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“They’re talking about leaving California for good. This is all your fault.” The bitterness in Dorian’s voice had taken Aurora by surprise.
Their parents hadn’t even waited until Dorian graduated from high school before selling the family home to the first decent bidder and moving into a rented condo.
“Dorian, I never meant to hurt you,” Aurora had said during that shocking conversation.
“You’re off on some grand adventure while I’m here with Mom and Dad. All they talk about is you. Finding you, missing you, wondering about you. I’m nothing. It’s all your fault. And now that they’ve found you, they can’t stand to see you. They want to move to Arizona. Do you know how far away Arizona is?”
“Dori, I’m sorry. Really sorry.”
“You didn’t even tell me goodbye,” Dorian had sobbed. “Some sister you are, Aurora. I hate you! I wish you’d never come back.”
The relationship between the sisters hadn’t improved as the years went on. Their parents did move to Arizona, leaving Dorian at a California college, living in a dorm. When Dorian got married, Aurora had been out at sea, unable to return for the swiftly arranged wedding—something else Dorian held against her. The same had occurred with Tanya’s birth. Then, to everyone’s horror, Tanya grew up resenting her mother’s unrelenting bitterness over Aurora’s effect on her life.
Tanya felt neglected by her own mother, and became a rebellious, angry teen who couldn’t be managed. At every attempt to correct her behavior, she replied, “I’m going to be just like Aurora. She did what she wanted when she was sixteen, and I intend to do the same.”
Dorian had convinced herself and her parents that Aurora’s bad example was the cause of Tanya’s problems. Gerald had tried to make peace, saying Tanya’s behavior should be blamed on Tanya herself, not Aurora. That had caused more strain in the family and the marriage in particular.
Finally Aurora had decided to stay away from them all, save for birthdays and holidays—and then only if she was invited. Her parents made new friends in Arizona, Dorian and Gerald closed ranks, Tanya was forbidden to associate with her aunt, and Aurora had sadly realized that her need for independence would continue to cost her dearly.
I don’t care, she told herself daily. If I had it to do over again, I would. She’d known how she wanted to spend her life since she’d first learned to swim. When opportunity came, she’d begged her parents to let her join the Florida salvage team—a group of divers she’d met at a dive site she frequented in those days. They’d refused. She knew she might never have another chance like this; she knew she was ready.
Mom and Dad saw me as a child, but even then I was an adult. I was sure what I wanted. After all these years, why can’t they understand that? Or at least forgive me? Must they spend the rest of their lives blaming me for all the family’s problems?
I love them. I always have. And now I’ll probably be blamed for Tanya’s ending up in jail. And everyone wonders why I keep to myself.
But this was one time she couldn’t run away—one time she couldn’t ignore her ties to family.
I’m the only one left to help—if I can.
Tijuana Women’s
Jail One hour later
THE RADIO STATION blared Spanish rush-hour reports as Aurora pulled into the bumpy, potholed parking lot at the women’s prison. Dirty diapers and ant-covered fast-food wrappers littered the ground, while rusting vehicles of dubious colors crowded the lot. Aurora climbed out of her shiny, late-model truck with her diving and salvage-service logo and phone number painted on the sides. She carefully locked the doors, but as added insurance held a five-dollar bill in the air. Instantly she was surrounded by a swarming horde of Mexican boys of various ages and sizes.
Aurora let the largest of the bunch push his way through, and gave him the money. “Another five if I come out and my truck is still safe,” she said in smooth, California-school Spanish.
“Sí, señora—señorita,” the boy correctly substituted, obviously noticing no wedding ring on Aurora’s finger. “Truck, tires, all safe,” he said in English.
“Antenna and windshield wipers, too,” Aurora added, pushing through the throng of clamoring children. She gave the smaller children a sad smile. Their ragged clothes, dirty bare feet and extremely thin bodies wrenched at her every time. Her heart went out to them. Still, her priority right now had to be her sister, her sister’s family, and their misfortunes—especially with her bank account emptying fast.
Her truck’s Mexican guard snapped out a curt order, and the ragtag bunch of children reluctantly moved away, their dirty, tugging hands leaving smudges on her clean jeans as well as her truck.
Authorities frisking her for weapons and other contraband left more smudges. Aurora went through what had become her Friday-afternoon routine over the past two months, and was finally shown to Dorian and Tanya’s cell. There were no fancy visiting areas to those awaiting trial—just the smell of sweat, urine and fear from both sides of the bars. In fact, Mexican prisoners weren’t allowed out of their cells to visit, the way they were at home.
“Aurora!’ Dorian called out. Aurora rushed to the cell for a hug, despite the bars between them, as her sister asked, “Have you got any news of Gerald?” Dorian ignored Rory’s outstretched arms.
“Nothing yet, but—”
Dorian began to cry, cutting her off. “You promised you’d help.”
“I’m working on it, but it takes time.”
“How much time?” Dorian demanded, her voice starting to break.
“Well…”
“Mom, knock it off,” Tanya ordered. “We can’t hear her talk if you’re bawling again.”
