Down Among the Dead Men

27

Nobody could ever accuse Vargas of being smart.

The smart thing to do would be to go back to the motel office, ask to use the phone (his cell had been stolen along with his car keys), and call Agent Harmon.

The problem with this idea was that Harmon already thought Vargas was a drug-addicted, attention-mongering crackpot and the presence of his car in the Western Suites parking lot would more than likely bolster that opinion.

Vargas still had no idea how they’d managed to get the thing across the border-seeing as how the Border Patrol was reportedly on the lookout for it-but that didn’t much matter, did it?

Whoever he’d gotten himself involved with was not playing around. And if they were somehow associated with what had happened in the House of Death, a story that had gone through the usual news cycle, then faded away, they might be a bit concerned about some americano reporter starting to dig it all up again.

How much did he know? Who had he told?

That, if his jangled brain was remembering properly, had seemed to be Sergio’s concern. A concern that was no doubt shared by “the man himself.”

Part of Vargas wanted to simply jump into his Corolla, head straight back to California, and pretend he’d never gotten involved in any of this nonsense in the first place. But besides coming up a bit short in the smarts department, under the right set of circumstances Vargas was also insanely curious. And he could think of no better set of circumstances than the one he’d stumbled into today.

One of his old story sources, an ex-cop in Las Vegas who had a serious obsession with cards, had once described his addiction to Vargas as an itch. One that just had to be scratched. But once you scratched it, he’d said, the itch only got worse and worse until it was all you thought about.

Vargas had had his doubts about pursuing this story before today, but now the itch was setting in. And despite his encounter with Ainsworth and Sergio-an encounter Vargas was convinced would have led to his interrogation and possible death-he knew his only choice was to start scratching.

So instead of calling Harmon, he decided to chance going back to his room. His laptop was there. Along with the notes from his interviews with the Chihuahua police and the information he’d gotten from the murder file. Much of this had been transferred to the Secure Digital card he always kept in his wallet, but he hadn’t managed to do a full backup before his meeting with Ainsworth.

Going inside was a stupid move, sure, especially with his head feeling the way it did.

But he was stupid enough to make the move anyway.