelle's ex.

He set about assembling his daypack, pulling together everything he might need from the storage compartments beneath the camper's bench seats as he considered what, in all likelihood, lay ahead. The computerized voice had said he was going for a hike, and Chuck had a strong suspicion where he was headed.

T
WELVE

11 a.m.

Chuck walked straight to the Central Village shuttle-bus station, prepared to duck from sight at any glimpse of Donald's patrol car. An hour later, he stepped off the Rim Drive shuttle at Hermit's Rest into the rising heat of the nearly cloudless day, his daypack slung over his shoulder.

Rather than call Janelle before leaving camp, he'd left a note in the camper with the vague explanation that he was off doing Miguel's bidding. He'd reasoned he was protecting Janelle, and Rosie, too, by acceding to Miguel's demands on his own and not letting Janelle know where he suspected he was headed. Besides, he'd reassured himself, cell-phone service below the canyon rim was extensive these days; when the time came to let her know specifically what he was up to, he would call.

With the busy midmorning hours past, the cliff-top viewpoint at Hermit's Rest was nearly deserted. Only a handful of tourists braved the midday heat to snap pictures of the murky canyon depths and the North Rim off in the hazy distance. Other than Chuck, no other hikers were preparing to set off into the canyon as afternoon approached.

Chuck stood beneath the small roof that capped the end-of-the-road information kiosk, putting off the call Miguel had directed him to make when he arrived at the trailhead. A large map on the kiosk's information board showed the routes of the two primary trails, Hermit and Boucher, that descended into the canyon from the road's terminus at Hermit's Rest. He knew both trails well, having hiked them numerous times over the course of his work at the Hermit Creek latrine site two years ago.

The combined Hermit/Boucher trail plunged off the edge of the canyon for a mile and a half. Then the routes diverged.
Hermit Trail angled north and dropped deeper into the canyon, paralleling the ridgeline that separated the Hermit and Monument creek drainages. Boucher Trail, meanwhile, curved west along a broad sandstone bench to Dripping Spring and the abandoned home site of prospector Louis Boucher, the original hermit of Hermit Basin. From Louis Boucher's home site, Boucher Trail descended along the west side of Hermit Basin until it met up with Hermit Trail at Hermit Creek Backcountry Campground.