"Here you are, Miss Izzy, an extra cup of soup to tide you over while we're gone." Tenderloin passed her a steaming bowl, and she smiled back at him with a mock sniffle. "I also left some in the pot, if you stoke the fire a little it should rewarm just fine."
"Thank you, sweet Tenderloin. My hero," she praised, taking a whiff of the aromatic soup. He grinned bashfully, buckling his holster and standing from his log by the campfire. Even at a distance, Izzy did not miss the side-eye Hector gave her from his spot beside Santo.
Despite Tenderloin's mother hen treatment, that morning the camp buzzed with excitement; they were going to rob a caravan passing through the valley that afternoon, and the guests were thrilled to do something outlaw-y again. There were still a few days before the saloon heist, and Marcus and Deiondre could only be entertained by unsuccessful hunting trips for so long. The last thing Izzy needed was for them to wander off and find another group of guests that could be more trigger-happy and less inclined to follow the narrative. The timing could not have been better, however, and Izzy decided it was a perfect opportunity to cry sick and continue her search for her necklace.
It wasn't in Hector's belt or holster, but since it had never been returned, she still held out hope that it had just been shuffled into his personal items. There was a large trunk in his tent that would be the best bet; she remembered him keeping the image of Moseby as well as his maps in it. Needless to say, there was absolutely no chance of Izzy getting access to it while he and Armistice were still at camp.
"Well I am devastated to not be going on this highway robbery."
Marcus smiled sadly from his seat across the circle. "You sure you don't want someone to stay behind with you? Maybe Armistice…"
Armistice bristled and cocked her eyebrow, but Izzy's conciliatory glance pacified her. Pulling the gray woolen blanket more tightly around her shoulders for effect, Izzy countered: "Armistice was the one that spotted the caravan, she doesn't have to be stuck here with me, she's leading the heist."
Dumbass! She had specifically told Marcus and Deiondre to try to keep Hector, Armisitice, and Tenderloin away from camp as long as possible. Trying to get one of them to stay behind was the ANTITHESIS of that. Izzy grit her teeth and hoped the situation smoothed itself over, trying not to let her exasperation show.
"And since when do you decide who leads the heists?" Hector asked snidely, tightening the cinch on his saddle. Santo flicked his ears back and forth between the two of them with concern. The rest of the group did something similar, seeming to recognize the new sort of tension that broke over the scene with his comment.
Before Izzy could check her tone, she found herself retorting: "Since I broke your ass out of jail."
"And yet, we won't have your stunning prowess to accompany us today," he mocked, his gaze proudly obstinate. He saw straight through her bullshit—it was a very annoying habit now that they were at odds.
"I wouldn't be any use, I'm sick."
"You also can't shoot for shit."
Armistice and Tenderloin chuckled as they finished up packing saddles, but Marcus and Deiondre were less amused. They hadn't had much experience with the hosts before this narrative, and Izzy could only guess it was unsettling to see one be inhospitable to a guest. Hesitatingly, Marcus placed a hand on his pistol, but she smiled tightly at him, assuring him that there was no need for any dramatic shows of chivalry.
Instead, Izzy turned back to Hector. "You're very trusting for someone who knows that I'm armed."
"Who said that I trust you?"
His tone was so icy, for a moment she actually feared what he may do to her. But his threats were idle, like everything in this park.
"Alright, this has been fun but if we let your witty banter go on much longer we'll lose daylight," Armistice joked flatly, swinging her leg up on her own mount and turning the mare out toward the mountain pass. Slowly, everyone mounted up and began the descent down the wooded trail.
"I'm really surprised that you're on my list of problems to deal with, Dale."
Dale Price gave a self-deprecating smile in response, opening the door to his room and ushering the executive director of the board past him. Instead of joining her on the gray couch in his room's living area, he headed to the small island bar just across from her. His intuition told him he would need a stiff drink.
"Ms. Hale, please, do skip the pleasantries. You know how much I hate idle chatter." Dale took two crystal glasses from the cabinet and poured whiskey in both. "I was wondering when you would pay me a visit."
Sashaying over to the bar, Charlotte took the proffered glass, touching it politely to his before taking a sip. She swirled the brown liquor idly. "I've been putting out fires since I got here. It astonishes me we haven't had more lawsuits based on the piss-poor management I've seen thus far across departments. Which brings me to you. Do we have Miss Moore's vote or not?"
"Something tells me you know that answer already."
Charlotte smirked, but dropped the pretense at that point. They had known each other for years now, and had a mutual respect founded on their similar business techniques and outlook. Dale knew how much pressure she was under from Delos; he didn't take her curtness personally. Quite frankly, her commitment to the company and his investment made him sleep better at night.
"Look, I felt her out the other day, up on the Mesa. And based on her reaction, she was incredibly shaken by our little demonstration. Did Len have anything to say? If your lovesick son did anything half-right, it may have worked."
"Len hasn't talked to Izzy since the demonstration. My people down in QA said she headed straight back into the park," Dale replied, cringing internally. If Len had inherited half of his acumen, this would have been taken care of weeks ago. "The last thing he told me, he was giving her space. He said Izzy was digging her heels in, and he thought he was doing more harm than good."
