Zero at the Bone (9 page)

Zero at the Bone | 35

D made a face. “That shit is nasty. Rot yer balls off.”

“There is no medical evidence that Mountain Dew has a bad effect on testicles,” Jack said, smirking. “But I can’t disagree that it’s nasty.” He resumed his course to the gas station while D leaned against the car, waiting for the fuel tank to fill. He was glancing around, staying alert for a possible tail. He was almost positive that they hadn’t been followed from LA, but you could never be too careful.

He watched Jack through the windows of the dingy little gas station as he perused what had to be a limited pop selection. D shifted his weight, the comforting heft of the gun in his belt pressing into his lower back. He wondered if Jack had ever shot a gun.

Probably not; didn’t seem the type for sport-shooting, and he’d have no reason to do it otherwise.

D cleared his throat, eyes automatically picking out the lines of sight and the cover.

The hair on the back of his neck was standing up. He was getting that feeling. The cornered-animal feeling. The rush of the gas from the nozzle, the dry chilly desert air, the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead, it felt like every ambush he’d ever set up.

Then he saw it. The barest glimmer, a reflection off something shiny, around the corner of the gas station. He wandered nonchalantly a few yards away to light a cigarette and saw that it was the bumper of a car, parked behind the building where cars weren’t supposed to park.

Jack came out of the gas station, walking straighter with his hair back in place, carrying a couple of bottles of soda. “No clerk,” he said, frowning. “I waited and yelled, but there wasn’t anybody there. I just left the cash.” D nodded. “Get in the car,” he said quietly. “Driver’s seat.”

“What, my turn to drive?”

“We ain’t alone here. Don’t look around.”

To his credit, Jack stayed calm and didn’t look around. “The clerk…?”

“Already dead.”

“How’d they find us?” Jack whispered, acting like he was counting out change to D.
Pretty good cover, Doc.

“Dunno. Don’t matter right now.” In his head, D was wondering where on the car the tracker was.

“What do I do?” Jack said. He met D’s eyes for a moment, his own wide and scared.

“Jus’ get ready ta get us outta here. You’ll know when.” Jack went around to the driver’s side and got in. D pulled the still-gushing nozzle out of the fuel tank and tossed it to the ground, well clear of their car, the hold-open catch letting gas puddle around the base of the pumps.

Two dark-clothed men suddenly materialized from the brush at the sides of the parking lot and rushed him, much more boldly than D had been expecting. A silenced shot spanged off the iron support at his right. “Jack, get down!” D yelled. He put a bullet through the first one’s forehead and brought to bear on the second, but before he could fire he was wrenched around by what felt like a cannonball striking his chest, high under his left shoulder. He heard Jack shout his name. There was no pain, just a spreading numb pressure. He didn’t look down, just brought his gun back around and somehow hit the second guy, who went down.

Now, the pain was coming. It was a lot worse than he’d always imagined it would be. D staggered against the car, his left arm useless. The second guy wasn’t dead. In fact it looked like he’d only winged him… but he had his legs in the puddle of gasoline. D

36 | Jane Seville

took a big drag on his cigarette to fire the ember and tossed it into the gas puddle, which went up with a low-frequency
fwump
that sent a wave of air pressure toward him.

Jack had thrown himself across the front seat and now had the door open. “Get in!” he said. D somehow managed to collapse into the seat and shut the door. Jack squealed out of the gas station lot just in time for them to see the entire place explode in the rearview mirror. D saw with relief that the station and the car that had been parked behind it both went up in flames. Jack wasn’t wasting time watching; he was hauling ass away as fast as he could safely drive.

D lay in the passenger seat, the world graying out around him. Suddenly Jack’s hand was clamped around his upper arm, bringing things back into focus. “How bad?” he asked.

“Whut?”

Jack tried to look over at him and see the wound, but he had to watch the road.

“How bad is it? Are you bleeding out?”

D looked down at himself. The wound was in his upper left chest. His shirt was bloody but nothing was gushing. “Don’t think so.”

“Are you dizzy? Nauseated?”

Jack was speaking in a quick, clipped, answer-me-right-goddamned-now tone that D had heard from every medic he’d ever known. It was the Doctor Voice. “Little dizzy,” he managed.

“Can you breathe?”

