Dead Six

purposes would have a key and not even try to be quiet. I stepped away from the refrigerator, cup of water in hand, and stepped toward the door to the front room.

“Hawk?” I asked, squinting into the darkness. A moment later, someone appeared in the kitchen doorway and switched on the light. A woman stood not five feet from me with a blank look on her pretty face. She wore a short pink jumper, like a waitress uniform, and tennis shoes. She carried a purse under her arm.

Her eyes went wide when she saw me standing there in my shorts. It hit me then. I recognized her. It was Jillian Del Toro. Jesus Christ. It can’t be.

I think she recognized me, too. Dropping her purse, her hand flew behind her back. Before I could say anything, she’d produced a Smith & Wesson M&P compact pistol and leveled it at my face. Her nametag said Peaches.

She sure as hell didn’t look like a Peaches. She had an intense gaze; it was a mix of obvious fear and anger. I looked back down at the pistol in her hands. It was shaking slightly, but it was close enough that I could see the rifling in the barrel. It was a 9mm.

I dropped my water cup on the floor and slowly raised my hands. “Please,” I said. I was very calm. “Put the gun down. I’m just as confused as you are. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You shut up!” she said fiercely. “I know why you’re here!” Her grip on the pistol tightened.

“I’m getting a cup of water,” I said, nodding to the puddle on the floor. “I’m standing here in my shorts for Christ sakes.” The Calm was wavering as I became agitated.

“Shut up!” Jill shouted. “You’re Dead Six! You’re here to kill me!” I visibly halted when she said the words “Dead Six.”

“Dead Six is done now. I barely got out alive.”

“I know that! But what are you doing here?”

“I was getting a God damned cup of water!” I said, almost shouting now. “What do you think, I came to Nevada and infiltrated Hawk’s house in my fucking underwear so I could kill you?”

“Just shut up!” Jill snarled. She shifted her weight forward slightly. Her pistol was in arm’s reach. Close enough.

Moving quickly and following through, just like I’d been trained, my hand shot up and grabbed the pistol. I forced it upward, yanking both of her arms up with it. I was taller than Jill, and stronger. I twisted the pistol in her hands and slammed my other arm into her sternum. There was a chance she’d pull the trigger, but it wouldn’t hit anything but the ceiling. The blow knocked her off balance. She stumbled backward and lost her grip on her gun.

I have to give her credit. She didn’t stay down. She immediately got back up and came at me. In one smooth motion I shifted the pistol to my right hand, grasped the slide with my left, and racked it as I extended my arm. An unfired cartridge ejected and bounced off the floor. Jill froze as I pointed the S&W at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were wide with terror, but she didn’t blink and didn’t cringe. Ballsy.

“Now that’s enough,” I said firmly but calmly. I sidestepped to the left, shifting the pistol to my left hand then gripping it with both hands. “Just calm down, okay?”

“What the hell are you doing, boy?” Hawk’s gravelly voice boomed. I froze, and my head snapped around. Hawk was standing in the other doorway to the kitchen with a Remington 870 shotgun in his hands.

“Hawk!” Jill cried. “He’s from Dead Six! They found me!”

“Hawk,” I said. “This is the girl I told you about! She was over in the Zoob! She shot me in the back!”

“You pointed a gun at my face and took me hostage!” Jill snapped back.

I was pissed off now. “Well, what the hell—”

“Both of you shut up!” Hawk said, lowering the shotgun. “Damn it, Val, you give that girl her gun back. Jill, you holster that gun and calm down.” Giving Jill a dirty look, I dropped the magazine out of her gun, locked the slide back, and handed it to her. She snatched it out of my hand. I gave her the magazine a second later. She didn’t reload it.

Hawk sighed. “Both of you relax. This is my fault. I guess I should’ve told you about each other. Val, I was gonna say something to you when you got up. You’re both guests in my house, though. I expect you to behave yourselves. Now you damn kids go to bed. We’ll straighten this all out in the morning.” Hawk turned and left the kitchen, leaving Jill Del Toro and me alone. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at the floor. I shuffled my feet. Neither of us spoke until we heard the door to Hawkroom close.

Jill glared at me. “It’s your fault.”

Hawk roused me out of bed at six in the morning and told me to go feed the horses, reminding me that he wasn’t running a bed-and-breakfast. Half an hour later I was in the barn, carrying big bales of hay from the loft out into the field. The horses were already happily munching on their grain in their stalls. I was going to spread the hay around outside to keep them busy while I got to cleaning. See, I had to shovel the horse shit after I fed the horses. Living on a ranch is a lot of fun, let me tell you.

I hauled another hay bale through the barn, this one for Hawk’s ill-tempered stallion. I was wearing leather gloves. My .44 was holstered on my left hip, out of habit more than anything else. After everything that happened, I really didn’t like going around unarmed.

Jill Del Toro was standing in the barn, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and work gloves when I came back in. She carried a pitchfork and a shovel in her hands.

“Hey,” she said, sounding much more amicable than the night before.

“Mornin’,” I said, nodding at her. “Hawk drag you out of bed too?”

“What? No, I worked swing shift last night. He lets me sleep in on my days off.”

“Must be nice,” I grumbled.

“Look,” Jill said awkwardly, “I’m sorry about last night. You know, for trying to shoot you.”

“Well . . . I’m sorry I hit you,” I said.

“It’s just that I saw you, and I remembered from before, when you grabbed me, you know, and I kind of freaked, and—”

I held up my hand. “Hey, it’s cool. I know what it’s like to be twitchy.” We both fell silent for a few uncomfortable seconds.

Jill looked me in the eye. “Can I ask you something? How . . . whoa. Your eyes are different colors!”

I rolled my mismatched eyes and sighed.

“I’m sorry!” Jill insisted, embarrassed. “I’ve just never seen anyone like that before. I can’t believe I didn’t notice last night.”

“What were you going to ask me?”

“Oh, right. How did you end up here? Where do you know Hawk from?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said. “I know Hawk from way back. I used to work for him. Hell, my stuff is stored here. My Mustang is still in his garage. Unless he sold it. The question is, what the hell are you doing here?”

“We were in Zubara after that night. You know, when the fighting started. Lorenzo got hurt pretty bad dragging you out of there. He—”

I interrupted her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. Hang on. Back up the truck. What the hell do you mean, Lorenzo dragged me out of there?”

“Oh . . . you don’t know?”

“No, I don’t know! The motherfucker showed up in my room, pulled a knife on me, gave me this,” I snapped, pointing to the scar on my face, “and this,” I added, indicating the scar on my arm, “and I still don’t know what he was after. Now you’re telling me he rescued me?”

“Hey!” Jill said. “Your friends broke his fingers. They were torturing him!”

“What the hell was he doing in our compound in the first place?”

Jill deflated a little. “That’s, uh, that’s a long story,” she said.