The Infinity Tattoo (9 page)

“Okay, maybe you’re right. But right now, my head is spinning and I’m dead tired. Why don’t we try to get some sleep before the sun comes up,” he said.

* * *

It was the birds, and not the sun, that woke them up in the grey before dawn. Sometime during the night, Meg had woken up shivering. She pulled an old blanket from the back of the car and, with Jack’s arms wrapped around her and the blanket covering both of them, she dozed off again. Now he was leaning against the passenger door, and she was sprawled awkwardly across his chest. She tried to sit up and pressed her elbow into his midriff.

“Mmph,” he muttered.

“Sorry,” she said, managing to extricate herself from him. When she was in a sitting position, she tried to roll her neck and met with resistance on one side.

Jack was watching her through narrowed eyes. Her short, dark hair was a disaster: on top it stuck straight up like a rooster’s comb, the rest was pointing in various directions. She ran her fingers through it in a vain attempted to tame it.

She caught him watching her. “What are you smiling about?” she said.

“You look beautiful in the morning. I especially like the hair.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed and pulled the sun visor down so the she could look in the mirror. “That’s not fair. I spent the whole night in this bloody car. What did you expect?”

“Would you chill? I told you it’s cute.”

“Very funny,” she said and hopped out of the car.

“Where are you going?”

“Down to the creek. To get some water.”

When she returned, her hair was wet. She had finger combed it into some semblance of order. She got back in and glared at him.

“I liked it better before,” he said, which earned him a jab in the arm. “Okay, okay. Truce?”

“Hmph,” she said. Then she reached for the ignition.

“Going somewhere?”

“Well, we can’t stay here, and it’s still too early to find anywhere open for coffee, so we might as well hit the road.”

Meg took it slowly as she navigated the numerous sharp curves of the highway. It wasn’t until the sun started to light up the sky that Jack realized they were in a deep, breathtaking canyon. Red rock cliffs rose hundreds of feet on either side of the road, interspersed with oak trees, pines and scrub brush on its rocky slopes.

“What is this place?” Jack said.

“Oak Creek Canyon. Some people call it a mini Grand Canyon. It never stops being awe-inspiring to me no matter how many times I take this road.”

“Where does it lead to?”

“Flagstaff. We’ll start climbing in a bit.”

“Why Flagstaff?”

“Because that’s where the road takes us. It was either that, or go back to Sedona. Anyway, from Flagstaff you have a number of options to get out of town—trains, buses, planes.”

And sure enough, before too long they reached a series of hairpin turns that snaked up and out of the steep canyon. Finally, they reached a plateau and the road straightened out.

“Do you mind if we stop for a minute?” Jack said, staring out the window.

“What? Oh, yes, of course. There’s a scenic turnout just ahead.”

* * *

When they pulled over, the sun had finally risen above the cliffs. It shone over the wind- and weather-carved canyon in a delightful play of shadow and light.

Jack was enjoying the spectacular view when suddenly he caught sight of another vehicle making its way up the hairpin turns. It was a black SUV.

“Meg,” he said. Anxiety in his voice caused her to turn to him. “Look.” He pointed down.

“Shit,” she said.

“Come on.” They ran to the car.

Meg stepped on the gas. The road was straighter here. They flew by the speed limit sign calling for a sedate forty-five miles per hour.

“Do you think they’ve seen us?”

Jack turned and noted that the distance between the two cars was growing. “I don’t think so. They seem to be keeping close to the speed limit. If they’d seen us, I think they’d be chasing. Speaking of which, you might want to slow down.” By now they were in a sixty-five mph zone, but Meg was traveling eighty-five.

“Right, okay, yeah. You’re right,” she said and let the speed drift down to a leisurely seventy.

When they reached Flagstaff, Meg had a change of heart and turned onto the interstate.

“Hey, I thought that sign back there said Flagstaff,” Jack said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m hoping to lose our tail.”

* * *

As Meg and Jack approached Flagstaff, Jimmy and Cal sat unobtrusively in a silver Ford Escort at the end of Highway 89A. It was a perfect spot to intercept their quarry, as it was pretty much the only option going into Flagstaff.

