The Stirlings and the Missing Statue

Chapter Twenty-Six: Don't Trust the Bad Guy

So, are we still planning on dumping the
girl once we have the statue, or...
Why would my plans have changed? And what's
with the we? What are we, multiple identities?
Steach had insisted that they get going before the sun rose any further. The girl, however, thought that she'd done her job and no longer needed to comply with any of Mr. Steach's commands.
"I know you speak English even better than you speak Spanish, girl. Esmeralda," Mr. Steach had huffed at her.
She flinched at the sound of her own name and she pulled back from the sign so far that she was nearly standing on the pavement again.
Steach didn't like the familiarity any more than she did and, not that it mattered since it wasn't his real name anyway, he had promptly decided that he would not be sharing his identity with her. He hadn't quite decided if it would be necessary to wrestle the knife away from the girl later and put a physical and permanent end to their partnership—usually, if he had to protect his heist or his ability to get away clean, he let the decision to kill come naturally and in the moment. He didn't usually have to plan for that kind of step.
When he'd finally determined that he would need to simply start without her and hope she would follow—he did still need her to head in the correct direction—the girl had bolted from her spot and skidded in front of him, pointing the knife at his chest.
"You promised," she said in clear, unaccented English. "San Luis for taking me home."
She's not quite catatonic all the time, then.
But she's clearly pretty good with that knife.
Good luck getting that away from her.
"I still don't have the statue, now do I?" he asked rhetorically. "You said you could take me to the statue...in more or less words. So unless little bronze San Luis is hiding behind that rock over there..."
"He's in la cueva," the girl said with defeat in her voice and in her eyes.
"For simplicity, let's just stick to English, shall we, girl?"
She nodded and with a look, she seemed to understand that there was no fighting it—she'd have to lead the way or at least follow Mr. Steach wherever he was going.
She trusts you.
Why, though?
Maybe because you appeared out of
nowhere, speak English, and didn't try to
rape or murder her right away?
I don't do that. Well, the one thing. I might still
have to get rid of her though.
"You have money," the girl answered the question in his inner thought.
"Was that a question?"
"You dress...you dress like you have money," she said, faltering over simple words.
She's probably been speaking Spanish for
so long, she's forgotten her native tongue.
She's also a bit crazy, remember. Her mind
might have gone.
"And that means what to you?"
"I don't...know why you want the statue. And you seemed to know about the painting."
Damn you, Aurelio. I wanted both.
There may still be a chance.
"I thought, perhaps, I might take both. Since they were just aching to be taken."
The girl frowned and shook her head. "But you...must...must have come here, first, no?"
Her phrasing still suffered from a year of living abroad and in constant fear. Mr. Steach rolled his eyes and tried to move past her again. The girl held her stance firmly.
"No, girl. I went to Aurelio's gravesite first. I've clearly never been to this...what is this, a mountain? Some sort of sad little rise in the earth?"
"Cerro Gordo," the girl named it while pointing over Steach's shoulder to the welcome sign. "Fat hill."
"A place of great esteem," Mr. Steach drolled.
"You needed the combination," the girl announced. "Or you would have brought...something to break the safe."
Mr. Steach stared at her, expecting her to explain the relevance.
I wouldn't have needed the combination anyway.
You hadn't brought your tools, Gideon.
Don't.
Honestly. You call that a plan? Was the
statue just supposed to be sitting there,
waiting for us...you?
Yes! It's a statue that NO ONE remembers in a
town that NO ONE goes to and depicted in a
painting that NO ONE even thought still existed.
As eccentric as Aurelio was, with his vault and
the key buried with him, I had no reason to
suspect that he had a damned safe inside the
un-findable vault.
Un-findable, huh? Great word. Learn that
in boarding school, did you?
Shut up, Gideon. She's staring back now.
"I...I didn't think there'd be a safe," he admitted.
The girl watched him with a tilted head as she decided what to say next. "Well, you...wouldn't...have found it anyway. If you'd been smart. And come here first."
Because she has it.
"Because you have it?"
"Had."
Mr. Steach's thieving heart thumped a bit harder in anticipation of another mystery or, at the very least, finding the painting at last.
"Where is—"
"Ashes."
He couldn't help that his jaw fell open about an inch. "You burned it?" His excitement waned and fury began to take hold.
"It was no good," the girl told him, her phrasing again simplified and straightforward. But she shook her head. "I mean that it was evil. There was something...something in it. Or on it. Or...I don't...I don't know."
"It was a painting," Mr. Steach deadpanned.
She's a believer.
I know. Sad. And she looked like she might
be a bright girl.
"My brother touched it once and became...ob...obsessed," she claimed. Her eyes were growing larger as she spoke and the rising sun glinted off of the blue irises. "He lost it and it made him loco, I think. He...I think they found him. Or they...they stopped looking."
The girl's eyes darkened and she looked away and out of the sun's reach. Mr. Steach might have asked her if she was okay, but that was what a normal, caring person would have done. Not what he would do.
"Your brother sounds like a fool. And so do you. Evil paintings. Walking statues," he mocked her instead. "If you don't start showing me something worthwhile, I'll turn you over to the federales. They'll send you back home, you little urchin."
The girl cried out like she'd been bitten by something and raised the blade again in front of her.
"I saw what some of those federales do. And what happens when someone says they'll take you home and what that really means," she snarled.
And yet she trusted you.
"And yet you trusted me, for some reason," Mr. Steach laughed.
"You have money," the girl repeated with a logical tone.
"You said that."
"You have money. You don't need it. You want the statue and you'll do what you want to get it. That means you'll do what you want to get back home."
Her English is getting better by the second.
Too bad she has that terrible American
accent. Southern California, I believe?
That's what her poster said, Gideon. And the
girl's sixteen...no, seventeen and can probably plan
her way out of a bind in no time.
She's staring again.
"And you think it's back to the States, is it? I'll just whisk you away back to your mummy and daddy?"
"I couldn't go before," she breathed with regret through clenched teeth.
"And why is that?"
Gideon, the sun. The farmers will be...what
is it...toiling soon. Stop dawdling.
"It had a hold," she said.
Mr. Steach thought for a moment that the girl was having trouble translating her thoughts back into her first language again, but then he realized that she was again referring to the supernatural. Both he and his inner thoughts rolled their eyes.
"And you're broken of it, are you?"
"I think so, yes."
Mr. Steach took a step to his right and then took a few steps forward, giving the girl a wide berth as she traced his path with the tip of the knife. "I'm going in there to retrieve what is by this point what is rightfully mine."
"You won't get out of there by yourself," she warned.
"Aren't you supposed to say something along the lines of 'No, don't go, you need me to lead you'?"
His first few steps away from her were easy but then the toe of his mud-encrusted oxford caught on the edge of a small boulder and he nearly pitched his face into the rocky ground.
"Don't die," the girl said with just a bit more sarcasm than Mr. Steach would have liked to hear if any at all.