The Governor's Wife (61 page)

"Aw, shit."

Traffic had stopped ahead. Cars were waiting to turn into a walled compound.

"Boys' Town," the doctor said.

"Great."

Bode blinked hard to maintain focus. He swerved around the line of cars. But just past Boys' Town the police had set up a roadblock.

"Hold on!"

Bode headed straight at the police cars then abruptly jumped the low median and drove around them in the northbound lanes then jumped the median back to the southbound lanes.

"They're coming after us."

The doctor grabbed the dashboard.

"Turn around!"

"Why?"

He pointed. "That is the Villareal, the motel where the
federales
stationed here reside."

But they weren't just residing there; they were waiting for them in military trucks parked across all four lanes. Bode slammed on the brakes and swung the Mercedes around into the northbound lane. He stomped on the accelerator and sped past the
policía
and
soldados
heading southbound.

"Go left on Abraham Lincoln," the doctor said.

Bode turned left and accelerated.

"Now right on
Constitución
."

He swung right.

"Faster! No
alto!
"

"Don't worry, Doc. I ain't stopping."

They flew through the stop sign at Venezuela.

"Left on Peru."

Bode hit the brakes and turned the wheel hard. The sedan fishtailed and sideswiped a
Tacos y Barbacoa
vendor truck. He straightened out and headed west.

"Now go very fast," the doctor said.

Bode went very fast. The traffic was one-way, and they were going the right way for a change. They sped past
cantinas
with drunks loitering outside and small restaurants. In the rearview, Bode could see flashing lights. But they had a lead on them. His breathing came faster now.

"Bode, are you okay?" Lindsay asked.

"I'll get you home."

"There!" the doctor said. "
Calzada De Los Héroes
. The highway west."

Bode steered onto the highway. Four lanes headed west, so Bode pushed the sedan. They soon cleared the dense part of the city.

"We are outside the city now. Perhaps they will not follow."

"They're following," Lindsay said.

"Faster!"

Bode pushed the sedan to ninety. The pain in his gut had gotten worse. Much worse. He clenched back a groan.

"What's that?"

Up ahead, he saw red taillights, as if cars were being stopped.

"
Bandidos.
"

"You gotta fucking be kidding me."

"Do not stop, Governor."

He didn't. He swerved into the oncoming lanes and around an eighteen-wheeler then back into the westbound lanes.

"You drive fast very well, Governor."

"I been driving in Texas all my life."

"We will turn soon, toward the river."

"Bode," Lindsay said, "they're getting closer."

"There!" the doctor said. "The white cross … Turn!"

Bode slammed on the brakes and veered off the highway.

"There's no road."

"A dirt road leads to the river."

Bode steered down a path cut through the desert. The car bottomed out, so he couldn't go fast. His face felt hot; he fought not to pass out.

"They turned in behind us," Lindsay said.

"The river is just ahead," the doctor said.

"They're closer!"

"Just beyond that bluff is the river."

"How do we get down to it?"

"We drive over the bluff."

"Over the bluff?"

"It is a low bluff. We will drive right into the river. It is not deep, because of the drought. The
colonia
is just on the other side."

"Lower the windows."

"Punch it, Governor."

Bode punched it.

"Hang on!"

The big Mercedes-Benz sedan flew off the low bluff and belly-flopped into the Rio Grande. The air bags deployed and cushioned the blow. The car settled into the river. They climbed out the open windows and into the river. The water was only a few feet deep. Lindsay and Bode pulled the doctor out of the river and to dry ground against a ten-foot-high bank.

"We must get to the riverbank above," the doctor said. "We will be easy targets down here."

"I'll get you up, Doc."

Bode hefted the doctor onto his shoulder again, and the pain told him that this would be his last living act. Lindsay scrambled up the dirt side as if she were that tomboy back in ninth grade. Bode grabbed a cane shoot with his left hand and pushed with his legs, the doctor hanging on and Bode's body bleeding out, and his right knee with the four scars burned hot with pain and his mind pulled up memories of lying on a football field with ligaments torn apart, of taking the pain and fighting through the pain, and sucking in air as he was now, and just as then, Bode Bonner refused to give in to the pain. Lindsay reached down to him and he reached up to her but he saw his sister Emma now and he wanted to make the Bonner family proud, so he grunted out one last massive effort … and he stood in Texas again. He dropped to his knees, and the doctor tumbled off his shoulder.

"Thank you,
mi amigo
," the doctor said from the ground. "You have saved our lives."

Flashing lights appeared across the river.

"They're here!" Lindsay said. "We've got to get into the
colonia
."

She helped the doctor to his feet. He put an arm around the governor's wife. Bode pushed himself to his feet, but his time had come. He was born in Texas, and he would die in Texas. But he had gotten his wife home. He had come for her, as she knew he would. His last great adventure wasn't winning the White House—it was saving his wife. He now looked east and saw the sun rising over the Rio Grande. Over Texas. Perhaps it was the adrenaline or perhaps the delirium that now consumed his mind, but William Bode Bonner stood to his full six-foot-four-inch height and raised his good arm to God and shouted to Texas.

"That was a hell of an adventure!"

Just as he lost consciousness and his body collapsed to the ground, shots rang out from the other side of the river.

Dying is a way of life on the border.

