Chapter One
The smell of burning rubber assailed her nose and woke her with a jolt. Her head snapped up. Pain seared through her skull.
Her eyelids flew open. She blinked at the upside-down tree.
She clenched her teeth at the sound of a wheel spinning around and around, squealing with every turn. Her jaw throbbed.
The seat belt dug into her neck, and she reached down to tug on it. Her fingers crawled to the side of her head to probe the area that screamed with pain. The tips slid through strands of sticky hair.
She pulled her hand away and held it in front of her face. She tried to focus on the red streaks running down her arm. Blood. Her blood.
She swallowed and gagged. Swallowing and hanging upside down had its difficulties. She snorted out a laugh. People stuck on an amusement park ride must feel something like this—only this was no amusement park.
Her hand followed her seat belt to the latch. If she released too quickly, her head would bang against the roof of the car. It already hurt like hell. She didn’t need any more injuries.
She braced one hand on the roof of the vehicle and unsnapped the seat belt with her other hand. Her body slumped and curled in on itself in a fetal position as she rolled to her side.
She felt for the car door handle, but when she reached it, the handle wouldn’t release. Her fingers scrabbled to find the button for the door locks, and she clicked them open. She tried the handle again. This time, the door opened but not all the way. Repositioning herself, she shoved at the door with her feet, the edge of it scraping through dirt and sand.
When just enough of a space opened, she started to slither through it. Voices above her caused her to freeze with her feet just outside the car.
A man’s voice carried through the air, over the sound of the spinning wheel. “Should we go down?”
Another man answered him in accented English. “What do you think? I haven’t seen a thing move since it crashed.”
Terror seized her. Their words, their tone, their something pumped adrenaline through her system, revving up her sluggish, aching body.
She wriggled the rest of the way through the car door and crouched in the dirt beside the mangled, upended car. It lay at the bottom of a gully on the desert floor.
She peered over the top of the wreck at the ridge above and at two pairs of boots standing at the edge. The owners of those boots couldn’t see her, and for some reason, she wanted to make sure they never did.
One pair of boots, black with silver tips that glinted in the sun, made a move, and several pebbles tumbled down the embankment.
The owner of the boots said, “We have to be certain.”
“You go, man. I’m not going down there. What if the car explodes?”
“I’d rather be in a car explosion than face El Gringo Viejo and tell him we’re not sure she’s dead.”
“I have an idea. You see that gasoline leaking?”
The smell of gasoline now permeated her nose. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? The car could’ve gone up in flames at any time.
“Give me the cigarette, cabron. You’re too chicken to get close enough.”
If she ran now, they’d see her. Better to let them think she’d gone up in flames with the car. She coiled her body, her muscles quivering.
A few more pebbles rolled down as the man with the silver-tipped black boots ventured down the embankment sideways. He stopped, and she held her breath.
The other man laughed from above. “You missed.”
Two seconds later, a fire whipped up on the other side of the car. Fueled by the gasoline, it roared to life.
Using the flames and smoke as cover, she crawled through the sand toward that upside-down tree she’d spied through the cracked windshield, now right-side up. Leaning against its rough bark, she drew her knees to her chest, willing herself to shrink into the bark. Willing the two men to stay away.
When the car exploded, a door sailed past her and black smoke billowed into the blue cloudless sky. She stayed put, folding her arms across her body, fingers digging into her biceps.
A hot breeze carried the two male voices toward her, but she couldn’t make out their words this time over the crackling blaze. She squeezed her eyes shut and mumbled to herself, “Go away. Go away.”
A car started—maybe not. A small explosion sent another flurry of debris skyward, and she covered her nose and mouth with her hands to block out the acrid smoke and ash.
Her head hurt. Her lungs hurt. Her ribs hurt. And still she sat. She sat as the car burned out behind her. She sat as a lizard skittered across her toes. She sat as the sun dipped behind the hills. She sat as feral eyes glowed at her through the darkness.
Finally, her muscles stiff and her throat parched, she peeled herself away from the tree and cranked her head around. Wisps of smoke still rose from the torched husk of the car. It crouched in the desert like some watchful creature.
She patted the pockets of her pants and pulled out a few pesos from the front and a knife with a fancy handle from the back. She hit the button on the side of the knife, and a shiny blade materialized. She just might need that. She retracted the blade and shoved it back into her pocket, stepping away from the tree and scanning the ground.