Aurora looked over her sister’s shoulder to her niece. Blond, blue-eyed, pretty—and ever the cynic. Full of teenage attitude. Tanya took after neither of her dark-eyed, dark-haired parents with their law-abiding ways.
“Tanya, please. How are you two holding up?” Aurora asked. She tried to stroke Dorian’s shaking shoulders through the bars, but Dorian pulled away.
“How does it look, Rory?” Tanya defiantly refused to call her aunt. “I’m dirty, my hair’s a mess, the food stinks. I need a cigarette and my mother’s a nervous wreck.” Tanya gently drew Dorian away from the bars, led her to the prison cot to sit. “Wipe your nose, Mom. You look gross.”
Aurora compared the two women as Tanya passed Dorian a piece of questionable-looking toilet tissue from a roll on the concrete floor.
Dorian was tired and far too thin, despite Aurora’s regular deliveries of Dorian’s favorite nonperishable foods. Today she’d brought a bag of trail mix, some juice boxes and chocolate bars, which Tanya grabbed eagerly. Dorian wore a defeatist attitude along with her ill-fitting prison jumpsuit. Tanya, on the other hand, seemed more than just fine. She was actually thriving amid the adversity.
Tanya’s tough—but tough enough to survive life in prison? She’s hard enough to love as it is. What would prison do to that small, remaining lovable part?
Tanya wrapped a thin gray blanket around her mother’s still-shaking shoulders and patted them before returning to the bars.
“Mom needs news about Dad, and better food. She can’t keep down the prison slop. Nerves, I guess.”
“My nerves are just fine,” Dorian said.
“And rodents get into the dry stuff you bring, and she won’t eat it. I’ve made arrangements with her—” Tanya jerked her stubborn chin in the direction of the female guard. “She’s got a sick kid at home. You give her fifty now and twenty a week—and she’ll give Mom more food, extra blankets, stuff like that.”
Aurora gazed into eyes that reminded her so much of her own. “I see that sophomore Spanish course stuck with you.”
“Despite failing it?” Tanya asked flippantly.
“Grades aren’t the only indicator of intelligence,” Aurora replied.
“And what about being in jail, Tanya?” Dorian threw in. “How smart is that?”
For just a moment, Tanya looked like a little girl, then she was herself again. “Shut up, Mom. So, what’s the deal? Any news from the lawyers? Or are they still milking you dry? You know I’ve got registration next month. It’s my junior year.”
“You hope, kid.”
Tanya swore, the ugly expletive at odds with her pretty mouth. “You don’t have everything arranged yet?”
“The lawyers can’t get you out of jail. Neither can the U.S. embassy. You have to go to trial. They’re still working on getting access to the bank funds, but I’m having problems with the power of attorney. And I’m running out of money because I’ve been making your parents’ payroll.”
“But I thought you told me Jordan Castillo was our ticket out of here,” Dorian cried.
“I said maybe, sis. And he can’t do us any good if he’s dead. Someone’s trying to kill him. I—”
Tanya interrupted to swear again, but this time with more color and graphic description. Aurora felt her own temper rise.
“I’m doing my best. And skip the tough-girl act with me, Tanya,” Aurora spat out. “I was on my own and self-supporting when I was sixteen. And I didn’t end up in jail, either.”
“Yawn, big-time,” Tanya drawled.
“Sorry you find me so dull, but frankly, I’m tired of your mouth. To be perfectly honest, my sister is my first concern, then her husband. You—Miss Gutless Wonder—are at the bottom of my list. Using and smuggling drugs, then letting your mother take the blame, doesn’t impress me one little bit.”
“So I should shut up and listen?” Tanya asked, pantomiming a yawn this time.
“Exactly. Now here’s my plan.”
Aurora gave a detailed and methodical explanation, starting with how she’d found the treasure galleon Jordan Castillo wanted. She practically held the diving rights in her hand. U.S. waters extended twelve miles west, stopped at the Canadian border to the north and ended at the Mexican Coronado Islands to the south. Any waters beyond those boundaries were classified as international. Salvage laws were basically “finders, keepers,” and the finders merely had to register their claims. Aurora hadn’t yet filed her claim; maintaining the location’s secrecy had prevented her from taking that step so far. Once Jordan agreed to a partnership she would register.
“So you think you’ll get enough to bribe our way out?” Dorian asked.
“That’s the plan, if Jordan Castillo stays alive,” Aurora said. “He should be getting out of the hospital next week.”
“You’ve got yourself a job and a half,” Tanya said, checking her mother again before turning back to Aurora. “Do you really think there’s treasure on the ship?” The teen’s cynical expression actually revealed some excitement.
“Yeah, or I wouldn’t have been able to find the one piece I did so easily. There are no records of the San Rafael being salvaged by the early Spanish—the water’s far too deep for prescuba. Any deeper and it would almost be too much for modern diving.”
Tanya’s hands clenched tighter on the bars. “But you did it, Rory. You found the ship. I know you can find more money.”
