“It’s not some weird sex thing, is it?” he asked as he tucked the square of paper in his pocket. “Because that’ll stain your boots.”
Shepherd pulled a disgusted face. “It’s business,” he said. “But it ain’t that sort of business. Jesus Christ.”
“Then I don’t have a problem,” Bass said. “You want it done today?”
Shepherd shook his head. “Take your time. He’s not ready to be stupid yet. Next couple of days will do.”
“Want me to give him a message?”
“Nah, he’ll know why you’re there,” Shepherd said. He took a swig of beer and nodded at the arsenal of guns, knives, and assault rifles lined up against the wall. “Take what you need. But use some self-control. I want him piss scared, not dead or in the news.”
Bass ran his eye over the selection. The sawed-off shotgun caught his eye, but even the truncated barrel would be hard to tuck out of sight on a bike. He grabbed one of the Magnums instead. The handgun was heavy in his hand.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “And if I do a good job, maybe I get out from under the cars a bit more? Swear to fuck, Shepherd, Boone’s aunt’s brought that fucking car in so many times I think she’s after my ass.”
Shepherd smiled reluctantly and then shook his head. “You’re a likable fucker, Bass. I don’t trust likable fuckers. You make mistakes when you like people. But you make this guy shut his mouth, and I’ve got something else in mind for you.”
Bass headed out the door. He paused on the threshold and glanced at the woman. Her eyes were fixed on a point in the corner of the room, and he couldn’t remember if she was that greasy pale when he came in. He resisted the urge to check her pulse.
“You might need to get your man to rejig his gear,” he said. “Dead junkies don’t buy shit.”
Shepherd looked at the girl too. When she didn’t move, he flicked the bottle cap across the trailer at her. It bounced off her glazed blue eye, and Shepherd laughed when she blinked a second late.
“Not dead yet. Don’t worry about her. She came here because she didn’t want to be in her head anymore. Looks like it worked,” he said. “Tell you what, Bass. She survives this? I’ll give you a dose of the product. That Doc of yours is gonna be a lot looser with some of that in him.”
He laughed again, thick and dirty in his throat. Bass didn’t think it was funny, but he scraped up a grin from somewhere in time to play along.
“And I thought only wage slaves got target bonuses,” he said.
“Stick with the Brothers, kid,” Shepherd said. He drained the beer and went back to counting money with a swipe of a wet thumb to peel back each bill. “We’ll see you right.”
Bass glanced briefly at the girl again. Tears dripped out of her inflamed eye, and each breath she took was slow, wet, and shallow. Yeah, the Brothers would see him right. Or they’d see him dead. He doubted it mattered much to Shepherd either way.
GREEN STRIPEShad corroded over the fancy copper-lettered sign for The Retreat. A kidnapped child, a scandal, and suddenly the local rich parents couldn’t wait to stay away from the place. Rumor had it the old hippy who owned the place had tried to get back into the weed game, but it hadn’t panned out for him. Times and tastes had changed since you could make a living out of a greenhouse and an unmodified strain. There was plenty of competition out there these days.
Bass stood behind the sign and pissed out Shepherd’s beer on the calligraphedT. The trap-house trailer was pit enough. He didn’t want to find out what the toilet was like. Even the hot stink of road-cooked dead possum somewhere in the undergrowth was probably better.
He finished, shook his cock, and tucked it back into his jeans. As he zipped back up, the paper in his pocket crinkled a reminder he still had a job to do, unfortunately for Nathan Cochrane, whoever the hell he was and whatever he had to mouth off about.
The vulture that had waited politely in the tree for Bass to finish dropped back down to its road jerky as he headed back to his bike. He swung a leg over the seat, the quick memory of Tag’s body sprawled over it last night a brief, pleasant distraction, and started the engine.
He pulled back out onto the empty stretch of road and opened up the throttle. The bike surged forward, the rumble of the engine between his thighs harsher, and the needle on the speedometer ticked toward the red zone. The wind, cold at this speed despite the heat, caught at him as he hunched over the gas tank. A twitch of his hands veered the bike wide around a pothole, the buck of metal and rubber under him just about reined in.
Sometimes it felt like everything else—the fights, the parade of pretty boys and bad men, the danger—was just a poor substitute for this. Free, fast, and fuck ’em all. He wondered idly if Tag would like it, his body close against Bass’s back and his hand—
The saw of the police siren as the cop car lurched out of the culvert behind him, blues on flash, cut his train of thought short. Probably for the best. He flexed his hands around the grips of the bike and weighed whether he should run for it. It wouldn’t be easy, but if he cut through the feed store parking lot, took the old country road out into the maze of cookie-cutter new housing developments, he might be able to throw them off.
Instead he reluctantly laid off the gas and coasted to a stop at the side of the road. He stayed on the bike and waited for the deputy to stamp through the summer weeds to his side.
“Do you know how fast you were going, sir?” she asked by rote as she stopped next to him.
“Isn’t that youronejob?” Bass cracked. The Magnum felt like a brand against the small of his back, tucked into his jeans and hidden under his T-shirt. He tried not to think about it. “I mean, what else you got?”
She scowled at him.
“You were over the speed limit,” she said.
“Yet a minute ago you didn’t know how fast I was going,” Bass said. “Make up your mind, sweetheart.”
