Already Gone (24 page)

I open my eyes, and for a moment I don’t know where I am. There’s a thin strip of morning coming in through the break in the curtains, turning the room a cold blue. Diane is lying on the bed with her back to me. I sit up slow, trying not to wake her, then walk out into the hallway.

I hear the delicate sound of dishes coming from the kitchen, and when I turn the corner I see Doug standing at the sink, rinsing a coffee cup.

“Morning,” I say.

He looks back at me, then points to the table. “Have a seat. Want some coffee?”

“Sure.” I pull out one of the chairs and sit down. There is a silver ring of keys sitting on the table next to a folded map.

“I woke up early,” Doug says. “Couldn’t sleep.”

I start to apologize again for dropping in so late, but he stops me before I finish.

“It wasn’t that. I was just thinking about your situation.” He motions toward the hall. “Is Diane still sleeping?”

I nod.

Doug reaches for the coffee pot and fills two cups. He hands one to me, then pulls out a chair and sits down. “I didn’t ask many questions last night. I know you’ll only tell me what you want to tell me, so I didn’t see the point in pushing.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Well, you might not in a minute.” Doug takes the key ring off the table. “These are the keys to my place in El Regalo. If you’re set on going, I’ll give them to you.”

“But?”

“But I want to know what happened. I want to know why she’s back and why you think Gabby wants to kill her. From what I know of him, he watches out for you, so why would he want to kill your wife?”

I don’t say anything.

“Is it money?”

I sip the coffee and it burns. “Of course it’s money.”

Doug sits back and waits for me to go on. The house is still, and the only sounds I hear are the morning birds on the lawn outside the window.

“Where do you want me to start?”

“The last I heard of Diane, she was dead. Now she’s not. Why don’t you start there?”

I nod. “Okay.”

I go over everything, trying to keep it all straight in my head as I talk. Doug listens, refilling his coffee cup once while I speak. He doesn’t show any emotion at all until I tell him about the statues and the diamonds. Then his left eye starts to twitch.

“And Gabby wants to kill her because of the diamonds?”

“Because of the company that owns the diamonds,” I say. “He thinks she’s a loose end and will lead them to him if they come looking.”

“It makes sense.”

I hesitate for a moment. “He also thought she was working with Briggs. He thought she was using me the entire time to find the statues.”

“And you didn’t believe him?”

“Of course I didn’t. I still don’t.”

“But?”

“What makes you think there’s something else?”

Doug shrugs. “Tell me there isn’t.”

I pause, look down at my cup. “It does seems a little coincidental.”

“You could say that.”

I finish the last of my coffee then set the cup on the table in front of me. “But I trust her.”

Doug stands and grabs the coffee pot. He refills my cup.

“Why don’t you spit it out. I know you’ve got thoughts on all of this. Do you think Gabby’s right?”

Doug shakes his head. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I’ll say this. People might fake their deaths in the movies, but not in the real world, not like this.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you don’t just decide one day to do something like that. You can’t just hit a reset button on life. It’s not that easy.”

“She did it.”

“And that’s what bothers me,” Doug says. “She did it. She faked her own death.”

“I don’t see your point.”

Doug puts the coffee pot back, then sits. “How would you go about faking your death? Any ideas?”

I shake my head.

“She knew how to do it.”

“She had help.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Doug says. “Whoever did it knew what they were doing. They were able to arrange the entire thing. They were pros, and that worries me.”

“Worries you?”

Doug leans forward and rests his arms on the table. “How much do you really know about Diane?”

“She’s my wife.”

“Can you trust her?”

“She’s my wife.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s my answer.”

Doug leans back, doesn’t speak.

“Do you think Gabby’s right? Do you think it’s all a lie, our marriage, our life together?”

“Do you?”

My immediate reaction is to tell him, “No, of course I don’t, none of it was a lie.” But no matter how much I want to say it, I can’t do it.

Doug watches me for a moment, then he picks up the keys and twirls them once on his finger.

“You still want them?”

“Yes.”

“Then they’re yours.” He slaps them on the table and slides them toward me. “Maybe some time alone, just the two of you, away from all this, will make things clearer.”

I stare at the keys and don’t say anything.

Doug picks up the map, unfolds it, and lays it flat on the surface of the table. “Here’s where you’re going.” He turns the map so I can see. “El Regalo, right here. When you get there, talk to a man named Oscar Guzman. He runs the local market in town, and he takes care of the house for me. Everything in town goes through him. I’ll write a letter of introduction for you before you go. Give it to him, and he’ll help you with anything you need.”

“You shouldn’t do that. If we get stopped, they’ll know you helped us.”

“I’ll take the chance,” Doug says. “But that’s as far as I’ll go. Once you’re down there, neither of you should try contacting me or anyone else back here for at least a month, maybe longer.”

I nod. “It’s a deal.”

“Good.” Doug sips his coffee, then looks back at the map. “Let me show you the best place to cross, and a few of the back roads you can take to avoid the police.”

When Diane wakes up, we all sit in the kitchen, and I tell her the plan. She listens, sometimes looking at the map, sometimes staring out the window at the cars passing along the street.

When I finish, she turns to Doug and says, “Thank you for this.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he says. “Wait until you get across the border, then you can thank me.”

“Okay, I will.”

Doug pushes himself up from the table and motions for us to follow. “Let’s see if we can find you two some clean clothes.”

Doug has a lot of T-shirts. We borrow a few, then take a couple bottles of water and walk out to the garage and the SUV.

“Follow the roads I showed you. It’ll take a couple more hours, but you’ll be safer.”

I set the water on the driver’s seat, then turn and hold out my hand.

Doug shakes it and hands me an envelope.

“Oscar Guzman.”

