by Hondo Jinx
Frankie’s voice crackled over the ranch house transmitter directly into his head. “You have Tammy’s car! Is she back to stay?”
Brawley grinned at the excitement in the Gearhead’s voice. Tapping the onboard security system, he patched into the ranch network, and said, “Y’all just hold your horses. We’ll be in.”
Cheers exploded before he cut the connection.
Women. How the hell did they know from what he’d just said?
Whatever feminine witchcraft was at work, the girls poured out of the farmhouse and mobbed Brawley and Tammy before they even shared their good news.
Word of the wedding set them to shrieking, which woke Hannah, who smiled and said, “Can I have ice cream?”
Wiping tears of happiness from her eyes, Tammy said, “Yes, baby. This once, you can have ice cream. But we’re going to brush your teeth extra good before bed.”
Hannah wriggled free of her Aunt Nina’s arms and dropped to the gravel, spry as a squirrel in a nut factory. “I’m not sleepy,” the little girl announced, and pointed toward the horizon, where first light was breaking in the thin, pale lines across the eastern ridges.
Off in that direction, Pa was already out on the range, working among the lean and hardy longhorns.
They went inside, everyone talking and laughing.
Callie slipped up beside Brawley, gave him a hug, congratulated him, then pulled his head down to her lips. The cat girl’s breath was hot on his ear.
“You can say no, okay?”
“Okay.”
Callie squirmed against him. “I know you just got back, and you probably want to be with Tammy, but do you think we could do it later? My pussy has been aching for you all night.”
Hearing the truth in her trembling voice, he recognized Callie’s heated whispers for what they were: not a power play, not insecure weakness, just a desperate plea for the good, hard fucking the lithe girl’s body demanded several times each day.
He kissed her forehead, making her smile. “Sure, darlin. Just let me get things settled, and you and me will take care of business.”
“Thanks!” she said, and kissed his cheek.
To Brawley’s surprise, Hazel sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee. A smile lifted her wrinkles, peeling away a decade, and behind her spectacles her eyes lit up noonday bright.
“Congratulations,” the old Seeker said before anyone even told her the news. “Sure took you long enough. Can I be the flower girl?”
Tammy laughed, embracing the old woman with whom she had fled Florida. “I had planned on making Hannah flower girl.”
Hazel rolled her rheumy eyes. “Predictable. Maid of honor, then?”
Tammy shook her head and smiled at Nina. “Got that one covered, too.”
Nina set to weeping again and was instantly embraced by Sage and Frankie.
“Well, in that case,” Hazel said, “I suppose I will have to officiate the ceremony.”
Brawley and Tammy said that worked for them.
“Excellent,” Hazel said. “Now tuck in your children, Tammy, so we can share our news, too.”
“What news?” Brawley asked.
“I finished the mobile cloakers,” Frankie blurted. “They work like a charm. We’ll be able to cloak all three hundred Scars and then some.”
“Good work, darlin,” Brawley said. He hauled the gorgeous Gearhead into an embrace and kissed her pretty mouth.
When they stepped apart, he saw that Tammy was watching him and frowning.
Not because of the kiss, he knew. Tammy had accepted Brawley for who he was, and his five wives were a big part of that.
Frankie’s words had rocked her.
Unfortunate timing, Brawley thought. But maybe not that unfortunate. He had been straight with her about his life and the fighting that lay ahead. Delaying the inevitable would only make things harder on Tammy. Better to jump straight in.
“In other news,” Hazel said, “I also finished my work.”
“Already?” Brawley said.
Hazel nodded and took a sip from her mug. “Never underestimate the combined power of experience and coffee,” she said, and pointed to the counter, where sat a row of what looked like rolled up posters bound in rubber bands.
“Maps?” he asked.
“And blueprints,” Hazel said.
Brawley leaned down, embraced the old woman, and planted a kiss on her cheek.
Hazel tittered at his sudden affection. “Watch your step, young man. You don’t want to start something you can’t finish.”
