Page 149 of Lone Star

“Can you hear me?” she asked.

His mouth had gone so dry that he had to swallow a few times and wet his lips before he could answer. “Yeah.”

Jenny’s brows knitted, and he read it as doubt. “Candy,” she said, gentler now that she had his attention. “We’re going to get her back. It’ll be okay.”

It’ll be okay. That was what you said when somebody was dying in the hospital; when the business went belly-up; when there was no hope left, you saidit’ll be okay, because empty platitudes were the best a person could offer.

If the Chupacabras had Michelle, it wouldn’t be okay. She’d be laid out under a starry sky, staked to the ground–

The image filled his mind, so sudden, so exact, that his stomach heaved. He clenched his teeth tight against the urge to retch.

Jenny’s hands tightened on his arms, and the pain of her sharp nails was the good kind, the focusing kind. He didn’t realize he’d bowed his head until she was leaning in close, her hair feathery against his chin.

“Listen to me,” she said, fast and low, no louder than this small, sheltering place between them. “I know this is terrible, and I know you’re scared – we’re all scared. But you’re the president, and we need you to lead. You can’t fall apart on us, Derek, not now.”

It was exactly the sort ofbuck up, cowboyline their dad or Crockett would have used.Shit’s bad, so step up.

He took a deep breath, and lifted his head. He couldn’t fight the fear, but he could channel the anger. The fury. Let it run loose to keep the fear from choking him.

Jenny stepped back, though she still touched him. “Okay?”

Not even a little bit. “Tell me what happened.”

She nodded, the faintest grim smile tweaking her mouth.Good job.

When Candy got hold of Luis, there wouldn’t be enough of him left for the feds to ID him. Not even dental records.

~*~

“Where’s Albie?”

Eden wore a pair of sterile gloves and pressed a butterfly bandage over the split at Tee’s hairline with one deft movement while she pinched the skin with her other hand. She straightened. “That should do it,” she told him, and snapped the gloves off.

“Where’s Albie?” Fox repeated. His voice sounded very flat to his own ears – too flat. His heart didn’t race, and his stomach didn’t roll, but there was a faint whining in his ears; a catch at the bottom of every breath. They’d taken Michelle, and that was intolerable. Was something he was going tofix. But he couldn’t fix it without a plan. Without knowing all the particulars.

Eden finally turned toward him – he’d very nearly grabbed her and demanded that she look at him – and he saw the wildness in her eyes, warring grief and terror and shame.

He felt a tug in his gut, and squashed it, fast and hard. No time for that. No time for worrying about how she felt about any of this.

“They took Axelle, too,” she said. “He went after them.”

Of course he did. “Fucking idiot,” Fox muttered, and turned for the door, flicking his sunglasses down off his forehead and back into place.

“Charlie,” Eden protested.

“I’ll be back.”

Two ambulances sat slanted across the parking lot out front, but it was obvious where the truck had backed away from the ruined wall, turned, and spun out toward the highway. Deep ruts like fresh wounds in the sandy spoil. The front fender of one of the flatbeds had been clipped, bits of shattered headlight glinting on the ground.

A fed wearing white gloves was pacing along the length of the track, one of Cantrell’s young helpers – the blond from the precinct. She swung around when she heard Fox’s footfalls crunching on the gravel, brows drawn low over the rims of her sunglasses. “Don’t walk on the evidence,” she snapped.

Fox swung a leg over his bike and clipped on his helmet. “Wouldn’t dream of it, love.” He cranked the Harley, and gunned it down the path the truck had left, kicking up a plume of dust, and hit the highway in the middle of two wide-set dirt tracks laid thick on the asphalt.

It gave him a direction, if nothing else. He opened up the throttle, leaned low over the handlebars, and flew.

The dirt trail ended after half a mile, as he’d known it would. But the road was a long, straight stretch here, shimmering with heat mirages ahead despite the cool. He didn’t check the speedometer; no local cop could have caught him had they been lying in wait anyway.

Albie, you fucking git, he thought, teeth gritted against the stinging wind in his face.What will you do by yourself? Take down a whole bloody truck alone?

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