D took an experimental breath. “Yeah… mostly.”

“Missed the lung, then.” Jack shook his head. “I have to look at that. Where can I hide us, just for a little while?”

D gritted his teeth, holding his left arm tight against his chest. “Get off the freeway.

Get ten miles, at least. Take a few turns. Find a motel. We gotta get the tracker off the car too.”

“Tracker?”

“Mother
fucker
!” D yelled, as the car went over a bump and another wave of crushing pain cruised across his torso.
Shit, I thought I’d be a lot more stoic on gettin’

shot,
he thought.
I’m disappointed in myself.

“Shut your eyes and breathe quick and steady,” Jack ordered him. “Quit moving around! Haven’t you ever been shot before?”

“No!” D retorted.

“Oh,” Jack said, sounding chastened. “I assumed you would have been. You know… considering.”

“I ain’t been ’cause I’m good at my job! Took havin’
you
around ta get me shot!”

“Lean forward,” Jack said, in that Doctor Voice again.
Yeah, cuz it’s jus’ that easy,
D thought.
My body feels like it’s made a concrete.
He somehow managed to cant himself forward and Jack’s hand was on the back of his shoulder, feeling around. D gritted his teeth. “Bullet’s still in you. No exit wound.” Jack pulled him back again; D’s head fell against the headrest.

“Gotta get the tracker before we stop. Pull over.” Jack did as he was told, killing the lights. “How do you know there’s a tracker?”

“How else did they find us there?”

“But… they couldn’t have followed us to the station; we’d have seen them come in!

How’d they get there
ahead
of us?”

Zero at the Bone | 37

D shook his head, cursing his own habits. “My fuckin’ fault. Too goddamned predictable. If someone’s been followin’ me fer months takin’ pictures, they’d know I stop at that gas station. Like it ’cause it’s outta the way. Tracker showed us on that road, pretty good chance be stopping at that station. Now. Look under the trunk lid, above the inside a the catch. If it ain’t there, check the wheel wells, and underneath the trunk on the frame.”

Jack nodded. “Are you okay?”

“No, I been fuckin’ shot. Go do as I say.”

He popped the trunk and went around to the back of the car. D shut his eyes, listening to the vague sounds of Jack’s feet and hands, and then he heard him approach the passenger window and opened his eyes. Jack was holding out a small black device.

“It was under the lid of the trunk.”

D took it. “Shit. Fuckin’ Feds.” He handed it back. “Stomp on it, then throw it away.”

Jack let the tracker drop, then D heard it crunch beneath his shoe. He picked it up and flung it as hard as he could off into the darkness. He got back behind the wheel and got them on the road again. “How do you know it was them… the, uh, Feds? When’d they bug my car?”

“They always put the goddamned tracker on the inside a the trunk lid. Think they’d learn ta change it up a little. And they probly put it on the car before they gave it ta you, so they could find ya if ya ever decided this Witness Protection shit was too much ’n’

took off. When they realized you was gone yesterday, they activated it. Somebody else either hacked or bought the frequency ’n’ found us, ’cause them guys back there sure weren’t Feds.” All this talking was making D very, very tired. When had talking become so strenuous? “Gotta stay awake,” D mumbled.

Jack chuckled, incredibly. “That’s for a concussion. You’re not going to bleed to death. Go ahead and shut your eyes if you want.” D turned to find Jack looking back at him. “I’ll look after you. You did it for me.”

I ain’t trusted nobody else ta look after me fer over ten years, Francisco. The
second I shut my eyes yer gonna drive me to a police station, or dump me outta the car,
or take one a them guns and shoot me in the head. I can look after myself.
He sighed, looked into Jack’s eyes, and nodded. “Okay.” He let his eyes close and it was a relief; not just a relief of minutes, but of years.

JACK scanned the road, a two-lane highway by now. They seemed to be the last people alive in the universe; he hadn’t seen another car for five miles. D was passed out next to him. Jack could smell the familiar copper tang of blood, and it was almost comforting.

He’d seen D slammed back against the car and knew right away he’d been shot. His own reaction had been a surprise, even to himself. A shield of icy calm had descended over him and his mind had clicked over into trauma mode, triaging the situation, an instinct borne of months spent on ER rotation in a violence-ridden inner city.
Get an
airway, get a pulse, stop the bleeding, dull the pain, prevent infection.
Except this had been
get him in the car, assess his wound, get away, get far, keep your head down, drive
fast, don’t get pulled over, find a cave.

