Chapter Twenty-Four
Smoke walked the dirt bike a quarter mile out from the Rogerson place. Ever since they’d talked to Emmaline, he’d had a bad feeling about this place. The murders of the two deputies and Freddy getting himself and his buddy shot cemented his opinion that nothing good was going on.
He’d stayed away from the road, coming toward the property at an oblique angle. When he got to the fence, he used his knife to unhook the bottom of one link from its neighbor. Once started, the process to completely unravel the steel link only took a minute and he was through. As soon as the buildings came into view, he hid the machine under some scrub brush then found a good place to watch the house and the ragged tent behind it.
The sun was going down. Soon darkness would turn this dangerous game of hide and seek deadly.
A tall, skinny guy came out of the back door of the house and headed for the tent, coughing hard enough to wake the dead.
“Hey, lady,” the guy called at the tent. He cleared his throat, or tried to. “Uh, Nurse?”
“My name is Kini.”
Smoke jerked his small binoculars up and watched her come out of the tent, a stethoscope around her neck. “What do you want?” Covered in bandages, and bruises, and with bags under her eyes, she’d never looked better.
She was alive.
She was okay.
A burned, twisted wire deep inside his spine unwound and cooled off a little. She was okay.
“Bruce wants you.” Skinny dude angled his thumb at the house.
She backed up a step. “Why doesn’t he come get me himself?” She sounded defensive, cautious. She didn’t want to go into the house.
“He’s on the phone.” The guy gestured toward the back door again. “Hurry up.”
With a huff, Kini walked around the guy and went into the house.
The sick grin on the skinny dude’s face didn’t give Smoke the warm and fuzzies. Getting her out of there was his only priority, but how many men were in the house and how many in the tent?
Had they taken her to treat their sick? He couldn’t see anyone on a watch detail, and he would have seen someone if there was anyone to see.
As soon as the skinny dude disappeared into the tent, Smoke moved, silent and sure, until he stepped on something oddly squishy.
Looking down, he realized it was a hand, partially eaten and withered by daytime heat, but a human hand. On the middle finger was a ring, its shape familiar. The last time he’d seen it was two days ago on Nate’s hand.
For a long moment, Smoke’s brain refused to make the connection. Then, with rage raining white noise inside his skull, he flung the dirt off the face of the body and had to snuff out a snarl.
Nathan. A bullet hole between shadowed eyes.
These fucking assholes had killed his cousin. The same assholes had Kini inside this hovel of horror.
She wasn’t going to end up in one of these shitty, shallow graves. He would do anything, kill anyone to prevent it.
The lock on the lessons he learned in foreign deserts and lost jungles, lessons that kept him alive, but could only bury him at home, disintegrated.
A vicious, violent joy filled him.
The fuckers were dead. Every last one of them. Dead.
His soul all but sang, justified, justified, justified kills.
Smoke took the endorphin rush and used it to focus on what he had to do next, and next, and next. Kini wasn’t safe yet.
He left the body of his cousin and moved into a position where he could look into one of the windows to the front room of the house. Someone was turning on a couple of lights.
A whole lot of glass jars, plastic tubing, and other shit made seeing anything clearly impossible, but with the window busted, he could hear everything just fine.
“You want me to what?” Kini asked someone in a tone filled with a caustic combination of hostility, fatigue, and pain.
“Work,” a male voice, sounding pissed the fuck off, said. “My people are too sick.” A Texan accent.
“Your people are dying and doing this is what’s killing them.” Her voice scraped across Smoke’s nerves, with jagged, sharp edges. He’d heard that kind of strain before in the life he’d left behind weeks ago. It took days of witnessing violence and death with little sleep to achieve. Years of training couldn’t guarantee a soldier could handle it. How close to her breaking point was she?
“Get. To. Work,” the Texan ordered.
“No.”
Fuck. This conversation was going downhill fast. A distraction needed to happen yesterday. He tensed, preparing to be that distraction.
A cell phone rang.
That was a little too convenient.
There was a two-second silence then the asshole said, “What?”
Smoke waited. Should he take the Texan out now while he was distracted by his phone call? Or instigate a larger disruption with a greater likelihood of separating Kini physically from the men he’d seen?
“I’ve got it under control,” the Texan said, his voice vibrating with anger. “Just keep the Feds too busy to come out here.”
Another pause.
“I don’t give a shit if it’s the fucking Marines. Keep them away from here, because if I go down, so do you.”
Smoke had to get her out of that house and away from the Texan and Skinny, and he had to do it now.
He went back to where he’d left his dirt bike and walked it to the road leading to the buildings, maybe 150 feet away. The moon was nearly full and the sky was clear. Good conditions for what he wanted.
