Chapter 17 #2
She gets her hand into the front of my cut and grips the leather. The ring on her finger is slick against my chest. She looks up at me.
The woman looking at me isn't the woman who sat on the porch this morning with the chain off her throat and the ring on her hand.
Her grip on my cut tightens until her knuckles whiten. "You bring him home, Silas."
"I will."
She doesn't let go of the leather. Her eyes don't leave mine. "You bring him home or you don't come home in one piece. You hear me?"
My hand stays at the back of her neck. I memorize the way she looks at me. "I hear you, baby."
Then I make her promise me back.
My hand comes up off her neck and finds the side of her head where the blood is.
Her hair is matted with it. The wound underneath my fingers is bigger than I want it to be.
"You're goin' to the hospital, baby."
She tries to pull back from my hand. "I'm fine—"
I tighten my grip on the side of her head, just enough to keep her facing me. "You're not fine. You took a hit to the side of the head. You need a CT scan and you need it now. You ride in the ambulance with Marlena."
"Silas, I have to be here when you—" Her voice cracks before she finishes.
"You have to be alive when I get back. Promise me."
She holds my eyes. Her mouth pulls. The tears that haven't come yet today get behind her bottom lashes.
My thumb moves across her cheekbone. "Promise me, Hadley."
"I promise."
I turn my head over my shoulder. Phantom is already on his feet behind me. "Prez. She needs a head scan. Don't let her out of your sight until I'm back."
Phantom nods once. "She rides with Marlena. Bex too. I'll be at the hospital with all of 'em."
I bend down and press my mouth to the side of her head. The taste of her blood goes into my mouth and stays there.
I let her go.
I walk out the front door.
Banshee is on the porch boards with Roan kneeling over him, Roan's hands on the shoulder wound, two of Holt's patched men flanking with sidearms drawn for cover. Banshee's eyes are open. He's breathing.
Sirens come up the gravel.
The first ambulance crests the rise at the front gate, the second one behind it, the sheriff's truck behind that.
The lead medic is out of the rig before it stops rolling, jumping the porch steps two at a time, his eyes already on Banshee—the patient he can see from twenty yards out.
He goes to Banshee first.
The second crew is right behind him with a stretcher.
Holt is on the porch with his radio, calling the sheriff's deputy by name, telling him what room of the bunkhouse to enter first.
Phantom passes me in the doorway, going back inside to Hadley and Marlena. His hand finds my back once as we cross—once, hard, the only goodbye we have time for.
I get to the bottom of the porch steps and break into a run.
The barn is sixty yards across the gravel.
I go inside, past the stalls, to the back.
To the black Ford F-250 with a turbo that I keep covered under a tarp for the kind of work I haven't done in ten years.
The tarp comes off in one motion.
The duffle is in the bed under a tool box. I pulled it out of my closet the day Hartley called and I put it in this truck two days ago.
I climb in. The engine catches under me, and I back out of the barn.
I'm on the county road in under a minute, on Highway 71 in under five.
* * *
I call Bullseye on the burner from the road.
He picks up on the first ring with a bar's noise behind him. Music. Glasses. A woman laughing somewhere. "Brother. Saw the news on the ranch hit. Was about to call you."
I keep my eyes on the road. "Where are you?"
"Smitty's outside Brady. Longhorn's with me. We been here two nights."
The word *Brady* goes through my chest like a hot wire.
"Bullseye."
"Yeah."
My hand grips the wheel one notch tighter. "How far are you from the old wool warehouse on Commerce Street?"
A pause. The bar noise behind him gets quieter, like he's stepping outside.
His voice when it comes back is different. "Brother. That's a four-minute drive from here. Why the fuck are you askin' me about that buildin'?"
I take the exit onto 87 north without slowing. "Hartley's there. He's got Nash."
A longer pause. "You sure?"
My jaw locks. "I'm sure. It's where my old work used to stage. Hartley would take the boy somewhere that means somethin' to me. That's the closest one inside our range."
"Then he wants you comin' there. He wants you walkin' in."
The Hill Country goes by my window at eighty-five. "He does."
A pause on the line that says Bullseye is doing the same math I'm doing. "And you're walkin' in."
My hand tightens on the wheel. "I am."
The bar noise is all the way gone. Longhorn's voice in the background, asking Bullseye a question. Bullseye's hand muffles the receiver. He says something back.
Then he comes back to me. "Brother. We're walkin' out the door."
