Page 81 of Lone Star

Reese glanced back under his arm: Ten had braked hard, his bike sideways in the road, now, foot braced on the pavement. Gun in both hands, raised.

Reese wanted to shout at him, but it would have done no good.

He looked up, and hit his own brakes. Ahead of him, the back windows of the van shattered into spiderweb cracks. A hole blossomed in the rear door.

Stop!He wanted to yell. He didn’t know anything about the woman he’d glimpsed through the windows before, only that she was a victim in this, and that Fox, Candy, and the others didn’t want her dead.

Ten’s next shot hit a rear tire.

The van swerved, and skidded, shredding rubber flying like shrapnel. It fish-tailed off onto the shoulder, kicking up dust as it hit the loose soil. Bounced down a slight slope, hit a dip – and flipped.

Reese slid to a screeching halt, watching as the van rolled over three times, and landed with a loud crash and a plume of dust amidst a scrubby bank of grass and weeds.

He glanced back toward Tenny, who’d put down his kickstand and abandoned his bike in the center of the lane, striding up the road toward him, gun still in his hand.

Reese climbed off his own bike, and turned to meet him.

When Ten reached him, he tried to step around him.

Reese stopped him with a hand in the front of his jacket.

Ten paused, and glanced down at the fingers that gripped the leather, then looked up at Reese, expression flat. It was a rare glimpse of his real self, of the emotionless soldier he really was – a look Reese saw every time he looked in the mirror. More dangerous than any scowl. “Let go of me,” Ten said, calmly, “or I’ll shoot you, too.”

Reese held on. “Why’d you do that?”

Tenny let out a sharp breath through his nose, an impatient sound. “Because they were getting away.”

“What if you killed the victim?”

“That’s not my problem.” He moved to pull away, and Reese tightened his grip.

Tenny’s hand lifted, sharply, and clamped around his wrist. Squeezed until Reese felt the bones shift.

“I kill people,” he said. “That’s what I do. That’s whatyoudo. They don’t expect anything else.”

Reese let his grip go slack; let Tenny throw his hand off with a violent, angry motion, and stalk toward the van.

He turned and followed.

Just as they reached the van – upside down, its tires spinning – the rear doors opened, and three people spilled out onto the dirt in a heap. One was a woman, fresh red blood down her face, her hair long and pale. The other two were men dressed in black, wearing black leather gloves, and with black bandanas loose around their necks. They’d used them as masks, Reese thought, and then they’d come loose during the accident.

The woman’s eyes were closed, her body limp.

But the two men were conscious, groaning, and cursing. One had a dislocated shoulder – the uneven set of his shoulders unmistakable. The other had a bloody nose, red smearing his upper lip, visible on his teeth when he grimaced up at them, fumbling for the gun on his hip.

Ten shot him in the head. A shower of blood, and bone, and brain, and he fell back, limp and very dead.

The other one shouted at them in Spanish, and struggled to get away on his hands and knees, teeth gritted against the pain.

Reese stepped in front of him before Ten could get off another shot, and kicked the man in the face.

He howled and crumpled, clutching at his face, fresh blood leaking through his fingers.

“Is the driver dead?” Reese asked.

The man muttered something muffled.

His other hand was right there on the dirt, splayed out, and Reese stepped on it.

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