Runner

35

It was already nearly ten in the morning. The sun was bright and hot enough to burn off the protective haze from the ocean. The drive to the Mexican border seemed longer than Jane had imagined it. To her, San Diego had always seemed to be right on the border. But the wealthy parts where she had been spending much of her time had their faces turned to the north. Mexico was present only in the Indian faces of the people who worked in the restaurants and stood at the bus stops. Now, as she drove south on Interstate 5 and then through National City, Chula Vista, and Palm City, she began to see signs advertising attractions in Mexico and brokers who sold Mexican auto insurance to tourists. She pulled off at Palm Avenue and bought a policy. She knew she would never file a claim, but if she was in an accident she didn't want to be detained while the Mexican police sorted things out. A few minutes after that she reached San Ysidro.

Jane took her place in one of the seven lanes of cars waiting to cross the border. She read all of the signs and watched the movement of the cars on both sides of her, trying to be patient and calm because patience and calm were the things that customs agents on every border looked for. Jane had no experience at the southern border, but like most people in western New York, she had crossed the Canadian border frequently. This morning she was dressed in clothes that would make her identical to the hordes of female American tourists crowding the border. She wore a pair of expensive blue jeans, a long-sleeved white blouse, running shoes that showed she was expecting to be doing some walking, big sunglasses, and a baseball cap. She had her Alexandra Crowell identification in a worn wallet at the top of her purse, ready to show the customs officers.

The cars ahead didn't seem to be moving at all, but one at a time the ones at the row of customs kiosks changed. The people inching forward to the kiosks didn't seem worried, but they probably weren't carrying guns and ammunition and ten different sets of bogus identification. When she was given the wave to pull forward she took her turn with the Mexican officers. One of them came to her window.

Jane kept her face relaxed and blank, but looked at him attentively. He glanced at her for less than a second before he waved her into Tijuana and turned his eyes toward the next car.

Jane moved ahead. It had taken over two hours to get through the jam and into Mexico. She wanted to get out of the vicinity of the border, where the traffic was thick, but the traffic came with her and stayed with her—mostly in front of her—down Avenida Revolución. Mexico was crowded. The sidewalks were moving streams of people. There were hundreds of small stores and stalls and people selling everything—trinkets, textiles, leather, food. People who were obviously Americans elbowed one another to get closer to displays of brightly painted wooden objects. There were nightclubs, bars, and hotels, and in front of many of them, stalls that seemed to represent all of the great profusion of objects that existed and could be sold by one person to another.

As she made it onto Boulevard Agua Caliente the traffic thinned, and she dared to lift her eyes from the road to look around her more often. But as the sense of crowding eased, she was shocked by the sight of the endless hills on both sides, covered with the small cottages and shacks of poor people, most of them probably squatters, since it was hard to imagine pieces of land being cut into such small parcels. They went as far as she could see, and beyond.

By the time she was away from the border, many of the cars had pulled away onto Route 10 along the ocean toward Rosarito and Ensenada, and she felt a bit less hemmed in. But being on this side of the border worried Jane. Everything was unfamiliar and took extra seconds to interpret. She had seen not only policemen in the area close to the border, but also small contingents of armed soldiers at various corners, watching the passing cars. She wasn't sure what to expect of them. The crowds of people everywhere—half of them Americans—made her feel a bit less worried about standing out. Her long black hair might make an eye passing over a crowd include her with the Mexicans, but she didn't speak Spanish, so the impression was only of value if she kept moving and didn't talk.

She knew she was going to have a difficult time finding the building she was searching for, a hard time getting in, and a hard time getting out. As she moved along Boulevard Agua Caliente, she began to see some of the things Steve Demming had told her to look for. There were whole blocks of pharmacies. People who were obviously Americans, most of them elderly, came in and out carrying large shopping bags. There was even a charter bus parked on a side street with its motor running.

Now she moved into the part of the district that she had been watching for. There were medical and dental offices in every space of each block. There were signs offering lap band surgery, tummy tucks, breast and buttock implants, collagen treatments, botox injections, face-lifts, liposuction. The larger buildings were all called clinicas. Most signs were in a sort of English that had an otherworldly quality, with words that were cognates, not translations. There were buildings devoted to medical care that were called "spas." And beside a business offering a jumble of unrelated but major kinds of surgery would be an office offering "painless dentistry" and teeth whitening.

