SHE DIDN’T KNOW where she was.
Pain was her only constant. For days, she hadn’t been able to move without wanting to scream. When the aches had started to ease, the fever had begun. She’d lost track of time, the edge between darkness and day blurring until she no longer knew—or cared—if the sun or the moon shone.
The hut where she lay was thatched and a mosquito net covered the space above her. There was nothing in the room but her bed and a small table beside it. In contrast, a window opening to the right framed a scene that looked more like a Gauguin painting than any actual place she’d ever been.
A woman came in several times a day and checked on her. Sometimes in the middle of the night—or maybe the middle of the day, she wasn’t sure which—a man came, too. He was lean and gaunt with sunken eyes that frightened her. He never spoke. He did nothing but look at her.
She didn’t know where she was.
She didn’t know who she was.
THE DAY AFTER MEREDITH CALLED, Armando went into Rojo, but no one in the village had seen a gringa. He returned home and put the woman out of his mind. When Meredith called a week later, he told her he knew nothing.
“Dammit, I hate having to call Freeman Stanley and tell him that. Are you sure no one’s seen her?”
He let his silence answer the question.
“What should I do?” she asked in a worried voice.
He shook his head at her ploy. “Don’t try to pull one of your tricks on me, Meredith. You asked me to see if Lauren Stanley had been here and that is what I did. If this was a real assignment, I would stop and do anything you asked, you know that, but otherwise my days here are very full already. I have the clinic and the villages and the children. I did not join the Operatives to find missing daughters for worried daddies.”
“Stanley has called me too many times to count. He offered us a lot of money.”
“And I told you last time we spoke that I have no need of that.”
“Maybe you don’t,” she said, “but what about your clinic? When I saw you at Cruz’s wedding, you said the place continuously required new equipment and stronger drugs and more staff and better beds—”
He interrupted her as she had him. “The funds this man could give us wouldn’t make a dent in what we lack. And the time it would take to do the job, to find this woman, I do not have it, Meredith.”
“Your time I can’t replace,” she said. “But you’re wrong about the money.” She named a figure that shocked him. “You could buy a lot of aspirin with that, Armando. A donation that size could keep the clinic running for years. You could even hire another doctor.” She paused then added in a mocking voice, “A real doctor.”
Armando was a psychiatrist and Meredith liked to tease him about it. He ignored her taunt this time, however, and thought of the infant he’d seen yesterday. One listen through his stethoscope and he’d known that the child had a serious heart defect, probably congenital. Other symptoms had confirmed his suspicions—the pale skin, the wheezing breath, the lethargy. Any medium-size hospital in the States could have corrected the problem, but here the baby had no chance.
“I’ll call you in two days.” He made the promise abruptly then hung up.
Later that morning, his housekeeper, who also served as a nurse at the clinic, came to his study. Zue was Quechuan and eighty. She worked hard but her grandson, Beli, who also helped around the compound, did just the opposite. Knowing Armando would pay him regardless, he put out as little effort as possible.
“There are people here,” she sniffed. “From Qunico. I told them the clinic was closed but they won’t go away. They’re farmers.”
Armando had learned a long time ago not to point out what he thought were the discrepancies in Zue’s complicated class hierarchy. “Send them in,” he said.
Under Zue’s watchful eyes, the two men shuffled inside. Wrapped in woven blankets, they were exhausted and filthy. Qunico was fifty miles east of Rojo and even if they had had a vehicle, there was nothing but a rough path between the two. They’d either walked or ridden mules. Armando studied them but they both seemed healthy.
The taller of two spoke haltingly. “Señor Doctor, we have a woman in our village. She is hurt and very sick. She needs your help. You are the only one who can save her.”
Armando stilled. Something inside told him he knew the answer to his question, but he asked it anyway. “The woman is a gringa, no? With blond hair and ojos azules?”
The men exchanged a startled look and Armando realized he’d just added to the rumors that swirled about him. They came to him for help, but most of the villagers were frightened of him—they thought he could read their minds, disappear at will and heal with a touch. He didn’t like the mystery they’d built up around him, but sometimes it proved useful, he had to admit.
“What’s wrong with her?” Armando asked.
Their explanation came out in a jumble of Spanish and Quechuan but even if one language had prevailed, it wouldn’t have mattered. They were too overwhelmed to get the tale told in any kind of order. Armando held his hand up after a few moments and halted the flow.
“Por favor, amigos, one thing at a time. Start at the beginning.”
The taller man, clearly the leader, paused and tried to organize his thoughts. Finally he shook his head in a gesture of defeat. “We don’t know the beginning, señor.”
Armando frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We don’t know where she came from or how she escaped, but Xuachoto had her in his arms for a very long time. We think maybe he wanted to claim her for a new bride, but Mariaita wouldn’t let him. He had to give her up.”
The locals followed a convoluted mixture of Catholicism and Inca myths that had evolved through the centuries, their leader, Manco, serving as both priest and mayor. Armando hadn’t bothered to study the intricacies of the system but some of his ignorance was not his own fault. When the clinic had opened and the locals had seen what Armando’s medicines could do, they’d begun to bypass the old man’s rites and gone directly to Armando’s clinic for healing. In return, Manco deliberately made things more difficult because he resented what he perceived to be Armando’s healing powers and was jealous of his abilities.
Armando knew enough to recognize the name of their water god, Xuachoto, though, and his jealous wife, Mariaita. A chill came over him despite the heat and he dreaded hearing the answer to his next question.
“Are you telling me the gringa was in the river when you found her?”
They nodded in unison, then the shorter man spoke reverently. “Xuachoto had her. Manco fought hard, but he couldn’t bring her back from the other side. We know you can do better.”
“She’s dead?” Armando asked in alarm.
“No, señor, she is not dead.” He sent an uneasy look to his companion then faced Armando again. “But she is not alive, either.”
CHAPTER TWO
