Page 100 of Lone Star

“People change.”

“Obviously.”

“I’m not a dumb kid anymore.” Frustration, now. “I’ve been married, and divorced, and my life’s shit, okay? I can’t afford to be picky like I used to be.”

Michelle snorted. Imagine trading in a life with Candy for this: concussed in a hospital with a dead brother and a murderer for a boyfriend. Melanie’s loss, but her own gain.

“Look,” Melanie said, bowing up, “I don’t care what you think of me. You don’t get to judge. You’re a–”

“I’m someone you dearly don’t want to piss off right now,” Michelle corrected, coolly. “What did Luis want with Pacer?”

The other woman met her stare; she was growing more defiant by the moment, and Michelle hadn’t expected that. “To get to the Lean Dogs.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. Because he’s obsessed with you freaks,” she hissed. “Because he wants to beat you, and take the Dogs’ place in the outlaw world. There. Is that what you wanted to hear? He said he wanted to ‘obliterate’ you. He used that stupid word.” She was breathing hard, eyes glazed-over.

Michelle had suspected as much, and so she wasn’t frightened to hear this, now – but deeply unsettled in a way she hadn’t expected. Here was a woman who had been mostly ordinary, and look at what she’d been twisted into. Luis had done that. Luis had the power to change people – or, perhaps more accurately, draw the poison that already lurked in them out to the surface.

“You knew killing some of Pacer’s crew would get Candy’s attention,” she said.

Melanie glanced away, and didn’t answer, which meantyes.

“You drugged Pacer to keep him quiet. To keep him from knowing what was going on.”

Again, no answer. Anotheryes.

“Did you help them kill him?”

Melanie’s head whipped around, mouth falling open. “What? No – No, I –no.” Her eyes welled up. Her voice cracked. “Luis told me he’d look out for me – and for Pacer. We were safe. We were…”

“He turned on you?” Axelle said.

A nod.

Michelle stood, disgusted now. “I hope it was worth it.” She glanced back, once, at the door, and saw that Melanie was facing the window, harsh overhead lights glinting off the tears that slid silently down her face.

~*~

Reese had watched Badger’s crew interrogate a man once. They’d bound him hand and foot to a chair with duct tape, and put another strip over his mouth. They’d used a hammer on his knees, and pliers on his fingernails, and they’d pulled the tape from his mouth every so often, when he’d stopped screaming against it, and asked if he was ready to answer their questions. He remembered the blood pattering down on the concrete floor; the stink of piss when the man wet himself; remembered the particular crunch of bone breaking when the hammer hit his kneecaps. In the end, it had been the threat of Reese that had dislodged the answers Badger sought. Reese had been standing over against the wall, half in shadow, watching as he’d been told to do, and when Badger pointed, and said, “Start talking, or I’ll turn him loose on you,” the man had caved in on himself and spilled his secrets.

The whole thing had been inelegant, crude, and ugly. Badger and his men had been so proud of themselves, so full of bloodlust and self-satisfaction. But where was the joy in beating a captive? What was exciting about taking a man to pieces?

Reese had spent his life honing his skills and his body for only the quickest, most efficient, most elegant kills. Torture was anathema to him.

But he knew torture would be practiced here, now.

The Amarillo clubhouse wasn’t a sprawling industrial complex like Dartmoor – it was, in fact, an underwhelming blip in a stretch of open scrub field – but it boasted a few outbuildings, one of which was a three-car garage with a concrete floor, and that was where they took their captive cartel member.

He’d been injured in the crash; one of his legs wouldn’t hold his weight properly. The prospect, Nickel, and a skinny, baby-faced Dog named Pup hauled him by the underarms inside, and pushed him down in a folding chair. Pup cinched the doors shut, and Ten went to secure their captive: hands taped together behind the chair, ankles taped to the chair legs. Ten didn’t put tape over his mouth, yet, but Reese didn’t put it past him.

“Fox said to wait for him,” he reminded.

Ten tossed the tape roll onto a tool chest and turned to give him another of those bristling looks he’d been doling out since the van crash. He hadn’t seemed able to get his mask back in place properly; it kept sleeping. “Do you see me doing anything?” he snapped.

Reese didn’t answer.

Nickel and Pup had moved over the by pedestrian door, Reese noticed with a glance; both of them shifted their weight in obvious nervousness.

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