They had been there since the wee hours of the morning, ever since their boss, Freddy, called. Jimmy could hear the anger in the boss’s voice as he told him about the botched attempt to nab Meg and Jack in Sedona.

At around six, Jimmy’s cell phone rang. It was Freddy. “They’re coming your way.”

Jimmy nudged Cal awake. Cal yawned and sat up. Soon, they saw an oncoming vehicle. “This might be the car coming up the highway now,” Jimmy said. “I can see two people in it. It could be a Land Cruiser.”

The vehicle was moving at a pretty good clip, but when it reached the end of the highway, it had to slow down, to either turn towards the interstate on-ramp or proceed directly into Flagstaff.

“That’s got to be them,” said Cal.

They peered into the windows as it drove by. The woman driving had short dark hair, and the man in the passenger’s seat had medium-length brown hair and a beard.

“It totally fits their description,” Jimmy said. “Let’s go.”

Their quarry turned onto the interstate ramp. They pursued the Land Cruiser. Jimmy called the boss. “They’re on the interstate, heading south towards Phoenix.”

“Follow them,” said Freddy. “Whatever you do, don’t lose them. And keep me posted.”

Before too many miles the Land Cruiser pulled into a service station. Cal pulled into the service island next to them. The man filled the old car with gas and the woman went inside. She returned with two coffees and a small bag.

Jimmy wanted to nab them right then and there. But the place was too public.

* * *

Meg returned to the car and asked, “Do you want to drive for a while?”

“Sure,” Jack said.

She handed him the keys and as soon as they were back on the interstate, she wolfed down a donut and some coffee. But even the shot of caffeine wasn’t enough to keep her awake with the lull of the car on the smooth interstate. She sat back and closed her eyes for a nap. However, immediately her cell phone rang. It was Julio. He was probably wondering why she and Jack hadn’t shown up at the new work site.

“Hi, Julio,” Meg said. “Listen, something has come up and we won’t—“

“Meg,” Julio interrupted. “Where are you?”

“That’s what I was going to tell you. Jack and I aren’t in Sedona. We’re on the interstate.”

“Oh, thank goodness” he said with a sigh of relief.

“Why, Julio? What’s going on?”

“We had some visitors last night,” he said. “Some guys were creeping around our house. Elena noticed them when she let the dog out for a pee.”

“Did you recognize them?” she said, her heart jumping into her throat.

“Only their type. They were just like the guys that stopped by your house yesterday. When we got up the next morning, they were still sitting there. So me and Manny went to work, like always. We didn’t want them to know that we knew they were following us, so we called a friend. He went over to your house. There’s someone there as well. It’s not safe for you to come back, Meg.”

Meg felt a shiver run down her spine at Julio’s words. “H-how do you know who these people are, Julio?”

“I’m afraid Carlos may have had something to do with it. But I need you to tell me the truth. Is Jack a fugitive? Is he involved in drug trafficking? What was he doing staying with you?”

“No, Julio, it’s nothing like that. It’s true that Jack is in some trouble. Somehow, he has stepped into a . . . well, I don’t know what you’d call it. But we’re pretty sure it has to do with Alex’s disappearance.”

“
Dios mio
, Meg. What kind of danger has he gotten you into?”

Meg glanced at Jack who was concentrating on the road. “Listen, I don’t have time to explain it all to you. But there’s something I need to know. Why do you think Carlos had something to do with it?”

“Carlos is a member of a major drug cartel operating out of Arizona. He’s a really bad hombre. It is unfortunate that he married my wife’s niece. Anyway, when he was here visiting, he met Jack. He must have recognized him.”

“So . . . you think some thugs from a drug cartel are after Jack?”

“Sure looks like it. You’re sure Jack isn’t involved in drug trafficking?”

“I’m sure. Listen, Julio, I am so sorry to have gotten you into this mess.”

“Don’t you worry about us. We know how to take care of ourselves. It’s you I’m worried about. Where are you going?”

“At the moment, we’re heading south.”

