“Bullshit.” She shook her head dismissively. “Tell yourself all you want, that you’re a big, bad gangbanger, but you’re not. You showed that guy—Tommy-Blue—a badge, but you were pretty fucking uneasy about it.”
“I don’t know what—”
“And angry. Got angry all over you. I seen that before.”
“At Tommy-Blue.”
“Sure, maybe...plus a pile of other stuff. Plus...you’re a dealer.”
“I’m a what?”
“A dealer. Slinging dope. The garage?”
Surprised, Bean stared at her.
“I’m not an idiot, asshole, and he didn’t build my prison sound-proof, just escape-proof.”
Prison. A harsh word. He’d sent how many men and women there over the years? And now this little girl sat next to him and calmly talked about the prison where Bassi—the driver he’d hired—had kept her locked away.
“How long did he keep you there?”
“In the truck? As soon as he got it.” She looked at him as the car crested a hill, the high point of Terrell County. “But that’s not what you want to know.”
He swallowed. “No?”
“Three weeks.”
She said it quick, like ripping a bandage off a terrible wound.
Oh, Jeremiah. How could he do that to a little girl?
“Three weeks? You sure? He didn’t have the truck that long. How could it have been—”
Anger blew up out of her like a gushing west Texas wildcat oil well. Thick and black, clinging to everything it touched. “You think I’m making it up? You think I’m lying so that I can...what? Get you down into the gulley and kill you? Or maybe I’m scheming to get you alone and get me a little piece of manly loving? ‘Oh, she’s had sex with a grown man, she must have liked it, maybe she can do things for me.’”
Bean shook his head, horrified. “No, that’s not what—”
“I want to go home. That’s all, that’s it. Home. And right now, you’re pretty much my best bet. That’s all you are to me. Do you understand that? You’re not my savior, you’re not my hero, you’re a guy driving a car who’s about half-convinced me he could get me home.”
Bean put his eyes back on the road and from up here, he could see all the county roads, including Ranch Road 2400. But he could also see down between the rises. And just two more rises over, tucked deep into the scrub and dirt, was that lonely ranch house.
“I can, Faith, I promise I can. I will do—”
“That’s not my name.” Her voice exploded in the car, banging around like a coiled boxer. It slammed an uppercut against his chin, then nailed him with a roundhouse. It pummeled his gut, pounded his chest.
“I’m sorry, I thought—”
“What am I wearing?”
The white confirmation dress. A state of grace...of faith.
“That was his name for me.”
She started crying then but he didn’t mistake those tears. They weren’t sad or depressed tears, they were white-hot angry. They were violent and maybe homicidal but they were not sad.
“I’m sorry.” Bean’s voice was soft. “I apologize for my mistake.”
She took a deep breathing, inhaling slowly, letting the air leak out of her as the shaking in her hands lessened. When they were dead still, she spoke. “He had me before he had that truck.”
“Before?” The Judge turned his eyes toward her. “How long before?”
She shrugged, suddenly unwilling to talk about it. “Days are days, nights are nights. Coupl’a weeks, maybe.”
Deep in his chest, Bean thought his heart seized. Breath came hard and ragged, shots of hot pain pounded his brain. His skin broke in a hot sweat. “Two weeks? Before the truck? Holy shit, I’m so sorry, Fai—” Bean shook his head. “I can’t imagine, but I am sorry you’ve been through it.”
Then her anger was gone, a tire gone flat from broken nails and shattered bottles. She slumped against the seat, far away from him against the passenger door. “He’s dead. I don’t care.” Immediately, she lowered her head. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“The hell you say. He was a piece of shit.”
“He was a human being.”
Bean shrugged. “Technically, I guess.”
She didn’t laugh but maybe, just maybe, he saw the tiniest crack of a smile. It was gone in a heartbeat and Bean was content to leave it at that. She was a damaged, hurt young woman. When—if—she wanted to talk she would. Until then, all he could do was fuck it up. So he’d leave it in her hands.