Brawley laughed. “And on that note, you ready to tuck in the kids, Tammy?”
“I’m not sleepy!” Hannah protested.
“Shh,” Ty said, “the grown-ups have to talk.”
“I want ice cream!”
“I said you could have ice cream, sweetie,” Tammy said, “so you know I’ll give you some.”
Hannah sniffed and smiled. Her brother dried Hannah’s tears on his shirtsleeve.
“Why don’t you all just sleep here?” Brawley said.
Tammy showed him a crooked smile. Standing in the shaft of early morning light falling through the window, she looked both beautiful and exhausted. “We’d love to. Thanks.”
“Will you tuck us in, Bawley?” Hannah asked.
Beside her, Ty waited for Brawley’s response, trying to hide his hopes.
“Sure,” Brawley said, “but not until y’all have some ice cream.”
Hannah pumped her tiny fist in the air and howled like a barbarian.
Tammy fetched the kids some ice cream and took them out on the porch, while Brawley talked to his wives and Hazel.
Remi paced like a caged beast, her dark eyes flashing with fierce elation. At long last, they were going to rescue her twin sister, Winnie.
“And the RV is ready?” Brawley asked.
Frankie nodded.
“Even Operation Apache Glide?”
Frankie turned on her dimples. “It’s a go.”
“No shit,” Brawley said. “You girls are amazing.”
Remi slapped her hands together, the sound as crisp as a .22 firing in the kitchen. “When do we leave?”
Brawley thought for a second. “I gotta go over the blueprints, work out a plan, gear up, and get married.”
“So… ten?” Remi asked.
“Perhaps eleven o’clock would be a wiser choice, sister-wife,” Sage said. “That would give Tammy and our husband time to consummate their marriage.”
“They can honeymoon in Red Haven,” Remi said. “That way, they can fuck for hours and still leave by ten-thirty.”
“Wherever they go,” Nina said, “I’m going to be behind locked doors. No more surprise orgasms in front of Pa and Mama.”
Everyone laughed except Callie, who squirmed like she needed a bathroom. “I kind of liked cumming that way. Being surprised, I mean.” Callie turned bright red, looking back and forth between them. “And trying to hide it, worrying they knew what was happening, that made it even hotter.”
“You’re a sex fiend,” Nina laughed, and pulled the skinny cat girl into an embrace, “and we love you for it.”
“I have fallen in with Bohemians,” Hazel said, scooping her rolled up papers from the counter. “Now, if you will all give me your attention—”
But before the old Seeker could unroll her maps and blueprints, Tammy and the kids returned, beckoning Brawley. It was bedtime.
He followed the family upstairs, feeling a twinge of unease that the kids had stayed up all night. Then his mind hopped to the fact that a new school year would be starting soon.
Which meant Ty would be missing… what? Second grade? Third? Or were seven-year-olds still in first grade?
Brawley had a lot to learn about kids. And a lot to learn about being a dad. That thought brought a smile to his face as they topped the stairs.
“What?” Tammy asked.
“Nothing,” Brawley said. “This. I think I’m going to like being a dad.”
&n
bsp; She gave him a quick hug. “You just gotta promise me you aren’t going to get yourself killed out there.”
“That’s a promise I can’t make, darlin. I can promise to try, but don’t ask me to promise anything I can’t control. When your time’s up, it’s up. Things like right and wrong and trying hard can’t save you.”
“I know,” she said, her voice low and mournful as a funeral dirge. “That’s what scares me.”
After the kids changed and brushed their teeth, they climbed under the covers of the big queen bed at the end of the hall.
Tammy read two books, Little Red Riding Hood and a fun little story called The Gruffalo.
Brawley loved watching Tammy read to them. He loved her tenderness and the way she made up voices for different characters.
After prayers, Brawley and Tammy tucked in the kids and closed the door and stood for a moment in the hall, holding each other and talking quietly.
