by Hondo Jinx
Dutchman had good instincts. Intuitively, he ignored the girls behind the transparent shield and focused instead on the real threat, Brawley, meaning to fire another blast.
Unfortunately for Dutchman, Brawley wasn’t just a force mage. He was a power mage. And as a Carnal, he moved way faster than the psi mob capo.
Dutchman grunted, taken through the guts with a telekinetic slug. His lean, red-stubbled face twisted with pain, and he folded over, clutching the hole in his abdomen. His blast went high and wide, rushing harmlessly off into the perfect Key West sky.
Brawley rolled back behind the shield and hosed the dying man down with Seeker juice.
It would’ve been gratifying to tell Dutchman the truth. Would’ve been a sweet moment to pin the dying asshole down like a gutted fish and look him in the eye and tell him, I’m the power mage. Your son tried to kill me, so I killed him.
Let the guy put two and two together, let him think this was about Junior or maybe the assassins Dutchman had sent.
Then tell him the truth: This isn’t about revenge. Not really. I’d almost forgotten about you. This is about convenience. Your death is merely a pawn in a much bigger game.
Yeah, it was tempting.
And a weaker man might have given in to the temptation.
But Brawley was not weak.
So instead of showing Dutchman the truth, he showed him a lie.
A lie he believed, as Brawley knew he would.
He allowed Dutchman to suffer for half a minute, beaming his hatred into the universe and cursing los Hermanos Coronado between waves of puked blood.
Then, as the man faded, Brawley walked over and capped him in the back of the head with one of the pistols they had lifted from the cartel assassins.
He dropped the pistol on the ground beside Dutchman and turned to Remi and Callie as a considerable kill-boost sizzled through him. “Ready, ladies?”
They were already unzipping the heavy bags.
Once they finished spreading the contents, Brawley pinged Jamaal.
He would ping Jamaal again once they left the wharf house. Then again from the airport.
The fuggle PD would never discover this grisly, waterfront mess.
The Latticework, on the other hand, would start buzzing shortly after Brawley and the girls left the tarmac, Texas-bound.
Jamaal would see to that. Just as he would shade that buzz with crucial suspicions.
And the evidence Brawley and the girls were spreading across the scene would magnify those suspicions.
The weapons crawled with psi cartel signatures.
The Order had much bigger problems right now than a gangland massacre. Before they even decided what, if anything, to do about this hit, Don Valdez would retaliate.
Los Hermanos Coronado didn’t know it yet, but they were about to go to war.
And that should keep the sons of bitches off Brawley’s ranch at least until he got back from the Chop Shop.
“Merry Christmas, handsome,” Remi said, tossing Brawley a weapon she’d taken off the ground.
Brawley caught the shotgun and instantly recognized its futuristic design and composite stock. “No shit. An AA-12.”
He had taken one of the rare, low-recoil weapons off Dutchman’s son and put it to good use back in Miami. But he had lost the shotgun in Heaven and Hell. Like father like son, apparently—at least as far as shotguns went.
“Thanks, darlin.”
“Looks good on you,” Remi said, her dark eyes shining. “Seeing you holding it takes me back to our first date.”
“Hell of a first date,” Brawley laughed.
And they all laughed as they went about their dark work.
The flight went smoothly, and they reached the ranch as the sun was going down.
As soon as Brawley pulled up to the gate, he knew something had happened.
Not an attack.
But a loss.
Not an invasion. A departure.
Then he reckoned he knew what it was. The thought gnawed at him while he ascended the driveway, ignoring his wives’ chatter as the thought gained weight, growing into a full-fledged suspicion.
“What is it, handsome?” Remi asked as they pulled up to the farmhouse.
“Not sure,” he said, not wanting to alarm the girls before he knew for sure. He got out and crunched across the gravel and thumped up the ranch house steps and went through the screen door, calling out.
The house was empty, everybody over at Pa and Mama’s.
Well, almost everybody.
