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  “Can we stop by for another on the way out?”

  Pedro stowed his smile away. “First we must survive what comes next.”

  They meandered through the stalls surrounding the plaza. Pedro greeted a few of the locals and received soft words in reply. Instead of heading for the fence, Pedro took a well-beaten path toward the factories. Simon felt his hackles rise as they approached the run-down buildings farthest from the highway. He could almost hear the gunshot. His forehead pulsed hard.

  Pedro searched the empty area and asked softly, “Where did you cross the fence?”

  “About fifty feet back.”

  “You are certain?”

  “See where the pole is broken and the fence dips down almost to the earth? That’s where I came through.” In the distance, a machine whined a very high note. It was probably a sander polishing a metal surface, but to Simon it sounded like an alarm. “Are we going or not?”

  In reply, Pedro headed for the fence.

  The surrounding desert was littered with refuse and cactus. Dark-winged birds circled lazily far overhead. Given his current run of luck, Simon assumed they were vultures. “What happened to Vasquez?”

  Pedro picked his way carefully around a clump of rocks. “They say it was a heart attack.”

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  Pedro gave him that sour look Simon had been seeing a lot of lately. Like his questions revealed a myriad of issues these people would rather not think about. “In Mexico, there is always a ‘they.’”

  “Great. That explains everything.”

  Pedro’s footsteps were a delicate dance as his eyes scoured the way ahead. “The police have not released the body.”

  “Why not?”

  “They will not say. We have asked. Many times.”

  Simon realized the man’s subtle way of moving was probably because of snakes. He stepped farther away from the next rocky shadow. “So the police think it could be murder?”

  Pedro was clearly reluctant to answer. “Or the police are involved. Or someone the police answer to.”

  Which made no sense at all. “The professor didn’t have an enemy to his name.”

  “You must ask your questions to Harold. And Sofia. I saw Vasquez, of course. He was often by the orphanage. But he was their particular friend.” Pedro pointed off to their right. “The highway is over there.”

  “I need to make a stop.” Simon was having trouble getting his bearings. He struggled to fix his position based upon memories laced with panic. Then he saw the long vein of shade running in too straight a line to be anything but man-made. “Over here.”

  Simon scampered to the trench and dropped over the ledge. He ran down its length until he spotted the crack in the concrete pipe. He knelt in the dirt and fished around in the dark. It was hard to say what scared him more—finding snakes or finding nothing at all.

  But the duffel was there. As he dragged it out, though, he heard a dismal clank. “Oh no.”

  “What is that?”

  “The apparatus. Why I came to Mexico.” The clank turned into a hundred clatters as he slung it over his shoulder. Like he was carrying a sack filled with loose coins. “The wreck and my run must have damaged it.”

  “We can worry about that later.” Pedro kept squinting at the distance. “Right now we must hurry.”

  Long before they arrived at the highway, Simon was fairly certain there was nothing to recover. They followed a lone plume of smoke to the burned-out hulk, all that remained of Simon’s car. The destruction was total. The trunk lid lay some twenty feet away, blackened and crumpled, obviously blown there when the gas tank exploded. The few cars that passed slowed, but no one stopped. His entire life was exactly like the car. A wrecked and ruined hulk. His one remaining friend, gone. His ticket back across the border, lost. His chance at resurrecting his career, over. He murmured, “It’s all gone now. Everything.”

  He turned away. As destroyed as his car.

  Then he saw the man.

  The hunter walked away from them, headed into the sun. Which meant Simon could only see his silhouette. Just like the day before.

  He hissed to Pedro, “Hide!”

  Without hesitation, Pedro dropped behind the rock pile alongside Simon. The man knew enough to hide first and wait to ask, “What is it?”

  “That’s the guy who attacked me.”

  Pedro peeked over the ledge. “How can you be certain?”

  Simon didn’t need another look, but he eased up anyway. “Same build. Short, stocky. And that coat.”

  “I remember the coat.” Pedro risked a quick glance. “What is he carrying?”

  “What’s left of my suitcase. If he’s going to steal my things, why did he wait until now?”

  Pedro crawled away, holding as long as possible to the shadows. “We need to get out of here before we’re spotted.”

  Pedro did not speak again until they were back across the fence and into the industrial zone. “There can only be one answer to what he was doing.”

  “Well, if you’ve got one that makes sense, you’re way ahead of me.”

  “Give me your duffel bag.”

  “Why?” But he unslung the sack and handed it over.

  “Go hide somewhere. Back in the shadows. Keep an eye out for me. I’ll signal when you should come.”

  Simon wanted to argue. The hunter most likely had his passport. But something about the tension Pedro placed into every quiet word pushed him to move. He stepped behind the nearest stall and headed back the way they had come.

  When Simon arrived at the first decrepit building, he slipped into the shadows and moved around to where he could see across the plaza. He watched Pedro carry the duffel bag to his truck. The assistant town manager stowed it in a locked compartment in the rear, then resettled his load of cleaning gear and chemicals so the compartment’s lid was hidden. Then he sauntered back toward the restaurant.