They drove the last mile or so slowly. When the turn to RR 2400 came up, the Judge took it. Less than two miles down that road, he found the cattle trail and turned south.
Rutted. Broken. Filled with rocks and cactus. He squiggled the car back and forth, avoiding as many of the holes as he could. The car bounced around, jouncing them up and down, sideways, until their heads smacked into each other.
“Ow,” she said. “Keep your big head over there.”
“Doing my best.”
“Well...thanks for trying, I guess.”
He chuckled as the car banged through a dry wash and slipped up over a rise.
On the far side, still probably two miles from the ranch house, Bean shit a brick.
Sombrero Man.
“What the fuck?”
The man leaned against his truck, head down, intent on the giant Bowie knife he picked his nails with. Bean jammed on the brakes, the car lurched to a stop.
Dead center of the trail.
The man’s head rolled up and his eyes rolled over the duo.
“Are you stupid?” Faith asked. “Keep going.”
“The hell is he doing here?”
“Doesn’t matter. Keep going. You’re drawing attention.”
Bean got moving again, slow. As they passed, both he and Faith kept their gazes forward. When they were a hundred feet down the cattle trail, Bean chanced a look in the rearview mirror. The man stared at them, but kept working his nails.
Bean breathed, suddenly aware he hadn’t been. “We might be—”
Then the guy cocked his head, a puppy hearing a new sound.
“Shit.”
The man dropped his knife, his eyes as wide as the west Texas desert, and jumped his ass into the truck. He hammered the gas and his truck fishtailed a geyser of dirt and gravel.
The Judge took off. The car bounced over rocks and scrub and Faith grabbed the dash to steady herself.
“We’ll be fine,” Bean said.
The truck roared from the dust, faster than Bean thought it would. It tore down the trail and within seconds slammed into their bumper. The car banged, yawed for a second, then caught and straightened out. Bean and Faith rocked around the inside of the car. Bean smacked his head on the driver’s door window while Faith’s fingers gouged deep into the dashboard now.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”
“Who you trying to convince?”
The Judge yanked the wheel hard right just as the truck roared up on them again. But with them off the trail, the truck came abreast on their left. With a laugh, Bean jerked the car back on the trail and aimed it at the truck’s bumper. The vehicles met, crunched and kissed, and Bean forced Sombrero Man toward the edge of the trail.
But, really, what the fuck was Bean going to do? He could shove and muscle the truck a little, like a grocery clerk muscling up on an oil rig roustabout, but eventually the oilman was going to pound the shit outta the clerk.
“Mariana,” Bean said, trying to ease the truck over the edge and down the hill without tearing hell outta his car. “It’s getting worse. It’s all falling apart.”
It’s not, Jeremiah, I promise.
You can’t promise me that. You can’t.
It wasn’t falling apart now. It had been falling apart for years. Since that bloody night. And he knew, as surely as he knew that fucking truck was going to get them long before they got to the relative protection of the ranch house, that he was alone and would
never be able to stop the falling.
It was his madness made manifest. It was everything he’d ever feared come to fruition.
Jeremiah? You’re not crazy. I keep telling you. And if you had killed yourself to be with me, this little girl would still be with Bassi, right?
Yeah.
So you saved her.
Yeah...I guess so.
And maybe made up for Angela? Just a little bit?
I can never make up for giving Angela away, for letting the Donaways adopt her. It is a blood debt I can never erase.
Blood debt. So melodramatic, my love. Do you really think—”
Gunfire exploded the side windshield. Shards flew across them and out the other side, into the dust like glitter in a sea of shit brown. Faith yelped as Bean slammed her to the floorboard. He ducked, hammered down the accelerator to get in front of the truck. The engine screamed in the afternoon air, the frame and shocks howling as the car bounced over a cattle trail too fouled up even for cows to use.
“Damnit,” he yelled. “Who the fuck are you?”
More shots and at least one popped the back of the car. Pop pop, but to Bean’s ears it sounded like POP POP. Another window shattered and he felt more rounds hit the quarter panel and trunk.