Jane found the address in the center of this wilderness of medical and cosmetic marketplaces. The four-story stucco structure looked like an apartment building jammed between a pharmacy and another medical center, but it had balconies that opened onto a view of another stucco wall two feet away.

She drove past and then around the area for a few minutes before she found a parking space in a lot beside a large market. She went inside and used American dollars to buy a few snacks and some cans of Coca-Cola. She put them into her SUV and began to walk.

She thought about her conversation with Steve Demming. The address he had given her seemed to match his description of the building and the district. But she still wasn't positive that he had given up hope of killing her.

She had knelt beside him in the dark house. "Why should I believe you?"

He said, "Because I don't have anything to gain by lying now. I want to live."

She heard the siren in the distance. "The ambulance. One last thing."

"I know. If you find out I lied, or that I warned anyone that you were coming, you'll kill me."

"I hope you believe that."

"I do."

Jane walked along the street behind Agua Caliente listening and looking, trying to get a sense of everything that was happening around her. She went past dental offices, other places specializing in "salud familiar." Every place advertised that its doctor was board certified and everything cost less than half the U.S. price.

It took her a few minutes to walk to the Clinica Médica de la Mujer. She walked past and made a quick assessment. It had a staircase off the small lobby, and an elevator. There was a pretty young woman in a lavender skirt, matching high heels, and a white lab coat sitting at a graceful writing desk at the back wall. Near her sat a man in a set of hospital scrubs, but he was behind a solid counter that looked like a security station.

Jane never slowed down, and didn't attract any attention to herself. She kept going from one building to the next, shopping at stalls and watching the changes in the traffic and the movement of pedestrians. She had coffee in a nearby restaurant where she could watch the building through the front window but remain an undifferentiated part of the crowd. When she finished she walked to where she had left her car and drove off.

She spent the hours until dark exploring the city in the SUV. She took the road to Otay Mesa, where there was another border crossing, and studied the traffic there. When she judged it was late enough, she drove back to the Clinica Médica de la Mujer.

At midnight Jane climbed up the ladder at the back of the darkened pharmacy to the roof. It rose above the second floor of the Clinica Médica de la Mujer. She stepped close to the first balcony on the second floor of the Clinica, jumped the few feet between them, and climbed over the railing onto the balcony. She looked in the sliding glass door, and she could see there was a woman asleep in the bed.

She tried the door, and found that it was open a crack. Someone had been enjoying the cooler night air. Jane pushed the window open and stepped inside. She saw a tray on the movable table near the bed, picked it up carefully so it wouldn't wake the sleeping woman, and took it with her as she stepped out into the hall. If people saw her, their own minds would supply the explanation. The hall was empty.

Demming had told her that Christine was on the fourth floor of the building. She set the tray on the floor and stepped into the staircase near the end. She climbed to the fourth floor, walked down the hall, and looked in each of the rooms. There were no patients in any of them. When she got to the end of the hall away from the balconies, she saw a room with a solid door with a small double-glazed, metal-webbed window. It looked like a room for some kind of physical therapy or diagnostic equipment. But what caught her eye was that a key hung on a nail beside the door.

Jane moved close and looked in the window. There was a bed, and a patient asleep in it. She took the key and used it to unlock the door, then put it back on the nail so it wouldn't be missed, and slipped inside. She moved past the bed, and she could tell from the shape of the lump under the covers that it was a woman. She opened the blinds to let a little moonlight into the room. It was Christine. Demming had told the truth.

Christine was sleeping soundly, lying on her back, but Jane could see her chest rising and falling in a too-slow rhythm. Jane noticed that there was a medical chart on a clipboard hanging beside the door. She wasn't sure what it said, but there seemed to be a list of drugs and doses. The only one she recognized was diazepam. Valium. They must be giving it to her to help her sleep.

