Exit Blood (Barefield Book 2)
Page 11
In the darkness behind closed eyes, all I saw was Staind Skin and the foot and the bloodings.
“Darcy?”
How had a delivery man found me? How had some delivery flunky known to find me in a bar in Ft. Stockton? How had someone known to send me the damn plate in this shitty little town? Hell, for that matter, how had they found me in Valentine at the church?
“Hey, y’all dead?”
I stared at the ceiling. An old time ceiling, with pressed tin, painted directly over the tin in some places, left bare in others. Pipes and electrical cables and shit ran all over, tacked to the ceiling. Most old buildings in west Texas looked the same. All built at roughly the same time, with roughly the same materials. A ceiling in one place was damn likely to be the same ceiling one hundred miles away.
This one was just like Staind Skin.
Except Staind Skin, at least when I woke up, had been leaking green confetti.
From a couple of shotgun blasts.
“Damn.” I sighed. “I hate shotguns.”
“If y’all talking, I’m guessing y’all ain’t dead.”
Cope and I stared at the broken plate.
“Makes me wanna get moving,” Cope said.
“No shit. Let’s pay for—”
“Damnit,” Petunia yelled. “I need some fucking cognac.”
“Would you shut the hell up?” I said. “Christ, I’ve been listening to it all night. I don’t care. They don’t have cognac, get over it. I’ve got real problems over here.”
A slick smile played on her petite face. “You have more problems than you realize, Darcy.”
“How do you know...?”
As gracefully as she had slammed the eight ball into the guy’s nose, she pulled a gun from inside her leather jacket. “Ah, Darcy, I know all kinds of things. About you and your father.”
A Little More Than Two Days Ago
“Let’s start with this,” she said. “Why don’t you slowly pull Lucas’ .40 from your belt and hand it to me.”
I made no move. The last thing I wanted to do was give up the only thing that might save me.
“Darcy.” Her voice was low, soothing. “Don’t be a hero, okay. You’ll never make it. You won’t get a shot. You won’t even get it out of your pants.”
“Y’all heard that before, ain’t’cha?” Cope asked.
“Shhhhhh,” Petunia said to him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The bar might as well not have existed. It might as well have disappeared in some kind of small, regional Rapture, something that snagged only Ft. Stockton. Or part of Ft. Stockton. Everything—the bartender, the pool table, the jukebox, even Cope—was gone, disappeared into that Rapture. Everything except me and Petunia.
And her big-ass mother of a gun.
It was obviously too big for her tiny hands, but the ease with which she’d dispatched Jimmy made me hesitate to rush her.
“Who are you? How do you know me?”
“Girls have their ways, don’t they?” She inclined her head. “Lucas’ gun?”
“How do you know about Lucas?”
“Forever playing for the stall. Darcy, give me the gun. I will not ask again.”
My teeth pinched my tongue, but eventually, I handed her the gun.
She smiled as though we were old friends and shoved the gun in her hip pocket. “Now...about Fagan.”
“Yeah?”
“He was a greedy bastard and I don’t think he was a big believer in long term goals, only the here and now.”
“Okay. How did you know him?”
“He was always looking for an angle, always looking to play one deal against another to get a little further down the road.” Her eyes narrowed and the gun rose until it was level with my head. “Where are the plates?”
“What the fuck?” I pointed at the shards on the floor. “You blind? Didn’t you see that?”
“I saw a man make a delivery. I saw you break a plate on the floor. Nice try, but not quite what I’m looking for.”
“I don’t know—”
“Whatchy’all need plates for?” Cope’s face had gone serious, dark and concerned, but his hands were dead still, his fingers clamped around his whiskey glass. “Get take-out and y’all don’t need no plates.”
The bartender shuffled two or three steps toward the back and she fired. The bullet shattered the mirror. The glittering pieces caught the lights as they exploded through the bar, the after-burn of fireworks, flitting to the ground; catching green and yellow and blue and red in the colored lights.
The bartender froze. “Ple...please, I don’t want no trouble, Petunia.”
