Desert Angel Read Online Free Page B

a punishment? Angel fought an impulse to run. She glanced at the front door and noticed Tío and Matteo had moved and were now walking down the center aisle toward the front. Their hats, which they’d left behind on the pew beside Angel, were quickly picked up and carried away by the young man who’d delivered the pants. Angel watched as Tío chose a pew down front, sat next to an older man, and began taking off his shirt. She looked for Matteo but couldn’t spot him. Changing clothes. She finally got it.
    After she’d tugged the pants over her jeans, Abuela held out her hand.
    “Zapatos.”
    Angel thought she understood. “Shoes?”
    Abuela nodded and handed her some black cowboy boots that looked two or three sizes too large.
    “Over?” Angel asked.
    Abuela shook her head.
    While Angel slipped off the tennies, the young man returned, bringing Abuela a bright turquoise T-shirt and navy blue slacks. The old woman took the clothes and handed him the shoes Angel had taken off. “Panama,” she told the boy.
    “¿Qué?”
    “Sombrero,” Abuela said, pointing at Angel and shooing him away.
    Angel looked for Celina but couldn’t find her. Abuela walked to the back of the church to change. The young man brought the straw cowboy hat and offered it to Angel. When she put it on she smiled in spite of herself. If she kept the brim tilted down, from a distance she would look like a short, heavy Mexican rancher.
    Abuela didn’t return, and Angel sat beside the stocky older man who had donned a black sport coat that was too small to button. In a way, it made him look younger. The short-brimmed Stetson he’d worn earlier was missing. Angel wondered if he’d given it to Matteo. Someone tapped Angel on the back. She froze.
    “When it’s over, you go with him.” Celina’s voice.
    Angel quarter turned. Now Celina had a dark red denim jacket over a brown skirt, a matching bandanna tied around her hair.
    “Him,” Celina repeated, nodding toward the stocky man. “Ramón. He take you away.”
    “Okay,” Angel said. “Thanks.” But when she turned around again, Celina was gone. Was that Abuela standing at the back in a baseball cap?
    At the end of the brief service, Ramón took Angel’s arm and put it through the arm of a plump woman in a dark shawl. “Together,” he said, and took the woman’s other arm. The three of them walked out with the crowd and made their way to a maroon crew-cab with livestock rails. “Get in back.”
    Angel had kept her head down the entire walk, but once inside she scanned the parking lot. Scotty’s pickup sat just inside the entrance, facing the line of departing traffic. He could see each car.
    “Get on the floor,” Ramón told her.
    No way Scotty could keep track of everyone leaving the church and know how many people were in each vehicle. He wouldn’t be able to recognize Abuela’s family dressed differently. But the car? Before she knelt she looked at Celina’s Ford. It was empty, by itself now, at the far side of the lot. No one was walking toward it.

9
     
    Ramón’s house was on a paved lane heading south off Dillon Road, not far from Abuela’s. It sat in a thin grove of trees and ocotillo among different smaller cactus that made a garden of sorts. A climbing rose followed a trellis over the front door. The outside wood was painted a celery green and the door and windows were trimmed in white. A home. A real home. Angel couldn’t stop looking.
    “Stay in till I check,” Ramón told her, walking around the truck to help the plump woman get down from the cab.
    The woman had been smiling on the walk out of the church. Now her forehead was creased, mouth set. “¿La pistola?” she asked him.
    “Don’t worry, cara . I’m just going to the mailbox. See what I see.”
    The woman glanced at Angel, before going inside.
    Angel imagined they must all hate her for bringing this trouble. They could get hurt, and if some of their people were here illegally, they couldn’t afford