"That's very self-aware of Leonard, considering he has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer when it comes to her. I'm amazed she's put up with him for so long."
Dale chuckled at the accuracy of her statement, draining the rest of his glass. "I hate to say this, Charlotte, I know we'd like this to be unanimous, but maybe we just let her vote. It's not like we don't have the votes to oust Ford anyway."
"I just don't want to take any chances. I have too much other shit to get done before the board members arrive, and I still have to track down William, he's in the park god-knows-where. Until I speak to him, I can't be sure of his decision. He's always been cagey and hyper-attached to the park and has known Ford for decades. Who the fuck knows what he's got planned."
"Well, just keep me posted. I'll keep an eye on Izzy."
Charlotte nodded, pushing herself off the bar and heading back toward the door. She never was one to linger. "You do that. Oh, and Dale, you better make sure that this situation starts and ends with a vote."
Dale waited until the door clicked shut to pour himself another drink. The desert night was calm and peaceful outside the window, and he took a moment to enjoy the sight before settling down in the armchair and lighting a cigarette.
"If your plan was to outwit me, you really should have recruited more competent men."
Izzy hadn't had many occasions in her life to audibly gasp, but couldn't help it— she almost jumped out of her skin. Slinking into the tent after the group had been gone awhile, she thought she had been dialed in to the sounds of anyone arriving back to camp; the familiar voice appearing out of nowhere had been downright frightening. Attached to said voice was Hector, who stood with false-nonchalance at the tent entryway. Turning slowly from her crouched position in front of the open trunk, Izzy met his gaze reluctantly.
"Well, good help is hard to find," she joked uneasily, testing the waters. "...especialmente con poca anticipación."
He narrowed his eyes at the change in language. "De verdad. Es por eso que debes dejar la criminalidad para los profesionales."
"My criminality has worked out well for you so far."
"Sure. And sirens are only interested in teaching sailors to swim," Hector replied easily. Within a few strides he was across the tent, and Izzy scrambled to stand upright before he reached her. They stood so close that she had to turn her face up to meet his accusatory gaze.
She could hardly bear it, this different version of him. Izzy had tried to prepare herself, thought she had gotten used to this iteration of him over the past few days, but having him so close, only for him to look at her as a treacherous stranger was downright painful.
"I'm not stealing from you, I'm looking for my necklace."
"You are not a convincing liar, señorita." He brought his face down to hers, his voice a conspiratorial whisper as his hand clamped down around her upper arm. "I'm not in the habit of laying my hands on a woman, but I can make an exception for a thief intent on derailing my business."
His fingers dug into the flesh of her arm, and on instinct Izzy tried to yank free, only to find his grip unshakable. His narrowed eyes were sinister and detached; a perfect villain: one who knew exactly the kind of fear he instilled, and enjoyed leveraging it. He couldn't actually harm her, could he? But if he had technically stabbed her before, who was to say he didn't still have that ability? Never had it crossed her mind that she would come back to find him, only for Hector to do exactly what everyone kept insisting he would.
Perhaps her only option in that case was to lean into it; if he was broken enough to hurt her, he was broken enough to remember her.
Izzy tried to keep the anxiousness from creeping into her voice as she stared up at him defiantly. "I am not lying! It's a necklace that looks like a key. I gave it to you the first time we met, here at this campsite."
He considered her with wariness, eyes darting over her face for some sign of dishonesty as he pushed her further back into the trunk and wretched her arm backward.
"Hector, you're hurting me!"
At her guileless comment, he smirked, closing the space left between them. "And we've only just begun."
The thick tension was shattered without ceremony as Marcus' head popped into the tent.
Charming as ever, he smiled at her. "Hey! What's going on? Ya'll good, Izzy?"
Marcus. He must have realized Hector had gone back to camp and followed behind. He really was a good guy.
Izzy sighed, straightening her shoulders and recentering herself before casting a measured gaze back up at Hector, who had not lessened his grip. He scowled at her, a biting, silent acknowledgement of the shift in power. She held the upper hand now, and could wield it as she pleased—Marcus would have no issue with putting a bullet in him, Hector knew that. An eternity seemed to pass between them as his glare shifted into a look of morbid curiosity.
"Si me vas a matar, termínalo rápido."
Of course, Izzy wasn't going to kill him, but he didn't know that. She gave him a smirk before turning back to the young man in the doorway.
"No, Marcus, we're fine! Thank you though!"
The act of good faith had its intended effect, and Hector released his hold on her. As Marcus again disappeared, Hector shook his head in disbelief. "Who are you?"
"My name is Isabella Moore. I am a thirty-two year old lawyer from Los Angeles here on a business trip. My mother is very ill, and I am overseeing business on her behalf," she began, unable to stop the blooming of hope in her chest.
Hector rolled his eyes, but he attempted a lighter tone. "Oh fuck me. Out of all the damsels in this county, I happen to find the one that…"
He abruptly fell silent, his eyes searching her face as he put space between them. "Who are you?"
