Chapter 73: The Hunt in the Mountains

NARRATOR

Lucía watched the snow-covered pines slide past, the half-frozen rivers, the white rooftops of remote towns. She didn’t know how long she had been awake without closing her eyes. Isabella and Sofía slept in her lap, wrapped in wool blankets. The constant clatter of the train car was her only calm in the midst of terror.

Each station was a mortal risk. She gripped the seat whenever the train stopped, fearing she would see that face that had haunted her nightmares for years. But no one boarded searching for three fugitives. No one spoke her name. Silence was her temporary refuge.

In the distance, the Rocky Mountains of Alberta appeared as a majestic white line. The train announced its final stop in a small town called Jasper. Lucía put on her worn coat, carefully gathered the twins, and stepped down onto the frozen platform. The Canadian air was brutally cold, so clean it hurt to breathe it in. She didn’t know a single soul within a thousand kilometers. And that, for the first time in years, was an immense relief.

The town was small, lost among snow-covered mountains. A cluster of wooden cabin-style houses, a couple of shops with signs in English and French, a bar called The Grizzly, a Catholic church, and a modest inn across from the station. No one seemed to pay much attention to the young woman with two babies.

She asked for a room in her basic English, and the manager—a gray-haired man with kind eyes named Robert—handed her a key without asking uncomfortable questions.

“Second floor, last door on the right. If you need anything, let me know,” he said with a Canadian accent.

She climbed the creaking wooden stairs slowly, the girls asleep in her arms and her heart still racing. The room was simple but clean: a wide bed with a thick comforter, an old crib in the corner, a small wood-burning stove by the window. It was more than enough.

She laid Isabella and Sofía on the bed with infinite care, lit the stove, and sat by the window overlooking the main street. Outside, the snow fell slowly, silently, hypnotically. For the first time in a long while, fear did not completely paralyze her. She was far away. Very far from Mexico, from Damián, from everything.

No one can find me here, she thought with desperate hope.

Over the following days, she gradually adjusted to the town’s quiet rhythm. In the mornings she went down to the dining room to buy Tim Hortons bread and milk. The local women greeted her with distant but kind courtesy. No one asked too many personal questions. The neighbors were used to people passing through Jasper without leaving a trace—tourists and fugitives alike.

Lucía called herself “María González.” She said she was a Mexican widow who had lost her husband in a car accident and was rebuilding her life with her twin daughters. No one doubted her story. No one suspected anything.

At night, when everything fell silent under the snow, she thought obsessively about Mateo. She imagined him in his cathedral in San Cristóbal, speaking before a crowd of faithful, with that voice that still echoed in her chest and soul. Sometimes she turned on the small television in the room and searched for Mexican religious broadcasts online. Watching him celebrate Mass gave her something close to hope.

Even though she knew there was no possible path between them anymore, she needed to see him in order to keep breathing.

While she tried to start over in Canadian anonymity, hell was moving on another continent.

In Guadalajara, Santiago and Sebastián Salazar sat at a carved mahogany table in the armored office of the family estate. In front of them, one of their most trusted men handed them a manila envelope with documents and photographs.

“We’ve confirmed the name, boss,” the man said professionally. “The driver who intentionally ran over the monsignor is named Damián Reyes. He lived in San Cristóbal, but crossed the border illegally into the United States and is now in Canada, according to our sources.”

Santiago took the report. He read it with absolute calm, showing no surprise or emotion.

“Are you completely certain about the identification?”

“Yes, sir. Confirmed by eyewitnesses and security cameras. Apparently, the man is obsessively searching for a woman who fled from him.”

Sebastián frowned with interest.

“What kind of man runs over a monsignor and then flees to Canada chasing a woman?”

Santiago stubbed out his Cuban cigar in the crystal ashtray.

“The kind of man who is about to personally experience hell.”

He paused for a calculated few seconds, then spoke in a low voice, firm as steel.

“Find him. I don’t care how much it costs or how many people we have to send. I want that son of a bitch alive and conscious.”

“Alive, sir?” the man asked, surprised.

