A Serpent In Turquoise

Having stalled the Jeep, she coaxed it back to life, then sat in Neutral. Might as well give the cloud of dust that the pickup had raised a minute to settle—along with her heart. She glanced toward the cantina’s screen door just as it banged open. The barroom brawler plus his skinny pal lurched out onto the boardwalk. “Uh-oh.”

As he spotted her, the hulking man pointed her way, and the two broke into a purposeful trot.

Raine turned out onto the road and ran smoothly up through the gears. The Jeep reached the veil of dust that swirled in the pickup’s wake. The last rays of the sinking sun struck it and Mipopo vanished beyond a wall of shimmering copper. Raine stomped the pedal to the metal.

Within minutes she caught up to the pickup with its four-legged cargo. “Pull over and let me by!” she fumed, beeping her horn.

But here in the land that invented machismo, the driver had his honor to defend. The pickup swung out to the crown of the road and trundled on at its top speed. The goats gazed back at her with demonic yellow eyes, their wispy white beards blowing in the breeze.

And behind her, she heard the first rumbles of pursuit. The dust cloud swirled as they rounded a bend, and Raine caught a glimpse behind. Here came the lumber truck, its pile of raw pine logs towering above the battered cab, the whole top-heavy load swaying monstrously on the curve.

Trey had trained her and all her siblings in hand-to-hand combat, but the foremost lesson the ex-SEAL had drilled into their heads was: “Run when you can. Fight only when you must.”

Given an open road, she could outrun that truck. Then with a few miles lead, she could dive down the side trail she’d intended to take and vanish down into the canyon before they had a clue where she’d gone. The road widened suddenly and Raine pulled out to pass, but the pickup swerved to block her. “You son of a—” She got a grip and swung back to the right.

Behind her, Señor Skinny leaned halfway out the passenger window to jeer and hoot as he pumped his bony arm.

Okay, forget about passing. She supposed she could simply follow the pickup till her lunatic lumberjacks grew bored with the chase. “Hey!” she yelped as the truck made a roaring charge at her back bumper. She stepped on the gas and surged ahead, till the goats could have leaped out onto her hood.

“What is with you guys?” Harassing a lone foreign female seemed just their style, but instigating a three-way pileup was downright suicide.

If they knocked her off the road, she had to respond at maximum intensity. She hadn’t brought a gun this trip; flying made it impossible. And her usual weapons, her blowpipe and her knife, she’d stowed with the rest of her gear beneath a tarp in the back, before she’d strolled into Magdalena’s.

There’d be no time to put her pipe together, but maybe she could get to her knife in time. Meanwhile, she leaned toward the glove compartment, fished out a heavy flashlight and laid it in her lap as, up ahead, the road took a rising bend to the right. And there at last, beyond a screen of wind-tortured pines, the rim of the canyon yawned, a dark slash in the ground, falling away out of sight.

If she remembered correctly, the road snaked back to the east just beyond that promontory, while a side road cut away to her right and down. At this speed it lay maybe a minute ahead.

Just then the truck crunched her bumper, and Raine’s teeth clicked together as her head slammed back against her headrest.

“So be that way!” She grabbed the flashlight, flipped it up and over her shoulder.

In her rearview mirror, she saw the truck’s windshield glitter in a crazy spiderweb of cracks. Above the cab, the logs groaned against their chains. An outraged bellow sounded over the engine’s roar.

Up ahead, the goat chauffeur was finally realizing he was traveling in bad company. The pickup belched smoke and squeezed out a few more miles per hour, but Raine didn’t close the gap. She’d gut it out, ride the lumber truck’s front bumper for another quarter mile, then hang a last-second hairpin right down the canyon trail. The truck’s greater momentum should carry it well past the turn.

The engine behind her revved, roared. She gritted her teeth and eased ahead, hoping to soften the oncoming crash.

“Ooff!” Another blow like that and she’d be riding with the goats. She kept her eyes trained for her turn. Couldn’t be more than a hundred yards to go…then fifty, then… “Where the hell is it?”

McCord was driving up the last switchback on the trail out of the canyon, when the coyote popped up on his right. “No way!” He braked the ancient Land Rover, raising a wave of sandy gravel, as the dusky form flashed past his front bumper then flowed over the drop-off to his left. “Jorge?” McCord cut the ignition and leaned out of his doorless vehicle to whistle, then call, “George-boy? C’mere, fella.” He scanned the brush that edged the track, the top branches of a pine jutting up from below.

