7. Six
I woke with a knife against my throat and a man I didn't know sitting on my chest. Two more stood behind him, all three wearing the Javelinas' cut.
Fuck.
"Sleeping Beauty wakes up." The man on top of me grinned. He had a gap between his front teeth and smelled like whiskey, cigarettes, and old sweat. "Morning, big man."
I'd lasted until dark in the bunkhouse. Then Cruz started snoring, Mateo started talking in his sleep, and the mattress sagged under my knees with both feet hanging off the end. I told Cruz I was moving to the equipment shed and carried my bedroll across the yard.
The shed was quiet. The floor was flat, and the motorcycle Coyote stole sat beneath a tarp on the other side of the room. Best decision I'd made all week, right up until somebody put a knee on my sternum in the dark.
The younger Javelina stood near the bike with a cigarette burning between his lips. He pulled the tarp away.
"You know whose this is?"
"Not mine."
"It's ours, asshole." He crouched and knocked two fingers against the fuel tank. "Zaroff doesn't lose things. He gives them some distance first. Makes it more interesting when he takes them back."
The third man stayed by the door, a pistol loose against his thigh. He was the largest of them, though nowhere near my size. None of them were. The man on my chest knew it too. He kept his weight forward, and the knife pressed hard enough to dimple the skin beneath my jaw.
"That's a long drive for a motorcycle," I said, and kept my hands flat on the straw where all three of them could see them.
The smoker laughed. "We came for four bodies. Your little boyfriend put four of ours in the ground, so we take four out of this place. Then it balances."
"If you wanted me dead, I'd already be dead."
"Sure." He took another drag. "But Zaroff wants a message sent, and a message doesn't do anything if nobody can tell who signed it."
"Take the bike. Let me up, and I'll go with you. No trouble."
The man on my chest laughed. "Five months in that pit, and you never once laid hands on one of us," he said.
"Not when we chained you. Not when we threw you in with the hogs.
Not even when Zaroff had you beaten for refusing a fight.
" The tip of the knife pressed harder. "Boss said we could sit right on top of you and you still wouldn't do shit. Looks like he was right."
He shifted his weight to climb off me, and the knife left my throat.
I caught his wrist in both hands and cranked it backward until the joint broke.
He screamed and fell sideways. The knife dropped into the straw.
The smoker reached for the pistol at his waist. I kicked him above the knee. His leg folded, and the gun came loose as he went down. It hit the floor and skidded under the workbench.
Then the third man jumped on my back. His forearm closed around my throat.
I planted one foot under me and stood with him hanging off my shoulders, choking me from behind.
I drove backward into the wall until the whole shed rattled.
Once. Twice. His grip loosened the third time, but he still didn't let go.
The smoker came off the floor and buried a fist in my stitched side.
Pain ripped through me. My knees gave out, and the man on my back rode me down into the straw. A boot caught me in the ribs. Another clipped the side of my head.
I rolled to one side and brought my arms up to protect my face. Warmth spread under the dressing on my ribs. Dammit, I'd torn something open.
The man with the broken wrist sat against the wall, holding it to his chest and cursing me, my mother, and several generations of my ancestors in Spanish while the smoker kicked me onto my back.
"Not so big down there, are you?"
"Still bigger than you."
He kicked me again.
"Yo, Doc!" The door banged open, and Cruz stepped in.
"You good? I heard something hit the wall and thought maybe you fell off that bedroll you swore was better than a real bed, which, for the record, I still think you should've cleared with Coyote like I said, but you said you'd square it with him yourself and I figured—"
He stopped.
The third man swung his pistol toward him.
"Cruz," I said. "Run."
Too late. The smoker caught him by the collar and dragged him inside. Cruz's hands came up. He looked at the blood, then the knife, then me on the floor.
"Okay," he said. His hands stayed up. "I didn't see anything. I'll walk out, go back to bed, and forget the entire concept of this building."
The smoker locked an arm around his throat. "That makes two," he said. "Two more, and we're even."
I pushed myself up. The larger man planted a boot between my shoulders and forced me back down. His pistol pressed against the base of my skull.
"Easy, Doc."
The smoker looked at me over Cruz's shoulder. His cigarette had burned nearly to the filter, but he kept it in the corner of his mouth. "Go ahead, big man. Do something. I fucking dare you."
Cruz stared at me. The dropped pistol lay beneath the workbench, less than a foot from my hand.