D was his patient now. It had been awhile since trauma rotation but some things didn’t leave you. His wound didn’t seem serious at first glance, but he’d have to excise 38 | Jane Seville

the bullet and get some antibiotics into him as soon as possible. It might need to be stitched. He was unconscious, so Jack didn’t see the harm in getting them a little farther away from the scene of the explosion. From the remote location of the place, he guessed it would take police a little while to get there, and once there, there was nothing to connect them or this car to the incident.

He drove for half an hour before finally pulling into a generic roadside motel. He drove around the place once, parking on the far side so the car wasn’t visible from the street. He left D in the car, reluctantly, and walked around to the office, making sure he didn’t have any blood on him before he went in. “Can I get a room?” he said to the tired-looking clerk. “I parked over by twelve.”

“Suit yourself,” the clerk said. “Fifty bucks.” Jack paid cash and showed the clerk his new Dappa-issue ID, which identified him as John Templeton. He signed the register, took the key and hurried back to the room. He opened the door and glanced around; grabbed a couple of towels and put them on the bed, then went outside and opened the passenger door. D was still out cold.

Jack retrieved his doctor’s bag from the trunk and took out a vial of smelling salts.

He cracked them under D’s nose and put his hand on his forehead to keep him steady.

The wound looked to still be seeping. “Whu… fuck!” D cut himself off as his sudden movement strained his shoulder.

“Shhh,” Jack said. “Take it easy. We’re at a motel.” D nodded sluggishly, and turned to get out of the car. Jack bent and got one arm behind D’s back, helping him up and out. He kicked the door shut and staggered with D

into the room, kicking that door shut too. D sat down on the edge of the bed. “Get the cases outta the car,” he said.

“Don’t lay back without a towel underneath,” Jack said. “We don’t want to have to explain bloodstains.”

D blinked. “Towels’ll get bloody instead.”
Dumbass.
Except this time, Jack knew he wasn’t such a dumbass.

“We can get rid of the towels. This place must have towels stolen daily. They might remember a missing bedspread, though.”

D considered this for a moment, then nodded. “Yer not bad at this, ya know.”

“I’ll be right back,” Jack said, hurrying out and hoping D hadn’t seen him blush like a school kid at the praise. He gathered up their bags, the aluminum cases containing the guns, ammo and money plus their new papers, locked the car, and went back into the room. “Okay, now let’s have a look at that,” he said. D was holding his left arm tight to his side to minimize the movement in his shoulder.

Jack helped D get out of his jacket and shirt. D winced as the fabric stuck to his wound. Jack examined it; it didn’t look like there was fabric inside the bullet hole. He spread towels on the bed and helped D lean back. He was sweating and pale. Jack went into the bathroom and wet a washcloth, then laid it over D’s forehead. “Relax,” he said, lapsing into calming-bedside-manner without thinking about it. He opened his bag and drew out a syringe and an ampoule.

“What’s that?” D asked, looking a little suspicious.

“It’s just Lidocaine,” Jack said, showing him the bottle. “Trust me; you want me to numb the area. I’m going to have to go digging for that bullet.” D nodded weakly, and Jack injected small dosages around the wound, conserving the drug in case he needed more later. Almost immediately, the tension in D’s shoulder and arm eased off, allowing Jack to pull his arm away from his body and get a good look at the wound. He palpated it, Zero at the Bone | 39

front and back. He could feel the bullet about two-thirds of the way through D’s shoulder.

“You okay?” he said.

D nodded. “Lots better now.”

Jack took out a pair of long-nose forceps and snapped on some rubber gloves. He wiped the forceps with a sterilizing wipe. Not as good as an autoclave but better than nothing. He tilted the lamp toward him for better light and pressed his fingers around the wound. “Now, this is still going to hurt some,” he said. “I’ll try to be quick.” D nodded and shut his eyes; Jack saw his jaw clench. He took a breath, steadied the forceps, and plunged them quickly into the wound. They touched metal, he gripped and withdrew.

“Huh,” he said, holding up the bullet.

D opened one eye, then the other. “Is… that’s it?”