Ethan
The motel’s cafe was a long bowling alley of a room. A few wooden booths at one end, a well-stocked bar at the other. A steaming silver buffet waited, empty, against the wall opposite the doors and windows.
Hunter proceeded to a corner booth in the back of the bar. He didn’t drink.
Because he was certain about something else: Sarah Powers had never gotten her car repaired in Ellersby, Texas. The story she’d told about needing a new engine fan for her Ford Taurus was horse crap.
Trying to work out what the hell kind of mess Hunter had gotten them into, and how they were going to get out of it.
But then Ethan had seen the look on Hunter’s face.
Hunter poked his head around the corner of the room’s short back hall, his shirt already off and bundled up in his hands.
He looked at Ethan with an expression of absolute tenderness—a gentle sort of concern so vulnerable it almost bordered on fear—and sniffed the shirt and said, “Sorry about the smell. At least it fixed my headache.”
“Glad to hear it. Where’d you get the cigarettes?”
“Just on the road. Want me to rinse off any of your clothes?”
The question had been surprising. Hunter was tidy enough, always cleaned up after himself around the house, but in the six weeks they’d been together the man had never volunteered to do something as banal as laundry. “Don’t sweat it.”
That gentle concern still hadn’t left Hunter’s face. His hazel eyes had practically sparkled with it. “Are you sure?”
Ethan nodded, baffled by this change in such a hard, hard man. For all his powers of empathy, he had absolutely no idea what to make of it.
“All right, then,” Hunter said. “Don’t go anywhere. I want to ask you something.”
And then he’d stepped into the shower, leaving a whiff of menthol smoke in his wake.
Ethan had listened as Hunter scrubbed himself down, shook out his hair, scrubbed his clothes and twisted them dry.
He’d listened to Hunter cough and cough and cough.
Ethan rolled his eyes again. The cigarette might have helped Hunter’s headache, but had the man stopped to ask what it would do for his lungs?
As Hunter finished up in the shower, Ethan had heard a soft choking noise from the pipes of the bathroom, heard the spray of the shower’s jets dribble down to nothing. God, he thought. Don’t tell him the motel was running low on water.
When Hunter had stepped out of the bathroom he’d been wearing nothing, not even a towel.
The scars on his muscled chest seemed to have grown deeper in his absence.
That tenderness in his eyes—so close to pain, or the fear of pain—hadn’t left him.
It still churned there, right under the surface, almost like the man was about to weep. As if Hunter could ever weep.
The man had crossed the room, naked, with a wary care, arched up on the balls of his feet, as if he was worried Ethan would send him away if he made too much noise.
Hunter settled at the edge of the bed. Gently, he’d turned Ethan onto his side and climbed onto the coverlet and pressed himself against the boy and said, “I’m sorry. ”
Again, Ethan was almost too stunned for words. Hunter, sorry? “For what?”
“For getting you into this shit.”
“What are we going to do when that Frank guy comes looking for us? Or the police?”
“We’ll figure it out. We have so far.”
“What was it you wanted to ask me?”
Hunter had wrapped an arm around Ethan’s chest. “Can I hold you for a minute? Just like this?”
Now, in the motel’s cafe, Ethan was watching Thomas mix his drink—something about the bottles along the back wall had caught Ethan’s eye, but he couldn’t say quite why—when a bell chimed over the door.
Kyla stepped inside, joined by a teenage girl Ethan had seen in the back seat of the gray minivan earlier this afternoon.
The younger girl hardly seemed to notice him now.
She shot one look at Ethan, risked a rapid glance at Hunter, and then settled herself alone in the booth closest to the silver buffet.
She flinched at something, frowning, shaking her head, as if she was engaged in a deeply unpleasant conversation here in the silent bar. Ethan couldn’t help but stare.
The girl had a round scar on her forehead that gave him all sorts of willies.
He said to the girl, “Are you all right?”
“My grandfather abducted me from Mexico City. He’s taking me back to Fort Stockton against my will. Does that sound all right to you?”
“Abducted you?” Ethan said, stiffening.
The girl twitched again, seemed to shrug off some comment he hadn’t heard. “I’m fine. I’m just angry. Aren’t teenagers always angry?”
“I don’t know many teenagers who call themselves teenagers.”
Thomas said, “Your drink, sir,” and pushed a frosty glass across the bar atop a thick paper napkin. Kyla joined Ethan at the bar, gave him a gentle bump with her elbow. She murmured, “Just leave her be.”
To Thomas, Kyla said, “I’ll have what he’s having. How long until food is ready?”
Thomas plucked up a fresh glass. “Any minute.”
Ethan looked from Kyla to the teenage girl to Hunter. The man was too distracted looking from the hall to the doors and back again. He was back to his usual self: watching all his angles.
Kyla was watching the front door. Ethan said, “Where’s your friend?”
“The restroom, apparently.” As if making up her mind about something, Kyla turned to catch Ethan’s eye. To hold it. “I need to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“Are y’all part of the outfit?”
“What outfit?”
“Frank O’Shea’s crew.”
Ethan shook his head. “I keep hearing that name today. Who even is this guy?”
“That’s a good enough answer for me.” Kyla turned back to Thomas. “Are we talking five minutes on the food? Ten?”
Thomas said, “Not long. It’s been some time since my sister had to cook for so many people.”
“You could go help her,” Kyla said.
The man chuckled like she’d told a great joke. He poured her whiskey with a smile.
An eerie sound reached them from the desert. It was a faint, high SHRIEK like the cry of an owl, but judging by the volume, it sounded like a larger owl than one Ethan had ever seen. His eyes drifted to the cafe’s windows, to the endless dark past the motel’s lights.
He said to Thomas, “Y’all have some big birds out this way?”
The man unscrewed a glass bottle to pour water into Kyla’s drink. “We have some unusual wildlife in this corner of the desert. Some specimens you won’t find anywhere else.”
From the kitchen there came another great clatter of dishes. His eyes following the sound, Ethan saw that the teenage girl was watching him again.
“My name’s Penelope,” she said. “My sister says it’ll save time if you know that.”
Ethan looked around the cafe. He was almost tempted to look under the booths, behind the bar. “Where’s your sister?”
Penelope said, “I’ve been trying to figure that out all night.”