Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [147]
He would be glad when this confrontation was over. As he knelt beside Ariel, he thought that by now Mary must surely have explained their disappearance to Carl and Sarah. He hoped they could come up with a better idea about how to protect Delfino from his willful fate than he himself had been able to. And here was Ariel, in her way just as stubborn as her father and his uncle. It was becoming clear he should never have committed himself to keeping Kip and Delfino’s secret that day in Nambé. Shouldn’t have driven Ariel down to Tularosa. Should have phoned the police instead of helping to pack gear and saddle horses. So many shoulds and shouldn’ts. Not to mention last night’s kiss between two people literally in the dark about their futures. What had that been? A payback to Mary? Worse, maybe. He meant the kiss.
But what had the kiss meant about him? Could he so easily chuck aside the years of friendship with Franny? More than friendship, of course. He had even thought about asking her if she’d like to take it to another level, half intended to discuss their getting engaged the morning they hiked up Tsankawi, before she brought that flight of fancy crashing back to earth with her talk of moving out to Los Angeles, the two of them. He’d sooner move to Mars. And then her confession, her extraordinary fraud. He didn’t feel angry toward her, curiously enough, didn’t feel reproachful or vengeful. He’d forgiven her, yes, but in the same emotional gesture had released her as well. She had made up a story and like most stories it had a beginning, middle, and end. It’d been a good fiction, as fictions went. But Marcos much preferred fact.
Ariel’s eyes were open, looking at him. He snapped to.
“They’re coming,” he said, setting the cup on the floor beside her.
“I’ll be right out.”
At the door, which was dazzled by white-gold sun, he paused. “What happened last night—”
“Don’t worry about anything.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“That’s the last thing you did.”
“We can talk about it.”
“Marcos, I’m not going anywhere. Don’t worry. We need to keep our focus.”
She was right. Delfino had binoculars clamped to his eyes. He looked frail to Marcos yet at the same time principled and proper, courtly, with his flannel shirt tucked into a nice pair of western gabardine trousers. His turquoise bolo and finest silver oval belt buckle sparkled. Sometime earlier he even managed to spit-polish his boots. There was something noble and woeful about the whole thing.
“Can I have a look?”
What Marcos saw through the magnifying lenses was Jim Carpenter looking right back at him through a pair of binoculars of his own. The sergeant had radioed back to command that he was in visual contact with two of the three. Suspects were male, one apparently in his twenties, medium height and build, jeans and denim jacket, the other late sixties or early seventies, tall, slight build, dressed for a church square dance. Stow the humor. Point was, neither of them much looked like your desperado type. Maybe it was as simple as their having gotten lost. He ordered his detachment not to proceed any closer than two hundred meters until they got a visual on the third man. He could report with some confidence that they were not spies or professional agitators. Fact was, nothing they were observed doing hinted at pro behavior. Had base got any further info on that Montoya guy the other team was tracking?
Negative, he was told. Momentarily, though. Proceed with deliberate delay, his orders were, and he radioed same over to his team. Why not take it nice and slow. Sun on his back felt good. Not impossible these folks simply didn’t know the extent and nature of the trouble they were in. Be good to just ease on up there, initiate the dialogue, talk them off the reservation, then let the lawyers duke it out.
Believing this might be the day she would finally meet Kip, Ariel herself spruced up for the occasion by forgoing