“Where am I supposed to get affordable insurance? An employer? You know how hard it is to get hired with a felony conviction.”

  “If the only problem was money, you could’ve asked me.”

  He shrugged. “I had money. But I had other bills to pay first.”

  “Yeah, and now I’m gonna have to pay that much more for you,” I said. “Because I’m not letting you try on your own.”

  “I’ll fight you,” he said. Useless threat, and had been since we were kids. I’d always outmatched him. He’d still said it plenty then, when he’d wanted to get his way.

  He and I had more in common than I liked to think. We both hated to be seen as weak. No, worse – we both hated to think of ourselves as weak. It was more the latter than the former that was bothering him.

  “It may not feel like it,” I said, “but sometimes the last thing people like you and I need is to be left alone.” I bit my knuckle. Damn, but I wished Neena was here. Even Black Widow would be a sight for (literal) sore eyes. “I need to get in touch with my friends.”

  “Got your phone on you?” he asked.

  My damn phone had been in the Mustang’s passenger seat. And my extra ammunition was in the trunk.

  “That’s a problem,” he said, when I explained. “First thing they did when they invaded was bust both my phones, then cut every line. Just in case I broke out of where they tied me up, I guess.”

  The last thing I wanted was to go solo. Once upon a time, I preferred to stick it out alone, but… that was how I got myself into the kind of trouble my brother was in now. And worse.

  “The gang ever say where they were headed?” I asked. “Or why?”

  “Just that they needed to wait something out.”

  Magik’s psionic shield would last for another couple days. After that, I would be right back to where I had been: vulnerable to Johnny Dee.

  I was sure that, somehow, they’d found that out. Their behavior didn’t make sense any other way.

  Elias said the gang had thought they’d finished me. Wolfram seemed competent enough to know not to take that for granted. If he’d wanted me dead, he would have come up and finished me off.

  Slightly more valuable to me alive, he’d said. Something about me, specifically, was important to them.

  Too many questions. And while I wanted answers, I wanted them a little less than I wanted revenge. Now that the adrenaline of the fight had worn off, a deep, dark rage was boiling inside me. Enough to keep the pain away, for now. Given a choice between getting answers and killing this bunch of pustulent boils – I’d shoot them down every time.

  I never could sit through a villain’s exposition. People going over their evil plans just made me itchy. I’d rather just cut to the violence.

  The stolen Mustang left tracks that would be easy for me to follow – for now. Something dark was shading the fringe of the western horizon. I couldn’t make out just what. It could have been the Mustang, but it could just as easily have been a rock outcropping. My sight was too blurred to tell. The wind around here could get pretty bad. I couldn’t count on the tracks remaining contiguous into the next day. Especially if they got out and started moving on foot, as they’d have to if they kept heading in that direction.

  I was a pretty capable tracker, but part of tracking is learning where the limits are, and how fast you’ll need to move to keep up with your target. If I was going to find them, I was running out of time.

  Another good thing to learn about tracking humans is to recognize when you’re being led into a trap. And Wolfram and Johnny Dee’s gang was headed in a direction that made no other kind of sense.

  Elias may not have known all the details, but he didn’t need to be a genius to suss out what I was planning. “You need to hurry up if you’re gonna find a way to get after them.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone and hurt out here.”

  “I’ll get to the neighbors.”

  “On foot? The Wayfields are miles away. You’ll collapse first.” And I didn’t trust our neighbors. Their car had been among those that had pulled up to meet my dad that evening, before I’d left. OK – fine, I probably could have trusted the Wayfields enough to call an ambulance for a stabbed man, but some grudges die hard.

  He scratched the back of his head. “Well… first thing Wolfram did after breaking my phones was dismantle my car, make sure I couldn’t get away if I got out. But…”

  “But you think you can fix it,” I finished, preempting his bragging.

  “What? Hell no. They were thorough. I’m not a miracle worker. But I was also working on a motorcycle in the back. Got it cheap, and it’s real old. I had taken apart the engine. They must’ve thought the whole thing was junk, left it alone. But I bet I can put it together a lot faster than you’d believe. Two, three hours.”

