Love at 11 - By Mari Mancusi Page 0,41

between us when we were alone together, and it always made me hope for something more. But really, in the end, none of this was going to lead anywhere. He had Jennifer. They’d be married in a few months. That was reality and I needed to accept it. I wasn’t a home-wrecker, after all.

I thought about my dad’s other woman. Cindi with an “i”. Did she have the same worries, guilt, and fear when she first met my dad? Did he seduce her, make her fall in love with him and then let her sit and wonder if he’d ever leave his wife? Did she try to break it off, only to find out she was pregnant? What went through her heart when the stick turned pink? Was she overjoyed at the new life she’d created with a married man? Or overwhelmingly afraid that she may suddenly find herself a single mom?

I grimaced. I didn’t like thinking about Cindi with an “i” as a real person with doubts, fears, and insecurities. Better to think of her as the whore who broke up my parents’ marriage.

But was she?

About twenty minutes of troubling thoughts later, Jamie stopped and looked at his map and compared the coordinates to his GPS computer. “I think it’s right over that hill,” he said, pointing ahead to a cliff-face drop-off.

This was it! My pulse kicked up a notch in anticipation.

“Okay,” Jamie said in a low voice. “Let me turn on the camera.” He casually reached into the backpack and hit the record button, then closed it again. We had about an hour of run time before he’d have to switch tapes.

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded and we started walking again. Our steps suddenly seemed uncomfortably loud, and I had the weird feeling we were being watched, though there was no one in sight.

My heart beat loudly in my chest. What if we got caught? What if they found the camera? Would they destroy the tape? Or would they do more? Torture us? Kill us? Oh, why had I thought this would be a good story idea? I would never be able to get a job on Newsline if I were dead!

We reached the brink of the cliff and looked down. There, about hundred yards away, sat a big warehouse. I could see excavators and other digging equipment. Oil wells dotted the landscape. But no tunnel.

“Is that it?” I asked, disappointed.

Jamie pointed the camera lens to get a few shots of the building. “Did you expect mounds of cocaine piled out in the open?”

“No.” I shrugged. “But maybe at least a giant tunnel. This could be anything. Looks like an oil field. Maybe Miguel was wrong.”

“They want you to think it’s an oil field. That way they can go about their business in secret, I’ll bet.” Jamie zoomed in the camera and panned the landscape below. “But would an oil field have armed guards flanking each side of the front door?”

I pulled out my binoculars and took a look. Sure enough, there were two camouflage-wearing, AK-47-carrying guards standing watch. “Wow, you’re right.” I set down the binoculars, hands trembling with fear. What if they looked up and saw us? Would they start shooting?

Calm down, Maddy. After all, Diane Dickson would not let fear get the best of her.

Good thing Jamie was doing the camerawork. My shaking hands would have made the video come out looking like the Blair Witch Project.

“Ooh! The doors!”

The guards stepped aside as the large warehouse doors swung silently open. A battered van with Mexican license plates drove out of the building. It stopped right outside and the driver killed the motor, but remained in the vehicle.

“I bet there are drugs inside,” Jamie said.

I grabbed his arm and pointed over to the far left of the building. “Someone’s driving up.”

Jamie turned the camera to zoom in on the new car approaching down a dirt road, its tires stirring up a cloud of desert dust. When the air cleared, I realized it was a brand-new black Mercedes SUV with tinted windows.

“This is so exciting,” I whispered as the door to the Mercedes opened. I’d never been on a stakeout before and the adrenaline pumping through my veins was better than any high.

“Yeah,” Jamie whispered back, sharing my enthusiasm.

A skinny man with curly black hair, wearing cutoff jeans and a wife-beater stepped out of the SUV. Not the kind of guy I’d have expected exiting the expensive automobile. He rubbed a handkerchief across his sweaty forehead and walked