This time it was to their benefit that Gale didn’t stay in one mood for long. He abruptly sat down and grabbed up his bowl with its last few bites of oatmeal.
“Yer still the sneaky one,” he said to Beck, now sounding more sullen than hostile. “The Mexican’s not a good enough thinker.”
“Please. Call me Tilda,” she said, bristling.
“Yer plan has some appeal, I’ll give ya that. But there’s probly something I’m not seeing. I’ll think on it. Roll it around till I see it from all sides. Think I shouldn’t trust you.”
“I fixed your arm,” Beck said, back to her calm, nonchalant self.
“Not as good as it felt yesterday. You probly poisoned it.” He clenched and unclenched the fingers of his left hand.
Christ on a cracker, he sounded petulant. Imogen’s snort and chuckle slipped out before she could contain it. Gale quirked a grin at her, much to her astonishment.
“Does it look worse?” Beck asked, undaunted by his capricious temperament.
He peeked under the bandage. “No.”
“You need to rest it. Take a couple of ibuprofen for the inflammation.”
Imogen wondered if, behind Beck’s calmness, she was hiding something—some aspect of the plan that Gale would never agree to. She wished there were a way to warn her sister: Don’t trick him. If he agreed to something and later discovered a trapdoor they wouldn’t get another chance.
He nodded a little, like a chastised schoolboy who realized the teacher was right.
“We’ll come up with something, okay?” said Imogen. The breadth of his emotions actually gave her hope: he wasn’t a ruthless, one-dimensional cartoon character. “We’re not trying to be sneaky.” She shot Beck a look, Right? “We really do all want the same thing.”
“Doubt that,” he said, still pouting. He scraped out the dregs of his oatmeal, polishing his spoon with big, shameless licks. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Any a you girls married? Got kids?”
“I’m married,” said Beck.
Gale swiveled to look at her. “You? Didn’t have you pegged fer…Oh. You married to a dyke?”
“A woman.”
“You the butch one?”
Beck peered at him over the rim of her plastic coffee mug, but declined to answer.
“I didn’t mean no offense, I got nothing against gays. Or Mexicans. Or”—to Imogen—“whatever you are, with that weird-color hair.” She almost laughed again. There was something genuine about him, genuine enough to make her believe that his failings didn’t include being superficially hateful, in spite of crass generalizations. To Beck he asked, “Ya got kids?”
“Not yet.” Beck flashed a look at Imogen and there was something in her eyes, a message, but Imogen wasn’t sure what it meant. Beck and Afiya wanted kids, but Afiya had already had two miscarriages.
“What about you two?” he asked.
Imogen shook her head.
“I have a boyfriend back home,” Tilda said. “No kids.”
Gale nodded, and didn’t make eye contact as he spoke. “Well, I got me some kids. It goes without saying I been a shitty dad, locked up most a their lives. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love ’em. My daughter—I got just the one, and two boys with a different mother. The boys…Maybe it’s my fault, bad role model and all that. But my daughter, Crystal, she’s a good girl. She was born when I was twenty-one and now she’s twenty-one and having her first baby. I feel like that’s…We got a special connection. I shoulda named her Diamond, ’cause she’s priceless. She’s having a little girl and I suggested she name her Diamond.
“Anyway. I wanted to be there, that’s all. Crystal’s gonna have that baby any minute and I just wanted…to hold her hand. Kiss the baby’s head. Thought I could drive there and back and not miss my parole officer. I didn’t think that was too much to want, just to see my newborn granddaughter. Didn’t think the effort was gonna…Hoped to be fer Diamond what I couldn’t be fer Crystal. That ain’t a bad dream, is it?”
Nothing about Gale’s appearance spoke to a tender heart. But even Tilda, practically hog-tied, wore an expression of wounded understanding. Every daughter—and Tilda more than some—needed a father who’d show up for her. Beck’s eyes were filmy with tears. Was she really that moved by his story?
“Parole is ridiculous,” Imogen muttered, thinking aloud. It always sounded like a cruel game of Simon Says, played in whispers.
“Agree with ya there.”
“It just sets people up for failure.” The criminal justice system was only punitive, designed to minimize the odds for reformation. This entire chain of events led back to the rules of his probation. Now a cop was dead, three women’s lives were in the balance—and who knew what had happened to the Navajo kid—just because Gale wasn’t legally allowed to attend his first grandchild’s birth. “It was a good dream. A dream you should’ve been able to have.”
Something in her words or her tone made Beck turn a questioning glare on her.
“Yup. Shoulda. Instead…I never learn, even when I know better.”
“Let us help,” Imogen said. He might yet be convinced to hike out, take the Jeep, ditch the phones, and accept that there were no other booby traps, aside from the ones of his own making.
Gale tossed his plastic bowl and cup over to her. “You can help by washing the dishes. I’ll tie up yer sis and take the Mex—Tilda—to the john, as promised.”
Beck laid her dishes and spoon at Imogen’s feet. She turned herself over to Gale, hands clasped together. He took a bundle of cord from his pocket and quickly wrapped it tight, and Beck was soon immobilized where she sat. As Imogen used the last of the now-warmish water to clean up, she watched Gale work. The sympathy she’d felt for him only moments earlier was already waning.
“Gale, just take the car,” she said. “It’s the fastest way you’ll get to Crystal.”
“That’s fer me to decide.”
Tilda winced; he tugged the knots away from her wrists before successfully freeing her. “Can’t one of them come with me?” she asked.
Imogen might not have been able to relieve herself if her sister hadn’t been beside her. They already felt vulnerable in this man’s presence, and Tilda had never acclimated to squatting. “I don’t mind coming.”
But as she said it, Beck’s face hardened and she gave a little shake of her head.
“It’s this or nothing. I’m not gonna have you three always trying to get yer way. Yer not calling the shots here. But I’m a gentleman, keep my back turned, just like before.”
Tilda radiated panic, rubbing her wrists, but she tucked the toilet paper under her arm. Gale took her by the elbow. “Be back in a minute. Don’t do nothing stupid.”
“We won’t,” Imogen promised, though Beck’s clamped jaw looked less inclined to make such a vow.
They watched him lead Tilda up-camp, away from the creek. At least Imogen would finally be able to exchange a few words with her sister—but she wasn’t prepared for what Beck had to say.
“Run to the river! Now!” she whispered.
“But—”
“Flag down some rafters, tell them we’re here and ask them to call—”
“We’ll make it worse, he’s almost ready to take the car—”
“This was my backup plan,” Beck hissed, “if we couldn’t push him into the gorge. Tilda wrecked that before we could even try, but we can’t give up.”
“He’ll kill us!” The next time he took the gun out, it wouldn’t be for a warning shot.
“He’s gonna kill us anyway! We’re running out of options. Take a canteen. Hide somewhere, in case he comes looking. Go!”
There wasn’t time to keep debating Beck’s plan. Suddenly deluged with adrenaline, Imogen grabbed a canteen and bolted for the creek.