My grandfather put a gun in my hands before he gave me a fork.
Traveling shows were already dying when my grandfather kept his running on trick shots and three generations of bad judgment.
He taught me to shoot a candle out at thirty feet.
A card from a woman's fingers. A cigarette from a man's lips.
The rule was the same every time. Never point a loaded gun at a person.
I reached under the bench and closed my fingers around the pistol.
The boot pressed harder between my shoulders. "There you go," the man above me said. "Now we find out what kind of man you are."
I rolled onto one hip and brought the gun up. At this distance, I could have killed the smoker before his finger tightened. The man above me would have been next. The broken-wrist man sat against the wall with nowhere to go.
Three men, three shots, and I had the placement on all of them before I finished the thought. Chest, chest, throat. Thirty years of putting my hands inside people had taught me exactly where they came apart.
Cruz shut his eyes.
I moved the sights off the smoker's face and settled them on the burning tip of the cigarette. Then I fired.
The cigarette vanished from the Javelina's mouth, and a red welt opened at the corner of his lips where the paper tore skin. He jerked backward, both hands flying toward his face, releasing Cruz. "What the fuck?"
Cruz shoved him hard and ran.
"Coyote!" he screamed before he cleared the doorway. "COYOTE! THEY'RE KILLING JOHN!"
The man above me kicked the pistol out of my hand. It disappeared into the straw.
The smoker touched the blood on his mouth, stared at his fingers, and came at me. "You motherfucker."
He drove his boot into my stomach. I folded. The next kick caught the side of my head and put me flat.
Then all three of them were on me. Even the one with the broken wrist found something to contribute.
He kicked my injured thigh while the other two worked my ribs and back.
I covered my head and kept my hands open.
A boot struck the back of my skull. White light flashed behind my eyes.
I dug my fingers into the straw and hit nothing but dirt.
I'd kept that promise in rooms where keeping it cost me blood. Maybe it was about to cost me everything else. I still couldn't reach for the gun.
A wet choking sound came from above me, and the weight disappeared from my back.
I rolled over.
Coyote had the largest man by the hair. He hauled the man's head back and sank his teeth into his throat. The Javelina screamed once, the sound collapsing into a gargle when Coyote tore his head sideways and came away with blood running down his chin.
Warm spray hit my face, and Coyote spat red into the straw.
"?Chinga tu madre!" The smoker dove toward the pistol under the workbench.
Coyote caught the back of his jacket and dragged him away from it. The man twisted, swinging blindly. Coyote slipped under the punch, buried his knife beneath the man's ribs, and drove him backward into the wall.
The smoker sagged against him. Coyote lowered him to the floor, pulled the knife free, and turned.
The man with the broken wrist was already running. He made it three steps.
Coyote caught him at the door and kicked the back of his knee. The Javelina went down hard. Coyote dropped onto his back, hooked one hand beneath his chin, and opened his throat with the knife.
Then nothing in the shed was moving except Coyote's ribs and the blood coming off his chin into the straw.
Coyote stayed crouched over the body, breathing through his mouth. Blood covered him from his chin to his knees. Nimue wound tight around his shoulders, her head tucked under his jaw.
The first man's torn throat pumped twice more and stopped. The smoker by the wall made a soft bubbling sound when he breathed. Coyote turned and put the knife into his heart. The bubbling stopped.
I counted the dead, sorted the wounds, and moved on to the living.
Coyote was upright and breathing. No limp. No blood I could immediately identify as his.
The blood on my cheek cooled. It tightened the skin when I moved my jaw. I should have wanted it off. I should have wanted distance from the man who'd put it there. Instead, I wanted his pulse under my hand.
Coyote turned toward me. His shoulders were high and rigid. His knife hand shook once before he closed it into a fist. "John."
The knife dropped from his fingers. He crossed half the floor, then stopped. He searched my face.
I opened my hand. "Come here, little one."
He came the rest of the way and dropped to his knees in front of me. Both hands caught my face, leaving bloody prints along my jaw. "Look at me. Where are you hurt?"
"I'm all right."
"Where?"
"Two stitches torn. Maybe three."
His hands moved over me. I hissed when he reached my ribs.
His expression changed. "They opened you."
"Just the sutures."
"Who?"
I looked toward the bodies. "Take your pick."
