The girl brought coffee, black, hot and freshly brewed. Nicola gulped hers. It didn't quench her thirst, but at least helped to revive her a little.
She had been mad to let herself fall asleep again, she reproached herself. If she'd been awake, she would have seen they were turning off the highway, and asked' why. She might even have put some kind of a spoke in Don Luis' plans, although it was difficult to know what.
Lopez had come in, and was drinking his coffee at an adjacent table. Moistening her lips, Nicola asked him a little falteringly if he knew why Don Luis had changed his mind about their destination.
'The Señor did not honour me with his reasons,' Lopez said a little repressively, then his face relaxed a little. 'But I think, señorita, it is because of the chapel. There is a beautiful chapel at La Mariposa and no doubt Don Luis wishes to be married there. It is a family tradition.'
'A family tradition,' Nicola echoed weakly. All Teresita's forebodings had been right, it seemed. If she had taken this journey in person, there was no way Cliff could ever have traced her. She tried to feel glad for them both, but inwardly her stomach was churning with fright.
She stole a glance at Lopez, wondering what he would do if she threw herself on his mercy and confessed everything. She had money, perhaps she could bribe him to drive her to Monterrey. Then she remembered the note of respect in his voice when he had spoken of Don Luis-the way he had said, 'It is a family tradition", and knew there was no hope there. He would take her straight to his employer, and a search for Teresita would be mounted immediately. And if by some mischance she and Cliff were still unmarried, then it would all have been for nothing.
She got up abruptly from the table, and asked the girl who had brought the coffee to show her the lavatory which was housed in a rough-and-ready corrugated iron shack across the yard at the rear of the building, where a few scrawny chickens pecked in a desultory manner among the dirt and stones.
The flushing apparatus didn't work, and the tiny handbasin yielded only a trickle of rusty water. Nicola took off her dark glasses and stared at herself in the piece of cracked mirror hanging above the basin. Her eyes looked enormous, and deeply shadowed, and she felt as taut as a bowstring.
It had all gone hopelessly, disastrously wrong, and she had not the faintest idea how to begin to put it right. All she could do, she supposed, was go with the tide, and see where it took her. And if that was to the feet of a furious Mexican grandee, then she had only herself to blame for having got involved in the first place.
As she crossed back to the cantina, she noticed a battered blue truck standing in the yard. The driver was standing talking to an older man, probably the cantina' s owner. Nicola looked longingly at the truck as she passed. She'd asked for a way out of here, and now one was being presented, dangled in front of her, in fact.
But could she take it? The driver had stopped presumably for petrol and a drink, which meant that the truck would be left unattended at some point. But would the driver be obliging enough to leave the keys in the ignition? And how far would she get anyway in a strange vehicle, when only yards away there was a powerful car with a driver who knew the terrain, and would overtake her quite effortlessly because it was his duty to do so?
As she looked away with an inward sigh, she encountered the driver's smiling eyes.
'Bonita rosita,' he called, his glance devouring her shamelessly. She saw the cantina owner put a hand on his arm, and say something in a low voice. It was obviously some kind of warning, and she heard the word 'Montalba.' The truck driver sobered immediately, his expression becoming almost sheepish, and he turned away shrugging, and moving his hands defensively.
Nicola shivered a little. What kind of man was Don Luis that the mention of his name could have such an instant effect?
On her way back to the table, she saw a telephone booth in the corner. If it hadn't been so totally public and within earshot of anyone who cared to listen, she would have been tempted to try and get through to Mexico City and say to Elaine a loud and unequivocal, 'Help-get me out of here!'
Not that she could blame Elaine for her present predicament, she reminded herself wryly. No one had forced her into this masquerade. She had said herself that it was a crazy idea. She could have and should have stuck to her guns, and refused to have any part in it.
She sat down at the table and drank the rest of her coffee. It was cool now, and left a bitter taste, and she had to repress a shudder. Lopez had vanished, but Nicola could hear voices and a giggle emanating from behind a curtained doorway on the other side of the bar, and guessed he had taken advantage of her absence to further his acquaintance with the pretty waitress. His cap and gloves lay on the table, awaiting his return. And-Nicola took a shaky breath-so did the keys to the car. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she leaned across and took them, dropping them into her bag. The die was cast, it seemed.
Biting her lip, she got up and crossed to the back door again. There was on one in sight. The truck basked in the heat of the afternoon. Nicola looked round, her heart thudding uncomfortably, then crossed and looked into the driver's cab. The keys were there, she registered incredulously. But then why shouldn't they be? This was a remote corner of nowhere, not a busy urban street. The door squealed nastily as she opened it, and she froze for a moment expecting the sound of running feet, raised voices, but there was nothing.
She climbed up into the cab, wincing as the heat from the torn and shabby upholstery penetrated her thin dress. She drew a deep breath and made herself sit calmly for a moment while she briefly studied the controls. She needed to make a clean getaway, not fumbling and stalling. Nor would she take the road they'd just come on. She would head across country for the distant sierras, and hope that somewhere she would encounter the highway or at least a town of reasonable size.
With a silent prayer on her lips, she turned on the ignition. The engine didn't fire at the first attempt, but it did at the second, and she eased down the clutch, swallowing nervously. Bumping and lurching over the rough ground, the rickety vehicle took off with a speed which belied its battered exterior.
Behind her, Nicola heard a shout, and then another. She risked a look over her shoulder. The truck driver was standing with Lopez, like a frozen tableau depicting horror, then they both moved, running forward in a futile effort to catch the truck before it was too late. Nicola smiled grimly, and put her foot down hard. A glance in the mirror showed that Lopez had thrown his cap down and was jumping on it, and a giggle of sheer hysteria welled up inside her. She didn't look back again. This was practically desert she was driving over, and she needed all her wits about her.
She drove for over an hour, and then stopped the truck in the shade of a large rock and took stock of her position. So far she hadn't seen as much as a sign of a road, and although she knew she was bound to come across one sooner or later, there was a niggle of anxiety deep in the pit of her stomach. She remembered hearing that drivers were not advised to turn off main roads in the northern regions without qualified guides. Tourists had been known to be lost, and worse. She wasn't a tourist, of course, she was a fugitive, and that made it no better.
There were no maps in the truck, she discovered, after a perfunctory search. There was a service manual for some other vehicle entirely, a dilapidated torch, and a few tools, as well as an oil-stained jacket. No food or drink-not even as much as a slab of chocolate.
Nicola took off the wig and ran her hands luxuriously through her hair. Never again, she thought, and pitched it through the open window. Some desert bird was welcome to use it as a nest. She unzipped her bag and took out the long-suffering blue dress, giving it a critical shake, then found the simple leather sandals she wore with it. When she had changed, she rolled the orchid pink dress and the elegant shoes into a bundle and left them under the rock.
As she re-started the engine, she thought thankfully, 'It's over.'
Another two hours had passed, and Nicola had just realised that she was hopelessly lost, when the truck ran out of fuel. Alerted by the sputtering of the reluctant engine, she searched among the dials on the dashboard for the petrol gauge, and realised with a sinking heart that the needle was vacillating nervously in the red section.