Page 169 of Lone Star

Damn.

“I think you don’t want to see me do anything ugly to your future aunt. Brave, given that you outrank her, and that you’re pregnant.” He sat forward. “We don’t have to talk about her, though. You’re right: she’s not valuable as a hostage, only as a tableau when I’m done having a chat with you.”

Who are you?she wanted to ask.Where did you come from?Because this was no garden variety cartel boss, no. The creature studying her with rapt amusement was something far, far more frightening than that.

Fifty

It turned out not to matter that their guns had been taken back at the garage, because Mercy produced two duffle bags full of goodies once they’d taken care of the two officers who’d followed them to the gas station. Still in uniform, faces hidden by their caps, Mercy and Michael had gotten the drop on them at the pumps, locked them in their own trunk, and off they’d gone.

The van now sat parked along the shoulder, behind a clump of thorny shrubs. Their destination lay thirty yards ahead, the top of a dirt drive screened by tangled mesquite boughs. Adrenaline danced along every one of Candy’s nerve endings, breath choppy and fingers steady as he chambered a round on his borrowed .45 and holstered it.

Fox slipped his phone back into his pocket and met his gaze. “Albie and his crew are gonna come in from the other direction.” He nodded toward the street. “They’ll park off the road, like us, and cut diagonally overland to get to the workshop. We’ll split up: a few guys walk straight down the driveway, and the rest of us circle wide and go all the way around to the back of the workshop. It’ll be a hike, but it’ll triangulate.”

“I’m not here to question your strategizing,” Candy said. He surveyed the rest of his boys – his troops, for the moment. “Heads on the swivel, boys. Try not to get killed. Don’t be shy about killing them.”

He earned a chorus ofyes, sir.

Mercy had stripped off the ill-fitting uniform shirt and now wore a white Henley and Kevlar under his cut, his hammer propped on his shoulder. “Any suggestions about who goes in the front way?”

Fox smirked at him. “I’ve got a few.”

~*~

Eden climbed off the back of Walsh’s bike and surveyed the area while she unclipped her helmet. They’d pulled off along a stretch of lightly-wooded, uninhabited territory with just enough trees to provide cover – and shade. Her breath misted as she exhaled. She could smell sap, and dry earth, and above the ping of cooling engines heard the looping calls of songbirds. A peaceful spot. The road was old, its asphalt faded and full of cracks. No traffic. The rustling she whirled around to search for the source of proved to be a fox – a four-legged one, slinking off between two trees.

“They shouldn’t be out in the day,” Walsh said, then cast a glance up to the sky. It was already darkening, the sun winking through the branches in pale panels and coins. “It’s nearly dusk, though.”

“We need to move,” Albie said, his jaw still tight. “The others are headed that way, now.”

“Reese,” Walsh prompted.

The boy looked like a nightmare. He wore a tattered black hoodie, its hood pulled up to cover his bright hair. He’d painted his face, all save the very edges of his eyelids, and then tied a solid black bandana over his nose and mouth. He carried a sawed-off shotgun on a strap across his back, and pulled one of two handguns from his waist, suppressor already attached. His other hand produced a compass. He gave the barest nod, and then turned and set off through the trees, down the slight rise that would lead them to the workshop where the Holy Father terrorized his victims.

The others let Reese get a little ahead before following. Eden hadn’t heard one of his footfalls, but was keenly aware of the small cracks and crunches of their own as they followed.

Fox was loose, along with Candy and the others, on his way to meet them now, but she couldn’t feel relieved, not yet. If learning the truth about his father had put cracks in Fox’s foundations, losing his niece would shatter him. And Eden didn’t know what to do with the idea of a world in which the most unflappable man she’d ever met was a shattered ruin.

Fifty-One

Michelle badly wanted a drink of water. Her throat ached, and her tongue was too dry to do much good when she dampened her lips again. But she wasn’t at the point of asking for things: not yet.

“If it’s intel you’re wanting,” she told Luis, “you would have done better to kidnap one of the boys.”

He gave a dismissive wave. “No. It’s boring talking to men. I just get a lot of chain rattling, and ‘let me go,’ and ‘so help me God.’ You know: threats and pleading. They don’t know how to play the game.”

“The game?”

“Well, more of a dance, really.” The smile he gave her this time was lazy, knowing; a we-share-a-secret smile. “Men are clumsy. Your men, my men. They don’t understand the delicacy of this sort of thing.”

She stared at him as levelly as she could manage. Stupid, pretentious wanker. If he wanted to monologue like a comic book villain, she’d let him; it would buy the guys more time.

“The club fascinates me,” he said, like an admission. “Individually, all its members start as outcasts. Soldiers, and criminals; the bullied, and the weak; the addicted, and the vicious. They don’t fit in anywhere so they decide to fit together. They form their own society – and then they adopt every trait of the society that shunned them. They bully, and they discriminate. They flood the markets with all the vices that once tempted them. Kill and capture and torture.

“It really isn’t about wanting to be free, or to find peace,” he said, smile edged with bitterness. “Is it? It’s only about wanting control. Wanting power. Humans are no better than any other animal: everyone wants to be the strongest with the most territory.”

“Your point being?”

“I like that you don’t deny it.”

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