Something connects with Ike’s skull, now. It’s hard, and it’s cold, and Ike knows it is a gun. He trembles; he cries out; he almost pisses his pants. Tears roll down his face. He starts sobbing. He doesn’t care.
“You just don’t know when to fuckin’ stop, do you?” the voice, the familiar voice, says. The gun clicks. Ike doesn’t understand what it means, doesn’t know much about guns, but he knows it can’t be anything good.
Ike starts shaking his head, begging again, between sobs now, his only recourse. “I won’t print the story,” he says, tasting snot. “I promise I won’t print the story. I won’t print it, I won’t. I’ll delete it. I’ll delete the whole thing. I won’t print it –”
“Jesus Christ, will you shut him up already?” says the other man, the one who hasn’t spoken yet. Ike isn’t listening as closely now, but if he were, he reckons he probably would have recognized it, too.
“Gladly,” the first man says.
“I’ll delete the story. I won’t print the story, I swear, I swear, I –”
“Damn right you won’t.” He pulls the trigger.
CHAPTER 1
Tom Rollins is on his way to Mexico. To Guaymas. He’s in Texas currently, heading for the border. The urn containing the ashes of Alejandra Flores, of her and his brother’s unborn child, are to his right in the footwell of the passenger seat. Safely tucked in so it doesn’t roll. Tom won’t let it out of his sight.
It’s a long way to go to Guaymas, but he doesn’t have the radio on. He doesn’t want music. Right now, he isn’t listening to anything but the wind that whips by past his open window. His thoughts are focused, and he wants to keep them that way. All the way to Mexico. The pendant that hangs from his rearview mirror, the skull-faced visage of Santa Muerte, dances in the warm breeze that blows through. He glances at it, just once, and it brings remembrances that tighten his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, make his eyes flicker to the urn one more time.
The car is a Ford, dark blue in color. He bought it cheap, in cash, from a dealership back in New Mexico a couple of days ago. A week after he last saw his father, his stepmother, his brother. Anthony, his baby brother, was trying to take a swing at him at the time. They had differing views as to what should be done with Alejandra’s ashes. Tom knows – knows – that she wanted to be taken back to Mexico, to be spread on her home soil. Anthony disagreed. Anthony wanted to go against her wishes, to keep her atop his mantelpiece or on his windowsill like some kind of ornament.
Tom took the urn. He knows it’s the right thing to do. He has to honor her. If his brother won’t, he will. More than that – though he won’t admit it out loud – it is Anthony’s fault she is dead. Tom feels this, feels the bitterness that comes with this knowledge. She died because of Anthony. Because of the trouble he got himself into, and then because he couldn’t keep her safe.
Tom’s eyes go to the Santa Muerte pendant watching over him. He remembers Alejandra’s words when she gave it to him.
She’ll keep you safe.
In war. She was to keep him safe while he was overseas, in a desert hell, taking shots from insurgents. She did her job. Tom is still alive. He’s still safe, relatively.
Alejandra needed Santa Muerte, not him. Alejandra needed to be kept safe. Needed to be kept alive.
Tom stayed low after he took the urn. Got rid of the car he’d been driving, traveled on foot to a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere. A lot of people were looking for him. The CIA, for a start. Tom went AWOL from his black ops squad, and they weren’t happy about that. Now, after recent events, certain illicit elements of the FBI are looking for him, too.
Senator Seth Goldberg, however, has said on television that he’d like to shake the hand of the man who saved his and his family’s lives, and those of his entire congregation, not to mention everyone else present in that part of Dallas that day.
His brother is probably looking, too. Hot on his trail, though he should have found the trail quickly went cold. Tom stayed in that motel for a week before he bought the Ford, then stayed there another couple of nights before continuing on his journey. Anthony will not find him; Tom is confident of that. Tom was always the one who paid more attention to their father’s after-school lessons in survivalism – in tracking and in covering one’s tracks. His time in the army only further compounded his existing knowledge. Anthony has never been in the army. He’s barely held a job. He’s been in jail, but that’s hardly the same thing.
It’s hot in Texas. It’s hot in New Mexico, too, where he has spent most of his time recently, but it’s a different kind of heat here. Oppressive. Dry. Almost as soon as he crossed the border, his shirt clung to his back with sweat. He glanced in the mirror and saw beads pop on his forehead. The open window doesn’t help, but it’s better than keeping it up. It wasn’t like this in Dallas. Tom is keeping his distance from Dallas. His face might still be fresh in people’s minds there, even with his newly grown beard and his hair longer than it’s ever been before.
He spent yesterday in Lubbock, with Cindy ‘Shriek’ Vaughan. She didn’t sound surprised to hear from him when he called to tell her he was coming. “Would you believe I’ve been expecting this call?” she said.
Tom went to her apartment.
“I like the new look,” she