“Well, look. Just be careful.”

“We will, Julio. And thanks for calling.”

Meg hung up and told Jack what Julio had said.

“And it looks like we have more trouble,” Jack said when she finished. “I think we’re being followed.”

“No way,” Meg said. “I thought we got rid of them.”

“This is a different car. Take a look. Do you see a silver car, a sedan of some kind? It’s a couple of cars back, but you can see it when we get to the top of this rise.”

“Yeah, I see it.” She watched for several miles as it maintained a constant distance behind them. Whenever Jack moved into the passing lane, it followed. If Jack chose to follow a slower moving vehicle, it slowed down as well. Often it let other cars get between them, but it never left their tail.

“What are we going to do?” she said.

“I was thinking. We have high clearance and four-wheel-drive and they don’t. We can probably take a back road where they won’t be able to follow.”

“You’re right,” Meg said excitedly. “Listen, in the pocket on the door on your side there are some maps. Can you hand them to me?” He grabbed what he could find and passed them over to her. She unfolded a large aerial map and studied it for several minutes.

“Okay, when it comes up, take the exit to Montezuma’s Castle.”

“Got it,” he said. They exited the interstate and followed the signs to the monument. The silver sedan followed.

“Okay, now don’t take the turn-off to the castle. We’re going to take another turn-off further down the road,” she instructed. After a few miles, she said, “Okay, turn here.”

They followed the winding road for a distance. The silver sedan followed. Then they made another turn. This road was little more than a rock-strewn path. But the Land Cruiser handled it well. Meg held fast as it bumped over the rough ground.

She glanced behind her. The car following them had stopped and she could see the driver getting out. He knelt down to check under the belly of the car. The other man stood next to the passenger door.

Meg couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw him pull out a semi-automatic pistol from his pocket. He aimed it at their vehicle and started firing.

“Jack, they’re shooting at us.”

“Christ,” Jack said and turned his full attention to the road. He pushed the Land Cruiser as hard as he could over the boulders and around sudden dips where heavy rains had washed away the road.

After a few miles, she looked behind her. There was no sign of the sedan. “I think we lost them.”

“Thank God. But now what? Any ideas where we should go?”

“Let’s head on over to Payson. Then we can decide on a course of action.”

“Okay, Meg. Just get us there.”

CHAPTER TEN

When they reached Payson, their first order of business was breakfast. The donuts Meg had purchased at the gas stop had long been digested and they were both famished.

They found a Denny’s and took a seat in a booth. As the hot coffee warmed her and pulled the veil of sleep from her brain, Meg started to feel more like a human being. Soon, a large breakfast would follow, which was good thing because her stomach was rumbling loudly.

“I’ve been thinking—”

“There’s something I forgot—”

They started to talk at the same time, then smiled at each other

“Okay, you go first this time,” Jack said.

“It’s just that, whoever is after you knows who I am,” she said.

“So?”

“So, if any of our conjectures are right, they may want me just as much as you. Maybe more.”

Jack felt his heart do a summersault. If she was right, he had led them straight to her. How could he have been so stupid?

Meg saw the pained expression on his face. “Jack, you need to stop beating yourself up. You couldn’t have known it would come to this.”

“Maybe not. But if I had been thinking more clearly, I might have anticipated it.”

“But you weren’t. You were in the desert running from some unknown assailants, so you did what you had to do. And anyway, I would like to see the mystery of Alex’s disappearance put to rest. If we work together, maybe we can solve this.”

The waitress brought two plates heaving with eggs, hash browns, bacon and, for Jack, a short stack. They dove into their food like hungry javelinas. They finished, stuffed, and sat back enjoying another cup of coffee.

“If only Alex had left us a clue,” Meg said.

“Wait,” he said. “Maybe he did. That’s what I started to tell you. Alex sent me a package. It was a long time ago, and I completely forgot about it.”

“When did he send it? What was in it?”

“It was just some printouts of emails. And a couple of postcards. They meant nothing to me, so I stashed them away until I could figure out what to do with them.”

“When did you get this package?”

