CHAPTER 18“So, did Dad say anything about Caroline when he turned in last night?” Karen asked as the tour group followed a path between papaya trees to a bridge at the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa in the early morning sunlight.
“I don’t think your dad likes me enough to confide that kind of thing.” John Chandler looked up at the top of the tall steep steps leading to the cavern entrance where a guide awaited. The first group, including the girls’ parents, had already gone in.
Because the girls had lingered at the jewelry counter in the snack shop, John, Karen, and Annie wound up with Kurt, Wally, and Wally’s parents.
Or maybe it was by design, John thought. It was kind of cute, the way Karen and Annie had taken up the Cupid role where their parents were concerned. It reminded him of how his little sister had been all for love and happily-ever-after too. Thankfully, for Penny’s sake, it had worked out. Their stepdad didn’t have a little girl, and who couldn’t love John’s baby sister? On the contrary, John was the spare part of the family.
“He did kind of hum this morning while shaving,” he ventured in an attempt to lift the disappointment on Karen’s face. “Usually he stalks around in silence—like an assassin with his eye on a vic.”
He grinned. “Me.”
Karen gave him a chiding look. “Don’t be silly. If he hated you that much, he’d have sent you packing.”
John shrugged. “Maybe he hated upsetting you more than putting up with me.”
Karen gave him the elbow. “Not!”
“Hey, you’re lucky to have a dad who loves you so much,” Annie reminded her from a few steps behind them.
“So you think Miz C and Mr. Madison are really an item?” Kurt steadied Annie as she leaned against the railing to snap a picture.
Annie snorted. “If Mom’s voice hadn’t been normal when she came in last night, I’d have sworn she’d been sniffing helium.”
“Yeah.” Karen chuckled. “She tried to act like there was nothing in the works, but she was practically floating . . . and everything was funny.”
“You’re both lucky. Let it go at that.” John didn’t mean to be curt. But what had begun as a lark, spending time with these goody-goody people, struck a chord of envy that was tightening about his throat like a garrote. Besides, he’d outgrown wishing things were different. They weren’t. They’d never be. And who wanted to take over his old man’s insurance office anyway? His stepbrother could have it. John just wished it was his stepfather’s company footing the loss of the stolen stamp.
Walking into the caverns gave him the sense of being swallowed by the earth. John never ceased to be impressed by the Star Wars–like setting. The concrete staircase wound down and down past huge, craggy formations through some twenty caverns, many as big as a football stadium. Despite the balmy temperature of the cavern, Karen huddled close to him. John obliged her, slipping his arm around her shoulders, but annoyance grated at his nerves.
She was too young to be involved with him, much less with Jorge Rocha. If that ponytail of hers swatted him one more time in the mouth, he would be sorely pressed not to snap at it.
“It does look like a red-eyed wolf,” she marveled at one of the natural pictures carved in relief by crags and swirls in the rock walls.
Ahead, the tour guide did a trick with two flashlights that made rock silhouettes look like a man and woman moving closer and closer until they appeared to kiss.
“It’s my mom and your dad,” Annie snickered nearby.
“Then who’s the old hag sneaking up on them with a club?”
Kurt countered, indicating the shadow of what appeared to be just that—a crone with a raised club.
“Nobody we can’t take out with another flashlight, right?”
Karen looked at John as though he could conjure the light right there.
John was noncommittal. “I guess.”
“These caverns were once used by banditos,” the guide informed the tourists, “as a hideout and place to stash their loot.
They knew their way around like rabbits in their rabbit holes.”
“You mean warrens?” Wally’s scholarly scowl was wasted on the young female guide.
“If you wish, señor,” she answered, as if to say she really couldn’t care less.
Kurt elbowed his pal, teasing, “If you wish, señor.
”
With a huff of boredom, Karen grabbed John’s arm and dragged him out of the mainstream of visitors. “Let’s get away from these children.” She pointed to a dimly lit niche in the rock. “Take my picture over here.”
Assuming a Hollywood pose for the camera, she smiled. The flash went off with John’s push of the button.
“Now let me get you.”
“Let’s not let the group get too far ahead.”
“Indeed, that would be a bad idea, no, señor?”
The hair on John’s neck lifted, raked by the cold invisible finger of recognition. He knew that voice even before he saw the face of Jorge Rocha’s henchman, the same guy who’d beat the greedy college student to a pulp. Argon was taller and thinner than his boss, with a ragged scar across his face from forehead to cheek. John wondered how the eye it skipped over had been spared.
“John?” Innocent as she was, Karen recognized a thug when she saw one—or maybe it was Argon’s overpowering cologne that ran her off. She hurried to John’s side for protection, sending his thoughts into a furious spin.
Argon ran with the pack, too cowardly to take anyone on alone . . . which meant he was most likely here to deliver a message.
“Don’t be frightened, señorita. I work here and do not wish for you and your friend to get lost. You are not to leave your group.”
“Right.” Karen tugged on John’s arm. “Let’s go.”
“Young people should keep in touch with their families, no, señor?”
So that was it. John had not touched base with Rocha since the day at the pyramids, and El Jefe was getting nervous.
“They might think that you have run off or gotten lost.”
Like he was crazy enough to make the same mistake as the last kid who double-crossed Rocha?
John nodded. Javier must have OD’d on carbs and forgotten to let his uncle know what had happened. “Yeah,” he said. “We’d better catch up. When I get my cell phone charged, I’ll even call home.”
“John, the tour’s almost out of sight,” Karen said.
John lifted his hand at Argon. “Keep up the good work, buddy.
Sorry we dallied.”
