J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 03 - No Time To Hide (8 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was dusk when Michael and Andie got to the ridge.  Below them, the free-flowing Rio Grande River cut deep into the rock. The river was the border, and on the other side of the river was the least-visited national park in the United States, Big Bend.

Michael and Andie sat down. He opened his pack and removed two granola bars and two apples. He handed one of each to Andie. Then Michael ate his granola bar faster than he had wanted to.

Michael was still hungry when he was done, but there wasn’t more time.  It was getting dark, and there was no way that they could safely climb down the steep canyon wall to the river at night, even with headlamps.

He checked his GPS, took a final sip of water, and then, after Andie finished her apple, they followed the ridge further east. They had another kilometer to go.

###

The drop was nearly straight down 1,500 feet on both sides of the river canyon, but there were a few narrow, jagged paths that led to sandy open areas. The paths, however, were difficult to find. A person needed the right coordinates.

Michael checked his GPS with increasing frequency until finally the device beeped. Michael and Andie stopped, looked at one another, and then walked toward the canyon’s edge. They didn’t see it until they were there — a five-foot drop, and then a trail just ten inches wide to the next drop. 

Michael was relieved. They’d found what they had been looking for, just as the sun dipped out of view.

Half the sky had already turned black and within an hour there would be total darkness.
              “We have to go,” Michael said. “Don’t want to get stuck.”

When Andie didn’t respond, Michael stopped just before climbing down. He turned and reached out his hand.

“You okay?”

Andie nodded, wiping sweat and dirt from her forehead, and then she took his hand.

“Just get me to the river.” She let go of Michael’s hand and rubbed the key that was on a necklace around her neck. She rubbed it for good luck, remembering her experience on Ayers Rock when she was a teenager. “Just get me to the river,” she said, again, like a mantra.

Michael nodded, an attempt at confidence, and then they started.

They took small steps, trying to keep from sliding. Each step posed a risk of falling or turning an ankle, especially since they were both still recovering from the explosion a few days earlier.

It was one drop after another, a slow, twenty-foot descent.

Michael stopped. He looked down at another ten-foot ledge.

“I’ll go first.”

Andie didn’t argue.

Michael wasn’t worried about falling ten feet. He was more concerned about falling ten feet and being unable to stop himself from continuing to fall the rest of the way down the
canyon. There were dozens of boulders and sharp outcroppings that could easily crack open his head in an uncontrolled fall or snap a leg or an arm.

He put his hands down on the dirt. Michael lowered himself, searching for a foothold. He found one, put his foot in, and then descended the rest of the way.

After hesitation, Andie followed.

###

By the time they reached the small rocky beach, the sun was gone. The sky was pricked with thousands of tiny stars.

Michael and Andie limped toward the water. Their feet were blistered and sore. Their eyes stung with the salt from their sweat, and both were dehydrated and bruised. Michael and Andie had fallen straight on their backs a few times at the end of their descent. Their packs softened the impact with the ground, but most of their quad muscles ripped in the process. It was unlikely either one of them would be able to move particularly fast in the morning.

Luckily, they had some relief.  The air temperature had dropped forty degrees and the high rock walls naturally kept the bottom of the canyon cool and in shadows.

Michael looked up at the night sky, put his hands on his hips, and closed his eyes, still trying to catch his breath. “Pretty nice down here.”

Andie nodded. “It is.”

“Pretty dark too.” Michael’s eyes opened. His voice rose with a hint of mischief.

Andie shook her head and laughed. “Are you actually trying to hit on me?”

“Dirty and sweaty women get me excited.” Michael sat down. “ What can I say?”

Andie shook her head. “You’re gross.”

Michael laughed. “I thought that this crisis in my life would be a good time to be more open about my various kinks.”

“You sound like Kermit. You’re hanging out with him way too much,” Andie said. “He’s a bad influence.”

“Perhaps.” Michael kicked off his hiking boots and pulled his sweaty socks away from his feet. Then Michael stripped and ran naked into the river.

He hit the water with a splash, and Michael emitted a high-pitched scream. “That’s cold.” He bobbed under the water and came up, again. “My heart stopped working for a minute.”

“Good.” Andie sat down on a large flat rock, unscrewed the top of her water bottle. She took a sip. “Stay in there for awhile. You need to cool off.”

“Does that mean I’m not getting any lovin’ tonight?”

Andie massaged her quad muscles. “Since I’m having difficulty moving my legs, I think that’s a pretty fair assumption, young man.”

Michael splashed some water toward her. “Why do you need to move your legs?”

###

After Andie drank all of her water, she set the empty bottle aside. She turned on a small flashlight and laid it down on the ground next to their packs so that they could find them again. Then she walked away from the light.

