Page 26 of It Takes a Thief

Wolf waved them away. “Well, everything else around us was going batshit. Right, Andre?”

“Oh, completely,” said Andre the operator, a skinny black guy with enormous dreadlocks. “There was nothing I could do, Ford! Suddenly the machine was out of my control! It crashed through the median and hit a few cars in oncoming traffic before Greving could haul ass down there and stop traffic.”

I smeared my face with my palm. “Oh, fuck. Anyone hurt?”

Andre said promptly, “I don’t think so. Everyone got out of their cars before they hit the machine. You should never buy this crazy new stuff! We need to go back to kicking it old school, man.”

But the ambulance racing up the shoulder of the oncoming lanes told me different.

Faux Pas said, “Wolf made his knee worse, clambering like a monkey on that contraption.”

“And meanwhile,” said Wolf, “it was heading right toward Greving and the line of stopped cars. I hacked like a maniac with one hand on the machine control screen and the other hauling myself into Andre’s station.”

Andre nodded strenuously. “He was. He was hacking away.”

Wolf said, “I found what Noodlum did just in the nick of time. Just as I entered an override code, I told Andre to hit the kill switch!” He waved his arms so strenuously he bopped Greving in the face. “We came to a total halt just inches from that guy’s bumper!” Another strident wave, and another laborer was smacked in the nose.

Andre said, “Hector fell off the hopper!”

Hector and his buddies—most of whom were the stolen Cutlass men—erupted into happy, excited chatter.

I clapped Wolf on the shoulder. “Good job. But you should’ve worn a hard hat.”

Wolf modestly dismissed my praise. “There was no time for hard hats.”

I stepped closer to him, speaking quietly. Faux Pas, after twenty years with the Bare Bones, instinctively drew closer, too. “I need you guys to stay here and deal with things. OSHA and state troopers will be here any second. Just blame the manufacturer for now.”

Wolf nodded crisply. “Mechanical defect.”

“Right. I’ve got to go up Mormon Mountain and deal with some things.”

Now Faux Pas nodded. “Up near the Discovery Channel telescope.”

I nodded too. “Exactly.”

My brothers were reading my mind, and that pleased me.

I had to leave that scene of a disaster in my rearview. As the boss, I should’ve stayed, but I had to prevent more such nightmares from occurring.

All I had to do was stop off at one of Lytton’s warehouses on his pot plantation. I always kept a good supply of C-4 and boxes of nails. I could throw together a good bomb in two minutes up there.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MADISON

The truck pulled up in front had “Chinle Comprehensive Health Care Facility” written on the door and a cherry on the rooftop.

I was in the right place.

A white man bent over the adláani had already cut away his jeans and was tying off blood vessels surrounding the shattered tibia. A young Diné assistant handed him hemostats as he worked. One guy from the back of the truck, maybe the guy with the deadly shovel, had the adláani’s head in his lap, pouring some kind of alcoholic poison down his throat. At least it kept the guy somewhat still.

Falling to my knees, I gasped, “I’m an RN.”

The white man didn’t even glance at me as his fingers expertly slithered through the mess of flesh. He was wearing scrubs, a stethoscope hanging from his neck, so he must have just come from the hospital. “Good. You can help by watching and learning.”

Although the doctor had just burned me, this was vital, exciting! It was the sort of work I’d been craving to do, out in the field where it mattered. I clamped off a vessel with my fingers, so I was helping save the life of a real Navajo Indian out in the Rez!

The doctor looked to be in his forties. With a sublimely hooked nose, scruffy hair, and granny glasses ringed in metal, he was the sort of guy I’d gone to medical school with.