Chapter Forty-Seven

 

DAVIS

 

God, I can't believe how heavy Ryan is. He looks so small, and yet, pulling him free of the car, feels as if I'm going to pull something in my back.

Oh, well. I can hurt later. I have to get him free. I can see Mitch starting to wake up. I can also see Donaldsen, and he's decidedly not waking up. I don't know how to feel about it.

I know what my professional life says I should think. That it's a damn shame. That he's been a cornerstone of the A.T.F. for more than ten years. That he's served with distinction.

I also know what my personal feelings are, and I know that if I had the time to I'd kick his dead body. Ryan's starting to really come around, now, his feet scrabbling ineffectually at the ground to try to stand on his own legs.

I keep pulling. I don't have time to wait for him to find his legs again. It's only another few feet to the car. I'm committing a crime, doing this, but I can't leave Ryan in that car. It's tantamount to killing him.

The Crazy Horses want him out of the way, and they want it bad. Bad enough to kill, but they had assurances that he'd be taken care of, and soon.

Well, now the man who'd given those assurances died in a car crash. All the promises in the world don't mean a thing any more. They have to hope that others will follow his lead, or they'll have to come after Beauchamp themselves.

His boots get a good grip on the lip of my car and he helps me push him in onto the seat, laid out flat in the back. I close the door, careful to avoid slamming it on his ankle, and pull into the front.

I look over to check on Brian. He's got his eyes closed, his head leaned back.

"Brian!"

He jolts forward. "I wasn't sleeping."

"I know you weren't. Just resting a second. But I need you to navigate for me, alright? We have to get your brother to the hospital."

In the rear end, I can see Ryan pushing himself upright, but his arms aren't playing nice, and he slips and loses the weight, falls back against the back seat.

The car starts going again. Not only shouldn't I drive away from the scene of an accident, but it's damn hard when, between the two cars involved, they take up three of the four westbound lanes.

Still, I find a space and slip into it and before I know it, I'm back to driving. Back into anonymity. Back on the way to the hospital, only now I have double the reason to get there as fast as I possibly can.

Ryan finally gets himself upright, slides into the back.

"Brian, are you okay?"

He turns and gives a thumbs-up sign. It's low, and I can tell it's not because he's just a low-signaling kind of guy. He's struggling to raise his any higher for more than a second or two.

"You alright? That was a pretty bad crash."

I can see Ryan in the rear-view, smiling. "I've got a pretty hard head."

"No, you never did wear a helmet, I suppose, did you?"

"Nah. Head's harder than a helmet, and I get to feel the wind in my hair."

I chime in. "That's dangerous, you know. You could hurt yourself."

"Sure, I could. Then again, Brian here could get picked up by drug traffickers. And we all know how likely that is."

Brian turns back in his seat, apparently too tired to stay twisted around. "Never happen."

"See? It'd never happen."

The signs say we're thirty minutes out of Tucson, if we obey the speed limits. We're interpreting them very liberally, though, at the moment. I figure twenty-five. I shut my mouth and let them talk to each other.

Part of me gets nervous about the way that they both seem to be treating their wounds with a very cavalier attitude. The way Ryan's eyes were rolling around in his head like that, he looked like he had a concussion, probably pretty bad.

Brian can rarely keep his head up for more than a few minutes before he has to lay it back on the headrest for another minute. To regain his strength.

But here they are, talking like they're immortal. Like none of it matters, like none of it affects them.

Each is trying to be stronger for the other. I don't know if it's working, but they sure are trying like hell. For me, it's just a constant reminder of how bad the A.T.F. fucked this all up.

Now, I keep being reminded, it falls to me to clean that mess up. To make sure that the guilty get punished. Well, the Crazy Horses have got 2 down, and 1 un-accounted for. 2 more are sitting in this car, and it'd be a damn shame for that to be how it ends.

My list isn't looking as good, but I've got my first big win. If there's a head to this snake, I have to think that it might have just gotten cut off, whether it was luck or fate or what.

There are signs pointing me in the direction of the nearest hospital, right off the interstate. Convenient. I follow them a little ways. It doesn't take long to find some place. Nice and big, white walls.

It looks quite nice. Pristine, even. I can't complain one bit. I pull around to Emergency and jump out of the car. Brian, appropriately, starts to get himself out of the passenger seat as if he's going to walk himself in.

I book it inside to grab a wheelchair, and happen to find a promising-looking nurse along the way. Between the two of us, the boys are brought inside. Their names are on the list, but the list looks long.

Just in case, I show my badge, and make a few notes as to their condition. One was in an accident, possible concussion. The other's lost a lot of blood. A lot of blood.

The nurse takes that all down. I like to hope that she's taking it more seriously, but I really can't say if she's just putting on an act for my benefit.

I settle into one of the cheaply-made chairs and for the first time in what feels like days, I can finally relax. The rest of the world can wait. I lay my head back against the stucco walls and close my eyes. I've got a lot of catching up to do.