“Let me think. It was before I went to Soto Cano, I remember that much.”

“Could it have been sometime after the coup?”

“I received it in November, just before Thanksgiving. I was deployed to Honduras in the new year, after the election. You know, when things were getting back to normal there.”

Meg felt her excitement building. Just like when she was working as a journalist. She could smell a story. “Where is it now?”

“In my army issue backpack. I stuffed it between the padding and the canvas along the back of my backpack. I don’t know why I thought I needed to hide it. Maybe it was just some instinct. It’s back at the base.”

“We need to go there,” Meg said.

“Hang on. That could be a dangerous place, and I’m not sure we should both go.”

“It could be dangerous for me to go home, too. Believe me, we’re better off sticking together.”

“Okay, I guess you’re right,” he said.

* * *

When they finished breakfast, they drove around until they found the right motel. They both agreed that they were too exhausted to continue and needed to stop and regroup. The motel was on a side street and the parking was behind it, so they could stash the car without it being visible to passing cars. And it had internet.

It wasn’t the Ritz, but at least it was clean. Lord knows, she’d slept in far worse. There were two double beds with cheap nylon bedspreads. The walls were painted a drab beige and a picture of the Grand Canyon hung on the wall. Meg checked the bathroom where she found a couple of thin towels, a small bar of soap, and a miniature bottle of cheap shampoo.

She grabbed her backpack, stepped into the bathroom, and closed the door. She turned the shower knob. A small stream of lukewarm water came out. She waited to see if it would get any hotter, then gave up, undressed, and stepped under the tepid stream. She used the shampoo sparingly, saving some for Jack, and lathered the small bar of soap over her body.

Then she stepped back out and dried herself with the small thin towel. She put the same pair of jeans that she had been wearing back on, but extracted a clean shirt from her pack. She congratulated herself more than once for remembering to bring her pack.

She had developed the habit of keeping a backpack at the ready when she was on the road hunting up stories. It contained the most basic and necessary items in case of emergency: a change of clothes, toothbrush and toothpaste, a comb, a throwaway rain cape in a tiny plastic pouch, extra cash, aspirin, and her passport.

After she’d combed her hair and brushed her teeth, she started to feel like a human being again. She quickly rinsed out the shirt she had been wearing and hung it to dry on the shower curtain rod. She left the bathroom and found Jack sprawled out on one of the beds watching some inane comedy show on the television. She grabbed her IPad and powered it up. Then she reached for the remote on the TV and turned the volume down.

“Hey, I was watching that,” he said.

“Fine. But there’s no need to watch so loudly.”

“It wasn’t loud. It was perfect. Now I can’t hear the damn thing.”

“Well, I need to hear myself think.”

“Fine then. I’m going to take a shower.”

After his shower, he sat down next to her and glanced at the screen on the tablet.

“Look,” she said. “These are US archives showing the involvement of the military with drug smugglers. This is just one example.” She read the excerpt out loud:

Reagan administration officials interceded on behalf of José Bueso Rosa, a Honduran general who was heavily involved with the CIA's contra operations and faced trial for his role in a massive drug shipment to the United States. In 1984 Bueso and co-conspirators hatched a plan to assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo Córdoba; the plot was to be financed with a $40 million cocaine shipment to the United States, which the FBI intercepted in Florida.

“Okay,” Jack said, “I’m convinced that the military, at least the Honduran military, has connections to the drug cartels.”

“Which means someone in Honduras could have put out a hit on you with the same cartel operating in the United States,” Meg said.

“But why? You said I knew something. What could I possibly know that was so secret and so important?”

“I don’t know. But here is some stuff in the Baltimore Sun about Battalion 3-16, a death squad that operated on Honduran soil during the Contra War.”

At a time when Honduras was crucial to the US government's war on communism in Central America, the battalion was created and trained to collect intelligence. But it also stalked, kidnapped, tortured and murdered hundreds of Honduran men and women suspected of subversion . . . . At least 184 of the battalion's victims are missing and presumed dead. They are called "desaparecidos," Spanish for the "disappeared."