Bean couldn’t fire back. First of all he was driving and barely able to keep the Camry on the cow trail. Second, the .380 was a good gun, accurate and lightweight, but not particularly powerful. To be effective for social work, Bean would have to get in close. But Sombrero’s monster shotgun would keep Bean distant.
“Mariana.” He fought to hold the car on the trail. “See you in a few minutes, babe.”
I hate to tell you this, but you’re not done yet. You have to get her to her mother, Jeremiah.
“And how am I going to do that?”
“Judge?” the girl said.
“I don’t have any ideas, Mariana, so if you’ve got one, from your perch where life is easy and clean, I’m all ears.”
“Uh...Judge?”
Jeremiah! Don’t you ever get uppity with me like that. You think this is easier than spending my life with the man I love and my daughter? You think this is what I wanted?
“Judge.”
When you do finally get here, Jeremiah, I will straight up beat your ass you keep talking like that.
“Judge!” The girl’s voice boomed like a gunshot.
“What, goddamnit?”
More shots peppered the car. The front windshield blasted out, covering them with glittering bits of safety glass. The truck was behind them now, the driver whooping and racking more rounds in the shotgun. His sombrero was nowhere to be seen.
“Quit talking to your dead wife. We have a problem.” She pointed ahead of them.
A goat.
A big-ass, seriously pissed-off billy. Dead center middle of the cattle trail.
Staring at the car like he fucking owned the trail.
“Are you kidding me with this?” Bean asked, thinking of the dog in the street in Barefield.
But unlike the dog, this fucking thing lowered his head and charged the car.
18
With a yelp worthy of an angst-laden school girl, Bean jerked the wheel.
Nothing happened. They kept flying straight at the goat. Dirt and rocks kicked all over the place, peppered the front and back of the car and still they headed for animal.
Who continued toward them.
Just before head and grill would have met, the tires finally grabbed the dirt trail and the car shot left.
Straight toward where the earth sloped away from the cattle trail.
“Fuck fuck fuck.” Bean yanked the wheel back right, trying to avoid rolling the damned car halfway down the hill.
Somehow, Bean managed to avoid both the goat and crash. The truck, on the other hand, drove straight into the animal. A head-on...Ford F-150 versus billy goat.
The crunch, machine against animal, was surprisingly loud. The goat’s horns penetrated the 150’s grill while the animal’s back legs, now off the ground, scrabbled madly. When the hooves did grab some ground, they caught and stuck and the truck bowled right over the animal’s back end.
Is that what Bassi looked like? When I ran him down, was it as bloody and disturbing as this goat?
“Holy crap,” Faith said, her fingers still deep in the dashboard.
That was exactly what Bassi looked like, but I don’t give two shits...not after what he did to her.
Another goat wandered onto the trail, completely animal-oblivious. The Ford struck it head on and the animal exploded. A red mist, threaded with viscera and bones, painted the front of the truck. Swerving through the muck, the truck went off the trail at probably forty or forty-five miles an hour. The driver tapped the brakes and turned the wheel downhill but it was too late. The angle was just enough, the speed just enough, that the truck began to tip.
“There it goes,” Bean said.
The truck went slowly, plopping on its side, then its roof, then gaining speed as it rolled down the hill. Three...maybe four...times. Glass exploded, bits of chrome came away like cast off clothes. Somewhere deep inside the cab, someone screamed. Dust and rocks rumbled around the truck, tumbled down beside it. When the truck eventually came to rest, on its side, at the bottom of the low hill, the rocks kept tumbling around it as though they didn’t give the least shit about the truck.
Bean watched the entire thing, his hands hard on the wheel but his gaze equally hard on the truck.
“Judge, watch out.”
“Shit.”
Five more goats on the trail, all just as oblivious as the dead one. He slid the car to a stop, but heard at least one animal crunch against the car’s front end. The thing howled.
“Fucking sea of goats,” Bean said.