  “A motorcycle? That’d be harder on your wound than just walking.”

  He gave me a coprophagic grin.¹⁰ “Promise I’ll ride so slow I’ll get bored.”

  10 We’ll leave you to look that one up. –Ed.

  “Ugh. You want to give me an over-under on how many times you’d reopen your wound if you try this?”

  “Hey, I’ll be in better shape for my job than what you’ll be in for yours.”

  I didn’t want to say it, but he was right. Neither of us were going to do the right things for ourselves. And neither of us could stop the other. We had no recourse but to mutually disapprove of each other. Just like old times.

  He was still smiling. I wasn’t.

  •••

  While Elias poked around with his motorcycle, I went out and recovered the revolver I’d dropped earlier. I plucked some bullets out of one rotary chamber and slipped them into the other, until they were closer to evenly split. That gave me seven shots between them.

  And then I stopped by the place where Wolfram had shot Milos.

  Milos was lying at his same bad angle, like a broken action figure. His leg remained folded underneath him. He hadn’t moved a muscle, except to push an elbow against the dirt.

  I realized what had saved me from being shot. Wolfram’s bullet must have struck Milos’ spine. The bullet had glanced off the bone, or embedded in it. If just tissue had been in its way, he definitely would have gotten me, too.

  I wondered if this was how Neena felt, being lucky all the time. I sure didn’t feel fortunate.

  Milos was still alive. He breathed shallowly, staring dead-eyed into the sky.

  Judging from the trickle of blood still coming from his stomach, like an artery was opening every time his chest rose, he wasn’t going to last much longer. His wound smelled awful. Suffice it to say something had ruptured in his gut, and I didn’t want to think about what. There was nothing I could do for him. He wouldn’t survive a ride on Elias’s motorcycle or, frankly, a ride on a fully stocked ambulance.

  He blinked when my shadow fell over him, as if he hadn’t seen me before now. I sat on the dirt next to him.

  “Why were you and your buddies stealing my body?” I asked.

  “Why should I tell you, mutie?”

  “Come on. You really think those other guys are your friends? After they shot you?” I’d seen a lot of cold, cruel things in my time, but Wolfram’s I forgive you was one of the worst yet.

  He shook his head. There was a convulsive tremor to it. I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with me, or refusing to answer.

  “I can help you,” I lied. “But you’ve got to show me that you’re somebody I’d want to help.” After a quiet moment of listening to his uneven breath, I added, “It’s never too late to switch sides, you know.”

  “You really think you’re one of the good guys?” he asked.

  He was shaking. Shivering, I realized. He was terrified. Funny thing was, he didn’t seem scared of me. Or even of his death. He kept peeking over my shoulder.

  This was a waste of time. And, frankly, a waste of emotional energy. Neither one of us wanted me to be here.

  I stood and turned, and started heading in the other direction.

  A grip like steel closed around my ankle, and yanked. I fell hard, landing on my knee. Next thing I knew, Milos was grabbing his way up my leg, reaching for my holster.

  There was no way he could’ve moved with that speed. His palm brushed the grip of my revolver. I kicked him in the face. He hardly seemed to notice. He was like a zombie – single-minded, immune to pain, and with the strength of the damned.

  I’d held back on my first kick because I hadn’t wanted to kill him. On my second, I showed him a little more of what a “mutie” could do. My second kick cracked into his face. His head snapped back. His grip finally slackened. Blood spilled from his nose, onto his lips, but he didn’t seem to notice. It wasn’t natural. And, the moment I thought that, I knew what had happened.

  The kick should have knocked Milos out, at the very least, but he only looked stunned. I scrambled backward. Milos levered himself up on his elbows and tried to stand. He faltered only when he realized – as if for the first time – that his legs weren’t working.

  The pause gave me enough time to draw the revolver he’d tried to grab, cock the hammer, and aim at his face.

  “Johnny Dee,” I said, coolly.