Once he was around a corner and behind a collection of stones, trees, and the remains of some kind of rusty farm equipment, he kick-started the bike. After revving the engine several times, he dropped it and disappeared into the landscape. The back country only looked barren. To someone who’d spent most of their life here, it was traversable. To an outsider, it could be a death sentence.
Smoke moved fast and made it back to a spot where he could watch the house in time to see the Texan hauling ass down the road toward the bike.
Kini wasn’t visible anywhere.
“Get your hands off me!” The sharp words and the unmistakable crash of broken glass had him heading for the house at a sliding run he’d perfected as a kid while hunting with his father and grandfather.
Fast and silent, he went in through the front door, his rifle in his hands.
Kini was struggling with the skinny dude, but he had her pinned up against the wall and was using his body to hold her in place.
The asshole laughed. “Fight me, baby. I like it,” he said as he mauled one breast through her blood-stained shirt.
Adrenaline hit Smoke’s system and he detonated. He slung his rifle behind his back, freeing his hands as he ran. A bullet was too good for the asshole. One arm went around Skinny’s throat while he pummeled the other man’s kidney with his free hand. Smoke ignored the choking sounds coming from the asshole’s throat and kept hammering away. By the time he was done with Skinny, he’d be lucky if he could piss blood. “How do you like it now, baby?”
Kini staggered a couple of steps, knocking over a couple of metal buckets with a splash and clatter.
Smoke dragged Skinny farther away from her and began hitting his face.
“Smoke, I think you’ve convinced him to stop.”
Really? The image of Skinny, his body pinning Kini’s, passed through his head. Nah. He kept beating the shit. He got to kill whoever he wanted.
Kini frowned. “Smoke, he can’t breathe.”
Gee, that’s too bad.
“Smoke,” Kini said in a severe tone. “You’re killing him.”
And that was a problem, how?
Small, warm, bloody hands wrapped around his wrist. “Please, Smoke.”
Behind her, the floor around the buckets she’d upended began to smoke.
He looked into Kini’s warm chocolate eyes, a gaze so full of hurt it made the killing rage that had hijacked him retreat enough for him to think.
Those delicate hands pulled at the arm clamped around Skinny’s neck. He released the asshole and stepped back, pulling Kini with him.
Skinny flopped onto the pitted wood floor like a sack of potatoes.
Kini reached out with one hand toward the asshole’s neck. Smoke took another step back, taking her with him. She glanced at him. “I need to see if he’s still alive.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She stared at him, turning even paler than she already was. “Because you’re going to kill him anyway?”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.
“No,” she said, determination putting some color back in her face. She laid one hand along his jaw. “I don’t want his death on your conscience.”
“Won’t bother me.” It wouldn’t, but something was wrong with that truth, even though he couldn’t think of what it could be.
“No,” she said again, a tear clearing a track through the blood splatter on her skin. “Please don’t become one of the monsters.”
But that’s what he was.
She put a hand on his chest. “I’m tired and sore and I want to get away from this…”—she glanced around—“horror movie.”
Reality smacked him upside the head. The Texan would be back soon, and ready for a fight. This time, when she reached for Skinny’s neck, he let her go.
The smoke coming from the spill site intensified.
“Still alive, but…”—she looked around the room—“if he stays here, he isn’t going to stay that way.”
Smoke went to the front door.
Movement on the road.
He strode over to Kini and snagged her hand. “The Texan.”
The smoldering floor burst into active flames.
He hustled her through the house.
She sucked in a breath. “What about—”
“No time.” He kept her moving.
At the back door, Smoke paused to observe the tent, but if anyone was watching them from inside it, he couldn’t detect them.
He headed into the desert at a trot, needing to get her away from the burning cesspool as quickly as possible.
He pulled out his cell phone and swore.
“What’s wrong?” Kini asked.
He held out the phone. At some point during his scuffle with Skinny, his phone had taken a hit. The screen had been shattered and the battery case caved in.
He dropped it in the dust.
With the dirt bike no longer an option, they either had to flag down a ride back to town, steal a vehicle, or walk. Hitching a ride was out, there was no other car or truck in sight, and Kini was already at her physical limit.
He needed to find a place where they could hole up for a couple of hours or more. Somewhere the ass-wipe they’d left behind, who was inside the house yelling like a two-year old, and firing his gun like he had shares in Remington, wouldn’t find them.
Unfortunately, the area they were in wasn’t noted for its abundance of hideouts.
Except for one.