  Soon after Pedro entered through the screen door, a dark SUV pulled into the space alongside the pickup. The driver’s door opened up and the stocky man stepped out. The same close-trimmed beard, the same absurd leather coat.

  In a flash of insight, Simon understood the reason behind the hunter’s timing. The man stretched his back and dry-scrubbed his face, the acts of an extremely tired man. The man had left the Mustang as it had been because he had been waiting for Simon to return.

  The thought left him chilled and sweating at the same time. They were still looking for him. And he was trapped. Without his passport, he had no chance of escape.

  The attacker combed his beard with his fingers and dragged back the lingering remnants of his hair. He studied Pedro’s pickup, then entered the restaurant. Simon scarcely breathed until the hunter reappeared. The man turned in a slow circle, taking in the silent plaza and the stalls that had closed for the afternoon siesta. His gaze lingered on the shadows where Simon hid. Then he kicked at a rock and walked back to his SUV. The motor roared, echoing the man’s frustration. He pulled from the space and burned rubber out of the lot.

  Simon remained exactly where he was until Pedro emerged. The town manager walked to his pickup, opened the door, slid behind the wheel, and started the motor. Simon knew he was scouting the area, searching carefully for danger. Finally Pedro’s hand extended from the pickup’s side window. He waved.

  Simon scrambled across the plaza.

  Chapter 8

  When they arrived back at the orphanage, Sofia was in Harold’s office. She stood at a side table, reading from a ledger and making notes in her little book. She did not notice them in the doorway, or if she did, she chose to ignore them. She said to Harold, “You have to pay the power company everything you owe them.”

  Harold was seated behind his desk in an old-fashioned wooden office chair. He had swiveled around so he was facing in the opposite direction. He had
a Bible open and supported by one hand, so it was up close to his face. “God has always provided.”

  “I will ask Enrique for help.”

  “The mayor has bigger fish to fry.” Slowly, deliberately, Harold turned a page. Simon had the impression they spent many hours like this. Sofia prodding, Harold doing his best to deflect. “Like running for governor of Chihuahua.”

  “You are speaking at his Ojinaga fund-raiser. He is indebted to you.” She glanced at the old man. “You can’t run an orphanage without power.”

  “Or without faith. Isn’t that right?” He looked up and spotted Simon in the doorway. “How did it go?”

  From behind him, Pedro replied, “We found nothing but trouble.”

  “Come in and tell us about it.”

  Pedro gave it to them fast and low. Sofia remained where she was, standing by the narrow side table, with her arms wrapped around her middle. Her fingers were white from clenching her arms. Like she was trying to shield herself and the orphanage from whatever it was Simon had brought with him.

  Harold’s response was very different. He clearly did not like the news that Simon’s attacker had staked out the car. But he also was not troubled by it. In fact, he seemed grimly satisfied. As though it confirmed something he had already expected. When Pedro went silent, Harold said, “So his passport is lost to us.”

  “All he retrieved was the black duffel bag. Simon had hidden that away in the desert.”

  “Where is the bag?”

  “In my pickup.”

  “Did you recognize the man chasing him?”

  “I may have seen him around. But I don’t think so.”

  Sofia spoke to the bare wood floor. “It has to be the cartel.”

  Pedro protested, “Enrique has pushed the cartel’s men out of Ojinaga and he will soon do the same for all Chihuahua.”

  Harold said, “The man is probably a local thief hired to steal the device. He may even be linked to what happened to Vasquez.”

  Sofia gave him a swift look, then dropped her gaze back to the floor. As though doing her best not to allow Simon to enter her field of vision. “Do you even hear what you are saying?”

  “I hear very well. I remember hearing Vasquez talk about this brilliant student. He was certain Simon would take his research further in weeks than he had done in years.”

  “Vasquez is dead,” Sofia said, her voice flat. “So is the project.”

  “Perhaps Simon could bring it back to life.”

  “Simon is not even at MIT anymore. He is a bartender.” She looked at him for the first time. “Is that not so?”

  Harold saved him from responding. “Call Enrique. See if he can help us.”

  “With the power company or with getting Simon a passport?”

  Harold simply smiled at her. “Give him my best.”

  After Sofia slipped from the room and Pedro left for work, Harold opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a gaily colored box. Juan was halfway across the room before Harold opened the lid. “You want one?”

  “What is it?”

  “Red Rope.” He handed a licorice ribbon to Juan, took another for himself, then offered the box to Simon. “It was my vice during smoke breaks at NASA. Red Rope won’t kill you as fast as cigarettes.”

  “You worked in the space program?”

  “During Apollo. Back then, pretty much the whole crew lit up every chance they got. That’s how I met Armando. He worked for a contractor we used for the Houston control systems.”

  “I remember him mentioning that.” Simon found it odd to hear the professor referred to by his first name. To all of MIT, he had always been known simply as Vasquez. “So you moved from NASA to an orphanage.”

  “I’ve done a lot of things since then. Started a few businesses, then gave seminars for Fortune 500 companies. Helping people identify the right tools to grow their firms.”

