Whitewater (Rachel Hatch #6)(59)

Ayala pulled off the road and made his own path through the dirt and weeds until the Nissan could go no further. Thirty feet from the riverbank, Ayala parked and shut the motor off. He looked at the red pushpin on his cellphone's mapping system. He was in the right spot. But there was no Sanchez. And no boat.

The trio left the car and Hatch scanned the perimeter. The only sound was that of the river. A white Lincoln town car skittered past too quickly for Hatch to get a view of the man driving, but took comfort in the fact she could see, in the passing blur, that he was alone.



Experience taught Hatch the reward of patience. She applied it in the silent vigilance as she watched the Lincoln whiz by and continued watching the direction it travelled for several minutes after it disappeared around a bend in the road, shrouded by a cluster of rocks and trees.

Hatch didn't look away until the car vanished from sight. The reward of her diligence came in the red glow of the Lincoln brake lights illuminating. The car didn't stop, only tapping its brakes one time. Her hand instinctively hovering by the Glock tucked at the small of her back, Hatch waited until she felt the threat pass.

Ayala sighed and uneasily rubbed at the moist air accumulating on his brown arms. Hatch could see the strain on the reporter's face. "It's a river, not a road. I'm sure your guy will be here. If not, we drive."

"Driving would be more treacherous. Every passing car or truck has the potential to be loaded with the cartel's killers. Too dangerous. It's for this reason, we use the waterways whenever possible."

"Okay, then we wait until we can't." Hatch saw that Ayala was still coiled tight as a barrack mattress. "If it's not that, what's eating at you?"

"Goodbyes."

"We're a long way off from goodbyes. We still have to get down the river to the crossing."

"You. Not we." Ayala turned and, even against the obnoxious yellow of his Hawaiian pineapples peeking their way out from behind his fishing vest, looked blue. His sad aura was conveyed in the deep brown of his eyes. "I will not be making the rest of the journey with you."

"I don't understand."

Angela offered no response, verbal or otherwise, at Ayala's declaration. Hatch saw the lack of surprise in the teen. She assessed that Ayala must've already explained this to her in the interim while Hatch was having her less-than-pleasurable chat with Moreno.

"I should have told you my story when you so bravely shared yours. It's something I regret and something I hope to reconcile someday. Now, however, is not that day. All I'll say for brevity's sake, is that my mother died in that water many years ago. I've never set foot in it since. Look at me." Ayala held his hands out in front him. "Look at how I'm shaking just being around it."

Hatch did look and could see the tremors shaking his body as if a giant plow pushed along his entire body, spreading seeds which bore the fruit of its labor in the goosebumps popping up along his outstretched arms.

"I understand."

Ayala stopped shaking almost immediately. "I thought you were going to give me another pep talk. Like the one you gave me on the rooftop."

"The time for pep talks has long passed. Aside from that, I understand because I know the debilitating effects of fear."

"I don't see it. That's because the worst scars, the ones that never truly heal, are always the invisible ones." Ayala's eyes drifted to Hatch's right arm and the damage it spoke of, written in the pale twisted vine extending the entirety of it. "If what you say is true, I can't imagine the ones I can't see."

"You don't want to." Upstream, the red nose of a raft appeared.

In the rear of the sun-faded raft sat a ruggedly handsome man. His bronzed nut-brown skin shimmered in the late afternoon light. The setting sun's beams played with the water droplets in the air, casting him in a hazy glow, making Arturo Sanchez appear as though Hatch was looking at him through the smudged lens of an 80's Glamour Shot camera.

He navigated the raft to the rocky riverbank with a look of confidence matching the resume Ayala had heralded during their race to the river. The race now over, and Ayala's task of getting them there complete, it was time for Hatch to say goodbye.

"I'd like to see your smiling face walk through my doors at Cafe Rosa someday, and you and I can reminisce on the good we've done. And talk of the crack that we put in that boulder."

"Next time we talk again, I hope we don't just put a crack in it, I hope we've split the damn thing in half."

"I'd like that."

"Me too." Hatch hugged the man, favoring her damaged left hand while doing so.

Ayala faced his fear, or at least a portion of it, by walking between the two women he'd saved, as they made their way the last few feet.

The reporter turned human rights activist stopped dead in his tracks at the first wet rock, as if the water soaking its smooth surface was a forcefield barring further passage. And that is where he stood as Hatch looked upon the man who had risked everything to help a woman he didn't know find a girl he'd never met. A purity resonated in the kindness this man had shown.

In that moment, just as it did with Sanchez, the mist in the air combined with the sun to give him a glow. Hatch thought of Ayala's story, the one about seeing a glow around Maria that tragic day. Then she thought about the old woman who’d claimed to have seen a similar glow around Hatch before letting them into her home, knowingly sacrificing herself for people she did not know and had never met. She looked at the Peacock Man standing before her in the shimmering water’s glow and wondered to herself, was he glowing?