The Devil's Cauldron (6 page)

The birds outside the window were going crazy with their early morning birdsong and assorted bickering in the trees. It was light gray through the open shutters and her eyes turned around the room. Someone rapped her head with a knuckle or a stick, but she couldn’t quite focus yet. What was . . .
why?
 

The resident halls of Colina Nublosa were divided into buildings called habitats, which stood on stilts so they were up in the canopy like treehouses. The habitats radiated on spokes of covered walkways from the main building and blended into the environment like a large, sophisticated eco-lodge. Inside, the floors, walls, and furniture were tropical hardwoods, with beautiful details. The beds were firm and comfortable, and boasted 1,200-thread-count sheets. Shutters around the room opened onto a gorgeous tropical mountain view. The place must cost a fortune, and it had always bewildered Meggie that a working-class girl like herself had ended up in a place like this.

“Good morning, sunshine,” a woman said. The words were cheerful, but delivered in a cold, venomous tone.

The tapping continued, right on her skull. Whatever it was (it felt like a pencil) moved in and out of her peripheral vision.

What are you doing? Who are you?

“Are you awake in there? They say you are, but I’ve always wondered. What kind of miserable, pathetic life you must lead. Why don’t you die? Close your eyes and stop breathing. Do it. The world would be a better place.”

Leave me alone.
 

“It must kill you not to talk. Seven years without so much as a moan passing through your lips. And before the accident you never shut up. Always babbling away, talking about nothing. Verbal diarrhea, that’s what I told Benjamin. Whatever came into your head, you had to crap it out your mouth.”

Meggie’s mind began to shake off the drugs. As it did, she recognized the voice. Seven years had passed, but it still possessed a gleaming, sharp edge, like a dagger tip sharpened to such a point that it could slide through the ribs and barely draw blood before puncturing the lungs and bursting the heart. Meggie’s stomach dropped.

“It pissed him off when I said that,” the woman continued. “He never said a word against me. Never dared. But the tips of his ears turned red. So cute, my cousin. So weak and vulnerable. He needed someone to take care of him. That someone wasn’t you.”

Kaitlyn Potterman.

Meggie had known all along, hadn’t she? Known that Kaitlyn was a vicious backstabber. If not, why hadn’t Meggie blurted her discovery to Benjamin the moment she found out?

Your cousin is stealing from the company. Look at these transfers. Fifty thousand, then thirty thousand. Twenty more on four separate occasions between October and the end of the year. Yes, I know there are invoices in Spanish from Costa Rica, but there’s no such thing as Asociación Tierra Alta. It’s a bogus company, they went bankrupt two years ago. She’s bought it, she’s the owner. It’s not a grower co-op, it’s her way of stealing.

Any reasonable person would have looked at Meggie’s paper trail and called the police to nail Kaitlyn to the door. Benjamin himself would have done it to anyone else. Even one of his brothers, Meggie was convinced.

But not his cousin. And when Kaitlyn found out, she’d go ballistic. No question.

The night before their descent into the cave in the Nevada desert, Meggie had asked herself some hard questions. They were in a dusty little town named Brine Hollow at the base of the Snake Range, staying in a rundown motel with a cracked parking lot, overblown with tumbleweeds. Kitschy dinosaurs made of re-bar and hubcaps and other assorted junk lined the weedy strip between the motel and the highway. The office was a trailer on cinder blocks. The motel was the closest to the caves, roughly forty miles distant, so they forked over their fifty bucks per room, said that no, they weren’t going to be around for the continental breakfast (nobody on the team was remotely tempted, even if they hadn’t planned to leave before dawn), and lugged their gear to their rooms.

Not surprisingly, the motel rooms were equally shabby, so they found the only bar in town, trying to avoid the frowns of the locals who looked up from pool tables and video slot machines. An old-fashioned jukebox played country music over the digital ringing of the slots. A fly strip covered in black specks swirled in the air kicked up by the overhead fan. The doors were closed, so there was nothing to cut the smell of sweat, beer, and stale cigarette smoke that hung around the people inside. A huge guy with a cowboy hat, boots, and a nose that looked to have been busted up several times stared them down.

“I saw this once in a movie,” Benjamin muttered. “It didn’t end well. Maybe we should grab some beer at the mini-mart and drink in our room.”

