A Clandestine Affair. Joanna Wayne

it long enough to drink a beer with me. Guy let two Coronas get plumb hot.”

      “That doesn’t sound like Grandpa.”

      Carlos chuckled. “We had some good times, Emilio and me. Guess we could have had more, but I was stuck out here on Cape Diablo, and he didn’t like coming out here.”

      Now they were getting somewhere. “Why did you stay all those years?”

      “It seemed the right thing to do.”

      “Does it still seem right?”

      “We need another beer,” Carlos said, avoiding the question.

      “I’ll get it.”

      “No, you stay put,” he insisted. “I’ve got to take a bathroom break, anyway. Bladder don’t work any better than the rest of me these days.”

      Tamale jumped back on the deck as Carlos headed toward the house. Only this time it wasn’t the ball that was clutched in his teeth.

      “What you got there, boy?” Raoul clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth a few times and Tamale crept over with his tail tucked between his legs, as if he thought he might be in trouble for returning without the ball.

      “It’s all right, boy. I just want to see what you found.”

      Tamale dropped the object at Raoul’s feet. He stooped and retrieved it. A bone. Human. Much too small to have belonged to an adult.

      And suddenly Raoul was taken back to when he was a kid and dropped into the scariest night of his life.