“Me either, honey, and I do thank you for letting me drink in here.”
“The cognac notwithstanding,” Cope said.
“Exactly.” To the bartender she said, “You’re not the kind of racist redneck I expected in this place.”
The barkeep looked embarrassed. “I...I like Frank Sinatra.”
She laughed. “You and me both, honey, you and me both.”
Outside, Ft. Stockton seemed to quiet, as though the entire town had focused on her gun and was waiting with breath held to see what she might do. Who she might kill. I listened hard, trying to pull the sound of a siren out of the dead air.
Nothing.
No traffic, no cruising cars’ stereos, no siren.
“I told my employer Fagan was untrustworthy. But he wanted—still wants, by the way—those plates. I asked him to let me get them, no money, no muss, no fuss.”
“Who’s y’all’s boss?”
“Jefe Arabalo.”
“Never heard of him,” I said. “But sounds like a drug runner.”
“Don’t you think that’s just a little bit racist? You hear a Hispanic surname and you assume drug runner?”
I held up one finger. “Hispanic name in this part of the state.” A second finger up. “Your employer.” A third finger up. “That you’re carrying a gun, smashed Jimmy in the nose, and are basically holding us hostage. So yeah, if adding clues together is racism, I’m guilty.”
She flicked her hand dismissively. “Blah blah, I’ll let it pass this time. Jefe Arabalo is an executive in the...tourist...industry.”
I shook my head. “Clue number four.”
“White-Boy, shut up.” Cope frowned at me.
Petunia smiled at Cope. “Once upon a time, Jefe Arabalo was a craftsman...worked with his hands. Those hands were magic, he did beautiful work. People from all over wanted him, he was quite in demand. Made enough money that he was able to carve out his own path.” She sighed and shrugged. “Fagan was a snake, I told him, but Jefe Arabalo wouldn’t listen. Fagan stepped in and how he’s dead. The plates are gone and Jefe is...well, a bit torqued. Honestly, I’m certain he’d rather have lost the million dollars he allocated for the plates than to lose the plates themselves.”
The world slipped sideways. And upside down. And maybe backwards. A mil? It had been one hundred large and now it was one million and all I had were broken commemorative plates.
“One million?” Cope asked. “What y’all get me involved in, Darcy?”
I tried to croak out an answer. “Hell...hell if I know.”
“Hah.” Her laugh was as delicate as broken glass. “You know exactly, you were there. Granted, you passed out when the going got tough, but you were there.”
“I went for a fucking tattoo,” I said. “Nothing else. I don’t know what Fagan had going on.”
“He was trolling banks, what do you think he was looking for, honey?”
Frustration welled up from deep inside me. “I don’t know. I didn’t know then and I still don’t. If you think I knew, you think I’d still be going bank to bank?”
She stood and went to the barkeep. He was as white as the Kahlua bottles behind him. His teeth chattered and sweat had beaded large on his face. “Don’t worry, honey, I just need a few minutes.”
With a fluid swing, she brought the gun down against his temple and he
crumpled to the ground.
“Damnit, I hate doing that.” She looked at me and Cope. “It’s hard to tell exactly how hard to hit. Too hard and you might kill them. Not hard enough and you’ll just piss them off. Now let’s go.”
Petunia waved the gun toward the front door. I took a step, Cope never moved. She grinned seductively at him. “Come on, now. You are a sexy man, I’ll admit that, but please don’t get heroic.”
Cope’s face colored. “Ain’t nowhere near as sexy as you, Petunia, and ain’t got nothing to do with heroic. Just letting my bowels settle a little is all. Y’all want me to stand up quick and dump a fatty? I don’t think so, not if we’re taking a little trip.”
“We’re only tripping to the parking lot, just a little trip to the motorcycle.”
“For what?” I moved again when her gun pressed into my back.
“Get your damned hands down, Darcy,” she said. “This isn’t some B-grade crime movie.” She chuckled. “Real life is much messier.”
“Y’all gonna steal my bike?” Cope said, still not moving.