“Okay, so what does that stuff have to do with what’s happening in Honduras now?”

“Alex and I had heard rumors that the coup regime was reviving the death squad. We also heard that some of the leaders in that battalion have resurfaced since the coup and were working with the regime.”

“Maybe that’s what that other journalist, the Honduran, was trying to tell Alex.”

“Maybe he did tell him and that’s why Alex disappeared,” Meg said.

“And maybe that’s what that package was all about,” Jack said. He got up and paced the floor. “Okay, so we’ve connected some of the dots. There are still a lot of holes, but I think we’re making some progress.”

“Jack, I’m scared. We’re in a lot of danger.”

He leaned over to reassure Meg and give her a platonic kiss on the cheek, but Meg met his lips with her own and all reason left her head. She reached up around his neck to pull him closer. He responded by deepening the kiss. Then his arms wrapped around her waist. Meg moaned. She lay back on the bed and pulled him with her.

His body was hard and lean, just as she imagined it would be. She could feel his need pressing into her. He smelled of soap and something else, something darkly masculine. And she wanted him. She wanted to get naked, to roll across the sheets and have sweaty, musky sex. To chase away their troubles for a brief moment.

He reached for the button on her jeans. Yes, she thought. Yes, yes, and yes.

Then suddenly he stopped. He pulled away and stood up.

“Jack? What the hell?”

“I can’t, Meg.”

“What do you mean you can’t? It sure felt like you could to me.”

“It’s Alex.”

“What does Alex have to do with this?”

“He’s in love with you.”

“But . . . but Alex is gone. You said they told you where the body was.”

“Yes, but we won’t have proof until they find his body. I can’t dishonor him that way.”

“But what about how I feel? I loved Alex, but I never felt like this.”

“Jesus, Meg,” he said. He grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head, then headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.” He slammed the door behind him.

Meg wanted to scream. She wanted to throw something and break it, but everything was bolted down. She wadded up a pillow and threw it on the ground, but it just didn’t have the effect she was looking for. Talk about a prick-tease or a pussy-tease or whatever the hell he was. Her body was pulsing, aching with want.

She grabbed her pillow and returned to the bed and fumed until the fury passed. But she could still taste him. Damn him. She had never been in love with Alex. Yes, she had loved him, but she was never in love with him. And certainly never in lust with him. What she felt for Jack was powerful and overwhelming. Why did he have to complicate things by bringing Alex into the picture?

* * *

He returned half an hour later. He had a bag in his hand with a bottle of wine in it. He pulled out his Swiss Army knife and uncorked the bottle. All without saying a word. Then he rummaged in the bathroom and came out with two plastic cups. He poured two glasses and handed her one.

“Tell me about Alex,” he said.

“He was a friend. That’s all.”

“That’s not what he led me to believe. He wanted to marry you.”

“I can’t help that, Jack. I can’t tell you how many times I told him that I didn’t love him. Not like that.”

“So why didn’t you break it off with him? Put the poor guy out of his misery?”

“You think I didn’t try? Why do you think I went to Honduras? But he followed me. It was really hard because I did love him and I loved being with him, but I was never in love with him.”

“Okay, okay. But try to understand,” Jack said looking into her eyes, “When I touch you, I feel like I’m betraying him. Brothers don’t do that to each other.”

“Bros before hoes, or some crap like that?”

“You know it’s more than that, not just macho bullshit.”

She laughed. “I understand. I really do. But he’s gone. And he never made me feel the way you make me feel.”

“And how do I make you feel?”

“I want you. In the worst way. When I would go to bed at night, back in Sedona, I’d think about you down the hall, and it was all I could do not to go out there and jump on you. Is that so wrong?”

“No, it’s not. And I want you, too. Believe me, I want you. But I have to get the picture of Alex out of my mind.”

“Well, then, we need to find out exactly what happened to him, prove that he sacrificed his life for the sake of truth,” she said. “For closure for both of us.” She reached out and stroked his arm. Then her stomach growled noisily. And she laughed.

Jack touched her face and smiled that crooked little smile that made her stomach do flips.