Jane went to the bed and touched Christine's shoulder. She didn't move. Jane shook her gently, then patted her face, but she didn't react. Finally, Jane lifted her to a sitting position and whispered in her ear, "Christine. Christine. You've got to wake up. You've got to be alert now and talk to me. Wake up."

There was no change. Christine was still limp and unconscious. Jane eased Christine down on the bed.

Jane pulled back the covers, then untied the hospital gown at the back of the neck, and looked under it. A fresh, clean-looking bandage stretched across Christine's upper chest from her left shoulder to under the right arm. Jane covered her again. Maybe the other medications were for pain. Bullet wounds were painful and took a long time to heal.

Jane searched the room and then the rest of the floor, looking for equipment that might help her get Christine out. There was no wheelchair, but maybe that was a good sign. If Christine couldn't walk, this was going to be difficult. There didn't seem to be a walker or crutches, either. Then she returned to Christine's room and tried again to wake her. Jane was acutely aware that time was passing. The clock on the wall said 2:14.

She heard the elevator arrive on the fourth floor, a quiet, sliding sound as the doors rolled open. She couldn't hear footsteps, but she was sure the staff must wear rubber-soled shoes. She went into the small bathroom, opened the shower curtain, stepped into the bathtub, and listened. She was right next to the corridor wall, so she heard a scrape as the newcomer lifted the key off the nail. Jane heard a louder sound as the key slid into the lock and rattled a bit when the door proved to be unlocked.

Jane stayed still. The person opened the door, stepped in, and let it close. Jane heard squeaky footsteps on the polished floor as the person stepped to Christine's bed. The person moved the rheostat on the wall up so the lights began to glow dimly. It was a woman's voice. "Christina," she said loudly. "Christina, are you asleep?" She waited a few seconds, there was a rustling sound, and then the woman set something on the table by the door and then went out again.

Jane listened while the woman locked the door. When Jane heard the elevator move again, she came out of the bathroom and looked at what the nurse had left on the table. It was a small tray with a pitcher of water, a plastic cup, and a small cup containing four colored pills. Since Christine hadn't been able to take her medicine, maybe the nurse would return soon.

Jane searched the area around the bed for a telephone or intercom, then for a button to summon the nurse. If there had ever been anything like that, it had been removed. Jane went to the window to see what was visible on this side of the building.

"What are you doing?"

Jane spun and looked down. Christine's eyes were open, gleaming with reflected light from the window.

Jane stepped closer. "I'm glad to see you're alive. They told me at first you were dead."

Christine seemed to be trying to sit up, but she was too groggy. She raised her head. "Jane?"

Jane touched Christine's arm. "I'm here. I told you I'd do whatever it took. Talk to me. Try to wake up."

She blinked, tried to raise herself. Jane lifted her to a sitting position. "Sybil shot me." She started to say something else, but she couldn't keep from crying.

"Your baby was born, wasn't it?" Jane said. "Is it here?"

"He's still in San Diego with Richard's family. They took him away." She sobbed. "His name is Robert. He's beautiful."

"Okay. We have to get you out of here. Can you walk?"

"Yes. Not at first, but now I can. They've been keeping me pretty doped up with painkillers and things, but there's nothing wrong with my legs. I just feel so tired all the time."

"Drugs are a good way to keep you from running to the police, but they can't be expecting to keep you in this place forever."

"It's a clinica mujer. A woman's clinic. The doctor who delivered Robert, and saved me, is a surgeon. He owns this place. Sybil and Claudia told me he's got big connections. There's a red-light district, all whorehouses and strip clubs. That's where the head nurse said I'm going."

"She sounds like a real delight."

"She is. But I know it's real. The nurse who takes care of me told me the doctor does a lot of work for the prostitutes. They have to get checked for STDs once a month, and there are a lot of breast and butt implants, tummy tucks, abortions."

"Don't even think about that. Try to wake up."

"She said that after he's done some surgery to hide the bullet scars and maybe some breast implants I was going to one of the houses. She said if I was good I'd get to stay there."

"If you were good?"

"She said there were places that I wouldn't like as much. And they're a lot farther from the border and harder to find, and there aren't any rules."

"We've got to get you out of here. You said you could walk. Do you think you could run if you had to?"

"Some. Not fast."