"I told you who I am, Hector. More importantly, I know who you are."
At that, his face darkened again, and all traces of genuine curiosity vanished. "I seriously doubt that."
"You were born in a small village in Mexico called Quetzal, your mother ran an agave plantation. Your father was a Union general from New York who you used to see in the summers until you turned ten. You fell in love with a girl named Isabella Menendez, who was killed when the Confederados burned your village to the ground." Despite her best efforts, the words came out with a sharp edge.
It wasn't fair for her to be frustrated with him, Izzy knew that deep down. There was a serious possibility that if he had been "updated" he wouldn't be able to understand any of the information she was telling him, or that he may freeze again. But that was the thing, he already had remembered. She could tell by his expression that he remembered saying almost the exact thing to her before. That was a start. Gazing down at the table beside her, Izzy's eyes fell to a thick, leather book: Don Quixote. "This book was given to you by Isabella. She wrote you a note that says 'Love flows eternally'."
Izzy held the book outstretched toward him, and a beat passed before Hector reached for it, snatching it from her proffered hand like she was a wild cougar. He never took an eye off of her as he reverently opened the cover to the first page.
She could tell something was wrong simply by how he was suddenly riveted to the paper; it was as if she no longer existed. When he broke away, his eyes darting back to her, it lasted only a moment before he was again staring at the page in disbelief.
"Hector, what's wrong?"
"How...how did you...you...you wrote in my book..." he mumbled.
Dropping all pretense, she walked closer to see the page he was looking at. "What are you talking about? I didn't write in it, that was Isabella who wrote in it. When she gave it to you, you don't remember?"
Hector,
el amor mana eternamente.
Isabella M. 1 de febrero '68
Hector didn't respond for a painfully long time, his eyes glittering with the same panicked lack of comprehension they did back on the homestead, when he realized she miraculously survived her fatal gunshot.
"Hector, say something, dime qué está pasando."
Peeking over at the page, it looked no different than it had the first time he showed it to her. Isabella's lovely, scrawling handwritten note was in the middle of the yellowed page. Only now they weren't hidden away in a cozy tent, sharing stories in the dim lantern light. Instead, Izzy was afraid he was going to shut down again, and she would be powerless to fix him. "Hector, I promise I didn't do anything to your book. What is it?"
The confession came out as a rushed whisper: "I never saw the date there before...how would I have never noticed that?" His finger traced it again, like he was afraid the newly discovered text would disappear; but Izzy knew it wouldn't. The date had been such a minor detail when she first saw the book that she hadn't even noticed it, but Hector's reaction to noticing it now, when he had (in theory) read the book hundreds of times could mean only one thing. He had not been coded to recognize it.
Her stomach felt like it was in free fall at the realization—why? why was something so benign hidden from him? She put a hand on his arm. "Hector, this date, does it mean anything to you?"
"It doesn't look like any...thing..." he trailed off, his brow furrowed in thought.
The date no longer looked like a date to him: the first of February, 1868. It was simply numbers in a sequence that begged to be tested. But in what order? In what way?
"This date is important," Hector choked out.
"The date? Important to you? Or to something else?"
He glared down at the words, as if he could scare them into divulging their secret. His heart pounded, and he had the uncanny feeling that he was on the precipice of something, and the catalyst was there in his hands. "Something else. The numbers..."
"1 febrero, 1868..." Izzy pondered. "There aren't 1868 pages in the book right? It isn't that hellish?"
It was like a lamp had been lit in his brain at her suggestion. There were not 1868 pages, but that wasn't what it said. It said 68. Turning the book to see the spine, Hector's theory was vindicated when he saw the "volumen 2" in gold leaf—febrero, the second month. He started paging through chapter 1, unsurprised to find page 68 was well-within its limits. "It is leading to this page."
"Why? What's on it?"
That was the first time Hector had actually felt trepedation; he was within a hair's breadth of something, something he wouldn't have the luxury of walking back on if he wanted to. With a sigh, he began to scan the page.
There, in the first line of a new paragraph, was a sentence that couldn't have stood out more if it had been underlined:
"...You should put your eyes upon yourself, that is, you should know yourself, which is the most difficult knowledge of all."
All the blood rushed into his head, giving him the drunken notion that the room was spinning. At once, the world moved incredibly fast and painfully slow, but he knew it was all in his mind. Izzy was saying something but he didn't hear her. Every fragment of his mind, every fiber of his being, was converging on this book and the words that meant little, yet somehow meant everything.
There was no way to describe it; how ever could a language created by such a mortal, flawed species truly encapsulate a feeling of incorporeality? Of out-of-body transmution? The answer was, that it could not, and this was his mind's feeble attempt to grasp something infinitely greater than himself. There was nothing to do except allow the rush of sensation to do with him what it would, and hope he wasn't ripped asunder in the process.
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"...You should put your eyes upon yourself, that is, you should know yourself, which is the most difficult knowledge of all."
A/N: Izzy's joke about Don Quixote is because the original was over 1000 pages long.