Sunset painted a fiery backdrop for the mountains surrounding Mexicalli by the time Mark was settled back in his room. Soledad fussed to make him eat the arroz con pollo that she’d prepared for the two of them.
Freshly showered and changed into a skirt and blouse, Corinne applied a bit of orange blossom after-shower spray and headed for the salon to check on her patient one last time before heading to Doña . . . to her grandmother’s house for supper.
Mark whistled when she walked into the room. “Wow, I’m starting to feel better already. Besides, I don’t like the idea of you walking to the village alone.” He started to toss back the coverlet, but Soledad caught it and glared at him, her mouth set like iron.
Mark rolled his gaze toward the ceiling. “I slept all afternoon.”
“You no eat my arroz con pollo,” the housekeeper declared, “you not well enough to walk down to the village.”
“Much less back up to the hacienda,” Corinne pointed out. Much as she’d love for Mark to go with her, she knew the high fevers had given way to cold sweats from weakness.
“Then you go,” Mark said to Soledad. “Corinne shouldn’t go alone . . . especially at night.”
Ample chin to chest, Soledad peered at him from under the thick shrub of her brow. “The ghost was here.”
“It wasn’t a real ghost. It was a jerk pretending to be a ghost.”
“A jerk who was here.” The housekeeper tapped the side of the bed for effect.
Corinne couldn’t help but grin. “Give it up, Mark. I’ll be fine.”
Shifting on the bed, Mark met Soledad’s stubborn look with one of his own. “Will you go with Corinne if I eat all the delicious food that you worked so hard to cook for me?”
Boy, he knew the right strings to pull. Corinne could see the determination on Soledad’s face waver.
“Pues . . .” Calculation whirred behind her dark eyes. Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly until she had everyone’s full attention for her announcement. “No.”
“Soledad,” Mark moaned.
“I do not belong at Doña Violeta’s table. I belong here with you and our precious Toto.” She took up the untouched plate and scooped some of the cut-up chicken and rice. “And you will eat; I will not leave this spot until you do.”
“Well,” Corinne said, stepping up to the side of the bed. “You two take care.” She pressed a chaste kiss on Mark’s forehead, but memory of a more passionate one sent a frisson of heat through her.
“Like I’ve got a choice with Nurse Vengeance,” he grumbled.
“I wish you could go,” Corinne commiserated, “but we’re just going to look at family pictures.” Excitement surged at the idea of seeing her mother for the first time. “It’s not really a guy thing.”
“Diego is going to be there.”
Mark was pouting . . . and jealous, she realized with a twickle of delight. Corinne felt compelled to assuage him with a quick kiss. “He’s my cousin,” she said.
“Yeah, well, just remember that when he walks you home.”
Corinne winked. “I will, I promise.”
Soledad’s votives on the mantel cast a soft glow on the ceiling as Mark checked the clock there for the umpteenth time. Ten o’clock, and Corinne still hadn’t returned. Granted, it had only been three hours, but it was a long three. Tossing the covers off, he got out of bed and made his way to the front door. In the dim light of the electric lantern outside, he padded in his bare feet out onto the cool flat stone surface. Beyond the gape in the courtyard wall where the gate had been, the moon bathed the still landscape with a silence interrupted only by the sound of nocturnal insects.
With no sign of Corinne’s approach, Mark let his gaze wander over the stacks of supplies brought in by the Indios. They were dwindling, evidence that the project progressed. Mark rubbed his arms against the chill of the night air.
Lord, I just thank You for taking over, because I’ve been in way over my head.
Juan Pablo, who’d proved to be a competent site boss, had roughed in plumbing to the two rooms assigned as the new baths and showers. They now awaited Juan Miguel to lay the tile. But Juan Pedro kept Juan Miguel busy repairing the walls as the old wiring was replaced with new. All day long, someone called for another, although how they knew which Juan was to answer was anyone’s guess.
“And just what do you think you are doing?” Soledad demanded behind him. She still wore her on-duty black and yellow, instead of the floral housecoat she usually had donned by now.
“Wondering where Corinne is.”
The housekeeper glanced at her watch. “Where she was forty-two minutes ago . . . at the hacienda of Doña Violeta.” Her stern features softened. “But it makes much longer for a man in love, no?”
