Don't Look Back (35 page)

The muddy boots neared. He growled a bit with an exhale, a old man’s groan gone feral. And then the boots pivoted and the mesh creaked down abruptly, kissing Eve’s forehead. She turned her head quickly so her face wouldn’t touch the bowing bottom. The weight of his sitting brought the mesh to whispering contact with her chest, her stomach. Her hands were up as if to shove back, which every instinct in her body was urging her to do. But her head told her otherwise, and somehow she listened.

Thick fingers reached down and flicked at the laces. A stockinged toe shoved off one boot. It landed on its side with a wet thud. The next came off and remained upright, as if awaiting the foot’s reentry.

Another groan-growl and the weight above her redistributed, mesh rolling south to her stomach, her pelvis, and she waited to be crushed, waited for a telltale yelp to escape through the clamp of her hands.

But it didn’t.

The bed rocked, and the light clicked off, and she lay there beneath him, metal mesh barely touching her skin. He murmured something to himself in Arabic, and then all was silent, save the drops on the roof.

She reminded herself to keep breathing.

They lay there, together in the darkness.

The thought of Nicolas asleep in his bed pried into her mind, and she pried it right back out.

After a time she made out a faint rasp from above. And then another. She timed them, these rasps, gauging their regularity.

The rain increased until there were no individual drops, just the angry hum of an insect swarm, overpowered now and again by thunder.

She moved ever so slightly. Her muscles had been clenched for so long that the first tiny gesture, flattening her shoulders to the floor, brought with it an arthritic ache. She wiggled, doing everything she could to keep from scraping against the bowed underside of the bed. Progress was so slow it seemed she was moving with tiny ripples of her flesh, millimeter by millimeter. Her hips slid free first. One arm. A shoulder. Her head lagged, strands of hair hooked on the mesh. She tugged, the follicles popping one at a time.

He grumbled and shifted. Her eyes were closed, but she heard a whisper of flesh against sheet as an arm slid off the bed. A meaty hand tapped her just below the clavicle. She arched onto her heels and shoulders in a silent scream, her hips and lower torso raised from the hard floor. She opened her eyes. The hand, right there beneath her chin, the pinkie nothing more than a chewed-down nub.

He took another ragged breath, the hand lifted, and the mesh creaked again.

She was free.

She pulled herself upright. He lay facing away, squeezing a pillow between his bare arms. His pants remained on—this was just a rest, she figured, before he resumed his search.

She backed away, checking behind her feet before each step to ensure she struck nothing on her way out. She did not risk a breath until she was in the front room. The machete was embedded deep in the plywood. She considered it for an instant, but prying it free would make noise, and the notion of reentering the bedroom with it seemed beyond the scope of anything she was capable of.

To the front door. A silent turn of the knob. Blessedly silent hinges. She stepped across the threshold. Like a benediction, rain doused her face.

She ran in the mud, slipped, came up sticky. The Jeep waited ahead, the driver’s door cracked as she’d left it. She was sobbing, but without tears or grief or even fear—it just seemed another way of breathing right now. A flash lit the jungle, and seconds later thunder roared.

She ripped the driver’s door open, leapt in, the cracked upholstery powdering beneath her weight. It took some effort to work the key from her wet pocket and fumble it into the ignition. She rolled her lips over her teeth, bit down hard, and turned the key.

Nothing happened.

At first it simply did not register. She turned it again, tapped the gas once, tried a third time. Nothing.

She swallowed a scream of sheer frustration, afraid to make noise even this far from him. Her hands tapped out a quiet panic beat against the wheel, the gold band on her right hand giving off a metallic click. Her sweat-tangled hair had fallen forward in her eyes, and she jerked her head to clear it as she grabbed at the handle to climb out.

Lightning strobed again.

This time she did scream.

Just beyond the hood, al-Gilani stood stooped, rain washing his bare torso. His toes disappeared into the mud. The machete was sheathed across his back. One bulky arm was raised as if to lift a lantern, an item dangling from his hand. Despite the darkness and the slanting rain, she made out what it was.