Because unless his gut was all mixed up, someone very important to him had lit a shuck. Three someones, in fact.
He walked inside.
Question was, why was he looking for her here? She wouldn’t normally be here in this house, not at this hour. But his intuition told him to keep looking.
Then he saw why.
A saltshaker sat atop the envelope, pinning it to the kitchen table. The envelope was labeled BRAWLEY.
He opened the envelope and unfolded the letter inside and read.
“Shit,” he said, shoved the letter in his pocket, and hit the door running.
13
“Thank you,” Tammy said, as the waitress set down Hannah’s nuggets and her own cheeseburger with fries.
“No problem, ma’am,” the waitress said. She was eighteen or nineteen with a pretty face, a nice figure, and the clean, unburdened thoughts of a young woman who lived in the moment, confident of a bright future just over the horizon.
“Are you sure I can’t get you something, little man?” the waitress asked Ty, who sat scowling across the booth from Tammy and Hannah.
Ty shook his head, too surly to speak.
“Think about it, Ty,” Tammy said, her patience running thin.
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
“This is it,” Tammy said. “I’m not stopping again. If you don’t eat now—”
“I’m not hungry,” he said again, flashing her a dirty look that pitched her into a whirling cloud of anger, sorrow, and regret.
Anger at his attitude. Sorrow that she had hurt him so deeply. And regret that things had come to this, that here she was, running again… only this time, with no destination and no one to help them.
“That’ll be all, thanks,” Tammy said, dismissing the waitress.
Once the girl left, Tammy leaned over her plate, giving her son The Look. “The next time someone asks you a question, you look them in the eye and answer respectfully,” she told him. “Do you understand me, young man?”
Ty nodded, still avoiding eye contact.
Suddenly, Tammy was an emotional pinata, wanting to scream at the boy but also pissed at herself for doing this to him.
Hannah had cried it out, slept to the New Mexico state line, then woke up and started singing her ABC’s. Life’s speed bumps jarred the three-year-old hard, but the next thing you knew, she was zooming along at seventy-five per, ready to play.
Ty, on the other hand, wouldn’t get over this for a long time. He had really clicked with Brawley. Truly and deeply. Much more, in fact, than Brawley even knew.
The boy had never wanted another father. But now, having known Brawley, he wanted nothing more in the whole world.
Tammy inched her plate across the table. “Well, have a fry or two, anyway.”
Ty shook his head and looked away, staring through the diner’s plate glass windows out at the darkened world.
“Suit yourself,” Tammy said. “But if you don’t eat now, that’s it until breakfast.”
In the end, regardless of her tough love ultimatum, she would hold back half her meal and ask for a box just in case Ty changed his mind down the road.
That would be a mistake, she knew, since she’d told him now or never, but it’s hard to deny your kid food when they’re hungry. Feeling guilty about leaving the ranch would only weaken her resolve.
Parenting is an imprecise science. Kind of like bomb making… with unlabeled chemicals.
Out on the highway, a big rig zoomed past, trundling through the night to points unknown.
Tammy felt old and tired and afraid. What the hell was she doing? Where were they going? What would they do when they got there?
Shit, she was miserable.
But it had to be done. She’d known that as soon as Brawley and the girls left for Key West.
Tammy wouldn’t risk putting Ty and Hannah through losing another father. And she couldn’t face the agony of losing another man.
So they’d left.
And now here they sat in a roadside diner smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico, headed west toward Who the Hell Knew Where to do who the hell knew what.
Not her proudest hour.
She had the money Brawley had given them. She kept the gun, too. It was on her now, slung across her body in the little carry purse.
She hated guns, but Brawley would want her to carry it, and she knew he was right.
This was a dangerous world.
And presently, she felt like a hunted thing. Which made no sense. They were cloaked and shielded, armed and sitting in a well-lit diner with a dozen patrons spread across the room.
Which was nice and all but didn’t change the fact that she felt like a rabbit hiding from hounds.