I turn the envelope over, then slide it into my back pocket. I want to let Doug know how sorry I am for the way things turned out. He’s put a lot of faith in me over the years, and I can’t help but feel like I’ve let him down, like it was all for nothing.

I start to tell him this, but he waves me off and motions to the glove compartment. “I left you something in case you run into any trouble.”

I hesitate, then reach in and open the latch. There is a .38 inside, and I stare at it for a moment without speaking.

“It’s a good gun,” he says. “Hope you never have to use it.”

“Me too. Thank you.”

“Just keep your eyes open, Jake.” He looks over at Diane as she climbs into the passenger seat, then back at me. “I mean it.”

By the time we get on the road, the morning traffic is just starting to thin. We pass a couple cop cars on the way out of town, and each time my nerves splinter a little more. It’s not until the city is far behind us that I feel myself start to relax.

Diane doesn’t.

Every now and then I catch her looking over my shoulder at the speedometer, and I slow down.

She asks if I want her to drive.

“No,” I say. “It keeps me calm.”

“If we get pulled over—”

“We’re not going to get pulled over.”

“But if we do—”

“I know.”

The words come out harsher than I’d intended, but I don’t care. Diane doesn’t need to lecture me on what will happen if we’re pulled over. We don’t have papers on the SUV, and neither of us has a driver’s license. My face is bandaged and bruised, and there’s a gun in the glove compartment. Any cop would be suspicious.

“It’s important, Jake. We need to be careful.”

I lean forward and turn on the radio. Diane takes the hint. After a few minutes the sound of the DJ’s voice starts to give me a headache, so I shut it off.

I expect Diane to start in again on my driving, but instead she turns toward the passenger window and ignores me.

We drive for several hours in silence.

I stick to the roads Doug told me about. Most are minor highways, two lanes cutting a wide black gash through the hills and down into the desert. The few cars we see are either dusty, late-model American cars or cattle trucks.

Thirty miles from the border, I slow down and pull over.

“What are you doing?”

“You should drive. We’re getting close, and we won’t stand out as much if you’re behind the wheel.”

She opens the passenger door and steps out onto the shoulder. We both walk around to the front of the car, and as she passes me, I reach out and grab her hand.

“No, Jake.”

I let her go. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She looks up at me, then away. “I’ll just feel better when this is done and we’re in Mexico. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She smiles, then turns and walks the rest of the way around the car to the driver’s side. A few minutes later, we’re back on the road.

By the time we reach the border, the sun is sitting low on the horizon, and all around us the evening light is warm and orange.

Diane is squeezing the steering wheel tight. I reach over and put my hand on her leg.

“It’s going to be fine. Relax.”

“Why aren’t you nervous? You’re the one everyone is looking for.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m just not. Doug told me they don’t usually stop people on the way out of the country, just coming in.”

“When did he say that?”

“This morning.”

“What else did he tell you?”

I think about my conversation with Doug and try to think of something I can share. “He said we should carry extra cash for the police.”

“What for?”

“Bribes.”

Diane seems to think about this for a moment, then says, “We don’t have extra cash.”

“No,” I say. “So drive slow.”

The first time I see the police and the border guards on the bridge leading into Mexico, I feel a small knot tighten deep in my stomach. It fades when I notice the open gates and empty kiosks.

“Where is everyone?”

I point to the other side of the bridge and the congested northbound traffic. “Looks like they’re all over there,” I say. “Doug was right.”

“And as long as we never come back, we’ll be fine.”

I don’t like the tone of her voice, but I ignore it and look out the window at a group of four border guards standing around two patrol trucks.

They don’t look at us as we drive by.

Once we’re on the other side, we turn off the bridge and melt into the city traffic.

Diane stops at a hotel just off the highway and goes inside to get a room for the night. I stay in the car, under the dome light, tracing the route to El Regalo on the map. I use my finger to follow the thin red and blue road lines toward the coast, but my eyes are heavy, and I have to fight to keep them open.

A few minutes later, Diane comes out with a key.

“We got the last room,” she says. “They’re full.”

“We’re lucky.”

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of people around here.”

She hands me the key then pulls the SUV around to the parking lot behind the building. I take the .38 from the glove compartment and slide it into the back of my belt before we go inside.

The room is like every other hotel room. There’s a bed, a desk, and a TV sitting on top of a dresser. The only window is barred and looks out on a chain-link fence and a small square of dying grass littered with trash blown in off the highway.

I close the curtains and turn on the desk lamp.

Diane stands by the door with her arms folded over her chest. She looks at me. “I don’t like this.”

“It’s just for the night.”

“I mean stopping,” she says. “We should’ve kept driving. You could’ve slept in the car.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not tired.”

“Not yet,” I say. “But we have a long way to go. If we leave early tomorrow morning, we’ll get there before dark. It’ll be fine.”

“I don’t like it.”

I hold out my hand.

Diane hesitates, then takes it. “Do you really think we’re safe down here?”

“As safe as anyone is in Mexico, I guess.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she says. “Do you think anyone is going to look for us down here?”

“How could they? No one knows where we are.”

“Doug knows.”

“He won’t say anything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am.”

Diane stares at me, then nods. “I’m going to take a bath. You should get some sleep.”

I watch her walk into the bathroom and close the door. A few minutes later, I hear the metal scrape of the shower curtain sliding open and water running in the tub.

I set the .38 on the table then sit on the edge of the bed and listen to the hum of the highway outside my window. The noise is loud, and it rolls into the room like the sound of an angry sea.

I reach down to take off my shoes, and my ribs scream at me. I bite down hard against the pain, and once it passes, I inch back on the bed and lie down.

There is a thin brown water stain on the ceiling. I look away and think about Diane, wondering what she’s thinking and if she’s okay. Part of me wants to stay awake to talk to her, but it’s impossible to keep my eyes open.

After a while, I quit trying.