Gunner’s mom’s pants were in shreds. There were little pink pieces of flesh all over the pavement. I didn’t know how she was even conscious. “Get back, get back.” The police tried to push us away, but Gunner and I were too fast and got in right next to her. His voice was raw as he yelled, “Mom, Mom, oh my God, oh my God.” Gunner took her head in his hands, and his dad dropped to his knees, breathing in a panic, stroking her face, telling her in a whisper that she was going to make it. She was the color of ash. Her eyes didn’t understand.
Police taped off the lot, pushing us back, and I allowed myself to disappear into the crowd and away from Sheriff Healey, Gunner, and Gunner’s dad. They were huddled together like they were physically connected. I could feel the prayers coming off of them, and I added my own. Please let her be all right. Don’t let Gunner lose his mother. Don’t let Tanner lose our sheriff. Let this be the worst it gets.
Bomb-sniffing dogs funneled their way through the lot. Every cop’s car, every elected official’s, was getting searched first, but you could tell nobody here was going near their own cars until they got cleared too.
And then I saw him. My father? What in the world would he be doing here?
“She was going into the cruiser to get me some water,” he was mumbling to the police officers. “And then, out of nowhere, kaboom.”
My dad was covered in blood—the sheriff’s blood though. Other than some shards of glass that had sliced his face and forehead, he seemed to be fine. And, God dammit, drunk.
I was up in his face before I even realized what I was doing.
“Did she come out here for you? She was trying to help you, and this happened?”
He wrapped his hand around my wrists, forcing me back. Two cops stepped in fast to separate us.
“That bomb woulda gone off either way, now or later. Cartel thugs blow shit up and you’re gonna yell at me?” My dad was getting louder. Everyone who wasn’t still staring at the emergency workers loading up Gunner’s mom and rushing her off in the ambulance turned their attention to us.
“Why don’t you yell at your mother?” he hissed. “She’s married to one.”
“You know what? Stumble around into a frickin’ IED, for all I care.”
I turned around and walked away. Then I broke into a jog. Everyone, it seemed, was going in a different direction, crisscrossing like cattle gone crazy from a coyote. Except for Jane. I spotted her, standing still, on the edge of the football field, frozen in horror.
Jane was the eye of this storm, but I ran toward her, the only place to run.
THE WOLF CUB
I turned on the television while lounging in bed. The sheets were tangled. That bothered me. I liked them pulled tight and smooth. But the whisky was smooth. When I finished my glass, I placed it on the back of my leather-bound copy of Crime and Punishment and flipped to the news.
The reporter said officials were investigating a brazen attack during the classic American institution of high school football. I wondered whether if I offered her an interview, she would dare meet me somewhere alone.
“How did you become so powerful?” she’d ask.
“Let me tell you a story,” I would say, and the pretty reporter would hang on my every word, impressed by how much knowledge I held. I would tell her about Paricutín, a volcano I read about, uncovered by a farmer here in Mexico. He was tending to his crop of corn when a huge crack appeared in the dirt. A rotten smell seeped out. It was sulfur. There was a massive rumble, and the earth gave way into a giant fissure that started spewing fire and rock. No one had any idea a volcano could come from nowhere like that. It is called a scoria cone. It can appear suddenly, and the eruption . . . it can build a mountain.
The reporter would understand I was also talking about myself. I had been here all along, a volcano sucking down the countryside to rise. I was the mountain.
A sharp rap on the door interrupted my daydream. “Come in.”
It was Alamo. He smirked. “We brought you a present.”
I turned off the television and grabbed my gun, following Alamo downstairs. He called for Asesino and Pozolero. They forced a man with a bag over his head through the door and to his knees, hands tied behind his back.
“We found Grande’s accountant. He doesn’t know where the tunnel is, but he has some interesting information about who might.”
The man was shaking. Whimpering.
“Answer all of our questions, or I’ll kill you in a way your family will remember,” I ordered.