“No way that coulda been George.” He’d left the mangy beggar back at camp, forty miles down the gorge. The coyote liked to tag his tracks, but he’d never have followed him this far. Besides, he couldn’t have gotten ahead of him, if he had followed.

“Jorgito? If that’s you, go home. Take it from one who knows, city life’s not what it’s cracked up to be.” Magdalena kept a shotgun behind the bar, and the only varmints she tolerated walked on two legs. “Follow me there and she’ll chop you up for chili.”

No answer but a breeze, sighing through the pine needles.

McCord engaged the parking brake, then reached for the canteen on the seat beside him. He swung around to watch the sun flaming on a purple peak, far beyond the far rim of the canyon. He took a cool swallow while the light faded from copper to blue, sighing happily at the thought of the cold beers to follow, with a plate of tamales and mole on the side. Definitely a slice of real bread; he was sick of campfire biscuits and hush puppies. His stomach rumbled at the thought.

It had been complaining ever since he’d declined an invitation to supper when he’d stopped by the doc’s place, an hour back down the trail. But McCord had his first-night rituals for whenever he straggled out of the canyons. It was best to ease back into civilization like a bather into a hot tub, and Magdalena’s made a good halfway stop on the road to polite society. His first night out from camp, he didn’t need stimulating conversation or a fight for his life on the doc’s treacherous chessboard. He’d rather kick back, let a warm, curvaceous woman swaddle him in comfort and admiration.

Whilst he’d sat there anticipating, the sun had sunk itself, curving off toward the Gulf of California, and Baja beyond. “The Blue Hour,” he mused aloud, then frowned at the noise coming from just above—a big roaring diesel rasping at the quiet, rumbling down the road from Mipopo. One of those damned lumber trucks, carting off pine trees that had struggled a thousand years or more to attain their rightful growth, cherishing every drop of rain, standing fast against landslides and winter gale—only to fall to some greedy little guy with a rusty chainsaw.

With a rueful grunt, McCord glanced back down the long sloping track that clung to the canyon wall. Too late for supper at the doc’s? Maybe he wasn’t in the right mood for the cantina tonight. It was no place to pick a fight. If that crowd ever suspected he was a closet tree hugger…

On the other hand, if he meant to change his mind, he’d have to drive the last little stretch up to the main road, then turn around there. Only a fool would attempt a K-turn on this one-lane ramp that was scarcely wide enough for two burros. And if he got as far as the main road, then he might as well—

He’d swung back around with this resolution and now McCord sat, transfixed. “What the—” A car plunged out of the twilight, heading straight at him, its left flank hugging the mountainside, scraping a shower of sparks as it came. “Shit! Stop, you—”

No time to start his engine, no place to swerve aside if he did. He dove for the passenger door. Jump the other way and next stop was the canyon floor, about a half mile below.

The car clipped his left headlight. Head and shoulders out of the Rover, he clung to the doorframe as it spun counterclockwise.

Tree limbs crackled; the pine tree groaned like a wounded beast. Glass shattered, metal shrieked. His heart was going to burst right out of his chest and run for high ground!

Shaking and swearing, McCord lay, staring at the road only inches below his face. He listened for the sound of the other car striking the canyon floor.

It was a long way down, but still…He blew out a breath. Should have struck by now, and serve the jerk right. Driving at that speed, without his headlights? He struggled to a sitting position. “What the—” Almost afraid to look, he swung slowly around. “Sweet Jeez in the morning.”

The other car—a topless Jeep—hung at his eye level, wedged in the branches of the pine tree that grew up the cliff face.

“Good God.” McCord scrambled out onto the road till his knees gave out, and he landed on his butt, contemplating this miracle. “You’re the luckiest damn fool in the—”

Something cracked. The Jeep settled gradually, rolling toward its left side as it sank. It paused, still cradled by the pine, suspended out there, maybe five feet beyond the edge of the cliff. “Oh, boy.” McCord pulled himself up the Rover’s fender to his feet. That wasn’t a very big tree, and if—

Another branch cracked. The Jeep listed a few more degrees, allowing him to see the driver, who still gripped the wheel as if he meant to drive out of this mess—or straight on to Kingdom Come. “I, uh, think you better get outta there.” McCord limped closer, swallowing hard.

