The Watcher

MAX STOPS ME BEFORE I OPEN THE DOOR TO the stairs. "Where's the trip to the detonator?" he asks.

I'd forgotten about that little black box. It's no longer on this side of the door. When I look to Marta, she seems disappointed that Max remembered. I guess after all that posturing, she planned to blow us up anyway.

"Good try. Where is it?"

Her mouth draws into a thin line. She looks like a child being force-fed spinach. I take the cot leg from Max's hand and whack her across the back. Not too hard. Just enough to get her attention.

Her breath releases in a little huff. Her legs buckle but she remains on her feet. The second time I hit her, it's with a little more force. This time, she actually does fall to her knees.

"All right," she spits the words like venom. "The box is downstairs, in the kitchen. Lila has orders to open the door only at my instruction."

It's a good plan. If Max and I made it out alone, we'd be blown to smithereens when we tried to get out downstairs. "How are you to contact them?"

"An intercom at the bottom of the stairs."

"Then how about I open this door and you go out first?"

She sniffs as though I've given her another example of my cowardice. Like I care. I have no intention of letting Max or myself fall into another of her traps. I twist open the doorknob gently and step away, at the same time, pushing Marta into the doorway.

She stumbles out, but nothing blows up and nobody starts shooting at us from the bottom of the stairs.

Hooray. One for the good guys.

I follow her, keeping a grip on her hands. It's slow going with Max. He has to hop down each stair on his one good leg and the jarring of that motion on his broken ankle makes him bite his lips to keep from crying out with pain. I offer him my shoulder to lean on, but he waves me off. He knows we can't risk Marta getting away from us.

At last we make it to the bottom. The intercom is to the left. I yank her hands to get Marta's attention. "You have one chance to do this. You're going through the door first. So if you want to live to torture me another day, you'd best not fuck this up."

She must find that good enough motivation because she says simply. "Press one-oh-two on the pad."

I reach up and do it. I hear a buzz on the other side, then a female voice in Spanish says, "Quien es?"

Marta replies. "Senora Martinez. Lila, abra lapuerta."

I look over at Max. He looks wary. "Open the door, that's it?"

Marta sniffs. "What did you expect? A secret password? You Americans watch too much television."

Max shrugs but to be on the safe side, I gesture that he should join me as I step as far out of the doorway as I can. It's not much protection, there's only about six inches on each side. But in a moment, the mechanism that controls the cabinets whirls to life and the opening appears before us. I tense, waiting for an attack.

But nothing happens. In fact, Lila has stepped away, as if she's afraid of the same thing. When she sees her mistress, though, she rushes to her with a torrent of rapid-fire Spanish that sounds laden with concern.

I let Max take care of interpreting. He knows my Spanish is limited. If there's cause for alarm, he'll let me know.

I look around the kitchen. Pedro is not in sight. Marta is focused on calming Lila. No one is paying attention to me. I cross to the gun cabinet quickly and quietly, and pull it open. There's an arsenal in here, ranging from automatic rifles to a little silver-plated Derringer. That's the gun I pick. Easily concealed and we won't be engaging in anything but close combat. I snatch up a box of ammunition, too.

Marta and Lila are still deep in conversation. I slip the gun and ammo to Max and he puts it into a pocket in his slacks. Then I gather up the other guns, throw them into a heap behind the cabinets, and tug the canister. When the door is secured, I snap the thing off and toss it away. To check for a second control, I sweep the other canisters off the counter with the back of my hand. They scatter and fall to the floor with a shower of coffee, sugar and flour. There are other guns around here, I'm sure, but at least these are out of commission.

All the while, Max listens, his head cocked, to catch the harried conversation between Marta and her servant. Lila has untied Marta's hands and is examining her wound with an anxious frown. She leads Marta to the sink and gently holds her wrist under cold running water. She reaches above the sink for a bottle and bandages. Before she goes any further, I stop her with a sharp voice.

"Lila, you can tend to her later. After we're gone, right, Marta?"

Lila doesn't understand what I've said so Max repeats it in Spanish. She starts to protest but Marta waves her off and, wrapping a towel around her wrist, turns to us.

"By all means, let's get this over with. The sooner you've gone, the sooner I can contact Belinda. Get all the rest you can, vampire, because as soon as my pilot comes back, we'll be after you."

Thanks for the warning. But I'm still not sure we won't walk out of this house and into a trap. "Max, ask Lila where Pedro is."

He does and repeats her answer. "He's with the pilot, in the hangar."

"Are they waiting for us?"

This time, Marta answers before Max can relay the question. "He's helping the pilot. They're doing maintenance on the helicopter. Wouldn't want you to have an accident, now would we?"

"Is it ready to fly?" I ask.

She starts for a telephone but I'm beside her before she walks the two steps that take her to the instrument. "Don't try anything."

She sniffs and brushes my hand off her arm. She lifts the receiver, speaks into it.

When I look at Max, he nods. "She's asking if the copter is ready."

There's a pause while she listens, then she replaces the receiver and turns to us. "It's ready."

I gesture to Marta and Lila. "Then let's go."

At first, Lila acts like she's not going to come with us. But I'm not leaving her alone in this kitchen. She might take it upon herself to call Pedro and say something to upset our plan.

When I give her a shove, Marta says, "Leave her alone." She turns to the woman, "Lila, venga con nosotros."

Head down, Lila falls into step behind her mistress.

Max and I let them lead the way outside. The fresh air and sunshine come as a welcome relief after being cooped up in that hellhole for the last-what? I've lost track of time. When I turn my face to the sun, Max looks at me with a raised eyebrow.

"It's a myth," I explain. "The sun thing."

He nods as if I've just explained what makes grass green or the sky blue. Like it's a perfectly normal answer to a perfectly normal question.

Maybe there's hope for us yet.

It's painful to watch Max wobble along. I keep an arm on his elbow, both for support and to be able to snatch that little gun out of his pocket if the need arises. Marta's done nothing to indicate that she knows we have it, so at least we have one small element of surprise.

The door to the hangar is open. As we approach, Marta calls out and the pilot appears. He looks shocked to see Max and me. Marta says something that must put him at ease because the anxious look is replaced with a curious frown. Max listens and nods to me. "She's instructing the pilot to fly us to Tijuana. She says he's to come back immediately."

So far, so good. The pilot returns to the hangar and in a moment, he and Pedro roll the helicopter onto the pad. The pilot dons his flight helmet and sunglasses. He climbs aboard and fires up the engine. Marta and Lila stand quietly behind us while we wait for the copter to warm up.

The hair on the back of my neck is stirring. This is too easy. I turn to warn Max that something doesn't feel right and I catch a flash out of the corner of my eye.

Lila has stepped close to Max. From somewhere in the folds of her voluminous skirt, she has drawn a gun, the twin, it looks like, to the one I slipped Max.

She presses it into his back and says something that's lost to me in the roar of the helicopter engine. When I look over at Marta, she is signaling the pilot. The helicopter abruptly grows silent.

For once, I wish my instincts had been wrong.