He guided her down into the canyon that formed the northern border of the Rogerson property. Though the creek bed was dry right now, it saw enough water to support more robust brush and trees.
Better cover.
Behind him, Smoke could hear Kini’s breathing, fast and deep. He was pushing her, all but dragging her down the steep slope, but they had to get some distance between the Texan and them.
He stepped over a rock sticking out of the dirt.
She tripped over it then tried to hide a pain-filled noise as she attempted and failed to stay on her feet.
Smoke planted his boots in the sandy earth and caught her on his back.
An uncomfortable “oof” came out of her, but she didn’t move for a couple of seconds.
“Hurt?” he asked her quietly.
“No, just…give me a second to catch my breath.”
They didn’t have a second, but if she passed out and he had to carry her, his hands would be too busy to use his rifle. So, he waited.
More rifle shots, then a flash of light so bright he could see it halfway down the canyon, and a boom.
“Was that…” Kini began.
“The house,” Smoke finished for her. “Yeah.”
“There were two men in the tent out back,” Kini said, her voice strained.
“Doubt we have to worry about them anymore.”
She made a sound, something sad, angry, and afraid all at once.
Smoke was about to move when running footsteps became audible from the lip of the canyon above them.
“Fuck.” The Texan hadn’t spoken all that loud, but it was still clearly audible.
Damn it, he’d hoped the Texan had been a victim of the explosion. If he was going to try to catch them, they weren’t moving fast enough.
Kini sucked in a breath then managed to lever herself off his back and stand on her feet. She touched his shoulder, patting him a couple of times. A signal she was ready.
He began walking again, watching for, and avoiding, footing problems. The farther they went down, the denser the foliage got until they were at the bottom. The vegetation was thick enough here to easily hide them from anyone searching for them from above, but they were a long way from safe.
“Okay?” he asked as he picked a way through the prickly trees and undergrowth.
It took so long for her to answer, he stopped to take a good long look at her. Blood was splattered across her shirt and some of her cuts had lost their bandages. The bags under her eyes were so deep and dark that, in the moon shadows, they made her eye sockets appear empty.
Her hands shook and she was limping.
She wasn’t going to stay on her feet for very long. He needed to find a place for them to hole up until she’d gotten some rest, water, and food.
A gunshot echoed through the canyon. Another and another, along with the thunk, thunk, thunk of bullets hitting trees and dirt.
Damn fool might end up shooting them despite not knowing exactly where they were.
“Come out, come out, where ever you are,” the Texan called. He was on the canyon floor now, too. “I don’t know who you are, dirt bike guy, but you’ve got yourself mixed up in some very bad business. I’ve got more guns coming and when we catch you, we’re going to make you pay for making such a mess in my house.”
Smoke kept moving, trying to recall the topography of the canyon floor. It had been at least four years since he’d last been down here.
Texan sent a few more random shots in their direction, one of them ending up in a tree trunk a couple of feet from Smoke’s head.
Yeah, he was going to have to do something about that moron.
A rocky outcrop became visible and, if he remembered right, it was concave on the other side, a place where water pooled when it ran. A protected place to hide.
He led Kini into the shaded hollow. “Stay here. Got to lose the paparazzi.” He pulled out his backup weapon, a Berretta, and handed it to her. “Do you know how to use this?”
She checked the safety and held it in a two-handed grip. “It’s been a couple of years, but yes.”
Watching her hold the gun, handling it with confidence despite the pain and exhaustion he knew had her at her breaking point, made him hard. That was all kinds of messed up. “Don’t shoot unless you have to.”
“Right back at you, big guy,” she said with one eyebrow raised and expectant.
If ever there was time for a justified kill, this was it.
She snagged his hand before he could move, and, still panting, whispered, “Be careful.”
He nodded once and tugged his hand free. Not what he wanted to do. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her while they both slept.
More random gunshots.
First, he had an asshole drug dealer to deal with.
Locating the Texan wasn’t hard. The moron made more noise than an entire class of kindergarteners with all his shouting, shooting, and swearing. None of it made sense beyond the promises to kill Kini after he hurt her and hurt her and hurt her.
The bastard needed to die. Needed to pay for Nate’s murder and terrorizing Kini. Needed to pay for bringing poison into Small Blind.
So many sins, too little time.
He managed to circle around and get behind the Texan, who was stumbling around like a drunkard. Was the dude high on his own shit? His clothing was sweat stained, dirty, and…fuck, he smelled like he’d gone swimming in a shit lake.
Getting rid of him wasn’t going to hurt the world one bit. The memory of Kini’s face, bruised, battered, and cut reminded him of his first priority: keep her safe.
Smoke aimed his rifle and fired.