“No kidding!” She reached out the gap where a door would be in a standard car to grope for a hold, only to touch thin air.

It was a woman, he realized, noticing her pale-colored braid now. And what was the matter with her, just sitting there so calm? Was she drunk or stoned?

Or maybe stunned. He swallowed and said casually, “Got your seat belt fastened?” If the Jeep tipped any farther and she didn’t, she’d better have packed a parachute.

“Yeah.” She swung her arm again. “What am I hung up on?”

Another snap of a branch and the Jeep rolled ten more degrees.

“I’m in a…tree?”

She’d hit her head, he decided. Was concussed. Maybe in shock. “That’s about the size of it. Now listen, honey, I want you to just sit tight, while I…” Whatever damn-fool thing he did, it entailed going out there and getting the crazy bitch. Or maybe—“Hang on. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He spun, heading for the rear of the Rover.

“What happens if I move?” she called behind him.

“You don’t wanna know.” Returning on the run with a rope, he built a bowline loop. “I’m going to throw you a rope now, okay?”

She grabbed in the wrong direction. It slipped past her fingers and fell away.

“I’ll try again.”

And damned if she didn’t miss again. “Um, by any chance, do you wear glasses?” And she’d lost them in the wreck.

“I’m seeing triple, okay? Now throw me the fricking rope!” An edge of panic laced her husky voice.

“Sorry. Maybe if you—Oh, jeez!” he yelled as, in a crackle-storm of snapping branches, the Jeep rolled toward him—entirely upside-down. With its wheels turned up to the sky, it looked like a dying animal.

“Oh, shoot me,” came her voice, from somewhere down below. “I’m off the edge, aren’t I?”

“I’m afraid so.” He tied the tail end of his rope to the roll bar on the Rover.

Down below the cliff face, she’d started laughing. “Lost the love of your life? Chased by rabid lumberjacks? No problemo! Come to the Copper Canyons and leave your troubles behind!”

“Least it puts ’em all in perspective,” he agreed absently as he twisted the rope over his hip and shoulders in a body rappel. He was a firm believer in equality of the sexes; theoretically there was no reason he should risk his neck for a damned woman driver. Not that reason and women mixed very often, in his experience.

It was her husky laughter that was the clincher. She wasn’t hysterical; she just had a fine black appreciation for life’s little pratfalls, on top of what must be a whopping concussion. Still, if she showed that kind of guts in the face of disaster, what could he do but match her? “Just hang on now.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m hanging.”

Paying out rope, he walked down the cliff face, till he was looking up at the Jeep and the Dangling Beauty.

An ice cube slid down his spine. Only a couple of big limbs remained; the weight of the car had settled upon them. If they let go—when they let go, he amended, seeing the jagged crack in the crotch of the closer one—then down would come the Jeep like a Detroit-made guillotine, on his head. Two tons of dusty steel would ride him and the woman down to the ground.

“I’m gonna toss you the rope again,” he said as he coiled up its dangling tail. “And this time, believe me, you want to catch it. Now let your arms hang.” She’d never do it, he realized as he spoke. Though the belt ought to hold her weight, instinct would weld her hands to the steering wheel.

She drew an audible breath, then said in a rueful moan, “Oh, man.” She let go the steering wheel to hang, arms extended, swaying faintly in the breeze.

“Good girl. Here it comes.” The loop slapped her wrists and she clawed for it frantically, finally capturing it.

“Now get the loop around your waist,” McCord instructed.

Somehow she wriggled into it. “Beautiful!” Quickly he explained what she had to do. She had to release her seat belt, but hang on tightly to the steering wheel, and get herself aimed head-up, feet-down. “I’m wedged in right over here, and I’ll take in your slack. When you’re ready, all you do is let go, then I’ll do the rest. I won’t let you fall.”

She’d swing into the cliff below him and bang herself good, but she ought to hit feet-first, not head-on. It might work. Except that nobody in his right mind would release that seat belt, no matter how much he wanted to live.

But she fooled him again. Her hand fumbled at the buckle.

“Oh, honey, we’re gonna do this,” he almost sang. She was one in a million.

Somewhere in the tree, something snapped.

“Um, I hate to say this, Tex, but the buckle seems to be jammed.”

