“Cold blood,” Ernie muttered, looking faint. His gun hand dropped to his side, and he grabbed the counter, leaning heavily on the stool. “He’d kill us in cold blood. His brain is full of bugs.”
“He’s bleeding,” George said, his face, his hands, everything going numb.What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
And then he heard the frightened whimper coming from the ground.
You’re a healer, George. Help him.
He barely heard Ernie calling his name as he stepped out of the cubicle and ran to kneel next to the fallen enemy, who was staring up at the overhang, eyes rolling wildly while his fingers scrabbled for his fallen gun.
George shoved the gun away with his foot before he crouched, and he pulled off his hoodie to press against the man’s neck.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Shit. Hell. Fuck.” The guy was bleeding out fast, and George knew from experience that ambulances could take twenty minutes to half an hour to get out here.
“Stop,” the dying man rasped. “Just… stop.”
“What?” George actuallydidstop moving, he was so surprised.
“Life’s not much good,” the man said. “Not if your guy’s got the phone.”
George stared at him blankly, trying to put that into context. His life wasn’t good if they had the phone? But….
His hands lifted from the wadded-up cloth before his brain fully processed. “The phone?”
“Pictures,” Deputy Daily said. “Me and the kids. So… pretty.”
George swallowed and lost his balance, falling on his ass. He thought,I need to put the bandage back. I need to apply pressure. Somebody should call an ambulance.
And then, as he watched in horror, the deputy started scrabbling at his own neck. Before George could stand up and get back into position, he’d ripped the hoodie away completely and was shoving his fingers in the wound at his neck, his movements growing weaker with every dig.
George made a sound in his throat, a moan of sorts, and he felt a hand at his arm, tugging him up.
He whirled, almost furious, when he saw Ernie, white-faced, gazing at him with sympathy. “I’m sorry,” Ernie said, still unsteady on his feet. “Bugs. I told you. Bugs.”
And George understood then, full realization settling in as to why this man’s life wouldn’t be worth anything if their plan worked. If the phone saw the light of day.
He might have turned back toward the bad man bleeding out at their feet—still he might have tried to help, but he saw Ernie wobble again and he thought,Ernie is my friend, and a good man. And instead of crouching down to check the man’s breathing—it had almost stopped—he turned instead and held out his arms, and he and Ernie held each other, trembling, as they bled out their adrenaline, their fear, and their grief.
After a heartbeat, two, the corpse at their feet was done moving, and a faint voice emerged from the garage in the pit.
“If you are done, and the man is dead, I may have some ideas for what we should do. Quickly, yes?”
Ernie pulled back and scrubbed at his face. “Fuck,” he muttered. “His car can be tracked here.”
Dimitri appeared, shoving back the rollers that separated the undercarriage of the car engines from the vulnerable mechanics underneath so he could address them both.
“You can do two things,” he said. “You can let me strip the vehicle while you hide the body, or you can let me remove all the radio devices and GPS while you stash body in back.”
Ernie swallowed. “Get rid of the radio and GPS,” he said decisively. “We’ll wrap the body and shove it in back. I can dispose of the SUV with the body then, but I’ll need a ride home.” He took a breath and frowned. “It’s fine. Jason will be out my way—he’ll get me home. George, you and Dimitri stay here and mind the store.”
George nodded and looked at the body again. “What… what do you think he would have done if we hadn’t been here?” Because God, what he would have given to be anywhere else.
Nobody had an answer at that moment, but when they lifted the hatch (partly to pilfer from the weaponry in the back of the SUV because you didn’t randomly dump guns in the desert, even if they’d already established that bodies were fair game), they discovered two full containers of gasoline, with a shitton of rags.
George stared at the gallon containers in a sick sort of shock.
“Oh my God,” he said as he finished wrapping the body up in one of the many army surplus tarps that the garage went through in a year. “He was going to kill us. He was going to burn this place down no matter who he found here.” He straightened up and without knowing what he was going to do, he swunghis foot back and threw his weight into a kick into the corpse’s midsection. “Youfucking worm!”
“Whoa there,” Ernie said, coming up to quell his rage. “You do nobody any good if you break a toe.”
