The Jaguar Read Online Free PDF Page A

to welcome you.”
    “I feel kidnapped, not welcomed.”
    “You are here. Everything here is my duty to protect. I am in command. Only my father is more powerful.”
    He walked close to her and she looked up into his eyes. They were tan, small-pupiled, catlike. She could smell the scent of his body and breath. “You are more beautiful than the many pictures of you I have seen.”
    She stepped around him and hooked the serape off the floor with her bare toe and caught it and wrapped it around her shoulders again.
    “You are amusing,” he said. “You cannot protect yourself. I will take you when I want you.”
    His smile is the devil’s, thought Erin. “I’m Benjamin’s guest.”
    “And there is nothing you can do. Or anyone can do.”
    “I’ll be sure that Mr. Armenta knows that.”
    “He does not control everything,
pinche gringa
. You are far away from what was real to you. You are nothing in Mexico. Not even a person. You are entirely invisible and entirely alone. You are like the air. You need a strong friend.”
    Saturnino smiled again and came up close to her. When he leaned in to kiss her she slapped him hard across the face. In the silence that followed she watched his rage flash and hover, then slowly retreat.
    There was a knock at the door. Saturnino unleashed a rapid-fire string of Spanish curses, of which Erin understood most.
    “Edgar Ciel,” said the voice behind the door.
“In nomine patri et—”
    “Go to hell you filthy goat!” yelled Saturnino. He looked at Erin then swiped his card key and pushed open the door.
    In stepped a tall slender priest and two young novitiates—a boy and a girl. The priest was very pale, with a sharp nose and ears and thinning light-brown hair. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses his eyes were blue and luminous. He looked sixty. The boy and girl looked to be twelve or thirteen and they stood behind him, hands foldedbefore them, looking at the floor. The priest looked at Erin, then turned his gaze to Saturnino. “What are you doing here, my vile child?”
    Saturnino made the sign of a cross with his fingers and held it up to the priest as he circled around him and toward the door. When Saturnino went by he stomped the boy’s foot with his boot and backed out of the room with a nod to Erin. Edgar Ciel pushed the door closed on him. The boy hopped wordlessly on his good foot four times then put the hurt foot back down tentatively.
    “I am Father Edgar Ciel.”
    “I am Erin McKenna.”
    “Did he harm you?”
    “He would have.”
    “Never be alone with him.”
    “He has a key to my room.”
    “I will speak to Benjamin.”
    “Can he control his son?”
    Ciel studied her with his blue eyes. They had a light in them that was cold and possibly wise. Father O’Hora had had that light. “Of course.”
    “Can you do it right now? Talk to Benjamin?”
    Ciel held her gaze and swung open his jacket and pulled a cell phone off his belt at one hip. Erin saw the walnut-handled revolver holstered at the other. She smelled vanilla. He raised the phone to his ear and walked to the window that framed the balcony and the jungle and beach. He turned his back to her and spoke softly in Spanish, then he waited for a while and spoke again.
    “What’s your name?” Erin asked the boy.
    “Henry. Enrique.”
    “And yours?”
    “Constanza.”
    “How do you like the Castle?”
    They shrugged with their hands still folded before them and looked down at the floor. Enrique gingerly lifted his stomped foot, then set it back down.
    “We come here because Benjamin Armenta donated four million dollars to the Legion of Christ last year,” said Ciel. He walked toward her, fastening the phone to his belt again. “He has been donating such amounts for a decade. He convinces his friends to donate too. It’s the largest Catholic league in all of Mexico. Last year we built two more schools in Chiapas State and were able to endow a chair to head the department of cinema in our university in