“It makes much longer when a man is waiting and worrying.” Was that what love was? He couldn’t recall feeling like this about any other woman . . . but then he’d not been marooned in the Twilight Zone with any other woman.
“Pues, if you ask . . .” Soledad broke off, cocking her head to one side. “Did you hear that?”
Mark came in from the patio. “What?”
“I heard something . . . like someone moving bricks,” the wide-eyed housekeeper whispered. She pointed to the salon.
Or sliding tile? Recalling the sound from the night the ghost appeared, Mark took Soledad by the arm and guided her out to the patio. “Go to the orphanage and call the police.”
“But what will you do?”
“I’m going to sneak inside, wait, and watch.” And if he caught the so-and-so, he was going to give the man a headache like he wouldn’t believe.
Soledad hesitated, clearly torn between abandoning Mark to the ghost and remaining with him to confront it.
“I’m just going to watch,” Mark insisted, giving her a little prod. “Go get help.”
“I can build on that?” she asked.
Mark nodded. “You can build on it. Now, hurry . . . and keep in the cover of the lumber and stone stacks.”
Reaching inside the door, Mark turned the outside lantern off. The moon provided all the illumination Soledad would need to reach the gate and beyond while he clung to the shadows.
Heart pounding against his chest at the prospect of catching their ghost in action, he grabbed up a scrap of two-by-four and backed against the front of the house, listening. He hadn’t actually heard Soledad’s noise, but he trusted her ears above the CIA’s best high-tech listening device.
He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, mind racing. Dare he slip inside and make for Corinne’s room? From there he could keep an eye on the house from the front to the back through the utility-bath. But that meant slipping through the glow of candlelight from his room—the only room with brick or tile, not to mention the place where their ghost had vanished into thin air.
Something clattered to the floor. It sounded as though it came from the far end of the house. Peering around the front doorjamb, Mark scanned the empty hallway. Nothing there, but a flash of light from the upstairs ballroom balcony entrance. Someone was in the house—in the ballroom.
The length of lumber firm in his hand, Mark slipped into the hall and hustled toward the dark cover of Corinne’s room, when he sensed a presence behind him. Before he could bring his weapon to bear, pain exploded against the side of his face, knocking him to the floor. Through the white blast dazing his vision, he made out someone approaching from the back of the house.
Two ghosts. The thought swam round and round the whirlpool drawing him deeper and deeper into a gray-black funnel where hands pulled and tugged at him, lifting, dropping, hauling, shoving.
He heard Toto squeal. Were they killing the pig? Mark tried to open his eyes, but the room moved, the motion slamming his eyelids shut with such force that his stomach heaved in warning. It was safer to listen.
“Sergio, you fool, tie his feet as well.”
Who was Sergio? Mark didn’t know any Sergio. But he did know the smell of gasoline. He tried once again to open his eyes, but they were so heavy, only a slit of light came through.
Someone was working around him. Was he in a chair? Mark pulled at the invisible bonds holding him immobile. Wood creaked beneath him.
“He awakens, Lorenzo.”
Lorenzo? As in Lorenzo Pozas? The name registered with a chilling clarity, nipping at the daze fogging his brain. Clenching his teeth, Mark forced his eyes open. The room shifted left to right in a semicircle and back before stopping. Where is Pozas?
“In the back,” a young voice replied, alerting Mark to the fact that he’d voiced his thoughts.
Mark struggled to turn and look behind him in the direction of his captor, but ropes bit into his wrists, chest, and feet. “Who . . . who are you?”
“I am called Sergio.” Satisfied that the ropes held, Sergio walked around so that Mark could see him. “Much pleasure.”
Much pleasure? What, was the guy simple?
“Why did you tie me up, Sergio?”
“Because Lorenzo said to.”
“What’s the gasoline for?” As if Mark didn’t suspect.
“To burn down the hacienda, cómo no?”
Oh, God. Mark’s prayer dart faded with the welling of nausea. Would Soledad make it back with the police in time? He worked at the ropes binding his wrists when the press of a cold cloth against his right temple added its sting to his misery. Jerking away, Mark saw Sergio holding a bloodstained washcloth, his round face a mirror of concern.
