“What’s that for?” Kort asked.
“Give me your hand,” Soto said.
Without thinking, she stuck her hand out, and Soto grabbed it and pulled it toward him. At the same time he lifted the gin bottle, which she now saw had been broken off about halfway down, and jabbed the sharp broken edge into her forearm.
She managed to stifle a scream but threw herself away from him, farther into the folded-down backseat, looked down at her bleeding arm, and cried, “What the fuck?”
“Now you need to go to the emergency room and get sewed up,” Soto said, and he climbed into the driver’s seat. He handed her the towel and said, “Wrap this around it. Don’t get blood all over the car, it’ll start smelling bad.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What happened was, you slammed a motel medicine cabinet door too hard and the mirror broke and cut your arm. Medicine cabinet looked dirty to you, you’re afraid you’re going to be infected... that’s why I drove you to the emergency room.”
“Emergency room?”
—
AT THE EMERGENCY ROOM,a nurse practitioner put a half dozen self-dissolving stitches in her arm, took the same credit card they’d used to rent the Tahoe, and sent them on their way with prescriptions for antiseptic cream, penicillin pills, and pain pills. They filled the prescriptions at a Walgreens and headed for Texas.
“Could have thought of a better way to do it,” Kort grumbled from the backseat. The pain pills made her more comfortable and her arm had not hurt that bad to begin with. The penicillin pills, she thought, might even cure her aching ass.
“Don’t bother to say ‘thanks,’” Soto squeaked at her, and she didn’t.
That night, as they crossed the Red River, the College-Sounding Guy called and said, “That Davenport dude spent an hour out in a Dallas neighborhood. He was at a house in northeast Dallas. Actually, there are two houses. I don’t know this for sure, but I think he went into both of them.”
“You got an address?” Soto asked.
“I not only got an address, I can get you a picture of the place. Give me a few hours, I might be able to get you names from the gas company, run them to see who they go to. Davenport’s staying in a hotel over toward Fort Worth...”
Two hours later, he called again. “The people in the front house, the house closest to the street, are named Bennett, and I don’t find any association with Poole, but they couldbePoole and his girlfriend, since Poole’s probably using a phony name. Now, the guy in the back, that’s a different story. He was definitely involved with Poole in the past...”
“How do you know that?” Kort demanded.
“Everything is data now,” the College-Sounding Guy said. “Give me your real names and I’ll tell you your bank balance and what hour you were born.”
“I don’t need to know when I was born, because I already know that,” Soto said. “What I need is another car when we get to Dallas. Find one for me...”
—
AS LUCAS, BOB, AND RAEwere flying into Dallas, and Kort and Soto headed southwest toward Dallas, Sturgill Darling showed up at Poole’s place. He, Poole, and Box sat in Poole’s living room, talking.
“I’m not quitting the farm. That’s my home and I’m not leaving,” he told Poole. “When I get out of here, I’m going up to Canada. Shoot me a bear, build an alibi, and then head back home as innocent as one of the Lord’s angels. I gotta believe they’ll be all over me, though. It’s gonna be a grind, getting through it.”
“I’m not sure what you’re doing here,” Box said.
“We got two problems. The feds aren’t going away, but they don’t know about me—not really. Not the way they know about you guys.” Darling nodded at Poole and Box. “If they put your faces on TV, I might be able to do things you can’t. The other problem is these cartel killers. I don’t know how they got on to us, but they are. We need to get them off our backs, and I know something that you don’t.”
“What’s that?” Poole asked.
“I know where they come from. I know who they work for. I got a phone number. Knowing that, we might be able to figure out away to set them up, wipe them out. I can’t rest easy knowing that they’re looking at my farm, at me and my wife.”
“Wipe them out and they’ll send two more,” Poole said.
“Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe they’ll cut their losses, especially if we tip the feds as to who’s running them. We’ve got to get rid of these two, first thing. After that... well, you’ll be hid again and I’ll spend a hundred grand putting a security system around the farm—radar, the whole works. Best I can do.”
Poole nodded. “I buy all that.”
Box: “So do I. What they did to Gar’s folks... they’re nuts.”
