Counterfeit Bride(9)

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.