Coyote (Dust Devils #2)

4. Three

I had my fist knotted in the back of Big John's shirt, walking him across the yard by it.

Stupid place to hold a man his size. He could have planted his feet, torn loose, and left me standing there with a fistful of cotton. He didn't. Instead he let me steer him, leaning back into the pull a little, testing how far I meant to take him. My gut drew tight and stayed there.

"?Híjole!" Cruz came off the bunkhouse step with his phone already up and pointed at us. "Coyote. Bro. What is that? Is that a person?"

"Put the phone down."

"Mateo!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Get out here. You have to see this."

John stood a head and shoulders over everybody in the yard, bleeding through his bandages and looking like he owed them an apology for taking up so much room. Whatever he was sorry for, he could be sorry about it to me.

Mateo came out still dragging a faded band shirt down over his stomach. He stopped. "Okay," he said. "That's a big one."

"That's Goliath," Cruz said, filming again. "Linc says Coyote took out a whole biker gang and stole him."

"His name's John. Say it right."

Cruz lowered the phone enough to look at me over it. "That doesn't make this less weird."

John shifted his weight, and both of them stepped back. Then he laughed. The sound came up low in his chest and changed his whole face. I decided right there I'd be doing whatever it took to hear it again.

"Sorry about them," I said. "They're feral."

Cruz pointed at me. "That is rich coming from a guy with a snake around his neck."

Nimue slid her head out from under my jaw and tasted the air in his direction.

Cruz backed toward the bunkhouse.

The screen door banged, and Sierra came down off the porch wiping his hands on a dish towel. "Percy." He crossed straight to me and caught my face in both hands, turning it from side to side. "?Estás herido? Is any of this yours?"

"None of it."

"Then whose is it?"

"Bad men."

Sierra ran his hands down my arms anyway, checking. I endured it until he reached my ribs, then pulled loose. "I'm fine."

His attention moved to John. Then it moved up. "Oh," Sierra said. "Hello."

"Name's John." He held out one enormous hand. "Most people land on Big John."

"Can't imagine why." Sierra shook it, his own hand disappearing. "You're torn up, hijo."

"It's not as bad as it looks."

"That's what everybody says right up until it turns." Sierra ran the same inspection over him, with fewer hands. "Once you're finished with Rafe, you come sit in my kitchen. How do you take your eggs?"

"Any way you make them is fine."

"Coffee?"

"Hot."

"Good. I can work with that." Sierra reached for John's arm.

I had John's elbow out of his hand and tucked into mine before I decided to do it. My fingers didn't reach halfway around.

Sierra looked at my hand. Then at me. "Mm," he said. "I see."

"He's mine."

John's hand settled on the back of my neck. "I did tell him I wasn't running," he said.

Something under my ribs eased.

"Rafe's waiting," Sierra said. "Try not to make this more complicated than it already is."

"No promises."

"I know."

Rafe's office sat at the back of the main house.

The only thing in it worth looking at twice was the table, a wide round slab of turquoise set in dark resin.

Nobody knew where it came from or how it got here.

Rafe kept it because everybody who sat at it had the same amount of edge and the same size chair.

He was already in his seat when I brought John in. Ransom sat across from him, tipped back with his boots crossed at the ankle.

Ransom's grin disappeared when he saw John. "Jesus," he said. "That's the biggest man who's ever been in this house."

"This is Big John. The Javelinas had him in a pit past the river, making him fight hogs for money. I cut him loose."

Rafe looked at the dried blood on both of us. "How many Javelinas are still upright after this rescue?"

"Four of them aren't."

Ransom's chair came down onto all four legs. "You killed four of Zaroff's men, stole his fighter, and Linc says you rode out on his motorcycle." He looked at me like he was trying to decide which part offended him most. "In front of his whole crew."

"They should've stopped me."

"That's not how Zaroff will see it."

"I don't care what he thinks."

"I know," Rafe said. "That's the problem." His attention moved to John. "How many did you put down?"

"None, sir." John sat with his hands folded on the turquoise. "That's the truth, whether it helps me or not."

"He doesn't hurt people," I said.

Ransom looked him over. "That a combat medic badge?"

John pulled the collar of his shirt aside. A wreath and caduceus sat faded against his shoulder. "Two rotations," he said. "Charlie Company, Third Battalion, Tenth Aviation. DUSTOFF."

