Tres Leches Cupcakes (31 page)

“How do you know Sheldon Carslisle?” she asked.

“Can’t say that I do—other than knowing who he is. Why? Was he friendly with Miss Margo? I didn’t get that impression.”

So he wasn’t connected with Shel—assuming she could believe what he told her. She was tempted to test their knowledge of Shel’s connection to Ethan, but the familiarity the Hispanic man had used when he said Ethan’s name held her back. She couldn’t be too free with handing over information; she might need to bargain with it later.

“And that brings us back to you. See, if you ain’t the receiver of the property, then we have to really think about what your value is. If you’re no use to us, then yer just a liability, ’specially seein’ as how you’re all sweet with Standage. Liabilities get buried here in New Mexico.”

“Buried like Ethan’s assistants?”

Both sets of eyes snapped to her in surprise, and her breath caught in her throat. Apparently they hadn’t expected her to know this.

“Who told you that?” the Hispanic man asked, watching her intently.

She looked between him and the Cowboy, searching for direction on how to answer this. “The police did,” Sadie said. “I told you, they’re on to you. They know everything.”

“Oh, no, they don’t,” the Cowboy whispered, but he was obviously bothered by this new information. The other man was still watching Sadie, but when she looked at him, he quickly looked away. Guilty? Scared? Who was he? At moments, she felt as though he were a hundred percent into this, and other times she had the feeling that he was being victimized somehow too. Yet he was the one who’d helped throw her into the van, tied her up, and knelt on her head.

“We’re done talkin’. We got one more
amigo
who’d like to talk with you, but dependin’ on what he decides, you might run out of road pretty quick, sweetheart. I suggest that if you’re hiding something, you uncover it real quick. You done crossed a line when you was talkin’ to Standage. Things’ll only get worse for you if you’re not the one to help us recover our property.”

Sadie took a breath and quickly rushed through her options. There was only one possible course of action that she felt gave her any chance at all. The truth was, she had no value to these men. She didn’t know what property they were talking about, and even if she did, she didn’t have it. But they thought she did, or at the very least, they thought she might know something. If she could give them something, maybe she’d live to tell the truth to someone else.

The van slowed, and when he came to a stop after a slight decline and a left turn, Sadie suspected they were getting off the freeway. It was now or never. She took a breath. “I’ve known Margo since just before her daughter was killed.”

The Cowboy’s eyes lit up in the rearview mirror, and his whole body straightened. She’d told him something he wanted to hear. Good. The other man stared at her, but she kept her attention on the Cowboy. “I worked with another preservation group, and our paths crossed a time or two.”

“Which group?” the Cowboy asked.

“I guarantee you’ve never heard of us. We’re very discreet.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re lyin’. The whole point of those groups is to not be discreet.”

“Tribal Preserve, yes, but not mine,” Sadie said, brimming with confidence about something she knew far too little about. “We’re the . . . I guess you’d call us the intellectual side of the preservationists. We deal with politicians and powerhouses, and we funnel some of the hands-on work to groups like Margo’s. I haven’t seen her for years though. Didn’t know she was still involved until we met up at the dig site. She suspected Langley of stealing from the sites and brokering artifacts on the side, which is how he’s connected to you guys, I assume.”

“If she knew it was Langley, why’d she call Mr. Carlisle Crossbones?”

“She thought he was involved too,” Sadie said. It felt good to tell some truth amid the story she was fabricating one word at a time. “
He’s
the one who dug into that grave, after all. She thought she could get Langley to turn on Shel, and that seemed to be exactly what was happening until Shel attacked us.”

He shook his head and muttered, “I knew you wasn’t some grandmother when you blocked that punch.”

Sadie shrugged as best she could, but her heart was racing. How long could she keep this up?

“Tell me about the property,” the Cowboy demanded.

“No,” Sadie said bluntly.

He narrowed his eyes again in the mirror. “Then how’s I know you even have it?”

“You said someone else wanted to talk to me about it. I’ll wait for him.” Anything to buy more time, more opportunity. She was as limited as she could be in the back of this van. They were taking her somewhere, and once she was out of the van, she’d have more options than she had now. She’d also have someone else to deal with, but there would at least be somewhere to run.

The Cowboy didn’t respond, and silence filled the van. She caught the other man looking at her again, but this time she met his eye and lifted her chin the way she imagined an artifact-preserving mob boss would do. He looked confused, but . . . interested, then finally pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “He’s thirty minutes out,” he said to the Cowboy a few seconds later, then typed out a response.

The Cowboy said nothing.

The van turned again, and the new road was not as kind as the last one—dirt, maybe. Without a seat to keep her in place, Sadie bounced on the floor of the van, killing her tailbone and shoulders. She winced when her head cracked against the side of the van, and she tried to press her back against the metal side in hopes that would help her keep her place. The panicky feeling she’d been trying to suppress was rising quickly. Every second they kept driving took her farther away from rescue, but she was scrambling to put together the rest of her plan and needed time for that too.

“If you’re playin’ us,” the Cowboy said, finally breaking the silence as they bounced down the road, “I’ll kill you slow and painful.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” Sadie said brazenly. Inside, however, she cringed and cried and prayed for help some more.

Chapter 30

The van finally came to a stop. Nothing but desert and scrub surrounded them. When the two men pulled her out, she didn’t bother fighting. What was the point now that she’d told them she wanted to talk to the third man? They removed the rope from her ankles so that she could walk. Her legs tingled as the blood hurried back to circulate through the tissues.

The half-moon allowed just a blush of color on the red hills around them while reflecting silver off the pale sagebrush and black for the darker cedars and ponderosa pine. They weren’t in the flat, barren desert, but in an area with rock formations, trees, and brush; perhaps they had come up against one of the national forests, but it was desolate all the same.

