Swelter

by D. Jackson Leigh

  “Pops, no.” Tommy looked like he was going to cry, but Hawk and Manny only tensed. If they didn’t give Cobra the information, they were as good as dead. Giving him the facts, though, might also cost them their lives. Pops had anticipated they would know that as well as he did. Pops held Cobra’s gaze as he studied him. He’d lived a long life and didn’t fear what might come. But he had to try to save the others.

  Then Cobra smiled that oily smile again. “You think I grew up in the city and won’t follow them.” He handed the Glock back to his henchman. “I grew up in the jungle, not the city streets.” He pointed to Manny. “Tito, take the Mexican and ready three of their horses for the trail.”

  “They probably have faster transportation in the equipment barn.” Tito also wore a large silver buckle on his belt in addition to Western boots.

  “It’s also louder and will be useless in the mountains.”

  “Three horses?” Tito shoved Manny. “Are we taking him with us? You know I hate the smell of Mexicans.”

  Cobra turned a cold stare on the man. “Are you questioning me, Tito?”

  The man froze, then seemed to shrink away. He pushed Manny toward the door. “No. I, uh, I…if the third is to be a pack horse, I won’t need a third saddle.”

  “We’ll take the Mexican with us. We don’t have a map of the canyons. I’m betting he knows his way around them.”

  “You ain’t going to find tracks in the dark,” Pops said. “If I was you, I’d start out at first light from inside the state park.”

  “I’m no fool, old man. It would take much longer to find her if we go in at a different entry point. We will track her from here.”

  “I know the canyons,” Hawk said. “Better than Manny.”

  Cobra eyed him. “Yes, I expect you are better at many things. But I can’t take a hawk into his natural habitat and expect him to remain on my arm. Your Mexican friend will need less watching.”

  The guy with the AK-47 gestured at Hawk, Tommy, and Pops and then spoke in Spanish. “What about these putas? I can take them out back.”

  Cobra closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling in an exaggerated sigh. “I must talk to Luis about hiring his inbred relatives.” He spoke in English, which the man didn’t understand, judging from the blank expression on his face. Then Cobra spoke in Spanish. “Give me your gun and go wait outside.”

  When the man hesitated, Cobra pinned him with the same cold stare that had cowed Tito. The man held out his AK-47 and slunk out the door, the two other henchmen following. Cobra turned to Pops, Hawk, and Tommy.

  “My men will drive you to a remote location and dump you so that you will have a long walk back to civilization. You may take a backpack of water.”

  Hawk frowned. “Why?”

  Cobra cocked his head as if he, too, was considering this. “Because the senseless slaughter of locals will anger the local police and give them too much of a reason to pursue me. I only wish to delay you long enough to finish the job I was sent to do. August Reese is not local. They will be incensed, but none will crusade to avenge her as they would you.”

  Tommy’s face reddened. “August is worth a thousand of you. We’re not going to stand by and let you take her.”

  “There is nothing you can do about it.”

  “We know who you are. You hurt her, and I’ll never stop until I find you.”

  Pops shook his head. Idiot. Another misplaced crush on August. He should have seen it coming. When Tommy had passed out mid-sentence after his night of drinking at the Lock & Load, he’d been jabbering on about August kicking those bikers’ butts.

  Cobra slung the gun’s strap over his shoulder and drew his phone from his pocket, tapped the screen a few times, and held it up. There was a photograph of Brick and his ten-year-old son at the ballpark. He swiped the screen to bring up a photo of Brick’s daughters, six and eight years old. “Beautiful children, no? If they were my children, I would have them guarded every minute of the day. The sex-trade people, disgusting perverts that they are, love beautiful children like these.”

  “You lay a hand on those children, and I will hunt you to the ends of the earth,” Hawk said, clenching his fists at his side. “In this life and beyond.”