Andie got close to the edge of the river and stopped. Michael watched as she slowly took
off her clothes. The shape of her body cast a dark silhouette.

Andie dipped a toe into the water, and then stepped in. She edged deeper into the river until the water met her thigh, and then she jumped toward Michael.

Swimming a few yards, her hands reached out and found him. Michael pulled Andie up, and they came together under the stars.

He pressed her close to him, caressed her back, and then kissed her neck. She returned the kiss, finding an intimacy that had been lost in the rush to leave the resort and the tension that had flared after the visit from Tad Garvin, the fire, and the passing of Father Stiles. All three events had happened so close together, it had overwhelmed them.

“Love you.” Michael kissed her on the lips.

“I love —”

Bells and hooting filled the canyon. Spotlights blinded them from the United States side of the canyon. Then somebody yelled, “You kids want to be left alone, or can we all come in for a swim too.”

Michael recognized the voice.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Chester “Cheeto” Strauss was always up for a good time. He had no interest in wearing a suit or following in his father, grandfather, or great-grandfather’s footsteps. His family was filled with lawyers who had descended from lawyers who had descended from lawyers and so on, tracing back to a few barristers in Manchester, England.

He went to law school solely because it was a condition of gaining access to his sizable trust fund. Once he graduated, Cheeto took off. He started working as a river guide and had never looked back.

When he
had decided Colorado was too cold, Cheeto moved south to a shack along the Rio Grande, which housed four other river rats. That’s where he’d lived for the past three years, although now he was thinking about moving to somewhere in South America. He’d heard Chile had some nice big water.

“How’s the boy wonder doing?” Cheeto grinned at Michael.

“Better if you’d have waited another fifteen minutes to arrive.” Michael looked at Andie, sitting on the other side of the bonfire.

Cheeto howled, and then threw another log on the fire. “I bet.” Cheeto looked at Andie. “You two make a real handsome couple. Although Mikey looks like he’s gotten a little loose in the cage in his old age, if you know what I mean. Should’ve let him come visit me more often, get a real workout.”

“I’ll think about it,” Andie said.

“Don’t think too long, honey. Cheeto is always on the move.” He walked over to the cooler and removed three large plastic bags of food and then found a few pots.

He walked back over to the bonfire where Michael and Andie were sitting. Cheeto spread out some coals, and then turned toward the group of adventure tourists he was guiding down the river. They were about thirty yards from the bonfire, sorting through their packs and trying to set-up camp in the dark.

“Our dinner shall be served in just a few minutes, my acolytes.” Cheeto shouted at them. “Come on over when you’ve finished with your tents.”

Cheeto, then, looked at Michael and Andie, and lowered his voice.

“Bet you guys are hungry for some chow?”

###

The dinner tasted amazing. Perhaps she was starving, but it was the best spaghetti Andie had tasted in a long time. She wanted another serving after the first two, but was too full.

She handed Cheeto her plate, and then walked up a slight hill to their tent.

Andie unzipped the front, climbed inside, and then slid into her sleeping bag. She was exhausted, and it felt good to lie down. She turned her head on the soft pillow and rolled over onto her side.

Michael had already settled in for the night. 

“Not bad accommodations,” he said.

Andie took in the small two-person backpacking tent, and then asked the question that had been on her mind the entire evening. “Are you really trusting a guy named ‘Cheeto’ to smuggle us across the border?”

“We’ve already made it across the border,” Michael said, referring to their brief swim from the southern to the northern side of the Rio Grande.

“You know what I mean.”

She was serious, and so Michael stopped joking.

“He just plays dumb.” Michael leaned over and pecked Andie on her forehead, a little kiss. “Perfect LSAT score. Nearly perfect grades at Columbia. He didn’t go by the name Cheeto back then. He was Chet, and he was right there with me, top of the class, but he refused to play the game. He rejected an opportunity to be on law review, refused clerkships,
and never went to a job interview. He didn’t want anything to do with being a real lawyer. He said the law made his dad miss his first six birthday parties because of various legal emergencies. His dad didn’t exercise, ate rich foods, and died when Chet was in college. Chet decided early on that he was going down a different path. So now he’s Cheeto, and apparently having a pretty good time.”

“Does he know what’s going on with you?”

Michael thought about the question, and then said, “We’ve talked.”

“I’ve just never heard you mention him before.”

Michael nodded. “He’s a guy friend.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning we can go years without talking, and we don’t take it personally. It’s just life.” Michael shrugged. “We’re friends and we help each other out when we need to.”