The man’s voice trembled. “Grande is working with someone in the United States. We call him the Mad Son.”
“And where is this Mad Son?”
“I don’t know,” he swore. “I’ve never met him. I only coordinate the payments. He’s overseeing construction on that side of the border.”
“The Mad Son,” I pondered. I pointed to Asesino. “Peel back the layers. I want his real name. His address. His home. His business. Find out exactly who he is. And then . . . find out who he loves the most.”
They had done well again—my Fortress, Soup Maker, and Assassin.
I stepped around Grande’s accountant to my liquor cabinet and got out a bottle of imported vodka I’d been saving.
“My friends,” I said. “This is triple distilled through birch charcoal, then filtered again through a tube of precious stones inside the bottle as you pour.”
“What stones?” asked Alamo.
“They let you choose when you order. Enjoy. This is as close as we can get to drinking diamonds. Salud, amigos.”
I turned to Pozolero and gave a slight wave back toward the accountant quivering beneath the bag on his head.
“Go make some soup.”
JANE
Boiling water wheezed into the Styrofoam cup of soup from the vending machine in the hospital lobby. I stirred the flecks of noodles around until they got soft and handed it to Cade. He walked it over to Gunner.
“Please eat something, buddy,” he said.
Gunner sat with his head resting on his father’s shoulder like a little kid. He shook his head no and slumped lower into the hard chair. Plastic chairs should not be used in hospital waiting rooms. It makes it that much colder. And the colors are always wrong for whatever it is you’re feeling. Tan is not enough. Orange is too much. Both of those colors dominated the room.
“How about something from the cafeteria instead?” Cade offered. “I’ll go see what they have.”
“How much longer before you think we hear something?” Jojo thought she was whispering, but with her there was really no such thing.
We’d been waiting outside the ER for almost four and a half hours. Two buses out of Tanner had come and gone since last night, but there was no way I was leaving right now.
Gunner reached out for my hand. I looked down at Gunner’s fingers grazing mine, dark brown against pale, so pale it was almost blue, as if there was no blood flowing through me. I was empty, a black hole that would swallow his goodness. I should let go. But I didn’t. I couldn’t, or I would cave in on myself, like black holes tend to do.
“Thank you for sitting with me,” Gunner said. His eyes were dewy and wide like a puppy’s, and his bottom lip was wet from where he nervously bit it.
“Henry Healey?” a doctor called out.
Mr. Healey and Gunner jumped to their feet. I gave Gunner’s hand an extra squeeze before they disappeared down a hall for an update.
“This is the craziest, worst thing that has ever happened to anyone I know.” Jojo leaned in. “Do you think Sheriff Healey’s going to live?”
“Don’t even say things like that,” Mattey said.
“What? It’s a legit question.”
“Be quiet, Jojo.” Mattey stood up. “I’m going outside.”
Jojo looked surprised. Mattey rarely snapped at anyone, let alone her.
&nb
sp; “I think I need some air too.” I followed him out.
“Hey . . .” I jogged to catch up.
“I can’t do this anymore.” Mattey shook his head. “I feel like . . . like . . . It’s what my father said: Anyone who has anything to do with the cartel winds up dead. That guy who was chasing you, he was cartel. Don’t you think that after what just happened, we should tell the police the truth about him? I know Cade thinks . . .”
“Cade thinks what?”
Cade had come out of the hospital looking for us.
“We need to come clean.” Mattey was getting riled up. “Cade, I’m really freaked out. I know you think police are bad, but there was a bomb.”
“Calm down. No one’s fighting you on this, Mattey,” Cade said. “You’re right. The bomb changes everything. We need advice.”
I remember somebody saying to me once that advice is what you ask for when you already know what to do but don’t like the answer.
“I guess it was stupid to think this could last forever,” I said.
“It was stupid to start it in the first place,” Cade answered. “But we did.”
