“Illegal aliens can’t register a car here, Carlos,” he said. “Who’s listed on the registration as the legal owner?”
Tears mixed with the blood running down his face. “Mi amiga.”
“What friend?”
“Her name, Maria Gomez.”
Manuel had never heard of her, but it didn’t matter. Hector might have let Vanessa slip away earlier, when he thought she was Juanita, but he’d written down the make, model and license number of the car she’d been driving. He did that with every car that visited the house.
“What else?” Manuel demanded.
Carlos attempted to wipe the blood from his nose. “That is all,” he said. “I give her my mother’s car. No more.”
Hector pulled the bandanna he wore almost everywhere off his head and mopped his own face with it. “What do we do now?”
Manuel glared at Carlos, wondering whether he needed to have Hector or Richard kill him. He deserved to die, but it was never easy to get rid of a body. And for a man like Carlos, deportation would hurt badly enough. “We call the police.”
“What?” Richard cried.
“I thought you didn’t want to involve the police,” Hector said, obviously just as spooked.
Richard and Hector had spent most of the past decade avoiding the law. But the police could be a powerful tool, if used in the right way.
“I don’t,” Manuel said. “We won’t have anything to do with the call. At least not directly. Carlos and his friend Maria will simply report the Taurus as being stolen.” He smiled. “Then the police will start looking for it, too.”
ACCORDING TO THE MAP, Fallon served as the agricultural center of Nevada. But it was too dark to make out the surrounding farmland. As she came into town, Emma saw a string of restaurants and stores that were far more modern than any she’d noticed in Nevada since Carson City—a Jack in the Box, a Dairy Queen, even a Wal-Mart. A few budget motels sat right off the highway, but she didn’t want to stay in those. She was hoping to find a little hideaway where she wouldn’t have to worry that someone driving past might spot her car. She had no way of knowing if Officer Daniels had later realized that she was someone he should’ve detained.
Doubling back when she reached the end of town, she turned left at a sign that said Yerington to see what might be off the main drag. But Fallon didn’t seem to be nearly as deep as it was long. Almost immediately, she left the city behind and started into the country. The inky-black sky looked like crushed velvet overhead, and the smell of livestock and green growing things drifted through her closed vents.
It wasn’t a bad turn to have taken, though. About a mile from the highway, she found exactly what she’d been hoping for—a small, low-profile motel. A sign in front read Cozy Comfort Bungalows and the word Vacancy glowed red in the bottom right corner.
Weak with gratitude and eager for a short reprieve, Emma wondered if a motel like this was ever full. Fortunately for her, she didn’t think so.
She pulled into the gravel lot outside the long, narrow series of attached rooms, which weren’t bungalows at all but your basic budget motel, and parked as close to the office as she could. Then she contemplated whether or not to carry Max in with her while she registered. He was getting so heavy.
After a moment’s hesitation, she decided to lock the doors and watch the car instead.
The office was closed tight, but a porch light illuminated the space around the door. A sign above a buzzer on the wall read After Hours Ring Here.
Emma pressed the buzzer several times during the next five minutes and heard it go off, but didn’t manage to rouse anyone.
Thank goodness she wasn’t trying to hold her sleeping fifty-pound son.
“Is anyone home?” she called, opening the screen door to knock on the wood panel behind it.
A brown minivan pulled into the lot. At first Emma felt relieved that she wouldn’t be the only one trying to drag the innkeeper from his bed. But when the van’s engine rattled to a stop and the driver got out, she began to wonder if it was wise to be standing in the middle of nowhere alone. Whoever this man was, he didn’t look reputable. He didn’t look like someone who’d be driving a minivan. Nor did he resemble a Nevada native—there wasn’t anything western about him. Dressed in a pair of faded, holey jeans and a sweatshirt turned wrong-side-out, he had at least two days’ razor stubble covering a strong jaw and chin, and windblown blond hair. It brushed the collar of his sweatshirt in back and fell unkempt across his forehead.
“No answer?” he asked, shoving his hair out of his eyes.
Sticking her hand in her purse, she searched for a little security—in the form of the small can of mace Carlos had given her when she met him to retrieve her luggage. “Not yet.”
He opened the sliding door to his back seat, slung a black bag the size of a laptop computer over one shoulder and grabbed a large duffel. When he came toward her, his movements were well-coordinated, which allowed Emma to relax a little. He didn’t seem drunk or otherwise out of control. And when she could see him more clearly, she realized he didn’t look dangerous, exactly. He was far too handsome for dangerous. He had a straight nose, well-defined cheekbones and lips almost too sensual to belong to a man.
“Maybe we’ll have to go somewhere else,” she said.
He shook his head. “She’s here.”
The way his hair moved, Emma could tell it was clean. He seemed oddly refined despite his careless attitude, his thick whiskers and worn-out clothing. His nails were neatly clipped; thanks to the floodlights on the building, she could see that as he gripped his bags. His teeth were perfectly white and straight. And he had a body like Manuel’s, lithe and lean with broad shoulders and a tapering waist—an ideal build for an expensive tailored suit.
So what was he doing wearing such tattered jeans? Was he some kind of dot-com guy who’d lost his job and fallen on hard times? Why was he at this hole-in-the-wall motel in the middle of a Wednesday night?
Whoever he was, he had a story. Emma wondered if most of the people who stayed at the Cozy Comfort Bungalows had a story.
He didn’t bother ringing the buzzer. Opening the screen door, he used his fist to bang far more loudly and decisively than she would have dared.
A moment later, an inside light snapped on and an old woman with white hair and arthritic hands came to the door. “Oh, Preston, I thought it might be you,” she said, peering out at them. The smell of cats and Mentholatum wafted out of the house behind her. “You’re back already, huh?”