“Okay.” Andie repositioned her tiny backpacking pillow, then rolled over onto her side. “In Cheeto I trust.” She was nervous about the next day. There was certainly going to be an encounter with a park ranger or
an immigration agent.

“In Cheeto we trust.
” Michael leaned over and pecked Andie on the cheek. “Now let’s get some sleep.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“You gonna let me go?” Kermit leaned back in his chair, grinning at Agent Armstrong. “It’s getting late, and I’ve been sitting in here for hours, going coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.” Armstrong leaned across the table, and then he lowered his voice. “I need you to answer all my questions.” A smirk.

“I think I have a right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to love, freedom to hate, and the freedom to shut my trap from time to time.” Kermit sighed and looked up at the fluorescent lights. “Seriously, dude, are we accomplishing any of the great tasks of mankind right now?”

“Why don’t you just tell me where Michael Collins and Andie Larone are?”

“Mentally or physically? Because that’s a pretty vague question. Even the physical location is difficult to identify given the chaotic dance of internal energy and the subatomic bopping of our little neutrinos and leptons. Have I ever mentioned my groundbreaking work involving quantum chromodynamics?”

Armstrong’s eyes started to bug out, and he tried to control his temper.

“I think you have already shared with me your theories.” He looked at his watch. “I think we spent about an hour on the subject, which is about an hour too long.”

Kermit shook his head.

“You’re just scared.” Kermit looked away. “Not unusual for a simple man like you to be afraid of the unknown, afraid that what he sees with the naked eye is not an accurate depiction of the environment in which he resides.”

“I need you to answer my questions,” Armstrong said.

Kermit ignored him. “We must recognize that we only see representations of life, but not life itself,” Kermit said. “We see and speak in generalities rather than specifics, approximations rather than measurements. Did you know that a cup of flour is never actually a cup of flour? Just a best-guess estimate using an imperfect tool in the midst of a myriad of factors like the fineness of the wheat’s grind, the altitude, or the moisture in the air.”

Agent Armstrong pushed back his chair and stood. Kermit’s constant babbling, his odor, and the confined space had gotten to him.

“Physically,” Armstrong put his hands on his hips. “Where approximately did they go when they left the airport, physically? And I’ll accept an estimation.”

“I don’t know, it’d be less than an estimation. It’d be total speculation because I was cruising with the birds at the time. I saw nothing with my own peep-peeps.”

“Why don’t you speculate, then?”

“I don’t like to speculate,” Kermit
looked up at the ceiling. “I dream.” He smiled, and then added, “Do you know who also likes to dream?” Kermit didn’t wait for an answer. “Lawyers. Lawyers dream a lot. Speaking of lawyers, I think it’s about time for an attorney.”

Armstrong didn’t like that idea. He knew that an attorney would shut down all questioning, and so Armstrong held out his hands and softened his tone.

“What about this trip? What are you doing here?”

“You probably know about Father Stiles. I plan on going to his funeral. I’m also here to do a little business.”

“Business?”

“I got a book idea that I’d like to pitch.” Kermit cracked his knuckles. “It’s like a children’s book for adults, sort of a naughty introduction to my theories of QCD and hair.”

“Why would an adult want to read a children’s book about quantum physics?”

“Why do adults like to bounce on trampolines?” Kermit countered. “Because it’s fun, muchacho. That’s why we do it.” Kermit slapped his hand on the table. “Do you ever play ‘crack the egg’ on a trampoline?”

Armstrong clenched his jaw. “No.”

“Well, it’s hilarious.” Kermit laughed. “Anyway, this book is titled ‘Why Too Much Hair Down There?’” Kermit paused and smiled, letting the revelation of his amazing idea linger for a moment in the U.S. Customs interrogation room. “Great title, huh?”

“Are you actually talking about —”

“Pubic hair.” Kermit answered. “Through the use of humorous illustrations, this book charts our society’s recently developed aversion to pubic hair and why this war is actually depleting our energy and ability to find inner happiness.” Kermit touched one of his dreadlocks, believing that it would change the magnetic field of the room in his favor.

“Of course it all started with ‘Sex and the City’, season 3, episode 14.” Kermit smiled. “You remember that one?”  

Armstrong shook his head. “I’m not familiar with that one.”

“I can tell you all about it.” Kermit opened his mouth to describe a Brazilian wax, but stopped himself, sensing an opportunity. “Or you could just let me go.”

Agent Armstrong stared at Kermit. The room was silent as the two evaluated their options. Finally Armstrong lowered his head in defeat. The possibility of an extended conversation with Kermit Guillardo about pubic hair was too much.

“We’re done.” Armstrong turned and opened the door. “Get out of here.”