by Hondo Jinx
“There is no need to lock the RV,” Sage said with a grin. “To those young men, it appears to be a police cruiser.”
Tammy smirked. “Nice move, Seeker chick. But lock it anyway. Cops won’t even come in here anymore unless there’s blood, fire, or gunshots. Give those boys ten minutes, and they’d steal the damned light rack right off a cop car.”
Brawley fished his keys out of his pocket and walked out and locked the door. The little dog followed him, sniffing at his pant leg.
Over at the firepit, the thugs stared. Someone said something, and they all laughed. But no one was doing anything, and they had put their guns away, so Brawley didn’t bother fetching the AA-12, which, if push came to shove, ought to knock the chuckles right out of them.
He walked back inside, the dog at his heels. The girls were talking in low whispers about what had happened with the FPI.
Tammy glanced at Brawley, and again he felt the itchy warmth settle over his brain like an electric blanket made of wool.
He thought, I’m Brawley. Nice to meet you, Tammy.
Tammy smiled, and he realized that beneath her mask of fatigue, she was a pretty woman, a few years older than him and exhausted after a long spell of doing the best she could to care for two kids on her own.
Nice to meet you, too, Brawley, her voice spoke softly in his mind. And thank you for the compliment. I’m twenty-seven and yeah, I’m tired as hell from working two jobs and taking care of Ty and Hannah. I see Luna has taken a liking to you.
The little dog had taken a seat beside him.
Brawley reached down, patted the dog’s fluffy head, and felt the invasive blanket of warmth whip away from his mind.
Brawley reckoned Tammy was all right, but he pondered her character and released a thin rivulet of the Seeker juice still buzzing in his arm. Instantly, he felt a wave of peace and knew this woman could be trusted, so long as it didn’t come down to kids or torture, and that was all he could ask of anybody.
Tammy lit a cigarette and stood with one arm under her small breasts, which were apparently unencumbered by a brassiere, judging by how clearly her nipples printed against the thin fabric of the white t-shirt.
By the shirt’s size, he figured it must’ve belonged to a man. And his Seeker senses, still wide awake by virtue of the trickle he’d released, told him yes, a man. Her deceased husband, Charley, who’d died in a worksite tragedy two years earlier.
This peek into Tammy’s past hit Brawley straight in the heart, which reserved special acreage for widows and fatherless children.
When Nina finished telling Tammy what had happened with Remi, the telepath shook her head and exhaled a pale cloud. “Shit, you three are hotter than a ten-dollar stereo. I don’t know if I want to get in bed with you.” Then, turning her pretty smile on Brawley, she added, “Figuratively speaking, Tex.”
“We’ll pay extra,” he said.
Tammy took another drag, raised her brows thoughtfully, and exhaled runnels of smoke from her nostrils. “Yeah? I’m just waiting to hear what you mean by extra.”
“I’ll tack on an extra three hundred bucks. That’s ten percent, right?”
She grinned. “I can do the math, but it still doesn’t add up. Not for me. The whole world’s hunting you three. And it just so happens I’m allergic to the phrase aiding and abetting.”
“How about an extra five, and I’ll throw in an AK-47 and a can of ammo?”
Tammy laughed incredulously, exhaling a pale cloud. “An AK? You think I’m taking a red-hot gun in trade, you’re out of your mind. I’m already a piss-poor mom, smoking these damned cancer sticks inside. Daytime, I smoke out on the porch. But nighttime, I don’t dare to, not with those assholes across the way.”
“I could make them go away,” Brawley said.
Tammy took another drag, eyeing him thoughtfully before turning to her friend. “Nina, what sort of man are you running with here?”
Nina grinned. “He’s a savage, but I love him.”
“I know you do,” Tammy said, and squashed the smoldering butt in the ashtray. “I knew that before I opened the damned door.”
Nina lifted a hand to straighten the foil hat atop her head. “But how could you know? I—”
Tammy smirked and nodded toward Sage. “I read her thoughts.” Then, turning toward Brawley, she said, “This is dangerous work. No shit. I want double.”
