Page 62 of Dina's Favorite Mistake

I’ll be lucky if an amoeba is what kills me.

What was I thinking?

Driving out here?

With a gun?

Pendeja.

Uncertain of her whereabouts, she staggered down the road in the direction she thought the ruins were. The area had changed so much since the last time she’d been here. It was so much more overgrown, and the roads were in much worse shape. The heavy rain wasn’t helping. She could barely see five feet in front of her as she stumbled forward.

I’m going to fall and break my neck.

And then get eaten by a coyote.

Or die from starvation.

All because I think I know everything but I don’t know anything.

She trudged toward the fork in the road and held the phone high, searching for a signal. She noticed the rain falling harder and faster. All around her, water was puddling. Along the roads, small rivers were forming.

I should have paid more attention when Tia Lola tried to teach me about flash floods.

It hadn’t been that long ago, only a few months. Tia Lola had let her drive a farm truck through the fallow fields where she was taking soil samples. There had been huge chunks of land missing, the soil eroded and messy drifts of decomposing trees and plants left behind. A flood, her aunt had said. One so fast and quick, it had wiped out a whole field of agave.

Camila glanced behind her, noting the elevation shifts. If enough rain gathered above her, would it wash down the hill and take her with it? She was a great swimmer, but she didn’t think she could fight against the current of water cascading down a slope.

Please have service. Please have service.

She lowered the phone and checked the screen.Yes!

Relieved, she dialed her mother’s number and waited for the call to connect. When it dropped, she cursed and stomped her foot like an angry child. Seeking out cover under a nearby tree, she leaned against the trunk and closed her eyes for a moment. Her aching head made it hard to think.

Worried she had a concussion, Camila dialed her mother again. This time, the call connected. She waited for her mother to answer, praying she would pick up an unknown number rather than let it go to voicemail. The call rang twice and then dropped.

Feeling helpless, she trudged along the road, gaining altitude and hopefully a better signal. She kept trying to get a call to connect. Twice. Three times. Four.

Her hand dropped as she noticed a familiar vehicle parked on the road ahead. The burnt orange Nissan truck was near the mossy, chipped stone cenotaph commemorating the battles and ruins. She saw the truck every day parked in the staff lot at the estate. She’d recognize it anywhere.

But why wouldhebe parked here?

As she tried to make sense of the truck being in the place she’d agreed to meet her father, Camila began to pull at invisible threads tangled in her mind. She thought back to the attack on her family outside the restaurant. No one had ever figured out how those two idiot hitmen who botched the assassination of Tio Rafa and Tia Sky had known to find the family there.

And how had Señora Campos gotten her helpers onto the estate to leave that phone? To shoot at Tio Beto and Steve?

Why had it been so easy for me to sneak around and get up to trouble?

Her eyes widened with horror as she stared at the orange truck. Everything began to make terrible, awful sense.

With shaking hands, she dialed her mother’s number again, praying that it would connect this time.

It did.

On the first ring.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Ama! It’s me!” Camila clenched the phone and frantically scanned for any sort of cover. Road behind her. Road in front of her. Steep ditches filled with water. “Ama! I wrecked the truck.”

---