"Are the drugs wearing off now?"

"When the nurse came in I was already faking a little bit. I've been trying to get off the painkillers and sleeping pills, cutting down whenever I can. About half the time I palm them and flush them later."

"Great. Have you checked the possible ways out of the building?"

"They've wheeled me down to the examining rooms a few times, and I've looked. There's always a guard downstairs in the lobby. He has a gun, and there's another guy who kind of wanders. The windows in here don't open, but they seem to everywhere else. I think the only way out of this room is when the nurse comes with my pills."

"When will that be?"

"I didn't take them yet, so she'll keep coming until I do."

"All right. I've got a car—a blue Ford SUV—parked just around the block from here. The trick is to get from here to that. I saw the guard downstairs. You said there was a second guard somewhere. Do you know where his post is?"

"I don't think he has one. He seems to go on rounds like a night watchman. I've seen him look in to be sure I was here, or come in to lift something for the nurses. He has a uniform like a cop, and a gun in a holster. The other guy is always at the desk, even late at night. I don't know how often they change shifts or anything like that."

"Are there other women here who are being held?"

"Not that I know of. Since I've been here I've been the only one on this floor. But there are three or four other rooms, and they all have locks on the doors."

They both heard the elevator arrive again and the doors open. Jane said, "I've got to be out of sight. Your job is to not swallow any medicine." She stepped into the bathroom and behind the shower curtain.

They both heard the key in the lock. Christine pretended to be asleep. The door opened, the same nurse came in.

The nurse turned and looked behind her, but nobody was there. The nurse seemed to have a jumpy late-night sensation that there was movement somewhere beyond the corner of her eye. She shook her head and stepped to Christine's bed. "Christina," she said. "Wake up." She shook Christine gently, got no response, and then clutched Christine's left shoulder near the bullet wound.

Christine jumped and opened her eyes. "Ow! Are you trying to hurt me?"

"I'm trying to wake you. Take your medicine." She went to the table, poured water into the plastic cup and held it out to Christine. Then she held out the cup of pills.

"All right," said Christine. "You can go. I can take these by now without you."

"No you can't. I won't let you. I have to be sure you get everything you're supposed to." She folded her arms and stared at Christine.

Christine took the pills in her hand, brought her hand to her mouth, and gulped water, then held the cup out to the nurse.

The nurse seemed to reach for the cup, but then changed the direction of her movement and snatched Christine's other hand, twisted it hard, and held it.

Christine said, "Ow! What are you doing? Are you crazy?"

The nurse pried Christine's fingers open and revealed the pills. She gave a smirk. "I don't seem to be crazy."

"I don't need all those pills anymore. I'm not in that much pain."

The nurse smiled. "Good. I'll tell the doctor that you're just about ready for your bed in the whorehouse."

"You're disgusting."

The nurse slapped her once, then turned away from her, a small smile forming on her lips, until she saw a woman standing behind her. She jerked, then took a step backward. "You don't belong here. Get out."

"Nobody belongs here," said Jane. "Christine, it's got to be now."

Christine got out of the bed and stood unsteadily a few feet off.

Jane refilled Christine's cup from the water pitcher and said to the nurse, "Now take the pills." Jane opened her jacket to show her the handgrips of the gun protruding from her belt.

The nurse put the pills into her mouth, lifted the cup, then hesitated. Jane glared at her, and she swallowed. Jane grasped both her wrists and made her open her hands. "Now I need your uniform. Take it off and lie on the bed."

The nurse said, "What if I scream?"

"You'll only live to do it once. No second breath."

The nurse looked into Jane's eyes, then stepped out of the light blue scrubs she was wearing and lay on the bed. Jane opened a drawer of the bedside stand and took out some adhesive tape. She raised the sides of the bed and taped the nurse's wrists to the two sides. Then she took out some cotton pads from the drawer and stuffed them into the nurse's mouth and taped it.

Jane helped Christine put on the scrubs, and then pulled off the nurse's sneakers and gave them to Christine. Jane watched Christine sit in the chair, then put them on and stand up, and it made her worry. She seemed weak and tottering on her feet. "This might not be easy," Jane said. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to do the best you can."