A positive-terminal lead. From the battery of the Jeep she was sitting in.

He bared his teeth in a kind of smile.

Then he walked calmly to the driver’s side. She hit the lock and lunged to smack down the passenger-side latch as well. He was right there at the window, his breath clouding the glass.

She vaulted across to the passenger side, more from panic than strategy. He pressed his forehead to the driver’s window, and the soft-top canvas to the side pushed in in the shape of his hand.

Calmly, he walked around the rear of the Jeep. She flung herself back across into the driver’s seat. He appeared at the passenger window now, leaning into view, peering at her sideways.

She screamed again.

He seemed to be neither enjoying nor disliking this.

He straightened up. Removed his machete. The soft-top behind the passenger window bent in and then popped, the steel tip poking through. She unlocked the driver’s door and tumbled out. He ran around the hood of the car, and she bolted around the rear, keeping him in sight through the windows—a children’s game of chase around a kitchen table.

Even beneath the woven fronds providing cover to the Jeep, the earth was wet, slippery. One necessity penetrated the roaring clamor in her head: She had to mind her steps. If she went down, he’d pounce.

They kept at it for a few rotations, reversing direction once, then again, then pausing, staring at each other across the hood. For an instant the terror sucked out of the night air and she saw their dance differently, as something mildly ridiculous. He moved again, and she matched him. When he came around the tailgate the next time, she bolted for the canyon’s southern edge. Fueled by panic, her legs seemed to skim across the earth. She could hear his feet slapping mud behind her. Farther away. Farther yet.

Halfway up the slope, she risked a look back. He braced himself with a forearm against a tree trunk, staring up at her, and she understood he was winded. Invigorated, she relaunched into the hill, fighting through brambles and underbrush. The canyon grew denser. She turned but no longer saw him behind.

Passing shoots whipped her cheeks and arms and legs raw. She was unsure how long she ran. Losing sight of the moon, she crested one rise, dipped, crested another. She sensed the canyon diminishing at her back, but she might have been going in circles. At one point she thought she heard the river but couldn’t be sure. She reached a peak and stood on a clifflike outcropping, peering down in the rain to trace the line of the pass through to the next valley.

All the way at the bottom, several hundred yards off, he stood, facing away. Somehow he’d gotten ahead of her. The machete, freed from the sheath, gleamed at his side. His massy shoulders heaved with exertion. Then, as in a dream, he turned.

He looked up at her.

She looked down.

She backed away from the ledge and reversed, running along the ridgeline, descending. She reached the bottom and stared up. A fork of lightning froze him in the very spot where she’d stood minutes before.

The distance between them was sufficient and the terrain rough enough that she was in no immediate danger, but in a way that only made it worse, lending a five-minute buffer to the gruesome fulfillment of her worst fears.

She kept on, retracing her steps, driven back up into the Sierra Madre del Sur. Her mind raced with notions. She should find the river and follow it down to the coast. She should get as far away from his house as possible. She should return to the trails she was familiar with and find someplace to hide.

Don’t do what’s obvious right now. Do
anything
but what he’d expect you to do.

The rain had stopped.

She reached the brink of his canyon and paused for a few precious seconds. The rain had ceased, but the clouds roiled heavily, tugging at the firmament. Every instinct told her to peel toward the river and familiar ground.

But she ran west, away.

Leaves tore at her face. She got one mountainous bulge between her and the canyon and then another before she knelt in the mud.

Past the tip of her shoe sprouted a spiky plant. Noticing the dark leaves with their tiny stinging tendrils, she breathed a prayer of gratitude that she’d missed stepping in them. What had Fortunato called the plant?
Mala mujer.
Bad woman.

The slightest misstep out here could hurt you.

Despite the humidity her lips felt dry, her throat parched. Two sips of water turned into five. She panted.

It took the better part of ten minutes for her to confirm that her uncontrollable shuddering was not due merely to terror but to the fact that she was cold. Her flesh was hard, taut. Her T-shirt fought her every inch of the way off, clinging to her like a second skin.