"You were a flight medic?"

"Sixty-eight Whiskey. Used the GI Bill for medical school after I got out. Conscientious objector while I was in."

I frowned because that was a combination of words I'd never heard before.

"Means he won't kill," Ransom said.

I growled at him. "I know what it means." I picked a fleck of dried blood off my knuckle.

Ransom tapped his fingers on the table. "How does a conscientious objector end up in the Army?"

"I filed for noncombatant status. Carried an aid bag instead of a rifle and did everything else they asked." John flattened one hand on the table. "I got shot at plenty. I never shot back."

"You kill anybody over there?" Ransom asked.

"No."

"Not even to save yourself?"

John moved his thumb once against his palm. "I found other ways."

Rafe tapped two fingers on the turquoise. "And after the Army?"

"Residency, then a clinic up on the rez. Then I left."

Rafe waited. John didn't explain.

"You still licensed?" Rafe asked.

"As far as I know. I haven't been near a computer in a while."

"A doctor's useful here." Rafe leaned back. "So here's where we stand. You're welcome to stay. This is a working ranch, and everybody works. You keep our people breathing, help where you can, and we'll keep you fed and give you somewhere to sleep."

"I don't take charity."

"Good. We don't offer it."

John nodded once. That was the whole deal.

Rafe turned to me. "You."

I crossed my arms.

"The Javelinas will come after him. They'll come after the motorcycle. Mostly, they'll come because you embarrassed Zaroff in front of his people, and a man like that will put every one of us in the ground before he admits somebody made him look small."

"Let him come."

"No." Rafe's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "You don't go looking for him. You don't slip off after dark and decide to settle this yourself. You stay on Pae Saco land until we know what he plans to do."

"I can watch the fence."

"No, you can't. Not while you're watching John."

I huffed and looked away.

"John doesn't leave this land without two of ours beside him," Rafe said. "And that's for his protection. Not for the river, not for the road, not for anything. The motorcycle goes into the far equipment shed under a tarp until we check it over."

"It's mine."

"It is evidence with tusks wired to the handlebars."

"It can be both."

Rafe closed his eyes briefly.

Ransom covered a laugh with his fist.

John ran his thumb up the back of my neck, one pass over the top of my spine. "I don't want to bring this down on anybody here," he said.

"Little late for that," Ransom said.

I glared at him. "You're one to talk. It hasn't been a year since you flipped the whole ranch over for Winston. At least I didn't fall into bed with a sheriff I should've shot."

"That sheriff is half the reason no deputy came asking about four dead Javelinas last night."

Rafe lifted a hand. "Enough." He looked at John. "The Javelinas know your face. Until this dies down, you stay close. If anything feels wrong, you tell one of us. You don't handle it alone."

"I understand."

"You hear that?" Rafe asked me.

"I heard it."

"Hearing me and listening to me aren't the same thing."

"I said I heard."

Rafe sighed through his nose.

I leaned into John's arm and pressed my face against the thick muscle there. He smelled like sweat, river water, and clean gauze. Underneath it was the warm scent of him.

I wanted my teeth in him again.

"He's mine," I said. "I'm not asking if I can keep him. I'm telling everybody now so nobody acts surprised later. Anybody comes for him, they come through me."

Ransom made a small sound into his fist.

I showed him my teeth.

Rafe pushed his chair back. "Then it's settled. John stays. Coyote behaves."

Ransom went to the door and paused there. Rafe walked off down the hall.

"Doc." He didn't turn around. "My brother took a lightning strike ten years back.

Dead six minutes before they got his heart going.

Coma ever since. A machine breathed for him.

A tube fed him." He worked his thumbnail into a gouge in the doorframe.

"Back in February, he opened his eyes. The hospital people talk in circles.

So I'm asking you. How much of him will I get back? "

"Six minutes without oxygen is the number that matters," John said. "Nobody can tell you exactly how much that took. Fixing the body's the easy half. That's just hard work and determination and some luck. The rest..."

Ransom stopped.

"Did you talk to him," John asked, "while he was under?"

"Ten years. Every month I drove up and ran my mouth."

"Then he knows your voice better than his own."

Ransom knocked one knuckle against the frame and went down the hall.