"Just get me out of here."

The nurse was not able to speak, but she was watching them intently. Jane took the gun out of her pocket and held it up where she could see it. "Don't make noise for one hour."

The nurse nodded and turned her face away.

Jane stepped to the rheostat and turned off the light, covered the nurse with the sheet, and took Christine to the door. She looked out the small window into the corridor to be sure it was clear, then pulled Christine out, closed the door and locked it. She thought about hanging the key on the nail so things would look exactly as they had. Instead, she broke the key off in the lock, then took the house key from the ring for her SUV, put it on the ring for the room key, and hung it on the nail.

She led Christine along the hall. Then she heard the elevator move again. Someone must have pushed the button on a lower floor, and now the elevator was going down to them. Jane pulled Christine into the stairwell and closed the door. She helped her down the stairs to the third floor, but she heard the sound of the elevator doors again. Someone had arrived on the third floor. Jane opened the door just a crack so she could see the elevator.

The doors opened and another nurse came out, this one younger. The rooms were all arranged around the outer walls, with a nursing station in the center of the floor. The nurse walked down the corridor to the nursing station and sat down behind the counter with another young nurse who seemed to be doing some kind of paperwork.

Jane closed the door the rest of the way and leaned close to Christine. She whispered, "There's a patient's room on this floor that's right next to the roof of the pharmacy next door. That's the way out, but now there are nurses. They weren't here before."

Christine whispered, "It was after two-thirty when we left my room. I don't know why they'd show up now. Maybe they kept somebody in the recovery room for a long time, then moved her here. What do we do now?"

"Go back up." Jane took her back up the stairs to the fourth floor, then went into an unoccupied room and looked out the window. "See? We're right above the room I wanted."

"What do you mean?"

"We don't have much choice. We've got to climb out this window and lower ourselves down."

"How?"

"Go to the next room and bring the sheets from the bed."

Christine went out, and Jane stripped the sheets from the two beds in the room. When she finished, Christine came back with another set. "Six sheets. We can roll them instead of tying the corners." Jane rolled each of the sheets and then tied them together. She looked up and saw Christine frowning. "What's the matter?"

"I'm not going to be good at climbing."

"That's the beauty of it. We're going down, not up. I'll tie you in and lower you."

"But what if—"

"No what-ifs. Either way you'll get down. All we're doing is slowing the trip." Jane folded the last sheet and wrapped it around Christine's body so the pressure was spread evenly. "Here's what you do. You go out the window and turn around to face me. Put your feet out and walk your way down. When you get to the third floor, push hard off the wall with your feet. When you swing out, I'll give you slack and you'll land on the roof of the pharmacy. Got the theory?"

"Yes."

"Then make it work."

"Jane, before I go, I want to say—"

"From here on, no sound."

She tied the loose end of the rope of sheets to the bed frame, tugged it tight, pushed the bed to the wall, and opened the window above it. She helped Christine climb from the bed to the windowsill, and then turn to go out on her belly. She had a pained expression on her face, which Jane hoped was only fear. Jane let her down slowly for a dozen feet, then looked over the edge at her. Christine still had her feet against the wall, and she was looking up expectantly, so Jane let her down at a steady rate, the muscles in her back and legs straining. When Christine seemed to be barely above the level of the pharmacy roof, Jane waved.

Christine bent her knees and pushed off from the wall. When Jane could see she had swung out above the pharmacy roof, she let out most of the remaining sheet quickly, and Christine landed on her feet. She waved, then stepped out of the sling Jane had tied.

Jane climbed to the windowsill. As she turned to rappel down, she saw a man's face appear in the little window on the door to the hallway. Someone must have seen Christine descend past the third-floor window and called security. Jane let the sheet slide through her hands, going downward as quickly as she could. She felt something tugging on the upper end. He was untying her. She was still ten feet above the roof of the pharmacy, but she pushed off the wall to swing outward. As soon as she felt her momentum slow she let go.

A half-second later, the rope of bedsheets came free at the fourth-floor window. As Jane dropped to the pharmacy roof, the long white rope snaked down like a streamer and fell to the ground between the two buildings. Jane picked herself up. "Go."