  Cobra lowered the phone. “Money can buy many things. Who can say how children disappear, never to be found again?” He shrugged. “But it happens.” He swept his hands out, palms up. “Silence can buy many things, too.” He stared into the eyes of each man. “Will you keep them safe with your silence? Or will you tell the police who visited you and then worry every day that your friend will wake up to find his children gone?” They remained mute, and he gave a curt nod. “This is how we do business and ensure loyalty in my country.”

  He put the phone away and pointed the AK-47 at Pops. “Get a backpack and fill it with bottles of water. No quick moves. I’ll be watching.” He gestured to Hawk and Tommy. “Pick up your wounded friend and put him in the SUV.”

  The vehicle was large, and Hawk sat in the back cargo area where they’d laid BJ to keep him as comfortable as possible. Pops and Tommy sat in the backseat with one of their kidnappers.

  “Are we going to leave them like the Snake said?” The man in the passenger seat spoke in Spanish to the driver. Pops stared out the window, careful to give no indication he understood.

  “The Snake is not our boss,” the driver said without taking his eyes from the road. “Luis Reyes is our boss, and I don’t think he would like loose ends. I think these four are loose ends.”

  The first man nodded and turned his attention to the road. “Then we are in agreement.”

  *

  “Honey pot. I don’t think you should be standing right out there in the open. What if those guys are on the roof or something and take a shot at you? Just ’cause we have some of your tiny swimmers in cold storage don’t mean I want to lose my P-I-D.”

  Tank stood in the middle of The White Paw compound, staring into the shadowy edges of the security lights’ illumination. He swept his gaze from building to building. “There’s nobody here. I can feel it. Nobody’s here. Dang it. I knew we took too long.”

  “Tank?” One of the deputies sidled close so Bunny, who was surveying the scene from her seat in the cab of the monster truck, wouldn’t hear.

  “What?”

  “What’s a P-I-D?”

  Tank grinned. “Personal insertion device.”

  “Huh?”

  “My dick, you moron. She’s rather fond of it and is reminding me that she wants me to live long enough to have children the natural way, not in a doctor’s office.”

  “Oh.”

  “Stop thinking about my dick.”

  “I wasn’t. God.”

  “Then stop thinking about my wife.”

  “I, uh…”

  Tank shoved him. “Just kidding, man. Find anyone at the barn?”

  “No, but I see a lot of empty saddle racks. That doesn’t mean much since we don’t know if they’re usually full.”

  A second deputy came around the back of the house, while a third came out the front door. “All clear,” the third deputy, Johnston, said. He stepped off the porch, then stumbled. “Hey, look here.” Johnston pulled a small flashlight from his utility belt and shone it on dark, irregular spots in the dirt walkway leading up to the steps.

  Tank walked over and squatted to touch the darkest spot. His finger came away red with blood. “This isn’t good.”

  A fourth deputy burst from the bunkhouse and called to them. “In here. Lots of blood.”

  Ten minutes later, a thorough search of the chicken coop, Pops’s garden shed, and the equipment barn determined that no humans were in the vicinity. Tank and Johnston conferred.

  “We should report back to the sheriff,” Johnston said.

  “Are you kidding? There’s blood, but not enough for six people, so obviously they took some live hostages. We don’t have time to go back to get the frickin’ sheriff.”

  “We have no idea wher
e they went. How are we going to chase after them?”

  Tank shook his head. “Don’t take a genius to know they didn’t head back to town because we came that way and didn’t see ’em.” He pointed down the driveway. “So, we go back to the highway and turn right.”

  “There’s an all-points bulletin out on their SUV. The Texas Rangers will pick them up.”

  The big engine revved behind them, and gravel crunched as Tank’s truck jerked to a stop next to them. Bunny poked her head and shoulders out of the driver’s window and yelled down at them. “Y’all can stand there jawin’ all night or you can get in this truck. I’m going after the bad guys.” She revved the engine again.

  Tank ran to the passenger side, yelling over his shoulder at Johnston. “You better hop in the back because she won’t tell you twice.”

  The other deputies were already scrambling up the rear bumper and pulled Johnston over the tailgate just as Bunny hit the gas and spun gravel in a semicircle to whip the big vehicle around and speed back to the highway.