Why did she feel this way?
Was someone on her trail? The Order? The FPI? The Tiger Mage?
She didn’t know. But she knew she wasn’t a Seeker, so she kicked her anxiety in the ass and tried to pretend she wasn’t feeling it.
That was the cruel joke of being a Bender. You could tinker with people’s thoughts and tie up their emotions neat as a big red bow atop a Christmas present. But you couldn’t do jack shit to help your own brain.
“How are your nuggets?” she asked Hannah, who had climbed onto her knees.
Hannah nodded, gobbling another nugget. Her little mouth was smeared with honey. “Good.”
“Slow down, sweetie. I don’t want you to choke.”
The bell over the door jangled, and Tammy watched Ty’s eyes narrow. It was a look she knew all too well, though she hadn’t seen it much over recent weeks since Ty had warmed to Brawley.
Her son had perceived a threat.
She half-turned to see four men entering the restaurant.
They were a type you saw in midnight diners across the nation, a pack of glassy-eyed boy-men in their early twenties. Goatees and baggy t-shirts and sandals with socks, all comfort and no style, the pockets of their basketball shorts bulging with what she guessed to be an odd assortment of items. Dime bags, car keys, lighters, pocketknives, and wads of small bills perhaps bound in rubber bands. The strange chattel seeming to her like so many talismans to ward off manhood.
The boy-men ambled past, reeking of weed and cigarette smoke, their thoughts coming to her all at once in a tangled orgy of nastiness, all four of the men eyeing the young waitress’s ass while she led them to their booth, which—shit—just happened to be the next one over.
The boy-men sat down on the other side of Ty. One of the boy-men was large, and when he settled his weight, it jostled Ty.
Her son didn’t seem to notice.
Tammy hunched over her plate and took a bite. The cheeseburger was done to order—medium rare—and still had some juice to it but nonetheless tasted like cardboard to her.
She was no hungrier than Ty, truth be told. But she was Mom, and that meant she had to eat whether she was hungry or not, had to eat just to keep up her strength so she could take care of her kids.
She wouldn’t linger here, though. She would eat a little more and get the rest boxed up and get back on the road. Because that feeling of being hunted was stronger than ever, and now one of the guys in the next booth was sneaking glances at her, noticing her.
His thoughts were half-formed at this point. She registered his surprise, his interest. He thought she was attractive, but not in words. It was a physical response, a snap judgment, automatic and sexual and likely harmless.
But from vast experience, she also knew that these thoughts could rapidly escalate.
“Excuse me, miss?” Tammy said, stopping the waitress as she left the men’s booth.
“Every okay, ma’am?” the girl asked, and her thoughts sideswiped Tammy.
What do they want? They just sat down. Why does she have her kids out so late, anyway?
All of this burned behind the pretty, young face.
The girl’s thoughts were no big deal. Tammy heard worse every hour of every day she spent in public.
In fact, she was hearing a stream of far worse brain-chatter popping off in the neighboring booth, where two or three of the boy-men were undressing the waitress with their eyes, and the guy who’d noticed Tammy was pondering one of those great existential questions of life: would he rather ball the waitress or the MILF?
So no, the waitress’s impatient thoughts and questioning of Tammy’s parenting choices weren’t remarkably horrible, in and of themselves, but they were exactly the sort of thoughts that beat you down when you were a Bender.
Casual dissonance wore you down.
And the yawning gap between the girl’s polite smile and impolite thoughts was one more lead blanket added to the pile.
This sort of thing was so commonplace, Tammy generally took little notice. But after spending weeks surrounded by shielded psi mages and her own shielded children, she felt like groaning.
Instead, she put on a mask of her own and showed the impatient young woman a smile. That’s all you could do.
She smiled and thanked the girl for her time and asked for more honey for the nuggets and two boxes, please. Oh, and the check. No, nothing else. But thanks.
