“They’re after us, aren’t they?” Sara asks. “Hinojosa’s men?”
“It sure looks that way.”
“But how? The only people who knew where we were crossing were Brother Patricio and Mami.”
“And our dear father.”
“Emiliano, come on. Even you can’t possibly believe that.”
“Did you tell Ernesto maybe?”
“No. I told him we were coming to the United States, but I didn’t tell him how or where.”
“We need to figure out what we do now.”
“We can’t go back, can we?”
“I don’t think so. If we return to Boquillas and try to make it back to Chihuahua, someone will find us on those long, straight roads. At least here it’s hard to get to us. We need to keep on going, only we won’t travel on the road like we were planning. We’ll go that way.” Emiliano points to the ridge of mountains to the east.
“Can we do that?”
Emiliano clears a few rocks from the ground and sits so that he can still see the car in the distance. Then he opens his backpack and spreads a map of the park in the space between him and Sara. “The road the car is on was the one we were going to take north, up to this east-west road here.” Emiliano points to a line at the northern edge of the park. “Instead of going straight north, we’ll go northeast, up here to the beginning of the east-west road. From there we travel through these canyons and ridges toward Sanderson.”
“Is that longer?”
“Longer and harder. I was counting on the flat surface of the road and on the places in the park where we could get water. But it’s doable. And there’s no way those guys can get to us in that car.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s go, then.” Emiliano stands. The car is a black dot on the long straight road, but it has stopped again. If he can see the car, the two men can see them with binoculars. “We’ll head back the way we came, and then when they can’t see us, we’ll turn around. They’ll think we went back to Mexico.”
“I don’t understand,” Sara says, picking up her backpack. “I don’t understand how they could find us.”
They move on, first in the direction of the river and then, when they reach the cliffs and the car is no longer visible, north toward the mountains. The early morning warmth is transforming slowly into heat. They walk in silence, full of a dark foreboding.
“Do you have that flash drive with all the asylum evidence?” Emiliano asks Sara.
“Yes, I have it right in this little secret pocket inside the backpack.”
“Take it out and put it in your pocket.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because if we have to run, we’ll need to leave the backpacks behind. You need to have that flash drive.”
“Okay.” Sara stops, takes off her backpack, opens it, and pockets the flash drive.
“What about Hinojosa’s cell phone?”
“It’s in the front pocket of my backpack.”
Emiliano kneels down, takes the silver pouch with the cell phone from Sara’s backpack, and sticks it in the left-hand pocket of his pants.
“Why you?” Sara asks.
“It’s better if I carry it.”
They put their backpacks on and continue. Sara lets Emiliano move ahead. She looks at his bulging backpack. She had a hard time lifting it off the ground when she tried before they crossed the river. He is carrying twice the load she is, and now he has the cell phone as well. It’s as if he wished to take away all her heaviness, all danger, and put it on his shoulders.
There’s so much love in her heart for her little brother at that moment that it hurts.
Emiliano picks up the pace and so does Sara. Now they’re moving—only they don’t seem to be making much ground. The terrain requires concentration, or else you step on one of those horse-crippling cacti. Sara is a few steps behind Emiliano, although there’s enough room to travel side by side. She’s thought about walking next to him and talking to him, but Emiliano seems to be weighed down by thoughts. Thoughts can be heavy. Sara knows because she’s lugging a few herself. Juana told the bad people where Sara lived, knowing what they could do to her and to her family. That thought is so hard to carry. There must be something lighter she can think of as she walks down this endless road. Linda. Thinking about her gives Sara strength. What is Linda doing now? Surely she’s with her family, her mother, maybe Joel. “That’s nice,” she says, imagining the scene.
“You say something?” Emiliano asks without looking back.
“Just talking to myself.”
The mountains keep getting farther and farther away. They’ve been walking for how many hours? How can three hours seem like ten? She straightens when she notices herself slouching and thirty seconds later she’s drooping again. She doesn’t want to think about the men in the black car. Ernesto told her that Hinojosa would not give up. But how? How could they know where they were crossing? She goes back to the safe house and the time when Emiliano told her and Mami that he knew a place where they could cross. After that, who did they talk to? Mami called Papá, but they can both be trusted. Sara talked to Daniel at the Café Rojos and then to Ernesto, but she didn’t tell them where the crossing was going to be. And Emiliano talked to Brother Patricio and to … Perla Rubi. When he came back to the café, he said he talked to Perla Rubi and then went for a long walk.
It must be Perla Rubi. Emiliano must know that. Perhaps her family has some connection to Hinojosa. Even if she didn’t intend to betray Emiliano and Sara, she could have said something that would have given them away. Should she confront him or wait for him to tell her?
Sara decides to wait. It will be better for him to come to terms with that realization all by himself.
Emiliano forces himself to stay alert. Now and then he looks back in the direction of the road and the black car. He knows no car or vehicle can travel the terrain they are walking, but that hasn’t stopped him from checking. The good thing about his vigilance is that it’s a barrier against the pain he felt when Sara asked who knew where they were crossing. The realization that came to him at that moment was like an electric shock to his soul.
The conversation with Perla Rubi on that public phone by the Olympic Stadium. He’s gone over what he said to her again and again. He told her they were crossing from Mexico into a national park in Texas. They were going to follow trails and old roads to the end of the park. Did he actually use the words “national park” or did he just say “Texas”? It’s ridiculous to even imagine Perla Rubi doing anything that might hurt him.
But it is also irrefutable. If the men in the black car are looking for them and saw them—and he knows in his heart that they are and they did—the only explanation is Perla Rubi. It hurts to even think it, but there’s no way around not thinking it. Perla Rubi must have told her father, possibly not knowing the consequences. Mr. Esmeralda, on the other hand, had to have known what that would mean for Sara—and he still told the bad guys.
This city is like a spiderweb. Every thread is connected directly or indirectly to every other thread.
“Damn,” he says out loud.