Brawley spread his hands. “Sorry, darlin. Don’t have it. Not on me.”
Tammy leaned back against the counter, studying him and tapping a fingernail against the Formica.
Prickly warmth dragged once more across his mind. There and gone again, like a glancing blow.
“Tell you what, tough guy,” she said, shaking loose another Newport. She held the pack out as if in afterthought.
Brawley shook his head. He’d smoked as a kid but had switched to Copenhagen when his Grandmother got lung cancer.
“You strike me as a man of your word,” Tammy said. “A man who keeps his promises.”
“I do.”
“Well, how about you pay me the other half when you can?”
He nodded. “Done.”
She took a long pull off the menthol. “Just don’t go taking your time about it, all right? I have a sense you’re going to have a very short future, and I’d prefer to get paid before somebody blows your brains out.”
“We get to where we’re going, I’ll get your money.”
And just like that, the deal was struck. Tammy fetched her checkbook and read off the account and routing numbers. Brawley, surprised to realize that he had memorized the numbers upon hearing them, said he’d wire money the next day.
“Okay, sweetie,” Tammy said, turning to Nina. “Take off that ridiculous hat and let’s get down to business.”
“Gladly,” Nina said, but the second she took off the tinfoil cap, she frowned. “I’m fine, Dad,” she growled. “Now get out of my head. You promised.”
Tammy beckoned.
Nina went to her, grumbling to her dad.
Tammy laid a hand against Nina’s shaved temple, and a few seconds later, Nina was beaming.
“Hey,” Nina said. “He’s out of my head. No voice, no prying. Thanks, Tammy.” She gave her friend a quick hug.
“No problem,” Tammy said. “Let me just do a quick leak test.” She stood there for a few seconds, squinting at Nina over her cigarette. Then she nodded. “You’re good, honey.”
Brawley hauled the plastic baggie from his pocket, pulled the bills, and counted out three stacks of hundreds and twenties, a grand per stack.
“Thanks,” Tammy said with a wave of her cigarette. “These smokes don’t pay for themselves, you know.” She swept the bills from the counter but didn’t bother to count them. “I’d tuck the cash in my bra, but as you already noticed, Brawley, I’m not wearing one.”
He grinned. “All right. We’d best be going, ladies. Thanks for your help, Tammy.”
“You three be careful in Miami,” Tammy said. “Those Carnals look pretty, but they’re the ugliest people on Earth.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him,” Nina said.
“Whatever you do, avoid a big, blond-haired asshole named Colton Finn. Guy came here once, asking for a shield, said he’d heard about me from a friend of a friend and said he’d pay me ten thousand in cash, which was a lie.”
“What kind of idiot would try lying to a Bender?” Brawley said.
“Right?” Tammy said. “Well, let me tell you, Colton isn’t just stupid. He’s so cocky he thinks he can get away with anything. Glimpsing his thoughts was like peering into the pits of hell.” She shuddered. “The man looks like a Greek god, but he is all monster. The ultimate narcissist and a total sociopath. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do. Nothing.”
“He propositioned the wrong Bender,” Nina laughed. “I’m guessing you told him to fuck off.”
Tammy took a drag, nodding again. “In no uncertain terms,” she said, exhaling a long stream of
minty smoke. “He wasn’t going to pay me for the job, and then, as soon as he set eyes on me, he decided he was going to have his way with me one way or another.”
“Asshole,” Nina said.
“Sweetie, you have no idea. The man is a demon. As soon as I told him to get lost…” She shook her head and shuddered again. “He kept smiling, pretty as you please, but I could see his thoughts. He was going to rape me, kill me, kill the kids, and burn the house.”
Well, there’s a man who deserves to die, Brawley thought.
“That must have been highly unpleasant,” Sage said.
Tammy laughed bitterly. “Unpleasant. One second, he was floating in a pool of egocentric grandeur, figuring he’d put it to me the way another man might decide to crack a beer. Then I tell him no.” She snapped her fingers. “And half a second later, his mind was full of blood and fire. Just like that. So I punched him straight in the amygdala with a shit-ton of pure terror, and he got the hell out of here. But Colton is one of the Miami Carnals, and I’ll bet there are a lot more like him, so you three be careful, okay?”