His hands kept moving over my shoulders, my arms, the back of my neck, fingers trembling against my skin. I caught one wrist and pressed his palm against my chest. My heart thudded hard beneath it.
"You saw what I did," he said.
"I saw you come back."
His eyes found mine. "You aren't scared of me?"
"You killed four men in front of me before I knew your name."
"That isn't an answer."
I slid my hand behind his neck and held him there. "No," I said. "I'm not scared of you."
The shaking moved through his shoulders once and stopped. He leaned forward until our foreheads touched. Then he crawled to the man by the door and caught his boot. He turned the heel toward the light.
A chip cut across the boot heel.
"This one," he said. "He came through the north fence. He helped lay the trail, then turned back over the hard ground while the other one kept us moving."
His fingers tightened around the dead man's ankle.
"They built the whole night to get me away from you."
"You came back."
"Not fast enough."
Then the yard filled with voices.
Cruz reached the shed first, Mateo close behind him with a shotgun. Linc came through the door after them, chest heaving from the ride. Ransom and Rafe spread out to check the rest of the yard.
Sierra arrived with his hair loose and a rifle in his hands. He took one look at me and lowered it. "Everybody alive who matters?"
"Yes," I said.
Sierra looked at my ribs. "Get him up to the house."
"It's two stitches."
"Then you can complain while I replace them."
A wiry man I hadn't met stepped into the shed behind Rafe, shorter than the rest of them and all sinew, a faded blue tattoo running up his neck. He looked over the bodies, then at the motorcycle.
Coyote shifted closer to me.
The man crossed the room, pulled away the rest of the tarp, and crouched beside the rear wheel.
"What are you doing, Joe?" Coyote asked.
Joe ignored him. He ran one hand beneath the frame, stopped, and reached farther. Something small and black came free in his fingers with a metallic click. A magnetic box.
"This is how they found him," Joe said. "Tracker."
Joe turned the box over and found a seam with his thumbnail. "Cellular GPS unit," he said. "Internal battery. Whoever owns the account could've watched every mile this bike moved since Coyote started it."
"How long does the battery last?" Rafe asked.
"Depends on how often it reports. A month, maybe longer."
"And it works from anywhere?"
"Anywhere it can find a cell signal."
Coyote held still beside me.
"You knew where to look real fast," he said.
Joe's face hardened. "You want to accuse me of something, accuse me."
Coyote pushed himself up. I caught the back of his shirt before he cleared his knees.
Rafe stepped between them. "Enough. Joe, strip the entire bike. Seat, tank, frame, everything. I want every piece checked before sunrise."
Joe held Coyote's eyes for another second. Then he nodded. "Fine."
Coyote didn't look away until Joe turned his back.
Rafe crouched beside the man with the damaged heel and examined his boots.
"This was coordinated," he said. "One man walks the north fence and gets my patrol chasing a dead fox. These other two come up the service road and step over the south line while everybody's looking the wrong way."
"Nothing parked in the yard," Ransom said. "They walked the last stretch. Whatever dropped them must've sat out on the county road."
"They knew John was next to the bike?" Mateo asked.
"They knew the bike was here," Ransom said. "Finding John beside it was luck."
"Bad luck," Cruz muttered, hands shaking.
He caught me noticing and shoved them into his pockets.
"You did well," I said.
"I screamed and ran."
"You got three men off me in under a minute. Screaming was the fastest thing in this yard."
His mouth tightened. He nodded and looked away.
Rafe stood. "Paired watches from now on.
Nobody sleeps alone. Nobody leaves the main yard without checking in, and nobody crosses the fence alone.
Ransom, double the perimeter. Linc, wake Fenix and take the south line.
Three for the west plot before it's light.
Joe, check every vehicle for another tracker.
And I'll call Aguilar tonight. Better he hears it from me than from somebody else tomorrow.
" He looked at Coyote. "You stay with John. "
Coyote showed him blood-covered teeth. "I wasn't going to."
"This wasn't the attack," Rafe said. "This was Zaroff proving he could reach us. Next time he'll send more."
"Next time, I'll be waiting."
Rafe looked down at the bodies. "I know."
People started moving.
Joe pulled tools from the wall and started on the motorcycle. Ransom and Mateo carried the first body outside. Sierra argued with Cruz about whether a near murder excused him from work.
Coyote stayed beside me. His hand closed around mine. His palm was tacky with another man's blood. "Come on, big man," he said. "I'm getting this off you."