The Jaguar Read Free Page A

purpose, then he snapped the colorful serapes before spreading them over the artifacts. Dust motes rose and swirled in the hard light.
    Back up in the barn he stood at the open door. The wind was still blowing and the early sunlight sparkled through the wet trees to the east.
    Bradley opened his cell phone and made his first call.

3
    T HE TWO DEAD MEN SAT fast in their restraints in the last row of seats, helmets low, bandanas over their faces, and heads lolling like they were asleep. Erin could smell their blood and the various odors of the living. She listened to the automotive sounds inside the van dampened by the sound-absorbing bodies of the men. The men did not wear their helmets or face coverings now and she saw that they were young to middle-aged but none were old.
    At first they tried to ignore her but she caught them looking. Then they studied her more boldly and she looked down. She saw that some wore work boots and some cowboy boots and others athletic shoes and one a pair of huaraches with no socks.
    She sat in the middle seat of the second row, still in the nightgown, a red-and-blue striped serape from the barn pulled over her shoulders. Her nerves were raw and her insides were clenched and in spite of the warm night she was cold. She listened to the engine and the tires on the asphalt and the arrhythmic breathing of the men and the defroster going on and off. She pictured Bradley sitting in the trunk of the Cyclone with his head bleeding, trying to tell her that everything would be all right. And she pictured the baby inside her, his heart tapping away and his cells dividing amid the jolts of fear that he must surely be receiving from her. Such terror and not yet born, thought Erin. This world will be his. His life, four months strong,such a blessing after her failures. She lowered her face to her hands and rubbed hard at her temples and willed the nightmare to end.
    In the dark they drove Interstate Eight near the California/Mexico border then got off at Jacumba and within seconds a boy on a motorbike was leading them from one dirt road to another and another. This road shrunk to a faint trail that allowed them to trundle slowly between hills of rocks. There was a narrow bridge and a short tunnel. Somewhere they crossed into Mexico and Heriberto said to one of his men that he was relieved to be home again where he could drink the water—no more Washington’s revenge. Of course this must be funny to a gringa if she could understand it, he added. Erin’s Spanish was good and she had always loved Mexican music and could play and sing norteño and marimba and fandango songs long before she knew what they were about. But she didn’t laugh at Heriberto’s joke.
    Forty minutes later she was sitting in a small muscular jet shooting into the sunrise at four hundred miles an hour.
    She dozed with her head against a window. Fear had always made her short of breath and groggy and she had always tried to let the grogginess work for her. It had helped her survive possible calamity for twenty-six years: the male tarantulas that emerged by the hundreds that spring evening in the campground outside of Tucson, the runaway horse on the ranch near Austin, the attempted assault in Las Vegas, the car accident in L.A. Panic kills, dad always said. A tough man, fabulous on the harmonica. He’d fought in Vietnam and read Hemingway. So she told herself to stay calm and deliberate and go to the cold place inside that her father had talked about. Steer yourself out of this nightmare.
    She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and tried to empty her mind but she did not sleep. The jet was full of sounds within the baffled roar of the engines. Her ears were trained for sound, and the waking world was a busy place for her. Now melodies and rhythms drifted into her as they often did, new melodies, strange and lovely, some carrying words. Gifts. In the long minutes of forced calm she let her rational mind speak: stay alive, girl,