“Take it easy,” HalfOrc said. His real name was Paul Gorry, but he preferred his forum handle. “Don’t come in with an attitude and you’ll be fine.”

Both HalfOrc and Duperre were from out West, and Meggie figured they recognized the vibe, and it was safe. Besides, Duperre was an older guy in his late fifties—wiry and fit, but with a casual, non-threatening demeanor. Surely, they wouldn’t jump him.

She grabbed Benjamin’s sleeve and pulled him in, growing impatient. Part of not having an attitude was not freaking out because of a few cowboys in a bar.

Sure enough, after a couple of beers, the guys were playing pool for drinks with the locals, winning and losing their share. It took Benjamin longer to warm up, but when he did, he was fine. Didn’t make an idiot out of himself.

Meggie found herself throwing darts with the girlfriend of the big cowboy with the busted-up nose. Her name was Feather, and she had a hard look. Bleached blond hair, plenty of tats, bionic boobs that jutted at a right angle to her body and were surely pumped with silicon, and a face that had seen a lot of sun and hard drinking.

“Is that skinny one your boyfriend?” Feather asked with a nod toward Benjamin, who lined up for a shot at the pool table. He was laughing at some story Duperre was telling.

“Fiancé,” Meggie said, throwing her dart. Right in the bulls-eye, which won the game.

“Damn,” Feather said, as she collected the darts and passed the blue ones back to Meggie. “Nice throw.” Another glance at Benjamin. “Guy must be rich, huh?”

Meggie let out a surprised snort. She almost answered yeah, he was. He was about to take over the family company. But she held back. “What do you mean?”

“That dude has a stick up his ass. Your buddies ain’t too warm to him, and you looked bent outta shape when he set one foot in Maxi’s and turned up his nose. So I thought maybe he was rich.”

Meggie nodded toward Duperre and HalfOrc. “We never met those other two before today. So we’re just getting to know each other.”

“Guess that explains why the other two fellas went out to have a smoke with my Don, while your man stayed inside shooting pool by himself.”

“We’re all tired,” Meggie explained. “Drove all the way from Salt Lake today, and we’ve got a big hike into the desert tomorrow. We all get along fine, I swear.”

“Got it.” Only Feather didn’t sound like she got it. She sounded skeptical.

“What are you saying?”  

Feather shrugged. “What do I know? I ain’t no judge of character. My ex used to beat me up, and Don drinks too much. Boss said he shows up hungover one more time, he’s getting his ass kicked to the curb.”

“Benjamin is all right, anyway. He makes a good living. He treats me okay.”

“
Okay
, huh?”
 

“That means a lot to me,” Meggie said. “I had a lot of struggles growing up, so I wanted someone stable.”

“Something bad happen when you was a kid?”

Meggie hesitated. Back East, you didn’t start bitching to a stranger about your drunk boyfriend or your abusive ex, not unless you wanted to be taken for trailer trash, but somehow it sounded natural coming out of Feather’s mouth in that unvarnished western twang. And that made Meggie want to talk about it.

“My mother died when I was six,” she said, “and my dad left me to be raised by my uncle and aunt. He went to Alaska to work on a salmon boat. He sent back money, but didn’t bother calling or emailing. My uncle and aunt did their duty, but they wanted me out at eighteen. Never sent me a dime after that. I worked my way through school and never looked back.”

“And your dad?”

“Haven’t heard from him in years.”

“Dumbass,” Feather said in a tone of solidarity. Her dart hit the bulls-eye and she pumped her fist. She grabbed her beer from the table and drank the last bit, then shouted at the bartender to pour her another Bud. “Winner buys next round?” she said to Meggie.

“Duh, you’re ahead by twenty points. No way. Next game.”

“Deal.”

“Anyway, Benjamin is all right,” Meggie continued. “His family coughed up a hairball the first time they heard of me, but they came around. Maybe it’s because his parents figure they don’t have much time if they want grandkids.”

“How old is your man?” Feather asked.

“My fiancé? Only twenty-six. But his parents were in their forties when they had their kids, so they’re pretty old. Anyway, they’ve got money. The family runs a coffee company.”

“Like a diner? Or a coffee shop?”

“No, they import beans from Central America.”

“Oh, wow. So they
are
rich.”
 

