“Can you possibly imagine what those two… deaths must've been like, ”she said, looking at Titus now. “I have to say I've thought of it. In spite of my repulsion at the idea of it, I've been drawn to thinking of it. Can we possibly imagine the… odd… horror of their last moments?” Pause. “What are we to think of that?”
She put her hands together and pressed her forefingers to her lips as she thought a moment. Then she wiped back a few floating tendrils from her temples.
“We're not bad people, Titus. If we do this, then we do it, and we don't look back. I know that I've been dragging my feet, and that's made it hard for both of you. But if what he's telling us is the truth
… we don't have any choice in this. This really is bigger than us, larger than our own selfinterests, larger than our fears.”
She turned and focused on Burden. “We don't know what… we're doing here. We're caught in a terrible place. If Titus is willing to trust you on this, then I will, too. ”She paused. “But so help me God, if you turn out not to be who you say you are, as wild as this sounds, I'll see to it that you regret what you're doing to us.”
Rita and Burden stared at each other in silence. It was a moment that at once cleared the air and then suddenly filled it again with new tensions.
Titus stood up. “Let's just get the hell on with it, ”he said.
Burden looked up at him. “Titus, none of this ever happened. This is your own consent to silence.”
“Understood, ”Titus said. Rita swallowed and nodded.
Burden hesitated, then decided not to belabor it.
“Okay, then, ”he said, “that's settled. Now, first thing: It's time you two had a conversation in your bedroom for the benefit of the listening devices we left active in there. Titus, we need for Luquin to believe that he's achieved the effect he was wanting to achieve with you by keeping the pressure on you. This is especially true since you pissed him off last night.
“You need to tell Rita that after learning of Carla's death, you want to get this ordeal over with as quickly as possible. To prevent any more deaths, you're going to give Luquin all of the money he's asking for. Forget the delayed releases, you say. You're going to start putting through big chunks of his ransom demand to Cavatino as quickly as your attorney can arrange it with your banker and your broker. Tomorrow. Or the next day. As soon as possible.”
“But what if I can't deliver on that?”
“All you're saying is that you're going to speed up the original schedule he'd given you. ”Burden checked his watch. “That conversation needs to happen within the hour. One last thing, ”he said, looking at Titus. “In your meeting with Luquin last night, you gave him a pretty hard time. That took guts. But in any other circumstances, that would've gotten you killed. And that confrontational stance has a pretty stiff downside to it.
“It's my fault, ”he added quickly. “I should've covered this with you, but it got past me. The fact is, pissing him off wasn't what we wanted to do. The upshot of the meeting should've been that you were intimidated by your confrontation with him. He needed to have walked away from there thinking that he had you completely under his control. But in light of the effect you had on him, I think we ought to bring in some bodyguards to stay here with Rita. You may have to leave again. She may need company.”
Neither Titus nor Rita said anything for a moment. They were both having the same thought, but Rita came out with it first.
“But… isn't that… wouldn't that be the same thing as Titus removing the surveillance? When they see bodyguards coming in here… won't that give Luquin another excuse to kill someone else?”
She was looking at Burden, but it was Titus who spoke up.
“Do it, ”he said to Burden. “And do it fast.”
Chapter 34
He unzipped his pants, moved over a few steps, and pissed at an angle against the rock retaining wall so that it didn't make any sound. A bright green anole lizard scuttled away up the set-back rows of stones to get away from the urine.
As he relieved himself, he took stock of his situation. Bluejays complained incessantly somewhere in the peach trees. Cicadas hymned loudly in every direction, praising the rising heat. Nothing unusual. He glanced back over his left shoulder toward the guest house. The two guys who had come out half an hour earlier were still sitting on the veranda. The Cains were still inside the guest house. Whatever the hell that was all about.
He shook himself off and zipped his trousers again. Turning back to the camera, he leaned his full body against the stones of the retaining wall. They were set back row upon row from his feet to his chin, so that all he had to do was lean forward against them in an upright reclining position, as if it had been designed for him to spy from. He lowered his head to the camera, scanning the telephoto lens back and forth. No. Just the two guys.
That morning he had watched as the woman came outside, early, in her gown. She had gone out to the fountain and looked in, then she had walked over to the wall that separated the courtyard from the pool and looked at some flowers there. It was there, as she'd turned to go back to the veranda, that the sun had fallen on her across the top of the stone wall, and in an instant the gown went clear, as if it had turned to a thin sheet of transparent water. Oh, shit.
It was good for six or eight strides of her long legs, and then the thing went opaque again as the poolhouse blocked the sun. But he had gotten off two snaps, and when nothing was happening he went back to them on the camera's screen. He was going to save those.
Having thought of it, he double-checked the laptop, which was balanced on the retaining wall's top row of stones. The thing was powered up, ready to send his next series of pictures.
Suddenly the guest house door opened, and the two guys on the veranda stood, looking toward it. The problem with his position-and there was nothing he could do about it, no matter how much he moved up and down the retaining wall-was that he couldn't get a clear shot of the door itself. The allee of trees obscured it so that all he could see was the bottom half of the people who came and went, until they got to the veranda.
But now he saw three sets of legs. The woman, her husband, and another. He needed a shot of the third person. He didn't know there had been another person in there. The guy had to have arrived after dark.
Sweat trickled out through the hair at his temples and slid down the side of his face. His hands were sticky with it, and the case of the camera grew slick. Straining through the viewfinder, he concentrated on the legs of the people as they moved to the front of the allee, toward the veranda. He blinked away the sweat gathering in his eyebrows. Damn it.
Just before the three of them emerged onto the veranda, the unidentified man stopped. They talked some more, and then the guy left the Cains and headed down the allee alone.
He had to make a quick decision since the allee descended in his direction and came to within twelve meters of where he was standing. He shoved the computer into the grass-no time to put it away-grabbed the camera, and fell back into the orchard, disappearing into a stand of wild grass. Turning immediately, he faced the allee with a view through a row of peach trees.
The guy walked the length of the allee, and he could hear him talking, using his cell phone. Still he couldn't get a clear shot with the camera. At the end of the allee the guy turned and went down behind the orchard toward the woods. Where the hell was he going?
Risking discovery, he left the grass and ran, bent over in a crouch along the end of the rows of peach trees, past a toolshed. Breathing heavily and thankful that the guy was on the phone, which would distract his hearing, he came to the end of the last row of trees and dropped to his knees behind a cedarpost woodpile. He turned to the end of the allee where he expected the guy to have emerged and raised his camera. But he was nowhere in sight. Loza frantically scanned the edge of the dense woods that led down the hillside to Cielo Canyon Road below the property.
At the last possible moment he saw the guy entering the woods. He squeezed off a few shots, not sure what he was getting.
Shit. This was suspicious. Not good. Macias wasn't going to like this.