"Where?"

"Over here." She pulled her to the edge of the roof. "See? That's the ladder. Grasp the two sides with both hands, then lower your feet to the first rung. Get down as fast as you can."

Jane looked up at the window, but the man was gone. She looked at Christine and saw she was making her way down tentatively, right foot down a rung, then the left foot to the same rung, then right foot down again. Jane could see she was having a hard time keeping her left hand from letting go.

Jane heard running feet coming along the street side of the pharmacy, then rounding the corner. Jane looked around her on the roof. All she could see near her was a small pile of five-foot two-by-fours that had been stored up here for some future improvement. She lifted one and stepped to the edge of the roof. She saw the guard running toward the back of the pharmacy where Christine was on the ladder. Jane held the piece of lumber like a spear and threw it straight down at him. The end of the two-by-four grazed the back of the man's head, hit his right shoulder blade, and knocked him to the ground, where he lay still.

Jane went down the ladder as quickly as she could, then grasped Christine's hand and ran the other way around, between the two buildings toward the next street.

When they emerged, they could see Jane's SUV parked on the street, but there were three men in their twenties leaning against it, smoking cigarettes and talking. Jane said, "They may be harmless. Just stay out of sight for a minute while I find out."

Jane walked toward her vehicle with her keys in her hand. She pressed the button on the key fob, and the driver's-side door clicked to unlock. The men heard it and looked up to see Jane approaching. Two of them seemed to understand and stepped away from the car to the other side of the sidewalk, but the third, who had thick dark hair and a handsome face with big dark eyes, stayed where he was, leaning against the car, and grinned to reveal unnaturally white teeth.

Jane didn't smile back. "Por favor," she said, and pointed to the door.

He stopped leaning, opened the driver's door as though he were helping her in.

Jane took a step toward it, but he quickly spun around and sat in the driver's seat. His two companions laughed. Jane reached into her jacket and produced the Beretta M92 pistol. She held it at waist level, so the man in the car was the only one who could see it. He was still smiling, but this time his mouth and his eyes didn't seem to belong in the same face. The smile was frozen. He said in English, "Just a joke."

"Get out of my car."

The man carefully got out of the driver's seat and stepped back across the sidewalk to join his two friends. He muttered something to them in Spanish, and they all backed away a few steps. Jane used those seconds to get into the vehicle, lock the doors, and start the engine. When she saw Christine emerge from the passageway ahead, she pulled forward and stopped in the street long enough to let her climb in.

As Jane pulled away, the uniformed security guard from the clinic arrived on foot, having run along the street instead of between buildings. His face was a mask of rage. He pulled his pistol out of its holster and appeared to take aim at Jane's back window, but then he seemed to recall that this was a very busy street even at this hour, with plenty of tall buildings to stop the bullet if he missed, pedestrians for witnesses, and probably policemen and soldiers listening for gunfire. Before Jane lost sight of the guard, a new white pickup truck arrived, and he climbed into it.

Jane made a quick turn and then another, then drove down Boulevard Agua Caliente toward the bullfight ring, the racetrack, and the golf course, and away from the medical zone.

"You're going away from the border," Christine said. "San Ysidro is back that way."

"They're going to try to catch us," Jane said. "Most people cross at San Ysidro, don't they?"

"Yeah. It's the busiest border crossing in the world."

"Then it's where they'll think we're going. I'm going to try to cross at Otay Mesa."

"Okay, but I'm not sure if it's open at this hour."

"I drove almost to the crossing today while I was waiting for it to get dark. There are signs in English on the way. It closes for trucks at ten o'clock, but the passenger lanes are open twenty-four hours."

Christine was gripping the dashboard with both hands, staring ahead. Jane could see she was shivering.

"Believe me," said Jane. "I saw the signs."

"I'm just so scared," said Christine. "They're going to follow us."

"I'm sure they'll try. Do you remember what I taught you about firing a gun?"

"I think I do."

Jane took the Beretta out of her belt and held it so Christine could take it. "This one is different. See the little switch near your thumb?"

"This one?"