The waitress left, and Tammy sipped her coffee, and Hannah asked if she could have ice cream if she ate all her nuggets.
“Not tonight, sweetie. We have to get back on the road.”
Hannah frowned, and Tammy could see how tired the girl was, how punchy from sleeping and waking, sleeping and waking. “I want ice cream,” Hannah said.
“Tell you what, sweetie,” Tammy said, forcing another smile, “tomorrow, we’ll stop someplace super special and get—”
“No!” Hannah cried. “I want ice cream now!”
“Hannah, you stop that this instant,” Tammy hissed, desperate to head this off before Hannah went feet-first into a full-blown temper tantrum. Generally speaking, the girl was pretty chill for three, but when she built up a head of steam, look out.
And now was not the time.
Which of course meant that Hannah started howling with indignation. Her face was bright red and streaming tears as she repeated louder and louder, “I want ice cream! I want ice cream!”
Tammy grabbed Hannah’s wrist. “Hannah, stop. Right now. We’re in public. If you keep crying like that, they’ll kick us out.”
“I don’t care! I want ice cream!”
“Hannah Marie Schultz, you stop screaming this instant,” Tammy said.
“Let go of her arm,” Ty said. She looked up and saw her son glaring at her with the gunfighter eyes he normally reserved for anyone threatening his family. “I said let go!”
Tammy was so shocked that she released Hannah’s wrist. The girl wasn’t hurt. Her whole world was melting down because of ice cream, not pain. Tammy never had and never would abuse her kids.
So Ty’s assumption was a slap in the face.
Did he really think…?
Tammy buried her face in her hands.
No, she told herself. Don’t cry. You can’t cry because it’ll scare the kids. You have to stay strong.
But she sure felt like crying. Felt, in fact, like taking a page out of Hannah’s playbook and melting the fuck down, onlookers be damned.
How was she supposed to do this?
Hannah leaned close, sniffing and hugging Tammy’s arm. “It’s okay, Mommy. It’s okay.”
The little girl had already switched gears, dropping her screaming fit to comfort Mommy.
Tammy rai
sed her face and stretched her lips into what felt like an utterly unconvincing smile. “I’m okay, sweetie,” she lied. “Mommy’s okay. I’m just… tired is all.”
She turned toward Ty, but her son was avoiding eye contact again. He sat there with his head down, frowning as he shredded his napkin into little strips.
“That’s good,” Hannah said, climbing up Tammy to plant a sticky kiss on her cheek. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, honey.”
“Can I have ice cream now?”
Tammy blinked at her. She couldn’t fight this fight. Not now. So she smiled weakly. “I have to stop for gas just down the road, sweetie. We’ll get you ice cream there, okay?”
“Yay, ice cream!” Hannah cheered and stroked Tammy’s hair with her sticky fingers.
Tammy was too tired to fight it. And, sadly, too appreciative of the gesture to mind the mess.
There was one thing that lingered, however. One thing she had to address. “Ty, you know I wasn’t hurting your sister.”
Ty shrugged.
“Look at me.”
The boy looked up, his eyes hot with anger and his mouth bunched up tight as a fist.
“You know I would never hurt you two,” she said. “Right?”
Ty shook his head. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
A bolt of anger hit her. It was easy to let Hannah’s tantrums slide. Maybe too easy. But Ty was seven—and an old seven at that.
But she reined in more tempting replies for, “You know.”
He shook his head again.
Tammy kept her mouth shut, afraid of what she might say if she opened it.
Ty glared at the table, tearing the napkins strips into confetti.
He’d been so happy at the ranch, such a little man. All yes sir and no ma’am and please and thank you. It had been a little odd at first, like Ty was pretending to be somebody he wasn’t. But then she had realized that the somebody Ty had been mimicking was the man he hoped to become.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is powerful shit for a mother to realize. Especially a single mom.
As if reading Tammy’s thoughts, Ty said, “We should just go back. That’s what we should do.”