  Chapter Sixteen

  August slowed the stallion to a walk again. They’d kept up the pace for several hours, alternating twenty minutes at an easy lope with ten minutes at a walk. But these were cow ponies, conditioned for short bursts of speed, not endurance rides. A white, salty foam of sweat coated their leather tack and lathered their flanks. She twisted in her saddle to check on Teal. Her head bobbed sleepily with the big bay’s movements.

  “Hey,” August said quietly.

  Teal looked up and yawned, then belatedly covered her mouth. “Sorry. I think I can understand how cowboys say they slept in the saddle. Time to pick up the pace again?”

  “No.” August reined her horse in a circle to come alongside the bay. “Almost time to rest.” She pointed ahead and to the left. “There’s a small pond over there and a trail on the other side of it that leads into the first canyon. I know a place just inside where we can stop and catch a few winks before we start climbing.”

  “Climbing?”

  “Yeah. We’re taking the high-canyon trail. It’s pretty steep and rough. We’ll turn the horses loose to find their way back to the ranch.”

  The clouds had moved off, and the moon now lit their path and glinted off the dark water of the small, spring-fed pool at the foot of a steep cliff. The horses drank deeply as August freed them of their saddles. She propped the saddles under a small overhang and covered them with the ground cloth in her bedroll.

  Teal’s eyes followed her every movement. “Shouldn’t we hide them better? That will be pretty easy to see in daylight.”

  August refilled their water bottles in the pool and dropped purifier tablets into them. “That’s just to protect them if we get a cloudburst. If they see the saddles, they’ve already tracked us from the ranch, so it’s not giving anything away. I’ve got a few tricks to lose them on the high-canyon trail.”

  August led both the horses back and forth along the base of the cliffs to lay down a confusing pattern of hoof prints before she removed their bridles and stowed them in her pack.

  She shouldered their backpack and helped Teal tie their bedrolls together at the ends so she could fit them over her head like shoulder pads. It would be a comfortable fit but uncomfortably hot to carry them that way. The backpack was much heavier, so August figured they would suffer differently but equally.

  Teal looked at the cliffs rising before them, her expression a determined mask. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  August led them left of the obvious entry point on the other side of the pool, using a handful of trail mix to get the horses to follow. When they reached a sliver of an opening in the cliff, she fed the mix to the horses and shooed them away, effectively covering her and Teal’s footprints with their hoof prints. The horses went a short distance and lingered uncertainly before the stallion shook his head and started off at a trot for the ranch. The bay followed.

  They hiked for another twenty minutes with nothing but the sound of their boots on the sandy path breaking the stillness of the night before Teal spoke again.

  “Do you think they’ll try to come for us tonight?” she asked.

  “I have no idea, but I’ve learned not to underestimate Reyes.” August hoped they would because she was tired of looking over her shoulder. No matter how it ended, she was relieved that Reyes was finally playing his cards so they could end this game. Still, she worried about the other players possibly involved. “If he’s mixed up with a Central-American cartel, though, I’m mostly worried about who those guys would send to protect their interests.”

  “I’m trying to wrap my brain around some drug dealers chasing us on horseback.”

  August was only half listening. She was searching the steep incline on her right. Ah. There.

  “I know I’m babbling. I’m just so tired.” Teal stumbled into August’s back and grasped onto her backpack to keep from falling.

  “No, it’s okay.” She pointed to the small ledge she’d spotted. “I’m climbing up there to set our alarm so we can catch an hour or two of sleep.” She shrugged off her pack and emptied it. “Find as many rocks as you can fit into the pack.”

  She and Teal gathered small and medium-sized rocks to fill the pack, and August added a coil of dark twine from its previous contents, then slipped into a climbing harness. Teal helped her heft the pack onto her back, and she began to free-climb.

  “That pack is too heavy. Be careful,” Teal said.

  The rock wall appeared solid, but amazingly, after twenty years, the shallow indentions for hand and toe holes that she and her friends had chiseled into the rock remained.