"Yes. It's the safety catch. If you slide it this way, the gun will be ready to fire. If you don't, it won't. It has fourteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. You just keep pulling the trigger over and over until nothing happens. The brass casings eject to the right, and they come out hot."

Christine looked over her shoulder at the road. "I don't see the security guard."

"It's a precaution. When you're running you take every precaution before you think it might be necessary. We prepare for every threat we can imagine, remember? By the time there's a reason to prepare, it's too late. If they come up behind us, they'll try to run us off the road. Or they'll try to shoot me, because I'm the driver."

"What do I do about that?"

"If they pull up behind us, we'll do the same thing they're doing. I drive, you fire at them. You aim for the driver. But what you want to do is keep firing at the windshield. Any hit will make them lose their enthusiasm."

Christine sat in the passenger seat resting the gun on her thigh and looking down at it.

Jane looked at her for a second. "If you have any doubt that you can do it, let me know now."

Christine shook her head. "No. No doubt."

Jane drove on. As they swung north again toward the Otay Mesa crossing, Jane saw the signs she remembered from the afternoon that said GARITA DE OTAY, and then the English one she had been looking for. It said the crossing was open twenty-four hours.

As Jane slowed to be sure the arrow was pointing in the direction she was going, she heard a sudden roar of an engine. She began to turn her head to see, but the movement was cut short. There was a ferocious jolt, a deafening noise, a giant hammerblow of steel on steel. The air bag exploded into her face, punching her backward into the headrest. An instant later there was the sound of glass and bits of metal bouncing on the pavement.

The car spun sideways, and as it rocked to a stop, Jane pulled her knife out of her pocket and punctured the air bag to get it out of her way. She stabbed Christine's air bag, too, and as it deflated she looked around her. Her SUV had been hit broadside by a white pickup truck, but Christine was still upright. "Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so."

Jane put her foot on the brake, shifted into neutral and then reverse, then stepped on the gas pedal and began to pull back. She could see that in the pickup truck that had hit her were two men wearing the same kind of security guard uniforms as the one at the hospital.

The man in the driver's seat interpreted Jane's maneuver and pulled forward to ram the side door of her vehicle, trying to stay with it and push it over. Jane reached for the pistol in her jacket pocket, but Christine's gun hand came up more quickly and fired four rounds into the truck's windshield. They could still hear the truck's engine as Jane's SUV roared backward to escape it, the front of the pickup scraping along the side of her vehicle as she cleared it. Then the unguided truck kept going, drifting ahead across the road and into an empty lot.

"Oh, my God," Christine whispered.

Jane threw the transmission into drive and headed south, away from the border. When she reached a junction with Route 10 she took it. The road looked, at least late at night, like a California freeway.

After a minute or two Christine said, "Could you see if that guy was dead?"

"The driver? Not sure," said Jane. "I hope so. He's not behind us, and that's all I care about right now."

"I just feel ... weird. I didn't think about it. I just did it." She looked at Jane in the light of the dashboard. "You would have shot at them, right?"

"That's what I was going to do, but you were faster. Once I saw you still had the gun, I knew that what I ought to be doing was driving." Jane let the silence go for a time, then said, "You sure you didn't get hurt in the crash?"

"The air bag shook me up, but the seat belt went across my good shoulder, not the broken clavicle. I guess I was lucky the gun didn't fly into my face."

"You've been to Mexico a lot?"

"I grew up thirty-five miles from here."

"Have any ideas about how we can get across the border?"

"We could drive east, out of Baja, and try to get across the border somewhere else."

"East where?"

"I don't know. Calexico. Maybe Nogales, and cross into Arizona. Or even keep going and cross into Texas."

"We can't drive this car that distance. It's got too much damage. I haven't seen the outside of it yet, but I think it would attract attention at a border crossing." She looked at Christine. Beyond Christine was the black, endless Pacific. The moon hung above it, casting a silvery reflection on its surface.

"What are you looking at?"

"I'm thinking." Jane moved her eyes back to the road.

"Good, because we're going to hit Ensenada in a little while, and that's as far as we're supposed to go without stopping for a tourist card."

"I know," Jane said. "Let me ask you something else. There are a lot of cruise ships that stop in Ensenada, right?"

