Page 164 of Lone Star

“You look ridiculous.”

“So do you.” He headed for the door. “Don’t get out of bed. You’ll tear your stitches and bleed out.”

“Fuck you.” But when he was in the hall, and the door was nearly shut, he heard the faintest thread of hoarse laughter.

Felt his own lips tug in response. Another facial malfunction, this one not unwelcome.

Forty-Eight

Candy had been placed in the second row on the van, just behind the locked metal grate intended to keep the drivers and officers up front safe. Through the mesh, and over the top of Cantrell’s head, he had a view through the windshield and of the street ahead. Afternoon was melting into evening, the shadows growing long and slanted across the pavement. Two cruisers rode ahead of them, and doubtless another trailed. Candy wondered, with no small amount of delight, how Michael and Mercy planned to get them out of the convoy and to someplace where they could uncuff them all.

Colin was still whistling, and though Cantrell’s shoulders looked tight, he hadn’t ordered him to stop yet.

Candy wanted to poke the bear – a bear most of them outweighed.

“So he’s your kid, huh?” he asked, tone conversational, but much too loud.

Fox put on an obnoxious Texas drawl. “That’s what the paperwork says.”

“Who is whose son?” Victor asked.

“Cantrell’s been holding out on us,” Candy said. “Our boy Luis is his kid.”

“Right there on the birth certificate,” Fox said.

Cantrell twisted around in his seat – which set the muzzle of his shotgun forward, pointed toward the dash. And gave Mercy a clear opportunity, when the time was right to take it. If the way his head turned, wicked little smile visible in profile, was any indication, he’d thought the same thing.

“That’s enough,” Cantrell said, and maybe he would have sounded stern to someone who wasn’t a Lean Dog. Maybe he left ordinary criminals shaking in their boots. To Candy, he sounded scared and desperate. “Knock it off, all of you.”

Candy offered him a lazy grin. “Knock it off or what? Your kid’s already trying to cut all our throats. You think you’re scarier than him?”

A chorus of laughingoohs went up behind him.

Cantrell’s jaw clenched, and his face reddened – but the whites of his eyes gleamed like a spooked horse’s. He opened his mouth to respond, and Candy spoke over him, growing serious.

“Look, I don’t care if you hate me. I don’t care if you’ve somehow convinced yourself you’re some kinda upstanding cop despite the fact that your kid is literally terrorizing this city.” He sat forward, and saw the tension shudder down Cantrell’s neck; saw the way he wanted to lean back from him, even though a metal grate separated them. “And right now, I don’t give a shit about that. Or about you, or about this.” He lifted his hands and rattled his cuffs. “That little fucker has my wife. And youknowthat. You arrested me knowing Michelle’s–” He couldn’t finish the sentence, biting the inside of his cheek hard to keep the possibilities from flooding his mind and rendering him useless.

He couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t get lost, couldn’t help her that way.

He swallowed, and his voice came out low and threatening; Cantrelldidlean back this time. “Whatever I am, whatever I’ve done, whatever you think about me for whatever reason – she’s innocent. Are you going to let an innocent, pregnant woman suffer just to get me? Because your son told you to?”

“It’s not that simple,” Cantrell said, strained.

“That’s pretty messed up, bro,” Mercy said.

Cantrell started to turn toward him, but Mercy brought the baton up in a swift, brutal arc and clipped him in the temple with it. Cantrell went boneless and flopped down into the seat – and then onto the floor of the van. Mercy watched it all with something like warm amusement, and didn’t attempt to catch him or slow his fall. His head thumped dully off the rubberized floor.

Mercy stood and stepped over him, grinning, key ring jangling as he pulled it off his belt and moved to unlock the gate.

“Having a good time?” Candy asked, mildly.

“Oh, yeah.” The gate opened with a squeal and Mercy picked out a different key that he used to open Candy’s cuffs.

“I like the hat.” The whole moment felt surreal. Candy half-wondered if he’d been hit on the head and this was a hallucination.

But, no, Mercy was moving down the aisle, turning everyone loose.

“Me, too,” he said, reaching up to scratch at his hair beneath the brim of the ill-fitting cap. “Don’t think Ava would, though. My girl: she likes the hair.”

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