safe, she heard a distinctive scraping. Suddenly a match flared.
Mitch's fall had taken him several yards from where he had been before. The flame of the match flickered in a part of the cave where Lani hadn't expected to see it. Not only that, in her eagerness to return to her hiding place, she had gone too far. Instead of being completely sheltered by the stalagmite, she had moved a few critical inches to the other side.
'Why, there you are, little darling,' he said. 'Come to Daddy.'
And then the match went out.
Brian was waiting at the gate when Candace and Davy finally stepped off the plane. He grinned when he saw Davy. 'You guys must have been at the very back of the bus.'
'Close,' Davy said. 'Candace, this is Brian Fellows, my best friend. Brian, this is Candace Waverly. We're engaged.'
Suppressing a blink of surprise, Brian nodded again, taking charge of one of Candace's bags while she carried the other. 'Your mother mentioned something to that effect, but things are so chaotic right now, I'm not sure the information's really penetrated.'
'What's going on?'
'It's a very long story,' Brian said. 'And if you don't mind, I think I'll wait until we're in the car before I tell it to you.'
'It's that bad?' Davy asked.
'It ain't good,' Brian replied.
On the way down the concourse and while they waited for the luggage, Candace chattered on and on about how brown everything was and about how small the airport was compared to O'Hare. She seemed oblivious to the seriousness of the situation, but Davy had seen the bleak look in Brian's eyes.
Brian had gone home and traded the Blazer for his personal car, a low-slung Camaro. The mountain of luggage didn't come close to fitting in the trunk. Candace finally clambered into a backseat already piled with two leftover suitcases.
'All right,' Davy said to Brian as soon as they were all in the car. 'Tell me.'
As Brian related the story, Davy became more and more somber. Tommy and Quentin had been the banes of Davy's childhood just as they had of Brian's. In fact, it was the older boys' casual meanness that had, in the beginning, united the younger two. Mean or not, though, Brandon Walker's sons were still part of both families. To have to accept one of the two as Lani's killer was appalling.
'You're sure he did it?' Davy asked.
'I heard the tape,' Brian replied. 'Believe me, it was pretty damned convincing.'
'How's Mom taking it?'
'About how you'd expect,' Brian said. 'Not very well.'
'And Brandon?'
'He's better off than your mother is. At least he's able to do something about it. The last I saw of him, he was on his way out to Rattlesnake Skull Charco with Brock Kendall, an FBI agent.'
'Rattlesnake Skull? Why there?'
'To meet Fat Crack. Wanda Ortiz called and said that according to Gabe, that's where we'll find Lani.'
'Is that where we're going?' Davy asked.
'No. We're supposed to go to the house.'
'If the charco is where the action is, that's where I want to be,' Davy said. 'Let's go there.'
Brian cast a dubious look across the front seat toward his friend. 'All right,' he said. 'But first let's drop Candace off at the house.'
'No way,' Candace Waverly said from the backseat. 'Where did you say you're going?'
'To a charco to see if there's anything we can do to help.'
'What's a charco?' Candace asked.
'A stock tank,' Brian answered.
'A retention pond,' Davy said at the same time.
Candace sat back in Brian's cramped rear seat and crossed her arms. 'If you're going to the charco, I'm going too,' she announced.
Davy looked at Brian. 'I guess that's settled then,' he said.
'I guess it is,' Brian agreed.
'How can it be so empty?' Candace asked, as Brian's fully loaded Camaro swept west along Highway 86.
'Empty,' Brian repeated. 'You should have seen it years ago when Davy and I were kids. That's when it was really empty. There are lots more people living out here now than there used to be.'
Candace looked out across the seemingly barren and endless desert and didn't believe a word of it.
Davy, meantime, seemed preoccupied with something else. 'You told me about finding bones at the charco,and about Quentin's fingerprints showing up on some of them. What I don't understand is why Quentin would have taken Lani there. It doesn't make sense.'
'Nobody says it has to make sense,' Brian told him. 'All I know is Fat Crack said that's where your dad should look and that's where he's looking.'
'Who said that?' Candace asked.
'A friend of ours,' Davy answered quickly. 'His name's Gabe Ortiz. He's actually the tribal chairman.'
'He's an Indian, then?'
'Yes.'
'But it sounded like Brian called him by some other name.'
'Yes.' Davy rolled his eyes. ' Gihg Tahpani,' he said. 'Fat Crack.'
'So is Fat his first name and Crack's his last?'
Candace asked the question so seriously that Brian burst out laughing while Davy was reduced to shaking his head. Obviously he had failed miserably in preparing Candace for the culture she was stepping into.
'Fat Crack is a first name,' Brian explained good-naturedly. 'But it's also sort of a friendly name-a name used between friends. So when you meet him, and until you know him better, you probably ought to call him plain Mr. Ortiz.'
They turned off onto Coleman Road. 'What kind of shoes do you have on?' Brian asked, looking at Candace's face in the mirror.
'Heels. Why?'
'I was just over this road in a Blazer yesterday. If the Camaro doesn't high-center on the first wash, I know it will on the second.'
'On the what?'
'Wash. It's a dry riverbed. A sandy riverbed. We're going to have to walk from here, so the car doesn't get stuck.'
'That's all right,' Candace said. 'I have some tennis shoes in my roll-aboard.'
Brian pulled over on the side of the road. The suitcase in question was one of the ones that had wound up in the backseat with Candace. While she dug through it to find her tennis shoes, Davy and Brian stood outside the car, waiting and looking off up the road toward the charco. Finding her shoes, Candace kicked off her heels and then moved to the front seat. She was sitting there tying her shoes when she saw something strange on the shoulder of the road a few feet away.
As soon as she had her shoes tied, she walked over and picked up a small medallion with a strange black- and-white design woven into it. 'Hey, you guys,' she called to Brian and Davy, who were waiting for her on the other side of the road. 'Come see what I found.'
Davy sauntered over. As soon as he saw what was in her hand, though, his jaw dropped. 'Where did you get that?' he demanded.
'It was right here. Along the side of the road…'
'Brian, come here, quick. Fat Crack's right. Lani's been here. Look!'
Sprinting across the road, Brian Fellows stopped in his tracks the moment he caught sight of the basket. 'You're right,' he said. 'She has to be here somewhere…'
The three of them were standing there in stunned silence, staring up the mountain, when they heard a cry. 'Help.'