“You can keep it,” Petunia said. “But please do get moving. I’d hate for you to never be able to ride it again.”
Reluctantly, Cope started walking. He led us outside, where cool air washed over my face, bathing me as though it were a gentle summer rain.
That’s how scared I am: Freaking ninety-degree air feels cool to me after coming out of an air conditioned bar.
“I have no wish to take your bike, Mr. Cope, I just want what’s inside it.”
It was a short distance to the parking lot, one we covered unsteadily. Cope and I looked like drunks, I’m sure, our knees wobbled by the gun and the violence. Cars and trucks passed, never taking notice of us. We were nothing to get excited about, nothing to call the police over, absolutely nothing strange.
Except we had a gun to our backs, held by a woman who would just as easily kill us if we didn’t give her some plates we didn’t have.
“Ain’t nothing inside the bike,” Cope said. But he caught my eye and I knew what was coming.
“Oh, but there is. A little blue cooler with my plates in it.”
“Don’t y’all mean Jefe Arabalo’s plates?”
“Now you’re getting the lay of the land.”
At the bike, Petunia tapped the gun against my head until I grabbed the cooler.
“Look,” I said. “There aren’t any plates in there. There’s only—”
“Open it. Now.”
“But there’s nothing there. It’s just my—”
“Nose,” Jimmy said. “You bwoke my fuffin’ nose.”
From the darkened side of the lot, near a used car lot, Jimmy was bathed in shadows, cross-hatched lighting from the car lot and street lights and passing headlights. He held a pistol and a baseball bat.
“You fuffin’ bitch-aff. I’m’a kill you.”
“Oh, Jimmy,” Cope said, “Y’all ain’t this stupid, are you?”
“Haven’t you had enough?” Petunia asked. She swiveled the gun and she and Jimmy fired at the same time.
I jumped damn near into the bike while Cope dove for the asphalt.
Over our whimpers, Jimmy howled, holding his left arm at an odd angle. “Fuffin’ bitch shot me!”
I expected Petunia to waltz over and finish him off, double tap to the left ear and call it finished. Instead, she howled, too.
“Son of a bitch.” Her voice thundered in the neon-lit night. “Ten years.” She looked at me as though seeking out a best friend. “Do you believe this? I’ve never been shot.” A bit of smoke floated up from a hole in the slack of her jeans near her ankle. “Oh, that’s bad.”
Her gun went on autopilot then. Shot after shot, the barrel belching yellow-white flame and bellowing smoke. Bullets popped through windshields and grills and tires from one side of the car lot to the other.
Jimmy yelped and tried to duck behind a car. His two or three shots ripped through the side of a car while another disappeared across the lot and street and somewhere a block down, a window shattered. Bullets, thrown wild by who knew, smashed into the bricked bar.
Petunia ducked and ran, stopping for a second behind Cope’s bike before grabbing some cover behind the car Jimmy had shot up. The entire way, running with her head down, her gun was up over her head, firing non-stop.
“These cost a hundred bucks,” she said.
“Go,” Cope said. He shoved me into the side car and hopped on. The bike’s engine roared to life beneath the shots. The radio blasted to life a second later.
“—on KJPK, Ft. Stockton’s AM Beacon. All news, all music, all of what you—”
“Bwoke mah nofe.”
“And you shot my jeans. Let’s call it even.”
Jimmy fired again and the gunfire, both his and hers, was dueling popcorn. Random pops, more one second, fewer the next and I had no freakin’ idea how many rounds. They each blazed away, but never came close to hitting each other. I would have expected better shooting from someone like Petunia.
As Cope jammed the bike into gear and lurched out of the parking lot, one bullet zinged the air so close to me I smelled the powder. I pounded Cope on the shoulder while other bullets ricocheted off walls and cars, off the concrete and asphalt.
“Go, goddamnit,”
Without missing a beat, Cope laid a hard slap across my face. “Wha’d I tell y’all?”
“Just go, you fucking lunatic.”