“Bullion,” she corrected. “If it’s there. That’s my job. Yours is to talk to that guard with the sick baby and learn the going rate for escape bribes. The lawyers can’t do any more until your trial, and they said your conviction is a given, despite Dorian’s trying to take the blame for you. See if the guard has any connections that could get us information on your father, too.”
“Oh, Rory, I wish I was going with you.”
“Home, or treasure-driving?” Aurora asked, and Tanya flushed. “Get your priorities straight, you little fool.” Aurora patted her back jeans pocket. “I’ve got a hundred dollars you can give to your friend here. Get my sister eating—and get her another blanket. While you’re at it, ask for a bucket and soap and clean up this cell. Anything happens to her, Tanya, and—”
“I know, I know, you hold me responsible.”
“More than that. I leave you here to rot.”
Tanya blanched. “You…you aren’t serious.”
“You bet I am.” Aurora’s eyes narrowed. “You might be able to push your parents around, but when it comes to me—forget it. You accept blame for the drugs and get your parents out of jail, I do everything I can for you. You keep hiding your head in the sand…then you and Dorian are a package deal. She gets a guilty sentence, you go down with her. Your father gets a guilty sentence, you go down with him. If either one of them dies of illness, then vaya con Dios and adiòs, amiga.”
“You coldhearted bitch!” Tanya’s face was harsh and ugly.
“She’d do it, too, Tanya. She always does what she says, ever since she was a kid.” Dorian’s gaze held un-spoken animosity mingled with despair.
“You’re old enough to know right from wrong,” Aurora said. “Better only one of you in jail than all three. Take care of my sister—or else.” Aurora deliberately moved away from Tanya, and injected a pleasant note in her voice as she addressed her sister. “Dori, I have to go. I’ll be back in a week or so, okay?” Dorian slowly nodded, the animosity gone. The prison allowed only weekly visits, and Aurora needed to come up with more cash.
She slowly pivoted and cautiously approached the guard. “You look after my sister and her child,” she said quietly in Spanish, “and my American dollars will look after you and your niño.”
Aurora quickly tucked her cash in the woman’s un-buttoned uniform-shirt pocket. The guard carefully buttoned it, the money safely inside.
“Niña. Es una niña,” she said.
“Ah, sí. Nombre?”
“Guadalupe.”
“Lupe es una nombre bonita. Muy bonita.”
“Gracias.” A tender smile transformed the guard’s plain, lined face above her name tag, which read simply, Olivia.
Aurora headed for the exit and switched to English. “Let’s hope your daughter turns out better than my niece. And doesn’t carry grudges from the past like her mother does. Goodbye, ladies.”
For once, neither Tanya nor Dorian had a thing to say. Silence followed Aurora out of the gloomy jail and into the blinding Mexican sun.
THE MOB OF CHILDREN assailed her as she stepped out the door, only to be driven away by a harsh command from her truck’s hired guard. He hurried up to meet her, gesturing toward her undamaged truck.
“All okay, señorita. Not broken. Wipers, tires, you look.”
Aurora looked, walking around the truck. “Cómo se llama?” she asked.
“Roberto. Roberto Ortega. I speak English. Buen inglés. You said diez dólares if truck safe. You owe me cinco.”
Aurora nodded, and paid him a second five. She unlocked the door, got in and then paused. Those damn lawyers haven’t helped one bit. I’ve gone through all the conventional channels. Time to start using the unconventional ones. “I have a problem,” she said with sudden inspiration. “I could use some help—and I’m willing to pay.”
Roberto straightened. “I am your hombre, señorita.”
Aurora switched back to Spanish, and told him about Dorian’s missing husband, about Dorian and Tanya. “I need information about her esposo, Gerald Atwell. You get it to me, and to the guard inside, and I’ll pay you. Ten now, ten later.”
“Fifty later,” Roberto said, haggling in Mexico’s time-honored tradition. Rory, thinking of her diminishing bank account, determinedly haggled back.
“Twenty more.”
“Forty.”
“Thirty.”
“Sí.” Aurora removed a business card, along with another ten. “Call me at this number. Collect. Is there a number I can get from you?”
“My friend works at a carneceria—how do you say, a meat store?” Phone numbers were exchanged. He studied the side of her truck. “What does this say?” he asked, pointing.
Aurora translated her logo into the appropriate Spanish.
“I dive, too,” Roberto said proudly. “With tanks, without tanks. I dive for lobster, crab, shellfish. You need help on your boat?”
You don’t know the half of it, Roberto. Aurora shrugged, the noncommittal Mexican response.
“I help you find this man, you hire me? Take me to San Diego? Sponsor my carta verde? Be my sponsor for citizenship?”
Green card? Sponsor? Since she was a business owner, that was theoretically possible, but Aurora already had enough on her hands. She couldn’t possibly take the time to get a Mexican citizen a work permit, let alone sponsor him for American citizenship. The boy didn’t even look eighteen! She shook her head.
“Please, I get this man out of jail for you, you hire me?”