Brawley planned on being careful, but with every passing hour, he felt more certain that he was on the right path. Sage said Seeker notions sometimes worked that way. No lightning bolt revelation, just a slow leaning toward one direction that felt increasingly correct over time.
Nina embraced Tammy. She held the Bender close for a long time, and Brawley didn’t need telepathy to see how much they cared for each other.
He opened the door, and Luna started to follow him outside. “You stay here and protect your family,” Brawley said, and the little dog sat down beside Tammy, suddenly as squat and sturdy as an albino gargoyle.
Yeah, dogs beat people every day of the week. Even little ones.
Brawley held the door for his women and lingered in the doorway a moment longer, casting one last glance over the cramped and humble space this woman and her two children called home. He hadn’t fallen for Tammy’s quip about spending the money on cigarettes. Even without his Seeker senses, he would’ve known she was a tough, hardworking woman who wanted the best for her kids. “Why not get a man?” he asked.
Tammy arched an eyebrow. “Wow, that’s not sexist.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” Brawley said. “I’m not a sexist. I’m a realist.”
“I know,” she said, stepping out onto the porch beside him. She took a drag and stood there, hugging herself with one arm, staring out into the world with her eyes going out of focus.
“You’re a young, good-looking woman,” he said. “And you don’t want to raise your kids here. My impression is you don’t do this sort of side job often, or you’d be in a nicer spot.”
She nodded, blowing smoke. “It’s too risky. And sometimes…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Sometimes, I wish I didn’t even have the ability, you know?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t, but I’m sure I’ll understand in time.”
Tammy smirked. “If you live that long.”
“If I live that long.”
“Well, just don’t go getting killed before you pay me my money.”
He nodded and started down the steps.
“It’s not as easy as you think,” Tammy said. “Getting a man, I mean. Well, it’s easy enough to get one. As a Bender, I can have any man in any bar in the world.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. Simple.”
“I’ll bet.”
“But would you want that? Don’t tell me you’re not worried that women will want you just because you’re a power mage.”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
“And no,” she said, taking another drag, “I’m not interested in bonding with you. You’re a looker, and I like your style, but there’s no damn way I’d drag my kids into whatever red hell you’re racing toward.”
“Fair enough,” he said, his eyes falling on a kiddy pool sitting in the high grass alongside the trailer, and for some reason he remembered when he’d first read psi script and how thunderstruck he’d been at just how mundane it all seemed, the members of this powerful secret society leading lives every bit as dull and down to earth as the rest of humanity.
“Don’t get me started on what it’s like to shack up with a man whose thoughts you can read.”
Brawley nodded. “I’ll bet that’s tough.”
“You have no idea, sugar,” Tammy said, squinting at him over the bright coal of the cigarette. “No idea at all.”
As Brawley was leaving, he stopped the RV in front of the firepit party, which was still going strong. Guys rose and postured, filling their hands with steel and talking shit.
Brawley just gave the whole group half a smile and loosed the rest of the yellow energy crackling in his arm. “You boys leave Tammy alone, or I’ll kill every last one of you.” His tone was conversational, almost cheery, but he hosed them down with truth force. “That’s a promise.”
Looks of horror twisted their formerly cocky faces. The men nodded empathically, talking over each other, calling after the departing RV, promising to leave Tammy and her kids alone.
11
Remi dropped the hammer, blasting Metallica’s Master of Puppets as she roared south in the Suburban, determined to do Brawley’s bidding and tell Jamaal that Brawley and Nina had, unfortunately, been killed by Dutchman’s people. Even though she knew the story was bullshit, she slapped the dashboard, sneering at the notion of someone hurting her friends.
Her only concern at this point was Jamaal and what he would say about her twin sister.