Another branch crackled—and the Jeep settled one foot closer to Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.

Chapter 4

N ot a minute to lose, McCord told himself when the Jeep stopped moving. He scrambled back up to road level, then realized what he had to do. Bending low, he called down through the gap between the car and the cliff. “Uh, honey? Guess we’ll have to do it the hard way. You’ve gotta untie that loop and let it drop.”

“Are you outta your tiny mind?”

“Trust me on this. Drop the rope.” That loop around her waist must have felt like her last link to life, but if the Jeep fell when he added his weight to it, the line would saw her in half. A half-mile drop would be kinder.

She muttered something surly. The rope shivered, then slackened, and McCord was amazed all over again as he coiled it and slung it over one shoulder. “Okay, you’re going to hear a thump, but don’t worry. That’s just me.”

He leaped—and landed dead center on the Jeep’s chassis, flapping his arms for balance as the Jeep wobbled and wood crackled. His ankle touched hot metal and he swallowed a yelp. “Piece of cake.”

“Yeah,” she agreed bitterly. “Angel food.”

She was hyperventilating, it sounded like, as he picked his way along the hot greasy metal till he could reach an upper branch of the pine. It was the only unbroken one in a position to help, and it might hold the two of them.

“What are you doing up there?” she snarled.

“Just making us a sky hook,” he said soothingly as he tied the rope around the branch, then knotted in foot loops. Once he’d done that, he shinnied down the rope, to swing there level with her, toeing frantically for the last loop. He found it and settled his weight into it, then drawled cheerily, “Well, hey!”

Her upside-down face turned back and forth, then homed in when he whistled softly. “This is not the brightest idea you ever had in your life.”

“You always this bitchy when you’re scared?” He snagged the doorframe to pull himself closer. “Okay, here’s the drill.” He’d cut her loose, while she hung on to the steering wheel. Then she’d rotate, till they were no longer in sixty-nine position. “And then—”

“I get the picture. Just do it!”

“Right.” Drawing his Buck Knife from its sheath, he sawed at the seat belt. “Okay, here it comes. It’s all yours!”

Panting with terror and effort, she worked her legs out, her knees knocking him in the chest as she rotated upright. Then she dangled, treading air, her head stuck somewhere up in the Jeep’s foot well. “N-now what?”

He grabbed the wheel, pulled himself closer. “Get your legs around my waist.”

Easier said than done, but they managed. She had miles of leg, and he’d swear she wrapped them twice around, squeezing him like an anaconda.

“Now all you have to do is let go of the wheel, and wrap your arms around my neck. Just let go, honey, and reach for me.”

“I—I can’t.”

He opened his mouth to argue—and the Jeep shifted. With a screech, she let go and boarded him, hugging him in a stranglehold. The car slid farther and McCord kicked off its moving side. As they pendulumed outward, tons of steel sighed and slipped past and was gone.

“Yowsa!” he said reverently as their lips met. No telling who kissed whom, but still they brushed, and brushed again, then locked on tight.

Half a mile below, the Jeep pancaked on rock. The sparks singed him from here, or maybe that was the hot woman, almost welded to his belly. No sane man would feel a twinge of arousal, dangling over his own death on not much more than a healthy twig, but with the way she shuddered against him and the wild, wet taste of her…

Wham…wham…wham…wham…The echoes bounced off the far wall of the canyon and back again. McCord rubbed his lips across her cheek and up through her hair. She smelled like a surfer girl, whiff of coconut oil and sun-kissed sweat. He must be purely out of his mind. He glanced up at the bending branch. “There’s just one thing more we have to do.”

The first ten feet was the hardest part, but she had the slender arms of a rock climber and McCord gave her a boost. She swarmed up his body, then the rope.

By the time they heaved themselves over the cliff edge to collapse face-down and gasping on the road, it was just about pitch-dark. McCord rolled over and lay beaming gratefully up at the sky.

“God!” She groaned and flopped over beside him. Her shoulder was pressed against his and it started to shake. He swung his head to look at her. So here came the girlish tears at last, and who could blame her? But no, this was laughter, bubbling and building from a silent chortle to wholehearted hoots of relief as he joined in. They struggled to a sitting position and clung to each other, yelping like a couple of moonstruck coyotes.