"Sure," said Christine. "All the time."

"The ships are huge, right?"

"Yeah. Thousands of rooms."

"They can't all be full, can they?"

Christine's eyes widened as she shook her head.

An hour later Jane pulled the SUV to a stop in the parking lot of a large supermercado near the harbor. She took her small suitcase with her clothes and the packet containing the false identification that Stewart had sent her and the cash she had brought. She took a rag from the back of the SUV and wiped the steering wheel, door handles, windows, trunk, and hood for fingerprints. Then she unscrewed the license plates and took them with her.

Jane and Christine walked to the beach. Jane kept watch while Christine slept on the sand for a couple of hours, until the air around them seemed to be lightening. Then the two women changed into clean jeans and blouses from Jane's suitcase and threw Christine's stolen scrubs into a trash can. Jane disassembled both of her pistols, removing the magazine, the slide, barrel, recoil spring, guide rod, slide catch, frame.

They walked to the harbor before dawn. As Jane went, she found places to put the pieces of the two weapons—the springs in a trash can, one slide in a storm sewer. The guide rods, slide catches, sears, and triggers went into a row of Dumpsters. She saved the most identifiable parts, the frames and magazines, until they reached the docks, then dropped them in deep water.

When it was fully light they made their way to the zone of resort hotels and went into what looked like the best one to order breakfast. When they had spent the early morning in a leisurely meal, Jane went to the concierge desk. She found a man there who seemed to be in charge and said, "Good morning. Do you speak English?"

"Yes, ma'am," the man said.

"I need to find a travel agent. Can you help me?"

"Certainly," he said. He reached under his counter and produced a glossy brochure, opened it to reveal a map of Ensenada. He used his pen to circle a rectangle that represented the hotel, then circled a spot one block south and four blocks east. He said, "We recommend Tours Riviera to our guests." He scribbled the name Tours Riviera. "Some of us have used their services ourselves."

Jane said, "I should mention that I don't speak Spanish."

"That isn't a problem, Señorita. Most of their customers are American."

"Thank you very much," Jane said. She handed him a twenty-dollar bill, mainly because of her relief that he had not demanded to know if she was a guest of the hotel.

He pocketed the money. "Thank you, Señorita."

Jane and Christine left for the travel agency at ten, and found the office open. The young woman who took charge of them at the door said her name was Estrella.

Jane said, "The reason we've come is that we'd like to change our travel plans. This is a last-minute idea, so tell me if it's not possible."

"Certainly."

"There are cruise ships stopping in Ensenada all the time, aren't there?"

"Oh, yes, especially at this time of year. There are Baja cruises, three-day, four-day, and five-day cruises that start in San Diego, Los Angeles, or Long Beach that stop at Catalina Island, Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, and go back. There are fifteen-day cruises to Hawaii that stop here. Let me see what's in port now." She typed something into her computer and read off the screen. "The Carnival Paradise, Royal Caribbean Monarch of the Seas, Diamond Princess, Holland America Zaandam."

"Are there ever any empty cabins when they reach Ensenada?"

"I would say there always are."

"Would it be possible for you to book us a cabin on one of them to go to one of the California ports?"

"I think so, but it might be an expensive way to get home. They usually sail from here around five or six o'clock in the evening and arrive in their American port at around six the next morning. So you won't see much."

"That's just fine," said Jane. She looked as remorseful as she felt. "It's a last-minute plan. We came down here by car with two men we didn't know as well as we thought we did. We're going home early."

Estrella looked at them sympathetically. "Say no more. You have your passports?"

"Yes." Jane reached into the side pocket of her suitcase and produced the ones she had received from Stewart Shattuck.

Estrella lifted her telephone, spoke rapidly in Spanish, and in a few minutes, the arrangements were made. "The price is prorated," she said. "It's a three-day cruise, and you will owe one-third."

"We'll take it," said Jane. She looked at her watch. "I wonder if it would be okay for us to go aboard the ship right away and get settled. I think we'd like to explore the ship a little before we sail."

"I think that sounds like a good idea," said Christine.

"Yes," Jane said. "I feel as though we've done everything here that we want to."