Tammy didn’t like that he was going to the Chop Shop. Hated it, in fact. But she would wait for him. Wait for him and worry and pray.
“And if you get killed, I’ll bring you back just so I can skin you alive,” she said in an attempt at levity that crumbled beneath fresh tears.
He held her till she stopped crying, and they talked some more, and then he kissed her long and passionately before shooing her down the hall to the guest bed she’d be using.
Watching her head down the hall, he had the urge to scoop her up, carry her in there, and crack strands.
But she wanted a wedding, and he had business down in the kitchen, so he just stood there, watching her.
Tammy slipped into the bedroom, blew him a kiss, and closed the door.
Brawley headed downstairs to plot mayhem with his glorious savages.
16
Hazel had spread out her blueprints and maps on the kitchen table. The girls gathered close, listening to the old Seeker talk. At some point, dogs and cats had flooded the kitchen. The animals sat around the room, calm and attentive, like citizens attending a township meeting.
The detail and neatness of Hazel’s diagrams shocked Brawley. They looked like the work of professional cartographers and architects.
Her maps showed their route, including a suggestion for places to rendezvous with the Scars, who, having scattered to the four winds, would be coming in from all directions. No single rendezvous point would work, Hazel suggested, since any contingent of Scars might be tailed by the Order, the FPI, or some independent contractor hunting the bounties Janusian had recently placed on Braxton, Talia, and the gang’s officers.
Following Hazel’s plan, the RV would swing wide of the Chop Shop, head north, and come back around, circling the facility in a tightening arc, picking up and cloaking packs of Scars at various points along the way.
Brawley nodded, liking the plan.
Hazel directed their attention to the next map, which detailed the sprawling Chop Shop compound in the Smoky Mountains near Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
“Anyone entering the compound stops at three checkpoints,” Hazel explained. “Here, here, and here.”
Her gnarled finger tapped the map three times, indicating the outer fence’s main gate; a guard house halfway across the compound, where another fence, this one labeled “electrified” stood; and finally the large rectangular building at the center of everything.
“Here and here,” Hazel said, indicating lines drawn across the winding road that snaked across the compound, “guards can raise retractable spike strips.”
“Not a problem,” Frankie said. “I lined the tires with bio-plate.”
Brawley gave the Gearhead’s shoulder a squeeze.
“Here and here,” Hazel said, indicating two dots to either side of the road in a long straight stretch between the treadles, “are sniper nests.”
Brawley nodded. It was hard to know what weapons the FPI might be using now, given that they were working with mercenaries and psi mages alike.
As is so often the case when you leave polite society and penetrate the dark and bloody corners of the world, all he could do was hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
“Stealth is the way,” Hazel said. “If you end up having to fight your way through the first gatehouse, you might as well turn tail and run.”
“Fuck that,” Remi snorted. “We’ll smash those fuggles.”
“Indeed,” Hazel said. “But the Order watches the Chop Shop. If you tip your hand too early, the Order will dispatch their Gatlinburg team. And if they can delay your escape, additional teams will follow.”
“The Dragon,” Callie said.
Hazel nodded solemnly. “And you do not want to face the Dragon.”
Brawley took it all in, consciously pumping his mental brakes to avoid tangential thinking. Learn first, plan later.
Hazel walked them through the diagrams, which she had assembled through Brawley’s snapshot of Beecham and by chasing out connections of lateral truth as she delved deeper.
Despite the grim subject matter, Brawley had to grin at Hazel’s level of detail. She had labeled everything. Not just electric doors and guard stations and subterranean cells but hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other trivial items like a coffee pot and day room bean bags.
Such was the danger of deep Seeking, he knew, not just forgetting the forest for the trees but also forgetting the trees for the knotholes.
He would commit all of it to memory eventually. But for now, he focused on the big picture.
“Is this where they keep the prisoners?” he asked, pointing to an adjacent blueprint. The diagram showed a long, narrow hallway flanked in tiny cells.