At last they wound down, till they sat, shaking with their last spasms, his arm around her shoulders, their foreheads resting comfortably against each other’s. She pulled away to lean back on her hands in the dirt. “Th-thanks.”

“Heck, I only climbed down there to get the name of your insurance company. Next thing I know, I’m hanging by my fingernails, wearing—” You. And she’d fit him better than his favorite wet suit. McCord turned to study her. Her pale, tousled hair and long, lithe form, backlit by the first stars were about all he could make out, but there was something about her growly, soft voice that curled his toes. Down, boy, he told himself absently, then stood. “Stay right there, honey.”

“Name’s Raine,” she called as he walked to the Rover to find his flashlight.

And she didn’t care to be patronized, he noted with a grin; not with her feet on solid ground. “Watch your eyes.” He aimed the light down at the gravel and switched it on, wondering if the rest of her matched that come-to-bed voice. “Well,” he said, and found himself grinning wider. He must look like George the coyote when McCord pulled a chunk of rabbit off the fire and prepared to toss him his share.

She must be used to that reaction. Her smile quirked wry and resigned as she met his eyes. Or tried to. Instead she focused somewhere left of his ear.

“Still seeing double?” he asked her.

Actually, I figured you for the Twirling Triplets from Texas. “Guess I banged my head on the steering wheel.”

“That’s not good.” He touched her forehead, making her jump. “Easy. Sorry. I just want to check you out.” His gentle, work-roughened fingertips explored her temples with feathery strokes that set off ripples in her stomach. “Yeah, you’ve got a split here, right at your hairline. You’ll need a few stitches and a good shampoo.” His voice went brisk with decision. “I think the doc better have a look at you.”

It took him nearly fifteen minutes of inching forward and back to turn his car from its slewed position till it pointed downhill. Finally he helped her into the passenger seat, then fastened her seat belt. “Not that you’re going to need this. I’m the world’s best driver, so just lean back and relax.” He adjusted the seat till she was tipped almost horizontal.

The fear had left her drained and it would have felt good to lie back, if it hadn’t made her feel less in control, being carried off into the dizzy dark. She fumbled for the lever as he walked around to his side, but she couldn’t find it. “Really, I don’t need a doctor,” she tried again as he climbed in beside her and drove away.

“Probably not, but I can’t leave you sitting in the road, and I don’t think you’d care to be dropped off at Magdalena’s Cantina. Might get more help than you need.”

“God, no. That’s where all my troubles started!” She told him about the lumberjacks. “I guess their truck was too wide for this track. That must be why they stopped chasing. But what I’m wondering is why they hassled me in the first place. Maybe Magdalena sicced them on me?”

He swore as the car bounced through a pothole, then landed with a sickening slither on the gravel. “Why would she do that?”

“I was trying to connect with a guy, a Professor McCord, who picks up his mail at the cantina. She seems to think she owns him.”

“Huh.” He drove in silence for a while, then muttered, “I suppose Magdalena figures she’s got a lease on every man who walks through her door.”

“She’s welcome to ’em. I’ve no intention of jumping her claim. My interest is strictly professional.”

“Hmmm. You’re a…travel writer?”

“Nope.” She winced as she realized she’d just blown her cover.

“Ah, a mountain climber. You’re lookin’ to hire a camp manager.”

“Not me. But McCord does that?” She shifted to look at him, then winced as it hit her again; there were three overlapping images where there ought to be one.

“When he’s trying to scrape some cash together, he’s been known to do that. And worse things,” he added under his breath as the car slid again and he shifted to low. “You with the ATF? The DEA?”

“McCord runs guns? Or dope?”

“Not if he wants to live. That’s strictly a local franchise, no gringos welcome. But the damn feds—and the federales—are always shopping for snitches down here. No, McCord keeps his nose clean and he keeps to himself.”

“Sounds like you know him pretty well.”

“Too well.”

“So maybe I could get an introduction?”

“’Fraid we’re way past that. I’m McCord, and who the heck are you? Tell me please I didn’t kiss an agent of the IRS, hell-bent on an audit. I’d have to shoot myself. You’re Lorraine who?”

“Not Lorraine—Raine. As in Raine Ashaway. You wrote me about the temple at Teotihuacan, and yes, the Feathered Serpent looks like a dinosaur.”

Just then the car slid again, and this time what remained of his left headlight clipped the mountainside.