  “You have no idea how frustrating you are, Inez Temple.” Milos’ voice was still his own, but his Polish accent was gone. “I could have killed you a dozen and a half times before all this. They held me back.”

  “You treat all your friends like Milos?” I asked. “Planning on stealing all their bodies?”

  “Like he mattered,” Johnny Dee said. “Miss your brother?”

  It took me a long second to realize Johnny Dee thought he’d killed Elias. Thank all the stars in the sky that my brother wasn’t there. He probably had enough of my brother’s DNA on him, in the blood on his sleeves, that he could’ve taken over Elias at any time. If he’d known.

  “You don’t have to keep trying to get me mad at you,” I growled.

  “I enjoy it,” he rasped. “I’m having fun.” Milos’ voice was flagging. Johnny Dee could keep pushing Milos’ body without feeling Milos’ pain, but he couldn’t keep it alive when it was ready to expire.

  “Why me? Why my family?”

  “You know, you really bug the hell out of me. We were almost in position. We almost had everything set. And then through awful, dumb luck, you skip out on us at the end.” Blood and saliva were dribbling from the corner of Milos’ mouth. Johnny Dee didn’t seem to notice. “You want to know why we chose you? It’s because you’re too much of a simpleton to realize what was going on.” He grinned, horribly. “I bet you’re still too much of a simpleton to have figured it out now, even with everything laid out in front of you.”

  I could have asked a hundred questions. I especially wanted to know who Wolfram was, and why he seemed to be calling the shots when Johnny Dee was the one with the powers.

  Instead, I said, “I’m going to kill you, Johnny Dee.”

  “You’ve got maybe two days left before your protection fails. So don’t chase after us. Spend the time saying goodbye to your friends and what’s left of your family.” Johnny Dee sneered, showing me Milos’ bloody teeth. “And tell every mutant out there to do the same.”

  Then something snapped. Milos jerked, and went limp. His head slumped into the dirt.

  I stood, slowly, keeping my revolver ready. I kept my distance for a bit, and then closed to nudge Milos with my foot. His neck flopped loosely from one side to the other – broken.

  Snapped from a distance by his killer, Johnny Dee.

  Ten

  I stalked back to the garage in a blacker mood than I’d ever been in before. I couldn’t chase away the feeling of Milos’ iron grip on my ankle, or the sight of Johnny Dee grinning with Milos’ blood-covered lips.

  What I saw at the garage didn’t improve my spirits. The doors were open and, aside from the one dismantled Jaguar, it was mostly empty. Dad had left Elias more cars than that. Elias must have sold them to keep ends meeting. He did have the motorcycle: a filthy, beaten old CB Super Hawk that looked like it hadn’t been maintained since the 1960s. It looked more useful as a doorstop than a ride. No wonder the gang had left it alone. It was in five discrete pieces.

  Elias had dragged all five out into the sunlight to get a better look at them. The idiot had strained himself doing so. His tourniquet was redder than before.

  “How soon do you think you can do this?” I asked. “I need to get going before those clouds come in.”

  “Well, don’t let my sorry posterior keep you waiting.”

  “I’m not gonna have any chance of catching up to them on foot. I’ll need to drive you out to the Wayfields, and then go after–”

  “Not very observant, are you?” Elias asked. I was about to snap at him when his gaze traveled to the horizon. I followed it.

  It was like something out of a dream. The most beautiful dream. In fact, it had been the last good dream I’d had.

  My bad arm hurt too much for me to forget about it, but my good arm flopped limp at my side. All at once, I forgot how to be grumpy.

  “She must’ve heard your voice and come back to investigate,” Elias said. “I haven’t seen her in days. I didn’t think I would again.”

  Wheezer darted across the horizon, weaving back and forth like she was uncertain if it was safe to get any closer. Her radiant mane floated in the wind like a heat mirage. She met my gaze out of the side of hers and then tossed her head, as if in just as much disbelief as I was.

  •••

  Wheezer continued to loop back and forth. She recognized me, but didn’t want to come in to see me. Whatever had happened had left her real skittish around people. She danced away from me whenever I called her. It broke my heart.