“Get your ass back here.” Petunia’s voice ratcheted up over the gunfire, over the roar of the motorcycle engine, over the din from the radio. “Give me my plates.”
The bike hopped the curb and tore its way through late night Ft. Stockton traffic. Cars skidded to a halt, laid on their horns so hard the very air split open with the screech.
When I looked back, two high-set headlights bounced over the curb and onto Main Street.
“Fuck fuck fuck.” I hunkered down, as though that might make the bike go faster. Stupid thing to do. No way in hell was this bike going to get us away from her. By this light or the next or the next at the latest, she’d be on top of us.
She’ll run us down, kill us both, and just take the cooler.
“...reports of a major shooting in the parking lot of Whiskey’s,” the radio blared.
“Damnit,” Cope said, laying on the accelerator. “The radio’s got it now. Cops can’t be far behind. It’s gonna be over damned quick.” He nodded toward the sidecar. “Down in the footwell. Grab that case.”
Behind us, she fired again. The bullet tore off the left side mirror. Bits of glass peppered Cope’s face.
I pulled the case up.
“...reports are the culprits—”
They use the word culprits?
“Open it.”
“What is it?” A hole opened in my gut. I didn’t want this, didn’t want to have anything to do with this.
“...are headed south on Main Street. Two cars, according to our KJPK listeners on the phone. Yes? Can you see—”
“A fucking gun, Darcy, what’d y’all think?”
“I don’t want to—”
A bullet tore past us, leaving the air sizzling.
“Good enough,” I said.
I grabbed the gun, twisted around as well as I could, and laid out an entire magazine in less than a heartbeat. Behind us, the SUV swerved two or three times, drove over the curb, smashed through a café sandwich board. Petunia managed to get back on the road, came barreling down toward us.
“...right outside my shop. They just went past.”
“Can you tell what kind of cars, ma’am?” the disk jockey asked.
Cope laid off the gas and when the bike lurched, he tossed us around a corner. Off the main street, out of the lights, onto a side street, maybe more of an alley. Dark and deep in shadow.
“Well, a white SUV is getting chased by some kinda hot rod.”
The SUV blasted around the corner, one headlight missing now. And just behind her, another car.
Now there was some sliver of hope, thin as a fashion model. No one knew we were involved.
“...and don’t think they— My God, that’s Jimmy Warren’s car.”
“Ma’am? Ma’am?”
“Jimmy. Hey, Jimmy, what the hell you doing?”
The woman’s voice faded through the radio and I knew they had left her behind.
Petunia fired again. Maybe she was hanging her arm out the truck, maybe her entire body. Or maybe she was simply shooting through the windshield. Either way, her aim was getting better. The first few I had heard, but not felt. The next couple had thunked the bike. The last one blasted a hole in the rear of the sidecar and exited the front.
“This is going on live,” the jockey screamed over the radio. “Live on KJPK, Ft. Stockton’s AM Beacon.”
AM Beacon? That was twice I had heard it and it was tickling something in the back of my brain. Something that refused to come forward.
A bullet exploded a mailbox just ahead of me.
“There has been a shooting and KJPK can confirm a number of cars at Little Swen’s Pre-Owned Auto Emporium have been destroyed. Now the suspects are chasing each other south on Main Street. KJPK, Ft. Stockton’s AM Beacon, has been in phone contact with a number of citizens along Main Street.”
AM Beacon.
Such a grandiose title and chances were better than even KJPK was the only AM station in town, a weak one-lung that barely popped its signal across the county line. They all had such grandiose tag lines. Big News from Andrews. Pecos’ Music Leader and wasn’t that a hoot? Kermit’s Number One News Provider.
A horn, a huge, hulking sound, ripped the air behind us. When I looked, the SUV was honking and flashing its one headlight.
And firing.
Ft. Stockton’s AM Beacon.
The bike’s engine was right next to me, nearly at ear level. It screamed right now, pulling back only when Cope let off enough to get around a corner. Then it screamed again, as though one of the bullets had struck and torn metal flesh, had ripped open an artery and it was quickly bleeding to death.