Page 38 of Bad Rio

“Got it.”

“This won’t be a quick journey,” he continued. “It’ll be slow. Very slow. It might take longer than you think it should. Just keep close and do what I do.” He handed her a hollow reed.

“What’s this for?”

“Once we’re in the river, if I squeeze your hand, sink your whole face except your eyes below the waterline. Breathe through this.”

“Okay.”

“Even if you think someone has spotted you, or is looking in your direction at all, don’t panic and don’t look back at them. Lower your eyes. Humans can sense when they’re being observed.”

That made sense.

“Look at the river. See the current?”

She watched as an egret floated by them, and nodded.

“We’re just two clumps of underbrush floating along the river, okay? That’s all we are.”

“Be the clump,” she muttered to herself. “I am the clump.”

He grinned briefly. “The last phone call I made this morning? I’ve arranged for a diversion, fifty yards that way.” He pointed south and to the Mexican side of the river. A few families had started to arrive and the children were splashing as though in a pool. “When it starts, that’ll be our cue.”

She wanted to ask him what sort of diversion, but he was already moving ahead of her. Their journey had begun.

A single mantra played over and over in her mind:please don’t let us get shot at again, please don’t let us get shot at again, please don’t let us get shot at again.

Chapter Sixteen

With the sun quicklyrising overhead, the day heated. After all the freezing days she’d enduring, Becca enjoyed the ambient warmth. On her bare feet, the cool earth felt good. The smell of the river did not. Up to her knees in the water now, she found garbage swirling in eddies on the shoreline. A dead squirrel’s body sprawled beside the trash. It stunk. The water was a murky green. She had no idea what lay beneath, and didn’t want to know. Balancing their straw head-coverings, they entered the deepening water. Mud squished unpleasantly between her toes.

The last tall bridge of the four leading into Laredo loomed above them, its abutments sunk deep into the river.

Down past all the bridges, local families brought their children to splash in the shallows and picnic on the shores. Apparently it was a local hangout.

Bent almost to the ground, Rio crouched, keeping below the level of tall-growing Carrizo cane plants and out of sight of the border agents across the river. Becca had heard of the invasive Carrizo cane, and knew that it sent shoots up along waterway banks to form an interlocking network of subterranean roots. What she hadn’t known was that she’d ever be grateful for its shielding properties.

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