Page 159 of Lone Star

“Where are they?” Albie repeated, and this time, there was a scramble to answer, voices overlapping and tangling, stuttering.

“They’re not here,” one of the captives, the youngest one, said, raising his voice to be heard, quavering and audibly terrified.

Albie shifted toward him, lifting the hammer again.

“Wait, wait!” the boy gasped. “Please. I just take out the trash. I sweep the floors! I didn’t do anything to them.”

“But you know where they are.”

“Not here,” he repeated. “They came in just a little while ago. Enrique opened the back of the truck, and I–” He gulped, and shook his head. “They weren’t conscious. They looked dead.”

His hand slid up the hammer handle as his heart jumped up into his throat. “Were they dead?”

“No! No. One of them made a noise. The tall one.”

Axelle.

“Enrique and the guys put them in a van. They left about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Headed where?”

“I-I don’t–”

“The workshop,” one of the others spoke up, and was elbowed for it. He shot his friend a glare, and muttered angrily in Spanish. To Albie: “It’s outside the city. The place where” – a distant, different brand of fear flickered in his eyes, one that had nothing to do with this moment, and the hammer Albie held – “where the Holy Father practices.”

Albie had feared that – had been thinking about a dark room, and a robed figure, and two women he loved laid out on tables – from the first, but having it confirmed now sent a fresh chill down his spine, soured his stomach all over again. His pulse tripped erratically, but his voice was low, calm, threatening. “Tell me where. Tell me whereexactly.”

The man wet his lips, and looked regretful, but another aborted half-swing with the hammer had him talking again, fast and frantic. An address. And old house beyond the city, beyond the suburbs. Out in the middle of nowhere. A driveway latticed with tangled mesquite trees, and the house, tumbledown, ugly, abandoned. Another driveway, behind it, down into a gulley, a small workshop with a heavy, padlocked door. Windowless, reeking of blood.

Albie memorized the address, and he envisioned the place all too well.

He surveyed the pitiful group before him, now that he had what he wanted, and he knew an urge to more violence. What could it hurt to break their skulls open like fresh eggs? Who would miss them if they were dead? How great would the satisfaction be, to know that he’d taken the breath from them?

Out on the street, dim and growing louder, closer, he heard the roar of bikes.

The controlled clatter of rapid footfalls coming down the iron staircase from the second-floor offices.

He glanced up and saw Fox, his expression tightly excited, eyes gleaming, a sheaf of papers clenched tight in one hand.

“The boys are coming, I hear,” he said, as he hit the ground and strode to meet Albie. “Good. They’ll want to see this.” He flapped the papers toward Albie, too fast for him to read them.

“What?” Only half paying attention, because the hammer still felt so good in his hands.

“The top one’s a copy of a birth certificate. And look, underneath, photos.” He flipped through them, and Albie had the impression of a man, a woman, and a boy – their son, his skin a blend of her dark and his light. A lovely Hispanic woman, young, only twenty or so, and an equally young white guy, still awkward and gangly, his face pained.

“So?” Albie asked.

“I had to pick the lock of the safe these were in, all bound up in an envelope. This is blackmail material,” Fox said, like Albie was stupid.

The roar of bikes crescendoed, Dogs rolling up in front of the gate.

“Hold this.” Fox shoved the papers at Albie’s chest. “I’ve gotta go let them in.”

He trotted off with a pair of bolt cutters – and who knew where he’d gotten those – and Albie fumbled not to drop the papers.Blackmail material. He glanced down at them as they fanned back together, into order, the birth certificate on top.

He heard Fox shouting something to Candy at the gate. Heard the metallic clatter of the chain hitting the pavement, and the grumble of a half-dozen Harleys as they rolled into the lot.

The certificate was an American one, the state of birth listed as Texas, the baby, a boy, born twenty-four years ago. His name was Luis…

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