Chapter 61
John West walked into the office. He was wearing
a dark pinstriped business suit and black cowboy boots. His white
shirt had a string tie knotted with a turquoise stone. On his wrist
he wore a beaded strip of leather made for him by his sister. His
shiny black hair was straight and parted in the middle and hung
just past his shoulders. He had a small hawk feather tied to a lock
of hair in back. John liked to mix traditional Native American with
modern trappings. It gave him an interesting air and clients liked
it.
Rosetta took one look and ran to him.
“Daddy!” she said, jumping up into his arms. He
picked her up and she hugged his neck.
She spoke to him in Cherokee, a simple phrase, but
with perfect intonation. The kid was good. John responded in kind.
Then he made a series of gestures with his hand—“I love you” in
sign language—fully expecting Rosetta to mimic him because it’s
what kids do. She did a pretty fair job. Maria smiled. It was a
precious moment and totally convincing.
Rodrigo Cordeiro, Catia, and Cameron Michaels
looked at the two of them. Maria marveled at how the similarity of
deep ancestry passed for familial likeness. Cordeiro was convinced,
as was his daughter Catia. Michaels actually looked slightly
confused. By this time he had probably recognized Ariel, but here
was what looked and interacted like family.
Maria went up to John and he kissed her
cheek.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“I am now,” she said.
John’s gaze shifted from one person to the other.
He zeroed in on the airport manager and held out his hand. Maria
introduced all of them to John.
Rosetta pointed to Michaels. “He’s the bad man they
tell us about in school,” she said. Maria almost laughed and
wondered where she came up with that.
“I resent that,” Michaels said.
“Are you going to argue with a child?” said
Cordeiro. He sounded weary of the whole thing. “She knows you are
trying to take her away from her parents.”
There it was. Cordeiro believed her. Maria felt
relief beyond words.
The airport manager turned to John. “Mr. West, Mr.
Michaels has accused your wife of the murder of ”—he looked down at
the flyer—“of four men. He says he is from Interpol.”
“Maria . . . killed four men? How?” he said.
“This piece of paper doesn’t say,” said Cordeiro.
“He also accuses your wife of kidnapping this child from her native
village.”
John turned to Michaels. “Interpol doesn’t make
these kinds of accusations on its own in person; they work with the
local authorities. Where are the local authorities?”
“Here.” Michaels pointed to Rodrigo Cordeiro.
“I manage the airport, Mr. Michaels. I am not the
polícia ,” he said.
“She doesn’t have papers,” said Michaels, playing
his trump card, though Maria had already told Cordeiro she’d lost
their papers during the attack. She supposed that Michaels thought
Cordeiro needed reminding.
“We can get them replaced at the embassy in Rio de
Janeiro,” said Maria. She looked over at John. “I thought we could
take a little vacation there while we wait.”
He stared at her. The look in his eyes was stern.
“I would have thought you’d had enough of vacations,” he said. She
recoiled as if stung.
Michaels clapped his hands together slowly. “Well
played. I can see when I’m out of my league. Good day. I would say
it’s been nice.”
He left the room. Maria would have preferred he
stay so she would at least know where he was.
“Senhor Cordeiro,” John said, paying no attention
to Michaels. “My wife is not a murderer, nor a kidnapper. She
sometimes makes bad judgments about where to vacation with our
daughter. But other than that, she is a good mother. I am not
familiar with your laws in this country. Is there a provision in
your law for expediting a matter like this so I can take my family
home?”
Neither Lindsay nor Ariel was at ease until the
plane was in the air for several minutes. Lindsay half believed
they would be shot down. John was up front with the pilot, Arthur
Youngblood, a cousin of his. The Betty Boop
was owned jointly by several corporations, of which West
Construction was one. Lindsay was grateful for it. Grateful for
John. Just grateful.
Ariel had never flown in a plane, but she didn’t
look nervous. She looked disbelieving. Lindsay smiled at her. She
knew she was thinking of Diane Fallon and her dream to find
her.
“We did it, kid. I guess I can call you Ariel now,
huh?” she said.
Ariel was sitting in one of the cushioned seats
across from her. She was still belted in. She unclipped her belt
and ran over to Lindsay and hugged her.
“Thank you for not leaving me,” she said.
“That was never going to happen,” said Lindsay,
holding her tight. “Never, never, never.”
John came out of the cockpit and sat down in a seat
opposite them across the narrow aisle. He smiled. “At least if I go
to jail and lose my company for smuggling a kid into the United
States, I can fall back on acting when I get out.”
Lindsay suddenly realized how much he trusted her.
It was enough for him that she said bringing Ariel into the United
States without a passport was the right thing to do. She walked
over to where he was sitting and kissed him. She put her hands in
his long hair and looked him in the eyes.
“Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
He put his arms around her waist and pulled her
onto his lap. “When I found out you were missing, I was . . . I
thought we wouldn’t get lucky again like the time you disappeared
coming back from that conference. I thought, we won’t get lucky
twice. Then you called. I would do this and more. Though you are
getting a little expensive.”
“I hate to ask,” she said. She knew he had paid a
substantial bribe to fly out of Tabatinga. “I’ll pay you back,” she
said.
He laughed. “Archaeology doesn’t pay that well,” he
said.
Lindsay kissed him again. For the first time she
felt calm, safe. She kept forgetting they weren’t home yet.
She got up out of his lap and sat down in the
seat.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he said.
She and Ariel told the story, the whole story, the
parts that were Lindsay’s, the parts that were Ariel’s, and the
parts that were theirs together. It poured out of them, sometimes
out of order and sometimes confused, but they didn’t stop until
John knew everything—Lindsay’s kidnapping, the massacre at the
mission, Ariel’s plans to find her mother, their experiences in the
jungle. The people she killed in self-defense.
“I just wanted to get back to Mama so bad,” Ariel
said.
John was private with his emotions most of the
time, but Lindsay could see the glistening in his eyes. She was
afraid to speak because she knew her voice would crack.
“We’ll get you to your mama,” he whispered. He
looked back at Lindsay. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s worth any
price.”
“Can we call Mama?” asked Ariel.
John grinned at her. “Sure.”
Lindsay wished she could bottle the look of
excitement and joy on Ariel’s face. John picked up the phone built
into his chair and called information. Then he dialed the
RiverTrail Museum. He said nothing for several moments and hung up
the phone.
“Can’t get through right now,” he said. “I’ll try
again in a few minutes. Don’t be worried. This happens sometimes.
We’ll get hold of her.”
Arthur Youngblood came out of the cockpit and stood
at John’s chair. He winked at Lindsay and Ariel.
“Who’s flying the plane?” said Ariel.
“Otto,” he said.
Ariel looked down the passageway into the cockpit.
“Who’s Otto?”
“Otto Pilot,” he said. “Always take him with
me.”
He gave a hearty laugh. Lindsay wondered how many
times he had made that joke and how many times he had laughed at
it. He turned to John.
“There’s a big weather system stalled over North
Georgia. We won’t be able to get near the place. Our best bet is to
go home to Cherokee and land in our private field, especially since
we kind of took that long detour from our flight plan. I could try
for Atlanta, but it’s bad weather there too, and they have a lot of
security.”
John nodded. “The bad weather is probably why I
can’t get through on the phone. We can drive down to Rosewood,” he
said.
He looked over at Ariel. She had an anxious look on
her face, like maybe her dream wasn’t going to come true after
all.
“It’s not that far,” said John. “We’ll get you
there.”
“You don’t think the bad man will get there first,
do you?” she said. “He knows I’ll tell Mama about him and what he
did to Father Joe and the others. What if he tries to hurt
her?”