  Simon knew what was coming. He felt the same thing he always had when people started to tell him what he should do with his life. He had heard the words so often they might as well have been tattooed on his brain. Too much, too soon, too easy. That was his problem, so they said. “You were a motivation guy. Be all you can be, right?”

  A steely glint appeared and vanished in the old man’s gaze. Which meant Harold had caught the attitude behind the words. Simon had the impression very little got past him. Harold said, “There’s a lot more to it than that. The world is full of motivated people going nowhere.”

  Simon liked that. “I believe I’ve met a few of those.”

  “Which is your excuse for not doing more with your own life?”

  “I’ve never felt a need for excuses.”

  Harold smiled. “Good answer. Not the best, but not bad.”

  Simon found himself drawn to the man. “So you gave up a successful training business to come here?”

  “After NASA, I spent years helping good companies become great. Satisfying work, but not world changing. Then I got a letter from a young man, an orphan I’d met in India.” Harold used the remnant of his Red Rope to point at a framed letter hanging on the wall beside his map. “Nabeel attended a seminar I gave. Three years later, he wrote thanking me for changing his life. He’d taken the tools I’d offered and started a business, and now he’s employing a lot of other orphans. What’s more, he helped over a dozen start businesses of their own.”

  Harold’s gaze wandered to where Juan stood by the window, chewing happily on the licorice. “The letter was from Nabeel, but the message was from God. The world sees these Mexican orphans as hopeless cases. Born into violence, left without family, lost. But God has planted hope in them. Hope and gifts and a boiling desire to grow beyond where they are. My aim is to help them achieve this.”

  The bitter longing surged with a vengeance. Simon had not felt it in quite a while, but he instantly knew what it was. A desire to do more. Take the risk. Invest it all in the one big chance. Only there were no chances left. They died with Vasquez. “So you’ve found the secret to instant success.”

  “No, son. There’s no secret, and success is never instant.” He tore a page from his notepad, laid a pencil on top, and slid it across the desk. “Usually I start with this. I ask my students to write down three goals they want to achieve in life.”

  Simon stared at the empty page. It was easier than meeting the man’s gaze. Harold did not threaten. He was soft spoken and very polite and Simon had yet to see him become angry. But there was something about the man that probed, that challenged. “What is this, fifth grade?”

  “A lot of companies have paid a lot of money for this little bit of wisdom. So what is your first goal?”

  He said the first thing that came to mind. “Find my passport.”

  Harold laughed but pulled the page back and wrote it down. “And number two?”

  “Get across the border.” Simon raised his hand. “That’s it. There is no number three.”

  “Well, it’s a start. Not much of one, but still, a start.” Harold turned to Juan. “Give us a moment alone, would you, son.”

  But the kid had no interest in leaving. He asked Simon, “The device you and Vasquez worked on. I hear Sofia and Harold speak of this, but still I don’t understand. What does it do?”

  “If we could get it to work, it would convert raw wasted energy into useable power.”

  “Energy like electricity?”

  “That’s it.”

  “If you need electricity, why don’t you just plug it into the wall?”

  Simon grinned. “You sound like my ex-girlfriend.”

  “She must be brilliant!”

  “Juan,” Harold said. “Shut the door on your way out.”

  When they were alone, Harold pulled a laptop from the shelves behind his desk and opened the top. “There’s something I want to show you.”

 
The screen showed the silhouette of a face rimmed by ceiling lights. The only clear feature were his smiling teeth. It also gauged the strongest light and dimmed everything else to outlines. But Simon knew the silhouette belonged to Armando Vasquez.

  Simon felt the lump grow in his throat. He tried to tell himself it was due to fatigue—the drive from Boston, the council meeting, the wreck, the trek back across the desert, the stress. His head throbbed. What he wanted most just then was to crawl in a hole and pull the lid back over him. But he could not draw his gaze away from the screen.

  Vasquez leaned over his apparatus, which was perched on the tailgate of a decrepit pickup truck. The device’s central lid was open and he was making adjustments while watching an oscilloscope. Planted in the earth at his feet were several dozen lightbulbs. The computer at Vasquez’s end was angled so the oscilloscope’s screen was clearly shown. The lines were all over the place, as they always had been with Simon’s own attempts. In the background was a faint humming.

  Simon asked, “What is that noise?”

  “I have no idea,” Harold replied. “Watch closely.”

  Simon muttered, “He never gives up.”

  “He never gave up on you,” Harold replied, without taking his gaze from the screen.

  Simon found it impossible to give his standard sharp comeback. For there on the screen was another lost chance. Simon had not come to Mexico for the apparatus or for the grant. He had come down to apologize. It was an alien act, something he had never done before. Everything in his life said apologies were for the weak, a futile gesture for people who had not learned how to walk away. But the incident that had taken Vasquez from Boston had driven a wedge deep into Simon’s life. He needed to say the words. For both their sakes. Only now he would never have a chance.

  Then something happened that shocked Simon so hard, the past was forgotten. The lines on the oscilloscope started moving in regular tandem.

  Up to this point, their calculations had all pointed to finding a single rhythm, one vibratory pattern that could be used to convert the wasted energy into usable power. But every attempt they had made at isolating the proper frequency had proven a failure.