Free Canyon Sacrifice by Scott Graham Page B

ones?”
    â€œShe slept in them. She and Rosie were tired, didn’t want to change.”
    â€œThere’s a jacket and pants, right?” Clarence pushed Carmelita’s empty sleeping bag aside. He and Janelle began rummaging through everything on the platform.
    â€œWhat’s this?” Janelle asked, dropping the pajamas and picking up a piece of white paper previously hidden by Carmelita’s sleeping bag.
    She squinted at the sheet of paper in the dim light. Her hand and the paper shook. Two words were penned on it in large, plain block letters: “NO COPS.”
    Clarence snatched the paper from Janelle’s hand and flipped it over. Other than the two large words, it was blank. The three of them stood around the piece of paper in stunned silence.
    Rosie chose that moment to poke her head from her sleeping bag. “Uncle Clarence!” She kicked her way out of her bag and leapt into Clarence’s arms.
    Clarence handed the sheet back to Janelle and clasped Rosie to him. Looking over her shoulder at Janelle and Chuck, he unleashed a string of Spanish curses.
    Rosie leaned away from him. “What did you say?”
    â€œ Nada, bambina .” He put a finger to her lips. “ Nada importante .”
    Chuck took another look at the paper in Janelle’s hand. It had to be some sort of prop made by Carmelita while the girls played in the camper yesterday afternoon. But a glance at Clarence told him otherwise. Clarence’s face was drained of color, his eyes haunted.
    Chuck turned to Janelle—the look in her eyes matched her brother’s. Janelle knew what Clarence knew. Her eyes told Chuck something else as well: Carmelita had been kidnapped.
    A hole opened inside him, black and bottomless. Carmelita. Kidnapped .
    Janelle dropped the sheet of paper to the girls’ sleeping platform, put a fist to her mouth, and ducked outside. Chuck and Clarence, carrying Rosie, followed. Janelle bent double at the side of the camper and vomited, her hands on her knees. Chuck rested a hand on her back, his own stomach churning.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Mamá ?” Rosie asked.
    Janelle straightened and swiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at Clarence, who looked straight back at her. Only then did she turn to Chuck, her eyes steely with determination.
    â€œTag,” she said grimly. “You’re it.”
    Chuck stared at her, bewildered.
    â€œMiguel,” Clarence said, his voice hard.
    Janelle kept her eyes trained on Chuck.
    â€œMiguel,” she repeated.

N INE
    9 a.m.
    Chuck waved his hands in front of him and took a step backward. “Wait a minute. Wait just one minute.”
    Janelle had told Chuck little about Miguel Gutierrez, the father of Carmelita and Rosie. Chuck knew only that Miguel was a small-time drug dealer a few years older than Janelle, that he’d hooked up with her while she was a community college student, that the two had never married, and that Miguel had disappeared from the lives of Janelle and the girls shortly after Rosie’s birth five years ago.
    â€œWhat is it the two of you know that I don’t?” Chuck demanded. Rosie’s eyes darted from her mother to her uncle and back. Chuck reached over to rub her shoulder, but she ducked away from him and buried her face in Clarence’s neck. Hurt, Chuck turned to Janelle. “Talk to me,” he said, his words clipped.
    â€œHe always made threats,” Janelle said. “From the very first. ‘I’ll kill you if you leave.’ Then, after Carm was born, ‘You leave me, you’ll never see your little girl again.’ I was so scared. Of course I never left. How could I?” She looked plaintively at Chuck. “It was Miguel, finally, who left us. He swore Rosie wasn’t his. He was broke all the time. People were after him.” She paused. “It was so good when he was gone. Mami and Papi were, like, the best. These last