Short Cut to Santa Fe by Medora Sale Page A

airport security.”
    â€œOkay—get it. And no sudden moves.”
    John moved his hand toward his breast pocket. Slowly.
    â€œWayne, reach in there and get the passport.”
    John opened his jacket wide to display the inch or two of deep blue of the passport. “This it?” asked the younger man. Sanders nodded.
    â€œIt don’t say what you do,” said Wayne, after puzzling over the document for some time.
    â€œThey don’t,” said Sanders. “But it’s got my picture and it does prove I’m who I say I am, and that I come from Canada and have nothing to do with anything here.”
    â€œWhat do you do?”
    â€œI don’t see what difference it makes, but I’m a—I’m in the—”
    â€œIn the professional accounting business,” said Harriet quickly. “Now that everyone’s finished their income taxes, poor John can take a holiday.”
    It didn’t occur to them to ask Harriet what she did.
    Gary stood looking at them in silence. He was holding his weapon across his body, in one of those relaxed but vigilant stances, and suddenly Harriet was swamped in flickering memories from her childhood. Memories of television news programs, with their images and words alternately boring and terrifying her. Men in camouflage dress, stalking through the trees, holding weapons just like that one; fires blazing up; and ultimately the terrible knowledge that this was real. The people on the tiny screen in her father’s study were dead. Really dead. And then there were the nightmares. Ghosts in black and white with hands that burned reaching out to pursue her through the forests of her childhood and the comfortable streets of home. That was all that she had taken from the turbulent sixties, a nightmare, and it was standing in front of her right now.
    â€œI just have a couple things I’d like to say right now,” said Gary, in that soft voice that made her shudder. “We’ve heard a lot of words in here, all real interesting, and probably some of ’em even true, but I know at least one of you is lying, and I aim to figure out which one. My little brother here is going to go out and bring in all the bags stored in the hold and you’re going to claim your own bag and then we’re going to search it. Because someone on this bus is carrying something worth close to a million dollars, and that million dollars is owed to us, and we aim to find it tonight. And if we don’t, we’re going to start killing people. One at a time. Not that we specially want to, you understand. But it works. People are just a little more cooperative and honest when they think they’re going to be next.”
    â€œAnd when you find it, whatever it is, then what are you going to do to us? I like to be prepared.” This was Teresa, sounding almost bored.
    â€œDon’t you worry about that. We’re just going to leave you here. It’s not so far away from help. You can send someone back by the road. We have our own plans for getting out of the country, so we’re safe. All we want is our money, in whatever form it’s been turned into.” His voice was silky and confiding, like a snake slithering along the dirt. “Anyone want to tell us, and save us all a painful search?”

Chapter 5
    It was an evening of growing enlightenment for the state troopers called in to search for two missing children. The dawning realization that there was no need to find and interview a driver of a regularly scheduled airport bus from Albuquerque who had dropped two children off on the road to Taos came to them in the middle of a long and patient conversation with Joe and Samantha Rogers. With a certain amount of annoyance, directed silently at Joe and Samantha, and a professional embarrassment at being caught leaping to conclusions, the Albuquerque detachment called off the search for that nonexistent person, restructured their ideas,