“We’re going to be in so much trouble for lying. We need to tell someone now,” Mattey pleaded. “A grown-up. If not the police, my dad. Someone!”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Cade said. “Let’s wait and see how Gunner’s mom is doing. She’s the only one we can trust.”
“What if she’s not okay?”
“I don’t want to think about that.”
Cade hopped up to sit on top of a big electrical box. Huge air conditioning units buzzed and hissed around us. Massive pipes climbed the cinder blocks of the hospital walls. A row of dumpsters blocked us from view. I pretended for a moment we were on a spaceship full of machines and engines rumbling us far away from here. The night was cloudy, cool, the heat that lingers deep into late Texas fall coming to a close. It was trying to hold on. I was trying to hold on.
“No stars,” Mattey noticed.
“They’re there,” Cade said. “Even if we can’t see them. They’re out there.”
“We’re kids,” Mattey mumbled.
“It’s going to be all right,” Cade said.
“How? How is it possibly going to be all right?” Mattey asked.
Silence fell between us. No one knew.
CADE
Sheriff Healy was going to make it. Gunner’s mom would live.
First thought: Thank God.
Next thought: Now what?
We promised Mattey we would go talk to her first thing in the morning, the second the doctors let us, and take it from there.
Jane and I trekked back to the barn, exhausted from being up all night. We fell asleep as usual, side by side on our backs, then back to back facing away from each other. But when I woke up, I was curled around Jane, holding on like someone was going to take her away. My knees pressed against the backs of hers, my arms around her waist. Even our fingers were laced together. She was still breathing steady and soft. I didn’t want to move. We were all wrapped up against that first chilly morning.
The sun peeked through the slats in the barn. I took a minute to soak Jane in, her hair that Hawaii-smelling shampoo I bought her. This was the girl I knew. When we were in the barn, alone, all the doubt dimmed.
I couldn’t help it. I pressed my lips against the curve where her neck and shoulder met and let my face rest there in the warmth a minute. Jane’s breathing changed. I froze, my lips still on her skin. Her breath caught and went a little deeper, and she pressed closer. She was definitely awake. I wrapped my arms tighter around her. She gently stroked the back of my hand with her fingers, then traced them up my arm. I let my lips trail along her neck, over her cheek, stopping by her ear. I should tell her right now: I have your money. We can run away.
I pushed at her shoulder a little bit, trying to get her to face me. What would her lips feel like? Her body? I pictured Jane lying in the sunshine on that rock in the quarry in her see-through underwear. I wanted to run my hands . . . everywhere. Both of our breathing was the same now, too fast, too hot. Turn over. Kiss me. But then what? What would that make us? Don’t do it. But do it. But don’t. It will ruin everything. It will fix everything.
We moved away from each other quickly, kicked off the blankets, and stood up. I pulled a sweatshirt over my head. Jane did the same. Our eyes connected for only the briefest second in a way that hurt. Everything that we would never say. Or do. Or be.
Today was reality—the cold air that seeped in, everything that happened last night.
Summer was over.
The barn was over.
Game over.
“Gunner’s mom has surgery today,” I said.
We were both quiet.
“I’ll go wash my clothes at the Moraleses’ and pack up my things,” Jane broke the silence.
“I should go check on my dad,” I said. “I’ll let you know when we can talk to the sheriff?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
There was nothing else to say.
I wanted to punch someone. I wanted to kick something.
As I rounded the corner to my house, a black car pulled up. The driver’s-side window rolled down, and a man in a suit leaned out.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Do you live here?”
“Why?”
“We have some paperwork for Mr. Daniel Evans.”
“That’s my father.”
“We didn’t want to leave it in the mailbox, and no one came to the door. It’s important,” he said.
“I can take it.”
“Can you show me some ID?”
“Can you?”
The man handed me a business card.
I dug around in my pocket and fished out my wallet and handed him my license to look over. He nodded and handed me a big fat envelope.
