Page 8 of Bad Rio
He nodded. “Like I said it only works for a minute or two. If they hovered over us for long, and if they were looking in the right place, we’d be sitting ducks.”
Now it made sense. She felt a little foolish. “What is this place?”
“Just a hidey hole. I’ve used several of them across Mexico. I was here this morning. Left that light on.” He gestured at the battery lamp. “Lucky for us the cantina where I grabbed you is fewer than fifty miles off. The next cabin’s two hundred miles farther south. We’d have had a lot longer ride.”
She tried not to gape. What sort of person maintainedhidey holesacross a foreign country? Bewildered, she shook her head to clear it. “Where are we?”
“Chihuahua State, partway up the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.” He refolded the sleeping bag and placed it back at the end of the bed.
So far away, she thought in dismay, from the ambassador’s house, up north by the U.S. border in Matamoros. Again, she imagined forming an escape plan, of somehow getting away, getting to safety. No sense in letting him know that. Attempting to sound innocent, she asked, “How long should we stay here?”
“Depends on how close those bastards are, how bad they want you. We may leave at dawn. We may stay put. I’ll decide tomorrow.”
She blinked at him. “Whoareyou? Did my father send you?” It could certainly be possible.
“In a roundabout way,” he answered.
A small measure of relief crept through her, instantly followed by a new suspicion. “So, my daddidn’tactually hire you?” Quickly she sifted through possibilities. “The government got involved.”
He gave her a pained look. “Of course. The US of A can’t tolerate having American citizens kidnapped from a foreign dignitary’s residence. Especially from an ambassador’s house.”
“And it puts a black eye on the Mexican government.” She thought about this. “I work for my father’s San Antonio business, a hubcap distributorship. With my dad’s close ties in government, he’s politically connected.”
His glance was considering this. He picked up a water bottle and brought it to the small table next to the bed. Beside that, he positioned his handgun.
She watched him. “So ... you’ll be making money off me.”
He met her gaze squarely. “A lot of money.”
“From who? Who’s paying you?”
“How about you answer my questions. What else do you know? Why you? Why’d the cartel grab you, Becca?”
Her energy reserves waning, Becca wished she had all her mental faculties to continue demanding answers from him. But the exhaustion overtaking her was too strong. Her mind felt like sludge. “I don’t know anything else,” she said. “I wish I did.” Again, she felt her eyelids droop.
“We’ll talk in the morning. Move over.” Rio pointed to the opposite side of the bed.
Momentarily, she revived. “I told you, you’re not sleeping here—”
“Move or I’ll move you.” He waited, once again with a strangely dispassionate demeanor, as though it didn’t matter to him what she did. She knew that if she didn’t make room for him, he would physically set her aside. He was getting into the bed with her no matter what.
Grudgingly, she scooted toward the wall, where the bed and wall met. Rolling tensely onto her side, she faced away from him. As he lay down on his back beside her, she felt rather than saw him place his forearm over his forehead.
Outside, in the black darkness of the forest, she felt certain that those men—the cartel, Rio had called them—were relentlessly hunting her. Naturally they’d be eager to recapture her. The idea of returning to the imprisonment of that awful truck, to possible death, horrified her. She wanted nothing more than to go home to her condo in San Antonio, Texas, to her nice, quiet life, to her ordered existence, to her family and friends. If only this harrowing interlude would end.
As her eyes drifted shut, she drew her knees up to her stomach. Her leg throbbed. Exhausted, she tried concocting an escape plan. She didn’t know whether she could trust this Rio guy. So far, she’d been unable to stop any of these events from happening, all of them crashing down on her. With everything out of her control, she felt off-kilter and unbalanced. Normally in charge of her own destiny, she abhorred the feeling. “Rio?” she asked.
“What?”
“You’re supposed to get me back home?” She whispered the question.
“Correct.”
Maybe, she thought. And maybe he was just pretending in order to keep her compliant. After a long moment, she asked, “Who are you really?”
“I’m Rio,” he said. “And I’m here to save you. That’s all you need to know.”
“You’ll save me?” she whispered again, this time softer. She didn’t want it to be a dream, a fairy tale. She wanted it to be real.
