Nadine sat on the small hill above the cemetery, looking through 7x50 Zeiss Binoculars, watching Hunter and Kelly as they went under the I-10 Interstate. She called Suretta, “They’re back on the town side.”
“You still watching them?”
“Yeah. Hold what you’ve got until they stop moving, then I’ll guide you in.”
“And Ike hasn’t moved?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
She watched Hunter tell Kelly something, then point up a brushy hill to the west of their position by the Interstate. On the crest fluttered a large United States flag on a flagpole.
Kelly hurried up the hill as Hunter ran into town. She’s fast, Nadine thought. Hunter disappeared among the houses, still running like a deer toward the main street. Kelly made the top of the hill and found a place under a small oak near the flagpole, where she pulled a few dead limbs to her and formed a half-circle brush screen around her position.
Nadine smiled. She knew the kid thought she was safe. Calling Suretta, she told her where everyone was located, and started down the hill below her to Ike’s hiding place where she would wait for Suretta to show up. Then the fun would begin with that bastard Ike.
Chapter 19
Hunter maintained a fast pace through the town, eliciting a few raised eyebrows as she held her six-minute-per-mile speed across streets, through neighborhoods, and dodging between moving cars and trucks on the main roads.
Taking a right at the main intersection in town, she followed US 277 between the Dairy Queen and the Sonic, and under Interstate 10, then turned left on the access road in front of the Days Inn and on to the entrance to the airport. Hunter’s heart beat strong and regular, and her muscles felt loose and warm as she focused on her jeep and finished the run at her driver’s side door.
Suretta’s vehicle was nowhere to be seen. Maybe they’re in town, looking for us. She said a little prayer and lifted the hood, spotting where a bullet knocked off a solenoid wire. Putting the wire back in place fixed the problem and Hunter started her Jeep, pulling away from the parking area. She continued looking for Suretta and her crew while driving across US 277 and taking the road to the cemetery. When she could see the brush pile that marked Ike’s hiding place, she stopped.
As she walked toward it, Hunter saw the pile had been disturbed. A sense of dread washed over her, and she hurried to the far side of the brush, only to see most of it pulled away, and strong evidence of a struggle visible by the tracks and spots of blood and other fluids on the ground.
They had Ike. Hunter saw Ike’s shoeprints, and Suretta’s. She thought another one was made by Nadine, and at least two other prints had to be Suretta’s people.
Hunter was furious with herself. That they had taken Ike was her fault. But she had no time to waste, and hurried down the slope to find Kelly in her hiding place.
Hunter sped by the cemetery in the Jeep and cut under the Interstate again, this time circling into town and taking a caliche road up the hill where the flag flew and Kelly waited. Her new phone vibrated with a text message, and she ignored it as she drove the last distance to the top of the hill.
Kelly had been taken as well, and evidence of a struggle was evident, from where Kelly built a brush blind, to where she hit someone with a stout branch and left blood on it. They drug her to the vehicle, and someone pushed her inside, leaving fine droplets of blood on a flat piece of limestone where Kelly stood.
Hunter felt so weak that she sat on a large, upright stump. She’d failed everyone, Kelly, Ike, Ramona, Anita. Every-single-one.
Her phone vibrated again, and this time she checked it. Ike had written: chapa ranch at amistad.
Hunter was confused. She said to herself, “Solomon Chapa?” Had Ike made a mistake? Was he the boss? A feeling like ice ran down her spine. Chapa had his own child kidnapped and was going to sell her? Now he had them all, his wife, his daughter, Kelly, and Ike. She prayed the message wasn’t a blind lead, but it didn’t matter since that was the only one she had.
She texted Ike’s phone, but got no response.
If Solomon Chapa is behind these kidnappings and murders, and has his own child and wife taken…Hunter felt her anger rise to a white-hot level.
Hopping in the Jeep, she drove off the hill and through Sonora, taking the highway to Del Rio. She had some stops to make there, and she wouldn’t tell Norma about it, just to keep her friend out of trouble. But soon, very soon, she and Solomon Chapa would have a reckoning. Hunter worked her hands on the steering wheel, her eyes holding the look people talked of when she was angry.
An hour and twenty minutes later she was in Del Rio and pulling into the Wal-Mart shopping center. Hunter went inside and straight to the Sporting Goods section, buying binoculars, a Gerber folding knife with a four-inch blade, a Remington Model 870 twelve-gauge pump shotgun and two hundred rounds of .40 caliber pistol cartridges. There were no good rounds for the shotgun; no 00 buckshot, Number 2s or Number 4s, only number 6 loads for game birds. She didn’t like the limited choice, but bought a hundred rounds of Number 6s, and a canvas dove hunter’s bird carrier pack worn at the waist.
Taking the purchases to the Jeep, she drove away from the store and to a back road with no houses. Using the Gerber knife, Hunter worked loose the overhead liner in the Jeep and fitted the shotgun and cartridges into it. If someone looked closely at it, they would see some outlines of the boxes, but a casual glance shouldn’t be enough to alert anyone. She hoped.
Hunter drove to US 90 and headed west toward the lake, then turned left on the road to the dam and the border crossing port of entry.
The port was not busy, and the Jeep passed through with no problem. On the Mexican side, Hunter flashed a big, friendly smile at the officer and he smiled back as he waved her into the country.
She drove the road that made up the top of the dam, and followed it as the pavement continued and extended beside the lake. As the pavement narrowed and ended with the road becoming caliche, Hunter noticed a large monument of stone, with a square statue that she felt sure was made of granite or volcanic rock. She parked at the base of the short pyramid-like structure and climbed the steps to the statue. It was of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain.
Looking around the area from the monument’s height, she noticed a road going to the right, along a peninsula of land extending into the blue water of Lake Amistad. People worked out there on what appeared to be a park, with small shelters up and down the road near the water.