Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [166]
Delfino Montoya was injured by what would prove to be one of his own shells. The gaping, mangled wound looked dire under their flashlights, though it appeared worse in the field than it soon would to the surgeon in his operating room, which was bad enough. The girl, whom Marcos embraced even as she embraced his uncle, was splattered with blood that turned out not to be hers but the old rancher’s. The whole fracas took mere minutes, but those minutes were concentratedly terrible. The aerovac got there more swiftly than in a dream. Marcos sat beside her, and Delfino lay in the rear of the same chopper receiving emergency medical aid as Ariel watched Dripping Spring recede beneath them, a mere disarray of ruins and boundary markers getting smaller and smaller under the first pinks of dawn ascending the Sacramentos.
What happened would always seem unreal. Delfino was rushed into surgery, Marcos and Ariel were taken into the infirmary. Led to different rooms, they were checked over and found only to be exhausted and dehydrated. Each felt bewildered by this separation from the other.
“You did this knowing you’re pregnant?” the doctor chided.
Not like he was wrong. It had been madness, but with purpose. He’d never understand so she took his criticism silently. She really wanted Marcos to be here. Of anyone, he understood.
Within the hour they were moved to a conference room in another building. Carl was allowed to talk with them, and soon afterward Brice came in, having made calls to Nambé as well as back east to colleagues for legal advice. He’d already expedited scheduling hearings with local authorities for the next morning. After hugging his daughter, Brice asked the obvious question—“What the hell did you think you were doing?”—and heard straightforward answers about what had brought her and Marcos Montoya to this juncture. When Kip lit out on Delfino, and Delfino refused to abandon his plan, there really wasn’t much Ariel and Marcos could do other than turn them in or follow along. Brice didn’t foresee too much difficulty arranging their release on bail. Kip’s, either. Delfino, assuming that he came out of surgery okay, would be more complicated. But given the history of similar strife in the basin and the old man’s record of lawful behavior, Brice figured he would, when the time came, be able to bargain for parole in exchange for a plea of guilty. Surely the White Sands attorneys would prefer leniency to drawing the attention that would come from putting an elderly evicted rancher in jail. It wasn’t necessarily what Delfino was going to want, but it seemed the only responsible strategy.
Ariel listened, but her mind was elsewhere. Her interrupted talk with Delfino contended with the immediate present. God, she hoped he was going to be all right. What he’d said about her being courageous beleaguered her. She wasn’t courageous. In fact, she was the least courageous person she knew. That’s how she saw it. Right or wrong, the time had come to take another step at least in the direction of Delfino’s sanguine thought. She asked to see Kip.
“He’s not looking good,” warned Brice, all too aware he’d soon enough have to tell her about her grandmother.
“Neither am I,” glancing down at her torn, bloodstained dress.
“Let me try to get authorization,” Brice said, and left the room.
“Your father told me the story during our drive down,” said Carl, watching Marcos’s eyes on Ariel and hers on him and thinking he’d never seen Franny and his son exchange looks like that. “Not everybody gets to have two fathers.”
“Does that mean I’m lucky or cursed?”
“If it’s cursed, it’s a good kind of curse,” said Marcos. “You’ll see.”
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