By the time he and Karen caught up with the tail end of the tour, John ventured a look over his shoulder. Instead of moving along toward the exit with the crowd, the illustrious Argon was heading in the wrong direction, the idiot. Still, John’s heart scampered over itself from the encounter. Even idiots were dangerous.
Caroline sat on a bench near the snack stand and rubbed the back of her heel. It wasn’t blistered yet. To save further abrasion from the sandal strap, she put a Band-Aid on it.
“I can’t believe you wore sandals,” Dana remarked. “The brochure recommended sneakers for all the tours.”
“What price, beauty,” Caroline grumbled.
The yellow daisy on her black sandals had been a perfect match to the one on her black and yellow cropped pant set. Contrary to her practical nature, she’d tried for a feminine look as opposed to the sensible but klutzy pyramid-climber ensemble. But after all that walking down into the belly of the earth and climbing back out, she looked as though she’d just finaled in the Olympics— sweating, limping, and grinning through the pain.
“Besides, I didn’t get to read the brochure last night like some people. Otherwise I’d have worn sneakers and left this sweater behind.” She tugged at the garment tied to her waist. “I thought all caves were cool.”
“If you had gone out and missed Blaine last night, I’d have personally wrung your neck.”
Caroline cut her friend a sidewise glance. “You could have warned me about this Cupid conspiracy.”
When Caroline had returned to the room last night, the girls interrogated her until she pulled rank on them, insisting on lights out and quiet. In truth, she could have played coy at their questions in a pajama party. Instead, she’d replayed the scenes with Blaine over and over in her mind—their conversation, the dancing, the romance—until sleep claimed her with the memory of his goodnight kiss outside the door.
She should have guessed the girls would be spying. But for the latch catching when she finally opened the door to her room, both would be sporting black eyes. As it was, they sprawled backwards, dissolving into squeals of embarrassed laughter. Surely Blaine heard the commotion, but he retreated like a gentleman to his room, rather than amplify Caroline’s embarrassment with his presence.
“Blaine is the only one that matters.” At Caroline’s scowl, Dana held up her hand as if taking an oath. “No one else that I know of.
Of course, Randy knows about it, but refuses to weigh in one way or the other. But even those who don’t know that you two are involved think you should be.”
Involved. The word bounced off the walls of Caroline’s mind like the echoes in the caverns. Reason seesawed back and forth between excitement and caution. Part of her wanted to fly on the wings of love. Blaine wanted to take care of her—and of Annie.
When her daughter told her how he’d asked her permission to court her mother, Caroline’s heart had melted. And when he’d awakened a side of her she’d thought beyond revival with his touch, his kiss, so had the rest of her.
Yet another side wanted to run on the feet of fear. He wanted to take care of her. Did that mean putting her in a box where she lost her identity again? Would he break Annie’s heart? And could the woman he’d awakened in Caroline bear rejection again when someone younger and smarter turned his head?
“I see you found the Band-Aids,” Blaine said, interrupting the mental fray with his return from the snack bar. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a kitchen sink in that bag somewhere.”
“Mothers invented the Boy Scout motto,” Dana told him. “Be prepared.”
Blaine handed over one of the iced lemonades he and Randy purchased from the vendor.
“Delicious,” Caroline pronounced after taking a sip. “This is the real thing—”
“Mom!” Annie snapped a picture before approaching the bench with her entourage in tow.
Great, Caroline thought. Now her what-the-cat-dragged-out-ofthe-cave look was preserved for posterity. Thank You, God, that Annie wasn’t around when Blaine showed up last night. I have enough to atone for without bludgeoning my child to death with a disposable camera.
She pulled an exaggerated grimace. “Gee, we missed you guys.”
“I hope you didn’t try to get any pictures in the caverns,” Blaine said. “There’s no way to capture something that impressive on film.”
“We know.” Annie grinned at him, nothing short of adoration in her gaze. “Buy the postcards. What is it with you? Have you got a postcard franchise or something?”
Blaine winced, digging into a bag from the souvenir shop. “I’ve been found out.” He produced a book. “I guess I can return this book with professionally done pictures about the caves.”
“Oh, man.” Annie took the book and opened it. “I was looking at this earlier, but it would break my pocketbook. It’d be great for Mom’s school.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Are you going to tell them about that creep in the cavern?”
Kurt asked, peering over Annie’s shoulder at the book.
“What creep?” Caroline asked.
“You are such a big mouth,” Karen admonished him.
“It was nothing really,” John spoke up. “Karen and I stopped to take a picture, and some guy who worked for the place came out of the shadows and told us to catch up with the others.”
Blaine pounced. “Couldn’t you take a picture without leaving the group?”
Karen jumped in on the defense. “Not without a dozen other people in it, Daddy.”
“Yeah, they weren’t that far behind,” Kurt said, earning surprised looks from Karen and John. He heaved a big shrug. “So sue me. I went back to check on you two and saw him. He didn’t look like a tour guide to me.”
“Me neither,” Karen agreed. “This guy wore a suit, and his aftershave stunk to high heaven.”
“What made you think he worked for the place?” Blaine asked John.
John threw up his arms. “Look, I don’t know, man. He told us to catch up with the others, and we did. I wasn’t going to stand there and argue with him.”
“And it was my fault, Daddy,” Karen said, coming to John’s defense. “I wanted to sit on the rail and pose by one of the big rocks, so I made John wait till the others moved on.” She gave Kurt a scathing look. “I wasn’t going to say anything about it.”
Blaine studied John. “Do you think we should report this guy?”
John held the man’s gaze. “I don’t think it was a big deal, but do whatever you think. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Caroline spoke up. “Maybe you should report him,” she said.
“Can’t hurt, and might help.” At least it would take the paternal heat off John.