Sixty-Six

Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
August 2012

Christina covered her eyes, tiny fingers splayed across a face that was pressed into the wall. “It’s your turn to hide, Michael. One, two, three …” She kept counting slowly while he moved down one of the upstairs hall, trying doors as he went. Some opened onto empty guest quarters while some opened onto bathrooms or closets. A few seconds before she landed on ten, he stepped into a random room and waited for her to find him.

Colombia’s wet season was in full swing, so their daily trips to the beach had been replaced by games of hide-and-seek and Disney movie marathons. They hadn’t seen Lydia in over a year. Not since Christina’s eighth birthday.

As soon as Reyes left the island last June, he knocked on her door, tried to coax her out, but she wouldn’t answer. When he finally broke down and picked the lock, he understood why.

She’d been gone.

From somewhere down the hall he heard Christina yell “Ten!” She was nine and a half now and as fearless as her mother. He listened while she threw open doors, talking to him as if she knew exactly where he was.

The sound of a doorknob jiggling came from directly across the hall from the closet where he hid. “Locked doors are against the rules, Michael,” she said, rapping her fist against the hardwood. “I found you, fair and—”

Her protest stopped abruptly when he opened the door behind her, her hand falling to her side. “There you are. I tried the knob, but it’s locked. That’s weird, right?”

He looked down at the crack between the door and the floor and caught the split-second shift—a shadow sliding across the floor, that told him that someone was behind it, listening. He jerked his shoulder into a haphazard shrug. “Weird? Not really. One of the maids probably locked it on accident and can’t find a key is all.” He shut the closet door behind him, cocking his head toward the stairs. “Ice cream sundae break?”

Christina’s mouth quirked into a rueful smile and for a second, he was sure he’d been caught. “Promise not to spray the whipped cream directly into your mouth this time?”

He grinned at her, holding out his hand to cover up the relief that coursed through him. “I promise no such thing. That’s the best part.”

“It’s gross,” she sniffed at him as she slipped her hand into his with a barely suppressed smile. “That’s why I asked Rosa to buy you your own can.”

“You love me.” The words slipped out before he could reel them back in. They hung there for a moment, exposed and untried, sending him scrambling for cover. But before he could pull back, she squeezed her fingers around his palm.

“I do, even though you don’t have a mustache,” she said. “And don’t even get me started on your knock-knock jokes.”

“They’re not that bad,” he said, letting go of the panic, letting is slide right through him.

“They really are,” she said, laughing while she pulled him down the stairs toward the kitchen. “But I don’t mind, as long as you’re here to keep telling them.”

Two sundaes and four Disney movies later, Christina was tucked safely into her bed. Michael waited for the slow, even draw of breath to move her chest before he made his way back to the upstairs hall they’d been playing in earlier.

There were so many doors, so many hallways, he wasn’t even sure he had the right one until he reached the third-floor landing and saw light leaking from beneath the door Christina had found.

He didn’t knock. Didn’t want to alert anyone who might be inside that he was there. Not yet anyway. Instead he pressed his ear against the door and listened. No talking. No murmur of voices. He listened harder for the smaller sounds within the room. The pad of bare feet across a carpeted floor. The faint rustle of a page being turned in a book. It was Lydia. It had to be.

And she was alone.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Michael pulled his picks from his pocket, fitting them into the lock and giving them a few twists. The metal clicked and gave way. She must’ve heard him because the book hit a hard surface seconds before he pushed the door open to find her standing behind a high-back chair, fists bunched and raised. When she saw him, her hands relaxed, dropping to her sides. Her expression was lost, swept away in an uncountable number of emotions—confusion, relief, hope­—before settling on fear.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said, taking a look around the room. “How did you get in here?”

“He moves me a lot,” she said. “Every week or so. He knows you’re looking for me.”

She wasn’t making any sense. Reyes hadn’t been on the island for months now.

“I’d hoped when you led Christina away today, that meant you understood … you can’t be here. He will kill you both if he finds you here.” She was shaking, her fingers knotted together against the chair’s upholstery.

Michael took a step forward, shaking his head. “Alberto? He’s not here. He’s been gone for months. It’s safe. You’re safe—”

Lydia lifted a hand, stopping him in his tracks. “No.” Her voice broke, the hand she’d used to ward him off trembling against her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Michael. I just wanted … You need to leave.” She sounded terrified. Desperate to make him understand. “Not this room—this place. Tonight. Right now. You need to leave and never come back.”

Her fear reached out and slapped him, cold and bracing. Something was happening. Something he didn’t understand. Something she was trying to protect him from. “Okay. We’ll all leave. Right now. We’ll take one of the boats to El Valle and—”

“No, Michael. Just you. You need to go alone. If we go with you, he’ll never stop looking for us.” She unknotted her hands, smoothing them across the back of the chair she stood behind. “You can’t protect us from him. You have to leave us. Let us go.”

She was right. He knew that. He was a fugitive, a deserter, and worse, a traitor to his own country. He had nowhere to take Lydia and Christina. No way to keep them safe, but in that moment, none of that mattered. “I’m not leaving you,” he said through gritted teeth. He could still feel the weight of Christina’s hand in his. Feel her fingers squeezing around his palm, a rare smile lifting the corners of a mouth that had grown too serious over the years. “I’m not leaving her. You don’t understand. I did that once before and … I can’t. I can’t do it again.”

Lydia sighed, dropping her head as she stepped from behind the chair to reveal a belly that was large and swollen. She was pregnant. How far along he couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter. She was right. There was no way Alberto would let her just go. Not with his unborn child.

“Then you’re going to die,” she said quietly, as she looked up at him, tears welling in her eyes to spill down her cheeks. “We both are.”

He stared at her. “I don’t understand. Why—”

She laughed, a slightly crazed sound that worried him. “I know you don’t. You don’t understand because you’re a good man, Michael.” She rubbed a soothing hand over her stomach and shook her head as if to clear it. She looked up at him. “I need you to promise me something.”

He nodded. “Anything.”

She sighed, her hands going still on her unborn child. “When Alberto kills me … promise me you’ll let him.”