I switch the phone to my left hand. The right one stays on the wheel. "Bullseye. Hartley can't see you. You hear me? You stay invisible until I get there. He thinks I'm comin' alone. I am comin' alone. You and Longhorn are just gonna be in the parkin' lot havin' a beer when you hear shots."
"That's all we're doin'."
I pass a cattle truck on the left. "You recon the buildin' before I get there. Don't engage. Just eyes. Tell me what's inside."
"On it."
I drop my speed a notch as a state trooper passes the opposite direction. "My ETA is ninety minutes."
"Copy. You get here, brother."
My eyes don't leave the road. "I'll get there."
I end the call and set the phone on the dash.
The Hill Country goes by on either side of me at eighty-five miles an hour.
My hands are steady on the wheel.
They have been steady since the moment I stepped off Hadley's porch boards an hour ago.
They'll stay steady until I've got my boy in this truck next to me.
* * *
The drive is ninety-three minutes.
I think about Hadley on a stretcher in an ambulance with Marlena beside her.
The CT scanner. The fluorescent hospital light.
I think about my mother.
*Mama, I came back to this work one time. I'm goin' back one last time. I'm comin' home in this cut. I'm comin' home as the man you knew in the kitchen at suppertime, not the man you watched walk out the door at twenty-two.*
I think about Nash. The boy who called me partner the first day I met him.
The boy I held against my chest in his own bedroom three nights ago when he had a bad dream about something he wouldn't tell me about.
The boy I'm going to put back in his mama's arms in a hospital bed before this day ends.
I think about Hartley.
The man who taught a generation of operators the work, who went independent and started carving an empire out of contracts.
Who shot Marlena in the chest, Banshee in the shoulder, and an innocent dog. The same man hit my woman in the head with a pistol, and put a bullet in Thunder for getting in the way of him taking my boy.
He's a dead man. He just doesn't know it yet.
Bullseye texts me when twenty minutes out:
*Two operators outside. North and south corners of the loading dock.
One walks a perimeter every six minutes.
Hartley's SUV in the loading dock area. Boy not visible but the SUV has been here for a bit.
We're inside, brother. We came in through the southwest door during the perimeter walk.
We're behind the stacked pallets at the back of the loading dock.
Hartley doesn't know we're here. Come in the front like he expects. *
I read the text twice.
I type back:
*Copy. Eight minutes.*
I take the off-ramp into Brady, my speedometer hitting 120.
* * *
Commerce Street is empty in the heat of the afternoon.
The old wool warehouse is on the east side of the street. Two stories. Loading docks on the north side.
The roof has a hole in it from a fire ten years ago that the firm let burn through because it gave them a sight line they wanted.
I park the Ford a hundred yards down the street.
I get out.
I check the sidearm on my hip under the cut. I've got the second pistol in the small of my back. The knife on my belt. The cut on my shoulders.
I walk down the gravel of Commerce Street toward the loading dock.
The cameras on the corners of the warehouse track me. I don't try to hide from them. Hartley wants to see me coming.
I walk into the loading dock area through the front roll-up door.
The dock floor is concrete. Old wool bales in the corners. The fire damage on the roof lets a column of afternoon sun down across the middle of the floor.
Hartley is standing in the column of light.
Tactical gear under a civilian jacket. His left arm hangs at his shoulder from a shot he must've took at the bunkhouse. His sidearm is at his hip but his hands are open at his sides.
The two operators are at the corners—one north, one south. Pistols holstered but ready.
Nash is in a folding chair against the back wall of the dock.
Alive. Dirty. Scared. Watching the door.
He sees me. His face breaks. "Rogue."
I keep my eyes on Hartley. My voice goes for Nash. "Hey, partner. You okay?"
Nash's voice comes back small from the back of the dock. "Yeah."
I don't turn my head. "Hartley hurt you?"
"No."
"Okay, buddy. You sit tight a minute."
Hartley smiles. The professional smile. Small. Almost warm. "You came alone, Rogue. I appreciate that."
My hand stays clear of my sidearm. "I came alone."
His eyes go to the cut on my shoulders. "You came in your colors. I figured you'd come in as Silas."
I let the cut speak for itself. "Silas died in a buildin' just like this one ten years ago. Rogue's the one you're talkin' to."
Hartley's smile pulls a little wider. "That's a good line. Welcome back to the work, Rogue."
I take one step further into the column of sunlight. "This isn't a welcome back. This is a closing of business."
His hand opens at his side. Palm out. The way a man gestures when he wants the other man to hear him out. "Hear me out."
I let him talk.