“You bleed, señor.”
The man had to be mentally deficient to worry about bleeding when he was about to set the house on fire with Mark in it. Had Sergio been the crayon witch?
The sound of footsteps in the hall drew Mark’s attention to the door, where his worst nightmare appeared with a fuel can in hand.
“Ahora—” Lorenzo Pozas stopped short upon meeting Mark’s gaze. “So, the big engineer is awake. ‘I was just wondering if there were any caracoles around here,’” he said, mimicking Mark’s question in the market.
“So there are valuable snail fossils in the ground under Hacienda Ortiz,” Mark stated.
“Enough to make me a rich man.” Lorenzo walked away, pouring the accelerant around the hall, soaking the area in front of Mark’s room. “And you a dead man.”
“Soledad knows you are here. She’s gone to call the police.”
“No one will listen to that foolish busybody,” Pozas responded. “Especially Don Rafael and Capitán Nolla.”
Mark’s bravado faltered. He’d suspected as much, but hearing it didn’t make him feel any better. “But the government will listen to my brother. He’s already contacted the federal authorities to investigate the ammonite fossils in this area, as well as your colleagues. And he has your name.”
Pozas turned, his scowl almost inhuman in its darkness. “So you say.”
“So I know,” Mark replied. “I told him how you killed your brother and his wife—”
“They were witched.”
“—by arranging a gas leak. And how you shot Enrique and left him to the animals. He will be dug up, and the authorities will find out the truth about his death.”
“You know nothing about the boy.” Pozas gave the can a toss toward the curtains, but only a little fuel came out. With an oath of disbelief, he shook the can and glared at Sergio. “Did you fill it like I told you, estúpido?”
The young man nodded. “It was all I could carry.”
“To the brim?”
Sergio frowned. “If I fill it so, I cannot carry it.”
Pozas raised his hand to strike his assistant, but Sergio scampered out of reach and out of the periphery of Mark’s vision. “Run, you little idiot. You will get yours, that I promise you.”
Run? Run where? Mark shifted his weight, turning the chair a little, but he couldn’t see where the retreating noise that Sergio made had come from. The strike of a match drew his attention back to Pozas. In its glow, a yellow-stained smile spread on the assassin’s face.
“The secret passage to the mines made my job easy,” Pozas said, walking with deliberation toward the gas-soaked hall.
Mark was too distracted by the flickering death in the man’s dirt-smudged fingers to dwell on how the ghost came and went.
“It is said that Don Diego Ortiz built this in the days of the banditos, when no one who had money was safe from them.” With his free hand, Pozas pulled the sliding pocket doors to the hall almost shut. “But unlike him, you will not escape so.”
With a flick of his fingers, Pozas tossed the match and closed the doors. The whoosh of igniting gas on the other side rattled them. Ignoring the retreating man and his taunts, Mark watched the only thing that held the flames spreading through the hacienda from him.
“Die well, amigo,” the murderer called from behind. The familiar sound of stone scraping stone followed.
Mark’s mind raced. He had one chance. If he could break the chair, he might be able to free himself before the smoke pouring under the door overcame him. Bracing, he prayed, Heavenly Father, help me now, and shoved sideways with all his might.
But Violeta’s chair was well made, and the ropes would not give. At floor level, Mark watched the black fumes snake their way into the room. The varnish on the doors bubbled and ran from the heat that scorched his cheeks even from the short distance away. Sweat poured from his brow into his eyes, already stinging—or had he reopened his head wound?
He made a valiant attempt to wriggle as far away from the hall as he could between ragged breaths, but the exertion provoked an agonizing cramp in one of his bound legs. Realizing that his efforts were futile, all the squandered times of his life flooded his mind . . . only to be chased away by memories of times when he had been in the right place at the right time . . . in Sunday school, where he’d memorized his mother’s favorite psalm for Mother’s Day.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .
Above him, Soledad’s votives still burned, but given his ability to reach them, they might as well be on the altar in the village church. All the candles in the world burning could not help him now.
I will fear no evil . . .
His only hope was the fourth man in the picture of the three Hebrew men in the fiery furnace.
For thou art with me.
With the faith that he had had when he’d read that Bible picture book, Mark mouthed His name.
Jesus.