“Yes,” Hazel said, “the sub-basement.”
Brawley’s eyes flicked to a starred cell labeled Winnie. He glanced at Remi and saw her eyes drilling into the star.
“Security is very tight,” Hazel said. “The staff are numerous, highly trained, and well-armed. The prisoners are always hobbled. The cells are incredible strong, built to withstand even a powerful telekinetic blast from an escaped psi mage. Not that anyone ever escaped. These jailors are serious.”
“All right,” Brawley said, “so we need to sneak all the way across the compound, get inside, fight an army of guards, crack an impenetrable cell, and get out before the Order shows up.”
“Piece of cake,” Nina joked.
“There’s one more thing,” Hazel said.
Brawley raised one eyebrow, waiting.
“The sub-basement is three hundred feet underground. One way down, one way back up.”
Brawley whistled long and low. “One hell of a choke point.”
Hazel gestured toward a diagram that showed a cross-section of the main facility, all three levels stacked atop one another.
“The design is simple as a killing jar,” Hazel said.
On the ground level, the main floor housed reception, admin, and various personnel spaces, from an armory to a break room to meeting spaces and a large training area broken into three sections. All of this revolved around the heart of the facility, a circular space labeled Central Command.
From the confines of this heavily armored hub, guards could monitor the entire facility, send distress calls to external forces, or activate heavy blast shields.
Below this floor was the basement, which consisted of medical facilities, experimental labs, a kitchen, and storage.
From here, the long neck of the killing jar stretched down and down and down, cutting through the bedrock like a West Texas well, burrowing three hundred feet into the earth to the sub-basement.
“What’s the plan, babe?” Nina asked.
“First of all,” he said, “you’re staying here.”
“Fuck that,” Nina said. “I’m your strongest wife!”
“Which is why I need you here,” Brawley said, killing her protests with his eyes. “The cartel will have its hands full with Valdez, but we don’t know who else might show up. The security system is getting there, but it isn’t strong enough yet. Other than
me, you pack the biggest punch on the ranch. I need you to keep my people safe.”
Nina frowned but nodded.
“Sage and Hazel, you’ll stay, too. As will Tammy. I need you to keep an eye on things here and out in the world and to let me know if the shit hits the fan.”
“We will do as you command, husband,” Sage said.
“Remi, Callie, Frankie,” Brawley said, “you’re coming with me.”
The three women nodded, not a hint of hesitation among them.
“I need more information to nail down a plan,” Brawley said. “Hazel, can you share your renders with me?”
“Of course,” Hazel said. “Blueprints are one thing. The truth is something else altogether.”
Brawley nodded at that. He saw the plan in his mind and reckoned he’d lock everything down after seeing the memories Hazel had excavated. In a perfect world, they could hash it all out, checking and double-checking everything until they were certain they had the best plan.
But this wasn’t a perfect world. It was a chaotic world full of brutal killers, many of whom were currently distracted by the Tiger Mage’s atrocities.
Well-timed, violent action trumped a perfect plan.
Turning to his pacing Carnal wife, he said, “Remi, what do you reckon your dad is doing now?”
Remi lurched to a stop, and a savage smile cracked her beautiful features. “At this hour? Probably sleeping.”
Brawley tossed her his burner. “Wake his sorry ass up.”
17
Brawley had a busy morning.
First, he went to Red Haven. Unfortunately, there was no sign of the mysterious woman.
He’d been so damn busy lately he’d barely had time to wonder what she was doing or consider the implications of her being part of the Psionic Underground and their Voice of Freedom efforts.
He didn’t have time to worry about her now. He’d deal with her after they got back from Gatlinburg.
For the next hour, he rode Hazel’s renders. She had prepared a complete tour of the FPI facility by delving dozens of perspectives. Through their eyes, he studied every inch of the Chop Shop, stalking its grounds and twisting through all three floors like a cloud of poisonous gas.