Page 16 of Outlaw Road (A Hunter Kincaid Novel)

She said, “This is how it is. We are going to leave you. If you follow, I will light you like torches. I’ll have these,” she showed them the box of matches.

Jesse wasn’t paying much attention. He was feeling his head, noticing that every time he touched the burned scalp, it sounded like someone squeezing burnt toast between two fingers.

Johnny was listening, though. She didn’t have to tell him not to follow. That little bitch could go anywhere she wanted, long as it was away from him.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said.

Anda jiggled the matchbox at him to let him hear the rattling sound, then called to the women and walked into the brush toward the mountains.

***

Bobby and Hunter noticed the dark ribbon of smoke for a full ten minutes before they saw what was causing it. They turned on the side trail and stopped when they saw the burning hull of the Suburban. The sparse grass and brush for twenty feet around it was black and ashy. Two big men sat under a small mesquite thirty yards down the road. Jesse held a dirty tee shirt to the back of his head.

“The Barbosas,” Bobby said as they stopped and got out.

“You got any water?” Jesse asked, tee shirt to his head, “Shithead brother of mine, he brought tequila in our canteen, you believe it? Tequila and a shaker of salt.”

“Where are the women?” Bobby asked.

“What women?” That was Johnny, sounding mean because his brother was on his case. Bobby noticed part of Johnny’s forehead was blistered and half of one eyebrow was singed off. It left Johnny’s face looking lopsided, out of balance.

Bobby stepped closer so they had to strain their necks to look up. “You know me?”

Jesse nodded, “Yeah, so?”

Bobby grabbed a handful of Jesse’s hair and pulled up so hard the fat man’s eyes bugged. Johnny started to get up and got a fast kick to the face, the boot heel hitting high on the cheek and putting him flat on his back, stunned and looking at the sky.

Jesse tried to hang onto Bobby’s wrist with both hands and relieve some of the god-awful pain on his scalp. Bobby kept him low, with Jesse’s butt a foot off the ground so the man was off balance, his feet moonwalking backwards and kicking up dust, and all his weight hanging from his hair, “What the…What! WHAT! What do you want?”

“Where are the women?” Bobby asked, sounding like he was unconcerned and had all day.

“Okay!…Okay! I’ll tell you. Just let go!”

Bobby dropped him and waited. Hunter stood nearby with her arms crossed, like watching something interesting she hadn’t expected to see.

Jesse felt of his head, “Feels like my skull’s been peeled raw.” Bobby and Hunter saw the back of his head, a burned place the size of an orange, the hair around the edges crinkled and ashy gray, the skin pink, speckled with black spots and all of it shiny with a thin layer of ooze.

“They went that way,” Jesse said and pointed to the dark range of desert mountains that paralleled the road east and west as far as the eye could see.

“What happened that they left?” Bobby stood close, so Jesse had to crane his neck. Jesse felt it creak when he raised his head.

Skinny ponytailed bastard’s stronger than he looks, Jesse thought. “We were taking them down to a crossing so they could go north and not get caught. They were kinda flirty, so we thought we’d stop and have some fun first, party a little bit. But that little one, she’s mean. I’m not kiddin’. We’d pulled over here, was gonna have a few drinks and such, wait for the sun to go down. So we stop, and she throws a big paper cup full of gasoline on Johnny and me and lights a match and threatens to throw it on us while she and the two women got out of the car.”

“Where’d she get the gas?”

“We had a jerry can, case of emergency, in the back with ‘em.” Jesse rubbed the back of his neck, “Thing was, she threw the match in anyway. We barely made it out before the whole thing went up. I still feel like I got cotton in my ears from that damn explosion.” He stuck a finger in one ear, digging for something, “It’s like somebody slapped both my ears with the palms of their hands.”

Bobby looked at Hunter and said, “What do you want to do now?”

She looked in the direction the women had gone. “Back to Ojinaga. That’s where they’ll have to go.”

Bobby left the men and walked with Hunter to the Land Cruiser.

“Hey,” Jesse said, “Wait! You gotta take us. We’re hurt.”

Bobby got in the Toyota and put his head out the window, “You need to walk. Lose a few pounds off your sorry asses,” then he started the Toyota and drove away.

CHAPTER 4

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