Meggie shrugged. “It’s not a huge company, but they do pretty well. Benjamin is the oldest of his brothers, so he’s in charge now that his dad is retiring. The younger two both think they can run it better, and I think his cousin Kaitlyn does too, but he’s in charge. Benjamin just needs to toughen up a little and he’ll be fine.”

“Gotta watch out for family.”

“No kidding,” Meggie said. “It’s a big frigging mess.”

Once Meggie got going, she didn’t stop. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just westerners who ran off their mouths. And Feather was plenty chatty herself. She told Meggie about how her best friend from high school was working at a brothel in Winnemucca, how Feather cobbled together a living cleaning rooms at the motel and waiting tables at the diner. In turn, she let Meggie dump all her frustrations about Benjamin and his family.

The two women played a while longer, the guys still drinking and playing pool. Meggie only weighed 120 pounds and was seriously buzzed, even though she’d only had three beers. Time to call it a night. She didn’t know about HalfOrc and Duperre, but she figured if she didn’t get to bed soon, she’d be dragging in the morning when the alarm went off. And hungover, if she didn’t stop drinking.

After saying her goodbyes to Feather, she went over and tapped on Benjamin’s shoulder to tell him she was heading back to the motel.

“Okay,” he said, returning the pool cue to the rack. It was the middle of the game, and Don, Feather’s boyfriend, groaned.

“I’m just telling you,” she said. “You can stay if you want. It’s not that late, but I’m tired.”

“Okay. Do you think I should finish up here? Or should I come with you?”

“I don’t know, are you tired? We leave at 5:30 A.M.”

“What do you think? Tell me if I should come to bed or not,” he said. “Maybe I should.”

“Dude,” she said, starting to grow annoyed. “You know the drill in the morning. How much have you had to drink? No, it’s cool. Use your own judgment.”

In the end, he decided he should go back with her. Meggie told him to finish the game—she’d wait—then paid the bar tab for the two of them and led him into the cool night air. Crickets chirped, and a breeze blew off the high desert that smelled of sagebrush and sand. Hard to believe that in twelve hours she’d be dangling from a rope, rappelling two hundred feet into the ground.

She eyed Benjamin in the flickering neon of the broken bar sign before they picked their way across the darkened parking lot toward the highway and the motel directly opposite. Benjamin didn’t look overly drunk. Maybe now was the time.

“It’s good to get away from work,” she said.

“I wish I had cell coverage,” he said. “I should check my email.”

“At least you didn’t say check in with your cousin.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Benjamin said.

His voice was pinched. Was he angry Meggie had taken him to a dead zone? Gah, what was it with those two? Couldn’t they leave each other alone for three days?

She squeezed his arm. “I know you’re close to family, but you’ve got to make your own life sooner or later.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind.” They reached the highway, which stretched straight and flat in either direction, a dark ribbon across the desert plain. On the other side, the dim lights along the front of the motel gave it a depressed, gloomy air. “It’s just you guys are all working together, I think you lose perspective.”

“I don’t think we do.”

“I mean, what would happen if someone in the family tried to rip the rest of you off?” Meggie asked. “It would be hard to stand up to family. You’d make excuses for them and stuff.”

“You mean like if my brothers were trying to get control of Tropical Beans?”

“Or stealing from the company, yeah. Or even Kaitlyn. I mean, what would you do? It would be hard.”

“She’d never do that.”

“But what if she did? What if she were stealing? It would be tough, but you’d have to do something.”

“Don’t be stupid.” His tone was bristling. “Never happen.”

Funny how Benjamin could be so malleable in some cases. He couldn’t even decide whether or not to leave the bar without her input. As if that mattered. But when it came to something important, like getting out from under Kaitlyn’s thumb, he turned huffy and defensive. Meggie decided to drop it for now. Maybe in the morning, or down in the cave, underground, with all pretension stripped away. Maybe then she’d bring it up.

“Anyway, I’m glad we’re out here together,” she said, as they reached the motel.

There were two new cars in the parking lot. Good. A few more people would make this place look less deserted and spooky.

“Me, too,” he said.

“You’ve been working too hard. And it’s been forever since we got away from your family. I’ve missed that. Missed the alone time.” He didn’t say anything, and Meggie knew she should let it drop, but her mouth had the need to fill the silence, so it kept running away. “We need more time alone, don’t you think?”