“Alive,” Santiago repeated emphatically. “I will personally ask him the necessary questions before he dies.”

The emissary nodded, understanding perfectly, and left the office in silence.

Sebastián looked at his twin brother.

“And if Mateo finds out what we’re going to do?”

“He won’t find out until it’s too late.” Santiago poured two glasses of thirty-year-old Scotch whisky. “But if he ever does, we’ll have already paid our blood debt. Family comes first.”

Back in Jasper, Alberta, the snow continued to fall relentlessly over the mountains. Lucía was beginning to settle into the town’s safe routine. Isabella and Sofía were growing quickly, already babbling words in Spanish, laughing when she lifted them into her arms and played with them.

In town, everyone knew her as the young Mexican widow staying at the inn. They felt genuine affection for her. They helped her when she needed something. Little by little, the constant fear began to lose ground.

Some afternoons she walked to the town’s Catholic church with the girls. She sat in the last wooden pew, Isabella and Sofía asleep in their blankets, and prayed the rosary in silence. She didn’t ask for much—only peace and protection. Sometimes she thought she could feel Mateo’s invisible presence there, as if their prayers crossed at some unseen point in the sky.

One December night, as she returned to the inn after buying diapers, she thought she saw a male shadow move at the end of the snowy street. She stopped dead, spun around with her heart in her throat, but saw no one. She convinced herself it was exhaustion and residual paranoia. She had learned not to let fear take hold again.

She lit the wood stove, fed the twins warm bottles, and fell asleep between them on the bed.

The next day, a black Chevrolet truck with U.S. plates pulled into the town’s Shell gas station. The driver got out, stretched, and went inside. He ordered coffee and cigarettes, then, as if casually, showed a photo on his phone.

“Have you seen this woman around here?” he asked the clerk in English with a Mexican accent.

The photo showed Lucía smiling, years earlier.

The man shook his head quickly, but his eyes betrayed him for a fraction of a second. He involuntarily glanced toward the inn across the street.

Damián noticed. He gave the clerk a “friendly” pat on the shoulder, smiled with absolute coldness, and returned to the vehicle without another word.

He had all the confirmation he needed.

Lucía was preparing a bottle of warm milk when she heard the low rumble of a vehicle stopping in front of the hotel. She didn’t give it immediate importance—cars passed by occasionally. But for some visceral reason, she felt a tight knot form in her stomach.

She approached the window cautiously. She saw a black truck parked directly across the snowy street. The lights were off. The windows tinted. The driver was not visible.

She stepped back slowly, feeling the familiar terror climb her spine. She closed the curtains with trembling hands. She tried to convince herself it was baseless paranoia. But something deep in her body screamed with absolute certainty that she was not safe.

That she had never been safe.

Night fell early, as it always did in the Canadian December. Lucía turned off all the lights, left the stove burning for warmth, and held Isabella and Sofía tightly against her chest. She did not sleep a single second all night.

Across the frozen street, Damián sat inside the truck, staring fixedly at the second-floor window. His beard had grown for weeks, his eyes were sunken and bloodshot, his hands tense on the steering wheel. He had spent months tracking her across three countries, but this time it had been easier. Too easy.

He had seen her get off the train in Jasper. He had followed her from the station to the hotel without her noticing. He hadn’t needed to ask much. Life in small towns was simple; information came with a fake smile and a few hundred-dollar bills.

He lit a Marlboro cigarette. Smoke filled the interior of the car.

“I finally found you, bitch,” he murmured with dark satisfaction. “And my daughters too.”

He opened the glove compartment and looked at the Glock pistol wrapped in black cloth. It wasn’t time to act yet.

He had all the time in the world. He wanted Lucía to feel fear first. He wanted her to know he had found her. He wanted to watch her suffer before killing her.

He rested his head against the leather seat, staring at the dimly lit window where he knew she was trembling in fear.

The night was long and cold.

And the final hunt was only just beginning.

In his mind, he was already planning every detail of what he would do to her when he finally had her face to face.

And this time, there would be no priest to save her.