The headlights of the van were still on, lighting what might have been a path. The Hispanic man walked behind her, while the Cowboy led the way. It was cold, and Sadie remembered she’d left her jacket in Lois’s trailer. Would someone discover it there and come looking for her? The chances seemed very slim; it was just a jacket left behind, nothing more.

After walking a few yards, Sadie glanced back to get a final look at the van, still filing away details in hopes they would come in handy later on. One headlight was dimmer than the other, and more yellow. She squinted and thought she could make out the Ford logo on the front grille when the Hispanic man pushed her forward, causing her to stumble and nearly lose her balance. Almost as soon as she faced forward again, the headlights shut off automatically, and she had to blink as her eyes adjusted to the new level of darkness around her. What year did automatic shut-off first start being used in Ford Cargo vans?

The Cowboy led the way around an outcropping of sandstone, blocking them from the area where the van was parked and relying only on the moon to light the way. He seemed to be following a dried-out creek bed that was smooth enough to appear reflective in the moonlight.

Sadie stumbled over a rock, and the other man yanked her upper arm to keep her from falling. He jarred her shoulder in the process, which made her stumble again. Determined to come across as cool, calm, and in control, she bit back the retort . . . several retorts actually. Thank goodness she’d chosen to wear her TOMS instead of flip-flops today. She wished she’d also chosen long pants after she scraped her shin on a rock and was pulled through a clump of sagebrush. She tried to watch the ground in front of her to avoid spraining her ankle until she realized that the farther from the road she was, the farther she’d have to go for help if she managed to get away.

She stumbled forward and pretended to be hurt, gasping and limping as though unable to put weight on her right foot. The Hispanic man pulled her up again. “Ow,” she said through clenched teeth. He forced her to walk for another fifteen feet or so, but she moaned and limped as though she were in excruciating pain until the Cowboy turned back to see why they were so far behind.

“She’s hurt,” the other man explained.

Sadie put on a good show as she struggled to limp toward the Cowboy, as though not wanting to be left behind. “I think it’s a sprain,” she said, hobbling forward. “I’ve always had weak ankles.”

“We’ll stop here then,” the Cowboy said after watching her take a few steps. “He can take her farther in if he wants to.”

The Hispanic man loosened the grip on Sadie’s arm, and she hobbled to sit on a rock. He checked his phone again. “He says he’s about fifteen minutes out.”

Sadie was surprised he still had service. He stood on her right side, blocking the way they had come, and her heart started racing as she tried to come up with the next part of her plan. How would she get away if he was in her path? She tried to breathe deeply to keep from freaking out—no sense using up her adrenaline before she made a run for it. Though where she’d run to was anyone’s guess.

To her surprise, the Hispanic man leaned over and started untying the ropes on her hands.

“What are you doing, Horace?” the Cowboy said, marching toward them.

Horace! He had a name.

“Making sure nothing leads back to us,” he said, glaring at the older man.

Sadie looked between them. To prevent someone tracing the ropes back to them meant he expected her to die out here, and yet she thought she’d done a good job of convincing them she was valuable. Did he not believe the story she’d told? She glanced at Horace as he untied the ropes and repeated his name in her mind over and over again to make sure she didn’t forget it.

He finished with the ropes and shoved them in the pocket of his baggy denim shorts. The Cowboy muttered under his breath, but Sadie couldn’t make out what he said.

“So, where’s Margo?” she asked once Horace had settled himself against a rock a few feet away from her, though still blocking the path she needed to use for her escape. She rubbed her wrists, still raw from the ropes.

They didn’t answer her. She turned her attention to the Cowboy. He was the one in charge.

“Where is she?”

“Margo’s dead,” the Cowboy said, a half smile on his face.

The shock hit her like a sonic wave, and her whole body jumped.
Dead?
Sadie stared at the sand at her feet as tears rose in her eyes and a lump formed in her throat. He was lying. He was making it up to upset her . . . but . . . “Why?” she asked. She shouldn’t have an emotional reaction if her relationship with Margo was professional, should she? “Why would you kill her if you thought she had what you want so badly?”

“First off, she said she didn’t have it no more, and
then
she pretty much forced our hand.”

Sadie knew what that really meant: Margo had put up a fight, maybe she got away from them, and they had to kill her to stop her. Her stomach rolled, and tears pricked her eyes, but she pushed the fear and sadness down. She would not meet the same fate. She wouldn’t! She’d survive this and then get justice for Margo.

She glared at him, unable to keep her contempt to herself. “You’re a sick, twisted, lying murderer.”

He cut her off with a laugh, which stopped abruptly as he walked toward her, a swagger to his step. Sadie pulled back, completely forgetting the escape plan she’d been building as what he’d said kept her frozen in place. Margo was dead. Sadie couldn’t save her.

“Everybody’s gotta make a living,” he said, then cocked his head to the side and regarded her. “But you can learn from her mistakes, ya know. Play nice and live to see another day.” He reached out to run his thumb down her check. She pulled back as though he’d cut her, but she kept her eyes locked with his as she tried to reorganize her thoughts, which had scattered like so many pigeons. There was no way he’d let her live through this. She’d seen them; she knew they’d killed Margo and Langley.

“Who are you working for? Who’s coming out here?”

“Whooee,” he said, shaking his head and crossing the clearing to lean against a large rock directly across from her. “You do have a lot of questions in that pretty little head of yers, don’t ya? Dangerous.” He was twelve feet or so away and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his front pocket. The lighter flame lit up the Cowboy’s face for a few seconds, then withdrew, leaving the silvery reflection from the moon on his hat and the red ember of his cigarette floating in the semidarkness.