I stared at the business card he gave me. His name blurred as my eyes focused on the title underneath. Bankruptcy attorney.
It’s not so easy to break up fallow ground.
JANE
“It was all over the ground! I can’t believe how much blood there was from her leg. I mean, I know it got completely blown off, but still, it was like three people exploded.”
Jojo sat on the dryer in the Moraleses’ basement while I did my laundry, zippers and snaps clanging and clinking against the metal as they circled beneath her. Cade hadn’t had a working washing machine at his house in two years, so she was used to the routine. She chattered a mile a minute about the bombing. She was horrified, sure, but in the excited way that people who have nothing to do with terrible things are.
“If I were Gunner, I would want to kill whoever did that. I kind of want to kill them for Gunner. I am definitely capable of murder,” Jojo said. “Like, if someone hurt any of my family or friends.”
“You don’t know that,” I answered.
“Sure I do. I would straight-up shoot them. I’m not scared of the cartel.”
“I am.” Mattey appeared in the doorway.
He was beyond edgy waiting for us to talk to the sheriff, but too used to going along with Cade to make a move on his own.
“I’ll bet the feds come sweep Tanner. I wonder who they’ll find out is connected.” Jojo took a bite of her sandwich. “Want a pickle or some chips?”
“No thanks, I should head back.” I pulled the last of my laundry out of the dryer.
The sound the bomb made yesterday was caught in my brain, like an alarm on a ship warning that the whole thing is going down.
“Keep us in the loop,” Mattey said. “You know, if you hear anything about Gunner’s mom.”
“I will.”
The walk back to the barn was slow and sad.
Being in the barn was even sadder. I watched the
sunlight shift across the floor, noting the last place the afternoon brushed, staring at the spaces where the roof was uneven with the walls. I needed to pack my bag for when they made me leave here.
D-day. I would tell law enforcement everything I knew. I would tell them about Ivan and the money I lost. I would tell them about Raff and how he died, all of them left with their blood X’ed on their faces like the cross on the pharmacy wall. What they knew killed them—that was the message. They call it the tunnel at the end of the light, I would tell the police. And they could go to the pharmacy near the boney-looking forest full of starving coyotes and shallow graves and see if there was gold.
What would it be like to really say goodbye, I wondered. I could only think of how it felt waking up to Cade wrapped around me, turning me into the sunlight I wanted to be. Stop. I needed to stop. In the middle of this huge and horrifying mess, being with Cade felt perfect. Perfect is terrifying. Perfect breaks.
I glanced down at the barn floor and noticed that Mattey had left one of his sketch pads behind from our long, hot days here. I thumbed through the pages. He didn’t share many of his drawings, brushing them off as doodles, so I was surprised to find a perfect rendition of my own face looking back at me. Mattey was beyond talented. Here was my life in the barn, in this book. At some point he must have drawn me sleeping right after they found me. Hunter was against my legs. The lines of my body were jagged, and the shadows on my face, deep.
He had also sketched Cade and me talking at the table. We appeared so relaxed, not a care in the world. But then I looked closer. I was laughing in the picture, but he’d captured something in my eyes that scared me. I looked like I didn’t believe in anything.
I put the sketchbook down and wandered out to the back of the barn, where the three of us had watched so many sunsets, talking as the sky turned colors over the faded fence. There was something about the edge of white sky meeting wind-spindled trees, charcoal limbs cutting and cut by their own offshoots, lines inside lines, the bleached horizon crosshatched to gray, that made me wonder if I could still hope for a version of what we built. This view used to catch fire in the summer, raspberry, lilac, goldenrod, the vanishing colors of hummingbirds darting to take the smallest sips of nectar and quickly gone. How can a pinpoint of honey be enough to keep them flying? We can’t even see their wings. They blur white like those lines on the side of the road we are told to stay inside, but don’t. A thousand nerve endings ending.
Hide with Me Page 17