Lindsay Bonner knew that now. She was a nurse, but she could not deny death. She was a married woman, but she loved two men. Four men had come for her, but only one man would go home. She reached across the hospital bed and touched his face.

Bode Bonner opened his eyes. He blinked hard to focus. He was lying in a bed. In a hospital room. His wife sat next to him. He remembered.

"Doc?"

His wife clenched her jaws and shook her head. He felt tears come into his eyes.

"How long?"

"Four days. Since surgery."

"Where am I?"

"Laredo hospital."

"How?"

"Border Patrol. They brought us all here. The
federales
shot at us, from across the river. They hit you and Jesse. He died in the
colonia
. We buried him next to his mother."

She cried now.

"I'm sorry, Lindsay. For Jesse … and for hurting you."

She stared off a moment then turned back to him.

"You need to know something, Bode. I loved Jesse, but I didn't have an affair with him. Not a physical one."

"Can you ever forgive me?"

"I already have."

"Why?"

"Because you came for me."

Cameras and reporters from the networks and cable crowded into the press room and staked out positions in the corridor outside. Across the foyer, on the other side of the white marble statues of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, the governor of Texas stood at the window of his Capitol office staring out at the satellite trucks that lined the driveway circling the building. Since they had returned from Laredo, he had thought a lot about what it meant to be a good man, and while he hadn't worked out all the details, he had figured out the important points.

Honor.

Love.

Family.

Bode Bonner would be a good man again. He would live a life with honor, with love, and with his family. Jim Bob Burnet slapped him on the shoulder and out of his thoughts.

"It's been a great ride, Bode. Thanks for taking me along."

"I know you wanted the White House as much as I did. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You got something better than the White House—a second chance with your family. Don't fuck it up."

They shook hands. Left hands. Bode's right arm was still in a sling.

"Besides, I just might get to the White House without you."

"How?"

"Palin called, wants me to come see her in Alaska."

Now Bode slapped him on the shoulder.

"I'll be rootin' for you, Professor."

Bode walked over and put his arm around the governor's wife.

Lindsay Bonner felt her husband's arm around her. Where it belonged. Where she belonged. She loved Jesse Rincón, but she had loved Bode Bonner longer. He had been a part of her since she was fifteen; he would always be a part of her. There was no denying it and no fighting it. She had loved him from the moment she had first seen him, and she would love him until the moment she died. They had shared twenty-nine years of life together, they had joined together to create the most wonderful child, and they had survived Nuevo Laredo. He had come for her. She had come back with him. He wasn't the same man she had married in Comfort twenty-two years before, and she wasn't the same woman who had left Austin five months before. But he was her hero again.

And she would never again leave their bed. Not over politics.

Becca turned the volume up on the television. The broadcast was from the press room just across the foyer. A reporter addressed the camera.

"Breaking news from Nuevo Laredo that Enrique de la Garza, also known as El Diablo, head of the notorious
Los Muertos
cartel that made two assassination attempts on the governor of Texas, is now dead, killed by Governor Bode Bonner himself. That's all we have now, but I'm sure we'll learn the rest of the story when the governor addresses us. Speculation is ripe that Governor Bonner will use this opportunity to announce his candidacy for the presidency of the United States."

Bode walked into the press room with Lindsay, Becca, Miguel, Alejandro, and Josefina in a new green dress. And Pancho. Bode stepped to the podium.

"Good morning. I have several announcements. First, I am resigning as governor of Texas effective immediately."

The reporters jumped out of the chairs and began shouting questions. Bode held up his hand.

"My actions have resulted in good people dying. Hank Williams and Roy Rogers, two brave Texas Rangers. Darcy Daniels, my daughter's partner. Mandy Morgan, my aide. Eddie Jones, a campaign staffer. And Dr. Jesse Rincón."

Seventy-five miles south, San Antonio Mayor Jorge Gutiérrez watched the governor on the television in his office in city hall. Jorge knew he would die without respect.

"I've liquidated my blind trust," the governor said. "The money will be used to provide utilities to
Colonia Ángeles
, in honor of Dr. Rincón."

One hundred sixty miles further south, the Border Patrol agent named Rusty stood at his post by the gates in the border wall one mile north of the Rio Grande. For the first time in his career, he wondered why.

In
Colonia Ángeles
, Inez Quintanilla sat at her desk in the clinic, as if awaiting the doctor's arrival that day. Tears streamed down her pretty face. She could not believe that the doctor was dead, but she knew he was because she had stood at his grave in the small
colonia
cemetery when his body was lowered into the ground. She knew she would never see him again. She knew life in the
colonia
would never be the same again, without her brother or the doctor. She knew there would be no laughter and no joy, no movie nights and no one who cared for them. She knew her life had been irrevocably altered. But she did not yet know that the doctor had executed a last will and testament that left his homestead on the other side of Laredo to "my devoted assistant, Inez Quintanilla, who shall live beyond the wall."

In his café in Laredo, Luis Escalera got drunk on whiskey.

Two hundred miles downriver in the clinic in
Colonia Nueva Vida
, the governor of Texas spoke of the doctor on the small television, and Sister Sylvia wept.

In his office in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Ernesto Delgado watched the governor on television as he spoke of Jesse Rincón, and at that moment, he decided to retire. He did not want to die in Washington. He wanted to die in Laredo. On the border. Where he belonged.