Page 146 of Lone Star

The man who’d entered threw the tray he was carrying at Gringo’s head.

Gringo brought up an arm and deflected it, sent it crashing into the wall. He reached for his gun, after, but the thug already had his in his hand, was already lifting it. He’d won the draw. He wouldn’t hesitate.

Jinx held the TV remote in his hand, and he threw it. It struck the man in the forehead, and bounced off.

It didn’t slow him down for long – his eyes shut on instinct, and he grunted, and fell back a half-step, more startled than injured – but just long enough to give Gringo a chance to act first. Jinx was already braced for the gunshot, the way it would sound deafening in the confines of this tight, tiled room.

But Gringo didn’t shoot. He lunged forward, cracked the gunman’s hand with the end of his own weapon – a satisfying crunch, and the gunman’s hand opened on a spasm, and the gun clattered to the floor – and chopped him in the Adam’s apple with the side of his hand.

The man choked, because anyone would have. His eyes bugged, already tear-slick, and he let out an ugly wheezing bellow. But the attack didn’t drop him like it might have with a smaller man. He reached up with both his bear-paw hands, and then he and Gringo were grappling, shoving at one another. The thug tried to wrench Gringo’s gun away, even as he gasped, and stuttered, and coughed.

Idiot!Jinx thought. He should have shot him, consequences be damned.

He started to reach for the call button on his bed, but that would draw innocent nursing staff into the chaos. He spotted the gun on the floor, only a few strides away – a few normal, uninjured strides away.

Shit.

The gunman got a hand on Gringo’s neck, his own throat bulging, the veins distinct. His face was red, and he didn’t seem able to breathe, but he had his other hand fisted in Gringo’s shirt, and it was only a matter of time before he took total control of the fight.

Jinx clenched his teeth, braced himself, and rolled onto his good side.

Even that small, ordinary movement sent bolts of pain shooting through his pelvis, and down his leg. Fierce, fiery pain that traveled up through his stomach, radiating through his chest, shooting down to his toes as it lit up every nerve pathway with fresh agony. Black spots crowded his vision. His stomach rolled; he tasted salt under his tongue. Throwing up or passing out were distinct possibilities.

He pushed through it; he had to. His body screamed, and his throat closed up tight on a real scream. He gripped the bed rail, and swung his good leg down. It trembled, and was weak; his knee threatened to give.

There was still such swelling and damage in his hip that he couldn’t swing the bad leg down – not on his own. He grabbed his thigh with shaking hands and forced it over. Everything went white a second, the pain vibrating at an audible frequency, a high whine in his ears like a bad motor. When his toes skimmed the floor, the pain crackled all the way up the limb, took breathtaking hold in the ruined crater in his hip.

This was terrible, so terrible. His body sent him every kind of warning signal.Stop, you dumbass! Stop, you can’t do this!

But he could hear Gringo and the cartel thug shoving at each other, shoes squeaking on the tile, grunting and hissing and, in the thug’s case, gasping wetly.

Jinx marshaled every bit of strength, kept his teeth gritted, held tight to the bedrail, and lurched out of bed.

He lost his vision a moment, the black of unconsciousness pressing against the white of agony. His legs wouldn’t hold him. It felt like something gave way in his hip; swore he felt things tearing and snapping and breaking. He went down, but it was a controlled fall. He managed to pitch forward, and catch himself with his hands. As his sight was fizzing back to life, his gorge rising up his throat, he grabbed the gun, and made one last agonizing twist onto his side so he could aim it.

Gringo and the thug looked like they were dancing, roughly, swaying back and forth, pushing and then pulling, trading the upper hand. They were trying to choke one another, and he would have laughed about it if circumstances were different.

“G, play dead,” Jinx shouted.

For maybe the first time in his life, Gringo listened. He went totally limp, and the thug, surprised, lost his grip on him.

Jinx pulled the trigger, and blood showered the sheetrock of the wall in bright droplets. The shot bounced off the walls, obscenely loud. The Chupacabras hadn’t thought to equip their muscle with suppressors.

The thug went down hard, not dead yet, but dying, big legs kicking uselessly, making a few last gasps for breath.

Gringo scrambled to his feet and kicked the dying man. “Fucking shit.” He looked up at Jinx. “Aw, shit, dude, did you fuck yourself up?”

“Big time. Help me up.”

Beyond the door, he could hear shouts, and running. Someone called some sort of code over the PA system, a crackled voice calling for calm. Heard a scream. Heard a male voice bark, “FBI, move! Get out of the way! Stay down!”

“The feds,” Gringo said, going to a knee beside him on the floor. “Shit, this is bad. This is really bad.”

Jinx didn’t know if he meant the situation, the dead man, the feds, or Jinx’s pathetic body lying prone on the floor, but clarification didn’t matter; it was all bad.

“Move!” the voice in the hall shouted again, and then the door opened.

Jinx glanced up, and was startled to see Reese, one of Fox’s little proteges, in the threshold, a gun in his hand. Behind him, he spotted Fox’s brother, the one who should have been upstairs in the ICU, leaning on a young guy in a suit, clutching a wheeled IV pole, bandaged and looking like death warmed over.