I Shall Not Want

'Fair enough. No, your property's safe. The nun-the sister-was driving a bunch of-ah, migrant laborers. Some of them ran off when they saw my men. My officers,' he corrected.

'Migrant labor? You mean Mexicans?' Bruce frowned.

'The ones left behind are Spanish-speaking. I don't know where they're from.'

'Mexicans. Running loose through our woods.' Donald looked to his brother, who thumped the larger man on the chest before turning to Russ.

'You gonna catch 'em?' Bruce demanded.

'We're going to try to round them up, sure. See if any of them need help.'

'If they need help'-Donald sounded as if he wanted to spit-'they get a free ride to the hospital and the all-you-can-eat buffet. We get sumpin' wrong, we gotta go to the clinic and sit for an hour to get some woman who ain't even a doctor. And we're Americans! There's been Christies here since 1720!'

Probably interbreeding the whole time.

'Hush,' Bruce said. 'Anything we can do to help? Round 'em up, I mean?'

'You… want to help?'

'I wanna get them off our land.' Bruce looked up, to where the first star glimmered in the pink and indigo sky. 'When it gets cold tonight, they're not gonna stay freezin' in the woods when they can stroll right 'cross the pastures and take shelter in one of Donald's barns.'

'Stealin' stuff,' Donald added.

'We should turn out the rest of the boys.' Bruce turned toward his brother. 'Where's your phone?'

'Whoa up, there.' Russ held up one hand. 'I'm not sending anybody out as a searcher whose got a hair in his ass about immigrants.'

Donald stepped toward him. 'You think you can keep us off our own property?'

Bruce thumped him again. 'Hush.' He looked at Russ. 'We don't want anything different than you do, Chief. Get these guys off our land. Take 'em to the hospital or send 'em back to Mexico, dun't matter to me what you do with 'em once we've cleared ' em off. Hah?' He glanced at his brother. 'Hah? Play nice?'

Donald rumbled deep in his chest but nodded.

'Okay,' Bruce went on. 'We can call up some of our cousins and they can help look. Or if you don't want 'em to help that way, they can camp out on the other side of this forest. That's Donald's place, off'n Seven Mile Road. Head off anybody who comes outa the woods.'

Russ took off his glasses and polished them on his blouse front. Seven Mile Road was a hell of a long way away by car. This stretch of the mountain's spine was bigger than he had thought-a lot bigger. 'Okay,' he said, replacing his glasses. 'You can assist. You and your cousins.' He knuckled his hands on top of his rig, making himself larger and emphasizing his sidearm. 'But I'll warn you. Once. If there're any problems, if it looks at any point like one of you messed with one of the missing men, I'm rounding you all up. And we'll let the DA sort out who did what to whom. Shouldn't take her more'n a couple weeks.'

Donald rumbled again, more threateningly this time, but Bruce nodded. 'Deal.' He held out his hand to his brother. 'Gimme your phone.' The larger Christie reached into his side jacket pocket, a movement uncomfortably reminiscent of someone going for a shoulder-holstered firearm. 'How many of these guys you got missing?' Bruce asked.

'That's a good question. Let's go see what my officers have come up with.' He took a step back, swinging wide so the Christies would walk beside, rather than behind him. To his left, he heard the solid ca-chunk of a door's closing, and the rear lights of the Corinth ambulance flared red and white. It crawled off the crushed patch of ground it had been parked on, paused at the shoulder, and then, blue lights springing to life, surged onto the road. Leaving behind a solitary figure in desert camo, who turned, spotted him, and jogged over. 'Russ,' she called.

'In a minute,' he said. They all converged on the Millers Kill ambulance at the same time. Karl and Annie, the paramedics, were positioning an inflatable cast on the arm of a young Latino, whose closed-off expression may have been due to pain, or to an extreme reluctance to engage with Knox, squatting on the ground next to his pallet.

'Por lo menos digame si cualesquiera de sus amigos estuvieron lastimados,' she was saying. The injured man ignored her. She stood up, turning to Russ.

'Hel-lo, baby,' Donald said. He sucked and smacked his lips. Kevin Flynn, standing spread-legged behind Knox, flamed up. He opened his mouth.

'If I were your baby, asshole, I'd probably be stupid enough to find that flattering. But I'm not, and I don't. Get lost.' Hadley looked at Russ. 'The only thing I can get out of him is that his name is Amado and he claims to be legal. He's got some sort of guest-worker permit thing. He's happy to flash that around, but anything else, forget it.'

Kevin was staring at her, his expression a mixture of admiration and shock. Russ kept his mouth in a straight line. 'Thank you, Officer Knox.' He got down on one knee-squatting had gone out of his body's vocabulary four, five years ago-and looked at the kid. He was young, barely out of his teens, and his scraggly beard and patchy mustache made him look like a boy made up for a high school play.

'Amado.' He tapped his badge. 'Yo no soy del ICE. No cuido sobre su estado.'

Clare's voice. Surprised. 'I didn't know you spoke Spanish.'

He gave her a look. Turned back to the injured man, who was wincing as Annie finished Velcroing the splints in place. 'Amado, charla a mi.'

'Yo soy Amado Esfuentes. Soy legal.'

'No cuido. Deseo encontrar a sus amigos y ayudarles. ?Cuantos de ellos estan fuera de alli? ?Cualquier persona estuvo lastimada?'

'What's he saying?' Flynn asked.

'Same thing I was,' Knox said. 'How many are there, is anyone hurt.'

'Russ.' Clare's voice was insistent. 'I know how many men there were.'

Of course she did. He was surprised to find a part of himself amused. Smack-dab in the middle of police business. Just like old times. He braced his hand against his thigh and stood up.

'Sister Lucia said there were eight men in the van. They were headed for Michael McGeoch's dairy farm.'

He pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. 'Mike McGeoch's farm? On Lick Springs Road?'

She shook her head, loosening more strands of hair. 'She didn't say where.' Donald Christie was looking at her, curious about her BDUs, maybe, but he didn't show any signs of trying out his charm offensive. Of course, she didn't have everything out there on a platter, like Knox. A jackass like Christie wouldn't know how to appreciate a woman like Clare.

He turned to the injured man. Karl and Annie were helping him to his feet. In the light from the ambulance's interior, the kid's face was gray beneath his caramel skin and thin beard. Annie frowned. 'You'll have to ask the rest of your questions at the hospital, Chief. We need to get this guy and the other one back.'

'Okay. Thanks, Annie.' Russ pointed toward the Christies. 'You two. Get to the pump truck and get briefed by John Huggins about the search before you call in any of your family.' Thankfully, they shambled off without protest. 'And remember what I said!' he called after them. 'Knox. Kevin.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Yeah, Chief?'

'You two keep the van secure until the tow truck gets here. Kevin, show Knox how to write up the accident report.'

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw desert camo sidling past him. 'Where are you going?' he asked.

'To help with the search.' Clare's expression said, What did you think I was