The light from the half-moon provided scant illumination, but she spotted some debris in the sand. She squatted and picked through some scraps of paper, empty cigarette packages, receipts and bits of paper and plastic bags.
She snatched up one piece of paper stirring in the faint breeze and flattened it out on her knee. Someone had sketched the face of a man with longish hair and glasses—just more trash. She swept it from her leg and scanned the ground for something useful.
The desert floor stared back at her with hooded eyes, giving up nothing.
She glanced up at the ridge where the two men had stood and discussed her demise. They’d probably left hours ago, but fear had kept her attached to that tree. She needed a way out of here, water, food.
But most of all, she needed to find out who she was.
ROB CLIMBED INTO his Border Patrol truck and slumped behind the wheel, leaving his door open. He massaged his temples and whispered, “What a day.”
The hushed voice came from a place of reverence for the desert and its undercover creatures. He could shout at the top of his lungs and no human soul would hear him.
He sat for a moment, his hands resting on the steering wheel, soaking in the peacefulness. As a Border Patrol agent, he knew this stretch of the desert didn’t always host serenity. He’d experienced firsthand the headless bodies, the shoot-outs and the drugs—always the drugs.
His fingers curled around the steering wheel. Drugs had ravaged his life. They didn’t represent some inanimate object to him. He viewed drugs as some great evil that had become his personal enemy.
He’d never expressed it quite like that when he’d applied for a job with the Border Patrol. The agency probably would’ve dismissed him based on his psych eval if he had.
He loosened his death grip on the steering wheel and ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t want to pollute the evening with thoughts of home.
Easing the door of his truck closed, he started the engine. The sound would scatter all the shy creatures and maybe even a drug dealer or two, although his survey of the border today probably already did that.
He buzzed down his window and wheeled the truck around. The truck bumped along the dirt of the access road until it hit the asphalt, which didn’t provide a much smoother ride. He flicked on his brights. He didn’t want to mow down anything out here, and it wouldn’t be likely that he’d be blinding another driver at this time of night.
The warm breeze from the window caressed his face, and he inhaled the scents from the desert, subtle but distinct. His nostrils flared at an alien odor.
Despite the hot and dry conditions of the Sonoran Desert, fires didn’t commonly occur due to the lack of combustible vegetation, but he’d definitely caught a whiff of burning rubber and gasoline. He pulled over and adjusted his rearview mirror, studying the landscape behind him.
The road had crested and the desert floor had fallen away, down a steep embankment. Scanning the space to the side of the road, Rob detected a stream of gray smoke curling toward the sky.
He threw the truck into Reverse and backed onto the shoulder, giving himself plenty of space between his tires and the edge of the ridge that fell away about fifteen feet.
He left his headlights on and grabbed the flashlight from his truck. He exited his vehicle, planting his boots on the shifting gravel. Peering over the side of the road, he aimed his flashlight in the area where he’d seen the smoke.
The beam of light picked out the skeleton of a car, burned down to bare bones. “Damn.”
Torched cars did occasionally appear in this part of the desert. Sometimes car thieves dumped the fruits of their labor here after stripping them of usable parts. Sometimes coyotes got rid of their vehicles after transporting their human cargo across the border. And sometimes people had accidents.
Rob edged sideways down the embankment, wedging his boots in the dirt and rock with each step. He called out for the hell of it. “Anyone here?”
If anyone had been in that car, he or she would’ve perished in the fire. The car hadn’t crashed that recently, so even if someone had survived the impact and the inferno, that person probably wouldn’t have survived exposure to these harsh elements.
When he reached the car, he kicked at the frame with the toe of his boot. It collapsed with a squeal. Walking around the vehicle, he searched for the VIN, license plate and any other type of identifying information. He couldn’t even tell what kind of car it had been.
As he turned toward the embankment leading back up to the road, a rustling sound stopped him in his tracks. He glanced over his shoulder. It could be anything.
He eyed the paloverde tree and a few scrubby bushes to the right of the car. He’d probably startled an animal holing up there. Running his flashlight over the vegetation, he squinted at the outlines of the tree’s low branches. Something bigger than a longhorn sheep could be hiding out there, something as big as a person.
“Hello?” He started walking toward the tree. “Anyone there?”
Something decidedly human coughed, and a shape emerged from behind the tree.
“Are you all right? Is that your car?” He swept the beam of his flashlight over the figure.
A woman stepped forward, blinking in the light. She raised her arm, her hand gripping a knife, and said, “Take one more step and I’ll gut you.”
Copyright © 2020 by Carol Ericson