Flinging it aside, she caught a rippling reflection of herself in a puddle. The stained, wife-beater undershirt. Her hair, stringy with sweat. Her biceps, firm with exertion.

It struck her that she looked a bit like Theresa Hamilton.

Her teeth chattered, adding a counterpoint to the shivering. Deep in Lulu’s bag, beneath the diminishing hunk of cheese, the tiny spirit bottle was wedged, the
DÍAS FELICES ECOLODGE
™ label worn off. At the base of a sugarcane plant, she found a tuft of dead grass that felt mostly dry. She plucked some, nesting it in the swirl of her T-shirt, and doused it with mezcal. One matchbook had been preserved, perfectly dry, in a Baggie.

She struck a match, held the wavering flame out over the dry grass and alcohol. She was so cold, and the fire would be so warming. But it would also signal her location. Was it worth it?

Her mind raced.

Do
anything
but what he’d expect you to do.

She pictured that rippling reflection of herself, a woman not unlike Theresa Hamilton.

Except Theresa failed. Because she did what he
knew
she would. She let fear make her predictable.

Eve would have to be better.

She dropped the match.

Chapter 47

If there was one thing he could do, it was endure. His lungs ached. His legs cried out. But still his feet flashed beneath him. All the pain he took from his muscles. Wrapped it in a ball of thorn and thistle. And hurled it to the heavens.

Bashir led with the machete, the sword of the Prophet, may God’s prayers and blessings be upon him. He shattered through the jungle. Bulled through the underbrush. Branches snapped off across his chest.

He stumbled over a rise and looked down at his house below, hunched to the base of the canyon. She would head west to the river. This was land that she knew. The rest only faceless jungle.

She was agile. Fleet. Thin. She could out
run
him.

But he would out
last
her.

He rimmed the canyon. The rain had ceased, but sweat ran into his eyes, stinging. He reached the brink of the plateau with the rotting log and the ridiculous camping toilet on its side. No footprints. But she would not have been foolish enough to blaze across open ground. The trail led down through the orchids to the river. She would be there. He would find her scrambling along the bank. Her marks in the mud. Hands, feet. He would finish her. And then it would be down to him against the elderly and the enfeebled.

He started across the plateau, but an impulse seized him. She had proved smart, smarter than this. He stopped. He turned. Faced back across the canyon and his little house.

He waited. The bugs were out. Biting. Unpleasant pinches at his ankles and neck.

It took a few minutes, but at last lightning lowered from the heavens. It provided only a flicker of visibility across the unbroken jungle. But a flicker was enough.

To the west, two ridges over, a plume of black smoke rose from the canopy. Thin enough to be manmade.

The hand of Allah had turned him around. Had urged him to wait. He had obeyed. And now he would have his prize.

On light legs he sprinted through the canyon. Up over the first ridge. He lost vantage descending into the jungle again, but he knew these hills well. Knew where to point his feet to bring him to that plume of smoke. He was glad he had forgone boots. He preferred to feel the earth. To sense the tremor of her steps through the soles of his feet.

As he drew near, he slowed. His approach became silent. He circled the spot once, then spiraled in, cinching the noose. Through a break in the underbrush, he spotted a mound of burned grass as big as a bale of hay. The fire had been so big. Why?

An uneasy feeling began in his stomach and crept outward.

Impatiently, he broke cover. Stepped into the open.

Shoe scuffs where the fire had been stomped out. A few deeper prints—running prints—leaving the clearing. Pointing north. He followed them into the leaves. Gone. And then there, again.

Curving around. To head east.

Back to the canyon.

To
his
canyon.

He ran.

The lightness that had helped him float over the ridges was gone. He thundered along. Bones knocking together. Chest on fire. Ligaments stretching.

The door to his house was ajar. He stumbled inside. The cabinets open, rifled.

He searched. The bottle of spiked cooking oil he used to protect against bugs was missing. His bananas, too awkward for her to carry, smashed into the filthy concrete. His canteens emptied onto the floor. Two water bottles missing.

Fury rose in him.