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Tuesday, May 31
Near Echo, Texas
Baez had never hitched a ride of any kind before in his life. The sons of Diego Baez had been chauffeured as young men. When they left for college, they didn’t own vehicles because they didn’t need them. At Harvard, owning a vehicle would have been simply a nuisance.
Later, Baez had returned to Durango, Mexico, with his wife. The old man settled them into a villa similar to the one they now lived in. The new life came with servants, including a driver for both Cesar and Gabriella.
Despite his lack of hitchhiking experience, he imagined some kind of pecking order in picking up travelers on the road based on a subconscious assessment of risk. An older man offering a ride to a younger girl seemed low risk and most likely.
All of which meant that Baez immediately comprehended his luck.
The odds were heavily against a woman stopping for a bedraggled man, even without his disheveled appearance and the fresh bruises visible on his face.
“Where to?” she called out from the driver’s seat, sounding a bit unsure about the impulse to stop for him.
Of course she was worried. Who wouldn’t be?
“Anywhere,” he replied, and instantly regretted the words.
It seemed like something an aimless drifter would say. But he didn’t know where he was or what civilization lay ahead. If she left him here, he might die before another vehicle came along.
She considered things for a long minute or two. In the end, her humanitarian instincts prevailed over natural self-preservation ones.
“Okay,” she said, head ducked down and face tilted up, looking out through the window. “I’m headed south of Echo.”
“Perfect,” he said through his split lip.
He opened the passenger door and stepped inside. She had the AC running full blast and the leather seat felt like a block of ice under his ass. It was the best feeling he’d had in way too long.
He closed the door, she buzzed the window up, slipped the transmission into drive, and rolled the heavy SUV forward along the pavement.
“Adjust the seat if you want. There’s plenty of room,” she said, with a quick, nervous glance across the cabin.
“Thank you,” he croaked from his dry throat.
As if she could be joking, perhaps, she said, “And don’t get any ideas. I’ve got a gun.”
“You don’t need to worry,” Baez said sincerely. “I’m a wreck. I’m no possible threat to anyone.”
She was short and slim and dark-skinned and fine-boned. Her hair was almost jet black. Altogether a small person. Maybe forty years old, give or take.
Mexican, Baez guessed.
She was wearing a simple sleeveless dress of the kind his wife favored. Simple, but expensive. The skin on her arms and legs looked smooth and shiny as if it had been polished.
The scooped neck of her dress revealed a near perfect collarbone. There was a thickened knot there from a healed break. Perhaps she’d fallen off a horse long ago.
She had both hands on the wheel. Her fingers were long and tapered. Her nails were buffed and polished. No rings of any kind.
When she’d accelerated enough to get up to speed, Baez noticed quiet conversation from the backseat. He craned his neck to see two young girls, safely buckled in.
One was maybe sixteen. Wild blond hair. Freckled face. Blue eyes. The other was about seven or eight and the exact picture of what her mother must have been at that age. Small, dark, beautiful.
“My daughters,” she said, with pride and a wide smile that revealed her perfect white teeth. “Do you have any children?”
Her accent was purely American. Maybe a slight bit more Californian than Texan. Like the rest of her, the voice was silky and smooth and altogether perfect.
Under different circumstances, Cesar would already be thinking about how to get her into bed. As it was, he simply didn’t want to get thrown out of the car.
“Yes. I have four. Two boys and two girls,” he replied easily, as if they were talking over dinner in his villa with his family nearby.
“How did you end up on the road back there?” She glanced quickly into her mirrors, as if she expected to see something coming.
Baez had anticipated the question, so he had an answer ready. Sheepishly, he replied, “My brother and I had a fight. He left me and took off.”
“Was he trying to kill you? Because you look like a man who’s gone a dozen rounds in the boxing ring with a heavyweight,” she said. “I almost didn’t pick you up.”
“Why did you?” Baez asked, barely recognizing his own raspy voice. “Pick me up?”
“It seemed like the Christian thing to do.” She paused for a few seconds before she cleared her throat and added, “A long time ago, I lived out here. I know how unforgiving this country can be. Looks like we might get a spot of rain later, but you didn’t look like a man who could survive until someone else came along.”
“Well, thank you for giving me a ride.” Baez turned his head to stare through the window, seeing nothing but flat land on all sides of the SUV.
He glanced in the side mirror and noticed the dark clouds in the west seemed to be moving eastward.
She was rolling along now at about fifty miles an hour.
She reached over and opened the console between the seats. “Want a bottle of water? You look like you’re dry as dirt.”
Baez stared into the deep console. There was a stack of fresh three-liter water bottles inside.
“Thank you,” he croaked as he reached for one, twisted the cap, and poured half the water into his mouth. In that moment, the lukewarm water tasted better than the finest champagne and the best coffee and the most amazing tequila all of his money could buy.
He swished the water around to hydrate the inside of his mouth before he swallowed and then drank the rest. Two gulps and it was gone.
He’d have snatched another bottle from the console, but he didn’t want to frighten her. He was beginning to regain some of the strength he’d lost, but he didn’t want to test his body against the elements again.
If she kept talking, she might not worry about him so much. So he asked, “You said you were once settled in this area. I haven’t seen any homes. Where did you live?”
She went quiet. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth and her eyes were narrowed. She was worried about something. Maybe more than one thing. But she seemed to have it under control.
Baez saw that he’d taken a wrong tack with the question, so he didn’t ask another. They continued in silence.
The SUV was big and quiet and cool and at least as comfortable as any motel room around here was likely to be. He was exhausted and hurting all over. Silence suited him perfectly.
Baez relaxed in his seat, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes to rest while he could.
He must have dozed off. After a while, he felt the SUV slow and heard the turn signal indicator’s rhythmic beats. When he opened his eyes, he noticed a fairly new barbed wire fence running along the property line ahead.
About half a mile farther along the barbed wire changed to a picket fence on either side of a big wooden gate. The fence and the gate were painted dull red.
She was turning right off the road and onto a well groomed gravel drive.
Baez sat up just as the SUV rolled under the gate. When he saw the name, he smiled.
“Where are we?” he asked, although he already knew exactly where they were.
“Red House Ranch,” she replied. “I lived here a very long time ago. They’ll have a phone you can use to call your family. You can stay here until someone comes to pick you up.”
“That’s very kind of you,” he said.
“I’m Carmen, by the way. What’s your name?”
He would have given her a nonsense answer, but he was spared the trouble. The two girls began to squeal in the backseat, pointing out the horses grazing in the pasture.
“Girls, we’ll only be here about an hour. You can go see the horses. Ellie, you have your phone?” Carmen asked, in the way of all mothers everywhere.
“Yes,” Ellie said quietly from the back seat. “We’ll come back here as soon as you call.”
When she pulled the SUV to a stop in the gravel parking lot out front of the big house, the two girls opened the back doors and ran toward the barns.
“What is it about girls and horses? My daughters love them, too,” Cesar said to further soothe Carmen’s concerns.
Carmen nodded, preoccupied, and abandoned her question about his name.