  “Not to worry. I’m an old hand at this.” When she came alongside the short, narrow ledge, she tested the eyelet still anchored into the rock wall and smiled. Still solid. Who knew that kids playing at war games in those canyons could someday save her life? She hooked her harness into the eyelet to free her hands, then swung the pack around to begin her task. She neatly stacked the rocks vertically on the slim ledge, tying one end of the twine around the largest at the base. “Don’t touch that twine,” she called down to Teal as she dropped the rest of the coil downward.

  Teal was waiting anxiously when she reached the bottom and shucked off the harness. “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?”

  “When Tank and I were teens, a group of us used to come to the canyons and split up into teams with our paintball guns and play war games. This was a trap we set for our opponents—only we used hollow Christmas-tree ornaments filled with paint instead of rocks.”

  While Teal put their supplies back into the pack, August carefully threaded the twine through another eyelet long ago imbedded in the rock, then tied it off at a third one on the opposite side of the trail. She stood and pointed to the twine that now stretched across their path. “When the other team came through and snagged the trip wire, it would yank loose the wedge holding the ornaments on that small ledge, they’d roll off, and…splat. Anybody standing down here would get hit and coated with paint, effectively ‘killing’ several at once. Those rocks aren’t big enough to really hurt anyone but will create enough noise to let us know someone’s on the trail.”

  “What about other hikers?”

  “This isn’t a park trail.” August pointed toward a dark ridge some distance to their right. “That’s the upper canyon trail.” She helped Teal step over the twine and led her another five minutes down the trail that was little more than a sandy path at the bottom of a wide gorge. Narrow gorges had periodically forked off to the right or left, but August ignored them until they reached the fourth opening on the left. That path angled upward for a bit before it leveled out. “This is where we’ll rest. If we hear our alarm go off, we have several possible escape routes.”

  August watched Teal spread out her bedroll, then wordlessly laid hers at the top for a pillow. Despite the heat, they snuggled close. Teal was tense against August’s side, and August tightened her arms. The night was so sticky hot, she wasn’t
sure where her sweat ended and Teal’s began. Exhaustion winning out over adrenaline, she’d started to drift toward sleep when soft words drew her back to wakefulness.

  “I’m scared, August.”

  She touched her lips to Teal’s damp brow. If she wasn’t so tired, she’d kiss away every bead of sweat, lick away every worry that had Teal’s beautiful body strung tight as a bow. “Don’t worry, baby. We’ll be okay.”

  Teal clutched the front of August’s T-shirt. “I can’t lose you. If you have to go into witness protection, I want to go with you.” She loosened her hold. “I mean if you want me to be with you.”

  August rolled up on her side and captured Teal’s mouth in a deep kiss. This was no time to stoke their libidos, but she needed Teal to feel how much she wanted her. Teal whimpered when August pulled back to caress her cheek. “The smart thing would be for you to stay at The White Paw, but I’m not sure I could stand being without you.”

  Teal’s eyes were dark pools in the moonlight. “I know I said there’d be time to say it later, but you have to know I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with you.”

  August closed her eyes. She could deny it. If she didn’t admit it, maybe it wouldn’t hurt if this didn’t last.

  “August?”

  The fear in her whispered name jolted her to a quick decision, not that she’d actually had a choice. She opened her eyes and started to say what was on her heart, but Teal wasn’t looking at her. She was looking past August’s shoulder to the entrance of their small side trail.

  “Where’s your gun?” Teal whispered so softly, August could barely hear her.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. The gun was beside their bedroll, and when she’d rolled up to kiss Teal, she’d put her back to it. She mentally calculated the seconds it would take for her to roll over, grab the gun, and begin firing. Not enough time to stop them from shooting Teal as soon as she moved. “How many?” She, too, kept her voice barely audible.

  “One. It’s an animal. All I can see is a dark shape and the moonlight reflecting in the eyes. It could be a wolf or coyote or mountain lion. I can’t tell.”