The cattle trail was lost beneath undulating animals. They moved constantly, but never went anywhere. It was like waves of dirty, white water rolling over rocky and craggy beaches, but never coming all the way in or going all the way out.
“The hell is all this?”
The animals answered, their braying deep and thick. Mostly they ignored the car though a few nosed at it. They roamed the scrub and ate whatever presented itself and none of the animals seemed particularly disturbed by the intrusion. One jumped on the hood and Faith giggled, though not with humor. Bean clearly heard strain.
Sombrero Man’s truck was behind them. Smoke leaked from the engine.
“He dead?” Faith asked.
“We can only hope.”
“Uncharitable much?”
Bean shrugged. “The man tried to kill us.”
“There is that.”
“Stay here.”
“Not a problem.”
Bean snagged the .380 from his waistband, grabbed his hat from the backseat, and headed carefully for the truck. A couple of goats walked with him and he hoped that if the bullets started flying, Sombrero Man shot low. Bean neither loved nor hated animals but if it came to him or them, he had no compunction about using goats as low-rent Kevlar.
Bean hissed. “That’s some funk.”
One, or both, of the dead goats had shit copiously at their last breath and now the air with thick with fecal stench.
One hand over his nose, the other holding the .380, Bean moved down the slope and circled the truck until he was against the shattered back window. When he peeked in, he saw nothing. He tightened his grip on the pistol.
Over the din of the still-living goats it was impossible to hear anything except maybe the roaring fear in his ears. If the guy were standing next to him jacking a round into the shotgun, Bean wouldn’t have heard it.
“Damnit.”
I’m tired, Mariana.
I know, baby, I know.
I’m tired of the bodies.
I know, Jeremiah, but sometimes—
Bean realized, when he heard it, that he’d been expecting a shot, but nothing so loud as what exploded the air. Bean startled and stumbled backward, his boots clatterin
g over rocks and scrub. The shot went through the broken back glass and tore hell out of the dashboard and steering wheel.
Bean’s head swiveled, side to side, up and down, desperately looking for the shooter. Finally, the guy appeared at the far side of the truck, bloody and angry.
“Try to run me off the road?” He fired again.
Bean ducked—as though that would save him if the buckshot came his way—and dashed around the front end, giving himself just a second or so of cover.
“The fuck you try to kill me for?”
“Try to kill you? Because you tried to kill us.”
Bean tried to figure out how far to the car and could he get in and get gone before Sombrero Man shot him? Fuck no. Upslope, first of all. But even if he made it to the car, the trail was still covered with goats and there was no way he could simply barrel through them. They were too big and the car too small.
“After you tried to kill me,” Sombrero Man said.
He fired again, maybe a random shot, maybe not. But it went wide. Buckshot sprayed part of the front quarter panel and two goats who’d come down. They hit the ground and never made a sound.
“Fuckfuckfuck.”
A giant closed fist of fear, maybe as big as Zeus’ fist, slammed into Bean. Scared his hand into a sympathetic squeeze of the .380’s trigger.
Six shots worth of sympathetic squeezing, in fact.
One went high, one went into a goat, and two bloomed roses on Sombrero Man’s chest. Another replaced his left eye with a smear of blood. The last shot blew one of his fingers off. The digit snapped up, moving in Olympic-style slow-motion, bone and flesh and specks of blood flying like self-penitent priests beating their own backs with whips, up and up and then slowly down.
Until it plopped in the dirt.
Sombrero Man danced a spastic jig and finally hit the dirt, his head cocked at an odd angle toward the finger.
Searching for your finger?
And what the deuce is going on with fingers? They’re everywhere.
Bean froze, his finger tight around the depressed trigger of the .380, the magazine empty, the barrel smoking. His heart was equally frozen, a solid block of ice sitting cold in his chest.
Jeremiah?
Sombrero’s blood was already slowing, already congealing, and it soaked the dirt into a brown mush. Already there were a couple of flies buzzing around him and it wouldn’t be long until the goats and vultures and coyotes were swaggering by, sniffing blood as though it were a sauce for their dinner.
Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3) Page 10
