She squeezed his hand. That was enough. Their trusting connection had returned. It pulsed between them once more, as if it had never gone away. They were fighting on the same side again.
“Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?” Diego’s voice interrupted the moment of intimacy with all the delicacy of a chain saw.
“No!” they chorused, blushing. A little too quickly to sound convincing, perhaps.
“I was worried about you,” Diego said. “I didn’t know where you’d gone.”
“It’s a long story.” Roberto gave him an affectionate wink. “Seems you knew about Erundina’s grave, though. Can’t hide anything from you.”
“I’m a superhero,” Diego said proudly. “I look out for you.”
“Of course. If it weren’t for you, who knows where we’d be.”
“What happened to you?” Antía was checking Roberto’s injuries. “Who did this to you?”
“Now isn’t the time.” Roberto’s eyes were strangely bulging. The amphetamines were keeping him on his feet like a doped-up racehorse,but his dilated pupils gave him a manic look. “We should get out of here, before we bump into anyone else.”
“I thought you said you would never hurt anyone,” Antía said, gesturing to the body of Luis. “I see you’ve had a change of heart.”
Roberto used his foot to turn Luis over, eliciting a low whimper. “It’s just a scratch. He’ll get over it. Plus”—he grinned—“I thought I could make an exception for Luis. He killed poor old Pampín, after all. Besides, he gave me a push.”
“A push?”
“Really, it’s a long story.” He glanced around. The sound of gunfire had died down, and there was no one left in the vicinity of the graveyard. “I’ll fill you in, I promise. When there’s time.”
“These gunmen who showed up, the money’s theirs! In the graveyard, they were about to ...” She shuddered at the memory.
“I saw,” Roberto said. “I followed you from El Cucorno ...”
What he didn’t say was that he had come across guys like the Colombians before, too many times in his life. Ruthless professionals, the kind who didn’t tend to leave loose ends.
“So Ibaibarriaga is trying to get in on it. That changes things slightly, but still ...”
“Don’t you get it?” Antía wrung her hands. “It’s going to be a bloodbath! My family, the Docampos ...”
“Not necessarily,” replied Roberto, smiling slyly. “It might all end without another shot being fired.”
“How can that be possible?”
Maybe it was the mixture of adrenaline and amphetamines coursing through his body, or maybe it was because he was absolutely convinced of his plan. Whatever the reason, he had never been so sure of anything. And that feeling, after so many days of uncertainty, was comforting.
“It’s very simple.” Roberto’s smile grew a little wider. “Because I have a plan. And this one’s going to work.”
42
Roberto’s Plan
The sun hung low in the January sky when Roberto, Antía, and Diego reached the village. For the first time in almost a week, a patch of blue could be seen, a sign that Storm Armand was finally moving away toward the interior of the Spanish mainland.
In the thin early light, the main street presented a bleak picture. The damaged facades looked as if they were covered in some terrible rash, and not a single window had gone unharmed. They moved down the deserted road, broken glass crunching underfoot, looking around with a mixture of astonishment and concern. It was like being in a ghost town. Finally, they stopped outside the tattered church so that Roberto could have a brief rest.
“Are you okay?” Antía said. “We can wait a little longer, until you feel stronger.”
Roberto slumped down on the stone steps. Surrounded by the boards that had been ripped from the door, he was assailed by the memory of all that had happened since the day when, right in that spot, with the excited Freires and Docampos around him, he had opened a mysterious bundle that the tides had carried to Ons.
Somehow it all seemed like someone else’s memories.
“I’m okay,” he said, leaning on her to bring himself to standing once more. “We don’t have time to rest. There’s still a lot we need to do.”
