Uncharted Territory Ryan
He could have carried the Black girl on his own, but her friend insisted on helping. “I will take her feet,” the tall chick said. “You take her shoulders.”
“Where to?” Ryan said.
“Our room. I want nothing to do with this.”
Ryan nodded, but not because he had any intention of letting this tall Latina idle away the night in her room. She’d just shown herself to be handy with a fire poker. He’d find a use for her.
Ryan could be persuasive when he needed to be. It was why Frank O’Shea had first hired him, all those years ago.
Before they got to work, however, Ryan said, “What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Fernanda.”
“All right. Wait just a second, Fernanda.”
Thomas and Tabitha still stood behind the office’s desk, both of them looking shocked on some existential level. Stanley Holiday was blacked out. Considering the sound Fernanda’s fire poker had made when it connected with his skull, Ryan marveled the big man was even breathing at all.
Penelope was nowhere to be seen. Ryan needed to find her, on top of everything else that had just landed on his plate. He couldn’t let a teenage girl spend too much time alone in a place like this.
He’d made a promise. Etcetera, etcetera.
Ryan picked up the gun Stanley had dropped and carried it to where the tall boy, Ethan, was quaking on the floor next to the bleeding corpse that had once been the Hunter of Huntsville.
Ryan almost couldn’t believe it himself.
In the years they’d been cellmates, Hunter had always seemed more like a force of nature than a mere man, a compact mass of muscle and violence fueled by some private black fire.
It didn’t seem possible that he could ever die.
But dead he was, face down on the hardwood floor. A great crimson circle was spreading from his corpse. Ryan touched the boy Ethan on the shoulder. “You might want to move, kid. You’re going to get blood all over those jeans.”
Ethan didn’t answer him. Didn’t give any indication he’d heard.
Ryan sighed. In the weak firelight, he saw a familiar shape poking from the hem of Hunter’s shirt. Reaching carefully over the pool of blood, Ryan found a Colt Python tucked in the waistband of Hunter’s pants. “Here,” he said to Ethan, prodding the boy with the butt of the gun. “Hold on to this.”
Still Ethan didn’t move. Ryan left him there for a moment.
He placed both guns on the office’s desk, tugged loose the empty leather holster around Stanley’s waist, and strapped it onto himself.
The belt was built for much wider hips than Ryan’s, but he was able to get it snug enough to stow Stanley’s heavy magnum.
He carried the Python back to Ethan, crouched at the boy’s side. Together, they looked at Hunter’s corpse. A log popped in the fire.
“He cared for you,” Ryan said to Ethan. “He told me so himself.”
Finally, Ethan turned to look at Ryan. “When?”
“We smoked a cigarette together, earlier this evening.”
“You knew him?”
“Like, before tonight? No,” Ryan lied. He didn’t hesitate. This was another promise he’d made, the second of his life. “I never met him before tonight. He noticed me checking in this evening, saw me light up a smoke. He said he had a headache. He hoped the nicotine would help.”
“When… when was this?”
Ryan told the truth. “Maybe a quarter after six. Not long after I got here. Your man seemed like a decent guy. You’re all he talked about. He spoke highly of you.”
Ethan didn’t respond.
“He said you were the best thing that ever happened to him,” Ryan said.
Ethan started to shake again. Ryan patted his shoulder: firm, but kind.
“I’m sorry, kid. Really. I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the evening, but I need you to do something for me, just for a few minutes. Do you think that’s possible?”
Ethan didn’t speak, but at least he looked Ryan in the eye.
“I need you to keep tabs on our friend Stanley here in case he wakes up,” Ryan said. “Don’t shoot him. Just make sure he doesn’t go anywhere. I have some questions I need to ask him.”
Ryan offered the Python again. Ethan stared at it. “How do you know I won’t just kill him?”
“Because you’re not that kind of guy. Hunter said you’re the best man he’d ever met.” This, again, was the truth.
Ethan’s eyes clouded. “I’m not a good person. Hunter and I held up a diner before we got here. I watched him shove a man’s hand in oil. I… I enjoyed it.”
“Did the other guy have it coming?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, kid, but I have a feeling you’ve been pushed around a lot in your life.
It’s normal to want a little payback.” Even as he spoke, Ryan felt the pain in his nose where Stanley had crushed it yesterday in Mexico City.
He’d been smelling his own broken cartilage for the better part of two days.
Blood for blood. It’s the law of the desert.
“I’m not a good person,” Ethan said again. “A good person would have stopped Hunter from hurting anyone. Even if the other guy was shit.”