Sierra had a plate waiting before John reached the kitchen. Sierra set sausage, pancakes, eggs, and a mug of coffee on the table in front of him. John looked at the food like he wasn't convinced it belonged to him. Then he looked at me.

"Eat."

He picked up the fork. John ate slowly and cleared the whole plate without admitting he enjoyed any of it. Sierra hovered at the stove pretending he wasn't watching, a second batch already cooking.

Pearl trotted over and laid her head across John's boots.

I sat opposite him and watched his mouth. Every bite. Every swallow. The pulse working under his beard. I could've stayed there watching him eat all morning.

After a while, Cruz and Mateo came in arguing about fence posts and stopped when they saw the pancakes.

"You made him pancakes?" Cruz pointed at the plate. "On a Thursday?"

Sierra didn't turn from the stove. "I make pancakes on Sundays."

"There are pancakes on that plate right now."

"Those aren't for you."

Mateo slapped Cruz on the shoulder. "You've never been Thursday-pancake material. Accept it."

Cruz dropped into the chair beside John. "How tall are you, honestly?"

"Tall enough that my mother used to worry about it."

"How tall is that?"

"Six eight."

Mateo whistled. "Coyote could sleep in one of your boots."

"I could kill you with one of his boots," I said.

I went barefoot until Sierra started counting the spines he pulled out of me. Now I wear boots. I still don't trust what they do to the ground.

John laughed again.

I let the boys stay for another minute because his shoulders had finally come down from around his ears. Nobody in the room was trying to hurt him. Nobody wanted anything except an answer about his shoe size.

It came easily to them, taking him in. A plate, a nickname, a chair at the table, and John was one of theirs inside of an hour.

I'd had to plant myself at Pae Saco and outlast them. Year after year, rule after rule, before they stopped waiting for me to disappear. Meanwhile, Sierra made John pancakes on a Thursday.

I locked my jaw.

Then John caught my eye across the table and crooked one finger at me. I went over and sat next to him. He caught the back of my shirt and pulled me against his side, keeping me there while Cruz asked whether he'd ever hit his head on a ceiling fan. The sour thing settled.

Cruz pulled his phone out. "Can I get a picture? For scale."

"No," I said.

John drank his coffee. "I'd listen to him."

Mateo laughed hard enough to choke.

Sierra pointed the spatula toward the door. "Both of you out. There are posts waiting."

Cruz and Mateo dragged themselves up, complaining about injustice and pancake favoritism.

When John finished, Sierra took the empty plate.

"Anything else?"

"A shower and somewhere flat to sleep would be nice."

"There's a bathhouse past the kitchen garden. We built it around one of the springs. Coyote will show you. After that, take any empty bunk in the bunkhouse."

John thanked him, but Sierra waved it off and started stacking another plate.

I took John down the path toward the trees. The ground softened near the spring, green where the rest of the land stayed red. The cicadas had already started up in the heat. Somewhere by the barn, Cruz was still complaining loudly about fence posts.

John walked beside me with one hand close to his ribs.

"You good, big man?"

"Good enough."

"You heard Rafe. You get to stay."

"I heard him."

"You still look worried."

He glanced down at me. "I walked into a ranch full of strangers with four dead men behind me and a biker gang somewhere down the road. I'm allowed to think about it."

"I'll keep you safe."

"I believe you."

The bathhouse sat where the spring came out of the ground. The cedar walls had weathered gray, and steam leaked out under the roofline.

I opened the door, and warm air rolled over us. The air was wet, and it smelled like a hot spring. Rocks, iron, a little rot.

Empty, like Sierra promised.

John ducked under the frame. I followed and shut the door behind us, settling Nimue on the dry bench, away from the water. She coiled on the cedar and lifted her head to watch.

John caught the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head.

He filled the room, all broad shoulders and thick muscle. He had a pucker high on one shoulder blade and another low on his back. Both old, older than the fresh gauze wrapped under his ribs. Combat scars. I'd seen enough of them to know.

When he turned, gray ran through the hair on his chest and narrowed into a line that disappeared into his jeans.

I followed it down. My mouth watered, and I was hard so fast it hurt.

John watched me watching him. He didn't cover himself or look away. He just stood there in the steam, enormous and half naked, waiting to see what I would do.

I crossed the room, hooked one finger into his waistband, and pulled him down close enough to feel his breath against my face.

"Take off the rest."