Ironically, Winchester “Winnie” Dupree had always been the calm one. If either twin had been marked for prison, it was clearly Remi, who had been a hell-on-wheels teenager the likes of which few motorcycle gangs had ever known.
Half out of her mind in those days, Remi had wanted to suck face with life itself then smash its teeth in with a powerful headbutt. Like many Carnals, she had gone a little nuts when her strand opened, grooving on power, experimenting with body mods, and kicking the ass of anyone who looked at her sideways. It was wild, crazy fun and ultimately a really bad idea.
Winnie had been comparatively tame, one of those rare flesh mages who showed restraint, understanding that if she embraced the Carnal, she risked getting lost in flesh.
Which was exactly what Remi had wanted to do.
Live life nose to ground, fighting and fucking, and to hell with the half-steppers. That was seventeen-year-old Remi’s motto. And if anyone disagreed, they were welcome to throw down. But they’d better damn well pack a lunch.
Meanwhile, her twin sister held back, sharing her dream, her insane dream, with Remi and Remi alone. Of all the amazing futures open to them, Winnie wanted to be a bounty hunter.
That’s why what ended up happening in that Arizona diner had been so damned ironic, so heartbreaking, and why Remi still had trouble sleeping at night.
Guilt makes a poor pillow, after all. And what happened to Winnie was all Remi’s fault.
Remi slapped the dashboard again, cursing the FPI and the Chop Shop and that stupid fucking diner in the desert. For a second, she questioned what she was doing here. Sure, Brawley was her best friend. Sure, she wanted to help him. But what if Jamaal refused to spring Winnie?
And Jamaal would refuse. She knew it.
The guy practically had a stroke when she’d proposed the deal. Now, with Brawley and the girls “dead,” Jamaal would bail on her, to hell with Winnie.
Fuck that.
She had to rescue Winnie. For months, she had obsessed over the idea. Then, slowly, finding no viable way to extract her sister from the clutches of the FPI, Remi had started, it shamed her to realize now, to grow unconsciously complacent.
She understood that now. Striking a deal to save Winnie had brought everything back into focus.
But now it was all slipping away, and she wouldn’t allow herself the insidious comfort of pretending that it wasn’t.
No Brawley, no Winnie. That’s what Jam
aal would say.
Remi’s heart ached.
Should she turn around, go back to Brawley, and beg?
She could find him easily enough since she had, as a matter of best practices, slapped another transponder onto the RV just before he’d come out of the weeds spitting his cowboy spiel.
She grinned, picturing him standing there, pointing the pistol at her. But then…
Accidental discharge, her mind said. But the images in her head didn’t quite jive with that notion. Not at all, in fact. She and Brawley had—
Wait a second, she thought. What had Brawley pulled back there?
But then Remi rounded a corner, spotted a pair of dark SUVs blocking the highway ahead, and pumped her brakes.
“What the fuck?” she said aloud, slowing to a crawl. A line of orange cones picketed the road twenty feet in front of the cars. Farther back, shadowy figures stood behind the vehicles, peering over the hoods, holding…
Shit!
Muzzle blasts lit up the night.
Four weapons blasted flames skyward. A fifth swept a sparking line across the pavement before her.
The shooters could have targeted the Suburban, but they weren’t trying to kill her. Not yet. They wanted to stop her first.
Judging by their vehicles Remi knew who they were.
Black Hummers meant psi mafia. Dutchman’s people.
A figure emerged, extending his arm and showing his palm, like a traffic cop ordering her to stop.
But Remi knew what happened to people who stopped for Dutchman’s thugs. She hunched into the steering wheel and stomped the gas.
She had hired a Gearhead to mod the Suburban’s engine, and the beast roared and shot forward with the acceleration of a top fuel dragster.
Half a second later, doing one hundred miles an hour and grinning at the g-force, she slammed into the would-be traffic cop, whose eyes and mouth opened wide in a hilarious mask of terror.
In the next quarter-second, the shit hit the fan, a bunch of things happening in such rapid succession that they seemed almost simultaneous even to Remi, who as a Carnal was able to effectively slow the world by speeding up her processing and reactions.