Carter
When Carter woke up, the first thing he saw was Billie looking down at him with a strange smile. Her eyes looked like she was searching his face for...something. It wasn't unpleasant, but it made him feel a little weird.
“What?” he asked, yawning.
“Nothing,” she said, kissing him. “I'll tell you later. I think Buzzard's making breakfast for us.”
As they emerged from the bedroom, Buzzard was placing plates and bowls of food on the table, along with mugs of coffee. The smell of maple sausage was in the air.
“So I reckon I'll have to go ahead an' burn them sheets after you leave, seein' as how you young people prob'ly spent most've the night pollutin' 'em with your damn sex juices an' whatnot,” Buzzard rasped, winking at Billie.
Carter laughed. “Why don't you sniff them and find out, you old perv?”
“If all this talk isn't enough to make us hungry, I don't know what will,” Billie smirked, sitting down at the table.
“Sorry the eggs an' milk is powdered,” said Buzzard. “Should still taste all right, though. You goin' to meet up with them other two today, down at that truck stop?”
“Yep,” Carter said, shoveling a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
“I drew you a map to get to the airstrip from there,” Buzzard continued. “Take care not to get lost. That place ain't gonna have no signs pointin' to it, y'understand.”
“Airstrip?” Billie asked, adding milk to her coffee.
Carter nodded. “It's a little tarmac a few miles from the truck stop. The guy who owns it has a plane he uses to fly people over the border. He runs guns, drugs, fugitives, you name it. He'll transport us in exchange for a percentage of what we got from the banks.”
“Good plan,” she said.
Once they finished their meal and the dishes were in the sink, Carter grabbed his saddlebag from the bedroom. Buzzard gave Carter a hug, slapping him on the back. “Thanks again for makin' an old man happy, kid. You did good. Here, I'll go up top with you.”
They climbed into the lift and Buzzard cranked it, bringing them back up to the surface. As soon as the door opened, the heat from outside hit Carter like a blast furnace.
A second later, a shot rang out and the bullet buried itself in Buzzard's chest.
Buzzard fell out of the small metal shed face first, landing on the sand. Stunned, Carter watched him fall, his peripheral vision registering Billie's shocked expression.
Before he could reach for his own weapon, he heard a gun cock. A man in a black duster coat and a wide-brimmed hat was leveling a pair of long-barreled revolvers at them. He had a long scar extending from his right eye down to his lip, and when he smiled, he revealed a mouthful of rotten teeth.
“Keep your hands up and come on out of there,” he said. “Or don't, and I'll kill you. Either one is fine with me.”
Slowly, Carter and Billie raised their hands and stepped out into the sunlight.
“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” Billie asked.
“Name's Stoudenmire,” the gunman said. “Bounty hunter. There's a hefty reward for you, and I aim to collect. No pun intended,” he added, indicating the pistols in his hands.
“How did you find us?” Carter demanded. Stoudenmire clearly had the drop on them and Carter couldn't think of a way out, so he figured his best option was to stall the man and buy them some time.
“Ancestry website,” Stoudenmire said. He sounded quite proud of himself. “Ain't it funny the things Johnny Law won't think of? I got me one of them thirty-day free trials. Shit, maybe when I'm done with you two, I'll see if I've got any rich uncles worth hitting up. Anyway, I discovered that this codger was your only living relative. Finding his little hidey-hole was just a matter of asking the right questions and breaking the right necks.”
Carter opened his mouth again, but Stoudenmire stopped him. “I can see you've got a whole passel of questions for me, but you're going to have to ask them while we're on our way to the cops, because frankly, the longer I keep standing in this heat, the crazier it's going to fucking make me. So let's go.”
Carter's mind raced. After everything they'd been through, he couldn't believe it would all end now, out here in the desert with no chance of escape. He felt bad for Buzzard, but even more than that, he felt bad for Billie.
He hadn't swept her away from her old life—she was about to be delivered back to it, probably in handcuffs. And Carter couldn't risk doing a damn thing about it, or Stoudenmire would open fire and Billie might be killed.
Before Carter could move, there was a loud growl and a coyote darted out from behind the shed. Its jaws snapped as it lunged at Stoudenmire, sinking its claws into his chest and arm. Stoudenmire let out a high-pitched yelp and fell backward. He tried to shoot the creature, but the bullet went wild and a split-second later, its jaws closed around his throat.
There was a sickening gurgle and Stoudenmire was still, his guns falling from his lifeless fingers.
The coyote looked at Carter, licked the blood from its snout, howled, and bounded off into the desert without a look back.
From that point forward, Carter never had anything bad to say about coyotes ever again.