“This is a tough part of Texas. You can’t always make the right call. Doesn’t mean you’re evil.” Ryan shrugged. “I don’t trust a man who hasn’t had to face how ugly he can be. So it sounds like I can trust you.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You don’t have to. Just take the gun.”
Ethan looked Ryan in the eye. Looked at the gun. Without another word, he took it.
“Thanks, kid.” Ryan nodded at Stanley. “Don’t let him go anywhere.”
It took most of the way to room 5 before Ryan could persuade Fernanda to share the name of the girl they were carrying. Kyla. He’d never met a Kyla he didn’t like.
Fernanda was a different story. She was chilly, vaguely haughty, spoke from behind a thick shell of superiority, the kind only rich girls can grow.
Ryan suspected it was a defense mechanism, and he also got the feeling Fernanda really, really didn’t like him, and even though he had no idea why that could be, she was clearly in no hurry to share.
The woman seemed determined not to say a word more to Ryan than necessary, but he wasn’t daunted.
Before he and Fernanda left the office, Ryan had cleared up one thing with the twins. “Were you serious earlier? That if we want to see tomorrow, we need to figure out what happened to your cousin?”
Thomas had struggled to speak. “We have a place, a place to—”
Ryan waved this off. “You don’t have anywhere to hide. If you did, you’d be there already. You just want to know who killed the girl. I can’t blame you.”
One of those awful SHRIEKS had echoed across the desert, set off all sorts of alarm bells in Ryan’s mind. He’d never heard anything like that in all the time he’d lived in this part of Texas. He’d never heard anything like that in his life, full stop, and he didn’t care for it. Not one bit.
Tabitha had said carefully, “The situation here is… worse than you think.”
“You mean worse than the fact someone’s murdered your cousin?”
“Yes,” Tabitha said.
“In what way?”
“It’s… hard to explain.”
Another SHRIEK, this one from behind the door in the back of the office. Ryan had flinched. “You trap those things in your spare time?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why did you say we have until midnight to figure this out?”
Thomas had finally cut in. He sounded angry. He sounded scared. “No more questions. Either help us or don’t. The night’s already ruined.”
Everyone in the office had peered at him, even Ethan. Ryan said, “Ruined?”
Thomas had clammed up tight. When Tabitha had tried to speak, he gave her a sharp hiss. The woman hadn’t seemed thrilled about it, but she’d held her tongue. Ryan had frowned. He’d come back to these two.
Now, in room 5, he helped Fernanda settle Kyla onto the bed closer to the wardrobe, the bed whose mattress was slightly askew. Before the moment could linger, Ryan said, “I used to work for Frank’s operation, you know.”
Fernanda reached a hand under Kyla’s back. She withdrew it, now, to reveal a standard-issue, nine-millimeter Glock, the type all of Frank’s thugs carried around.
Fernanda pointed the gun Ryan’s way. “Get out.”
“I was quitting the outfit when I got arrested. That was around the time they started trafficking people.” Ryan held very still.
“The guns and the drugs—whatever, someone was going to move them across the border. But people? Slaves? No. I couldn’t handle that. I refused to work for them after that.”
“I said get out of my room.”
“I wanted to stop the trafficking. Truly. I was dating Stanley’s daughter at the time. She felt the same way.”
“I won’t tell you again.”
Ryan said, “How long you been in the States?”
Fernanda hesitated. She said, “That is no concern of yours.”
“Judging by your accent and your attitude, I assume you came from a little money. Enough money to get the right papers to enter the US, but not quite enough for a plane ticket. You and a bunch of other good-looking kids got on a bus. You needed a cheap ticket for some reason, but who doesn’t at your age?
Y’all thought you were safe. You and the other kids didn’t realize you were in trouble until the bus went off-road and started pulling up to the Rio. ”
The gun trembled in Fernanda’s hand. She said nothing.
“You’re lucky you got away before they sent you to Atlanta. Dallas. LA. They’ve got hubs all over, clearing houses for beauties like you.”
Finally, in a small voice, Fernanda said, “Frank took me for himself.”
Even Ryan, cynical bastard that he was, had been worried about that. The girl was, indeed, Frank’s type to a T. “I am so sorry.”
Fernanda said nothing.
Ryan said, “How long’s it been?”
“Three months.”
“Frank O’Shea normally burns through two girls in a week. Just like Stanley.” Ryan felt himself shudder. “You must be special.”
Fernanda said, “You have no idea.”
Something about her stare sent the willies climbing up Ryan’s arms. He looked at Kyla, the girl breathing slowly on the bed. “So you girls are on the run from Frank?”
Fernanda said nothing.