  Elias and I both knew her well enough to name the keys to her heart, though. “I’ll get her food,” I said, at the same time Elias said, “You should get her food.”

  That entailed going inside, which I needed to anyway. I couldn’t set out right away. Even under a deadline like mine, that would’ve been foolish.

  The house seemed so small. When I was young, it had been a castle. As an adult, it was like two mobile homes jammed together. I felt like I could cross the whole thing in ten strides. It must’ve seemed the same when I was seventeen and ready to leave. But it was my childhood I remembered most.

  I hate growing old. I’d hardly managed to grow up, and still wasn’t sure I’d managed that quite right.

  The bathroom was a mess.¹¹ The PC was smashed, the phones were destroyed, and even Elias’s several-generations-old PlayStation was broken into pieces. There were strangers’ clothes laid out in Dad’s bedroom. The kitchen had been ransacked for food.

  11 Thank your lucky stars that Outlaw is eliding the sanitary horrors there. –Ed.

  Strangely, the dishes had been done. Someone had delicately stacked them on the drying rack. Huh. I’d have to wonder about that later. I know Elias hadn’t been the one to do them. He never arranged them so neatly.

  First bit of business: bandage and disinfect both the wounds on my shoulder, entrance and exit. The exit wound was nigh impossible to reach, and I couldn’t bend my bad arm to get at it without gasping from the pain. But I wasn’t going to drag Elias in to help, so I sucked it up. My face needed treatment, too. That entailed something I very much didn’t want to do: look in the bathroom mirror.

  Elias had been right: I looked like ground-up dog turd. Blood dried in drips and rivulets down my forehead. The whites of my eyes were as red as Gambit’s irises. What Elias hadn’t mentioned, though, was the dark stippling of dirt and rock splinters flecked all over my face. I looked like I’d been hit by the same kind of shotgun that always spun Daffy Duck around and charred his face, only it was a lot more gruesome in real life. I had to spend time tweezing those out of my skin.

  With my mutant endurance, I healed a lot faster than most other people – but that came with its own hazards they wouldn’t have thought about. I couldn’t afford my accelerated healing scabbing and regrowing skin over all those flecks of debris. I’d let that happen once before, on my arm. Every time something touched it had been like scraping broken glass.

  My shoulder wound, at least, would heal a lot faster than it would have for most people. But my eyes were another worry. I’d gotten flecks of dirt and grit in them and, as I’d found out with my arm, that would make them heal poorly. I’d already blinked out everything I could. The pieces still there were microscopic, too small to tweeze out. They’d embedded in my cornea.

  There was nothing I could do about them but wait and see. Or not see. As the case may be.

  Next: a rinse and change of clothes. My outfit was soaked through with blood. The last time I’d left home, it had been after Dad’s funeral. I’d gone in such a blizzard of emotional turmoil that I hadn’t packed. My spare clothes were in my old bedroom, piled into a mess. I hated to think of Johnny Dee coming in here, pawing for my loose hairs. I resolved not to think about that and was only partly successful. The important thing was that they were clean. I changed into a clean shirt, clean vest, clean jeans. Then a heavy brown jacket. Aside from the jacket, it wasn’t all that different from what I’d worn in. The jacket was a desert necessity – in day to protect from the scorching sun, and at night to ward off the chill.

  Next: weapons. A good merc will never turn down additional firepower.

  Dad’s old gun collection in his study was gone. No surprise there. Either Elias had sold everything, or the invaders had taken them. But the false floorboard beside Dad’s bed was untouched. In it: a Beretta M9, the same kind he used to carry in his service days, plus a plastic case with fifty rounds.

  I still remember the hoarseness in Dad’s voice when he’d told me about that floorboard. I’d been seventeen. Like most country Texans, I’d shot a lot of guns before then, but this was the first time he’d let me have access to one without locking it away afterward. He went over how to load it in the same grave voice he’d used to tell Elias and I that Grandma had died. I listened just as somberly, and even pretended I didn’t already know where the gun was.