Zero at the Bone (5 page)

them were Old People Cars: sizable sedans, stolid and sedate, none of them too new. This parking lot felt neglected; many cars had dead leaves and other detritus piled around their tires and rain-dust streaking their windows. The back of the nursing home was secluded and not visible from the street; they were alone. Suddenly D stopped and his chin tilted down; he zeroed in on one car like a hunting dog pointing at a kill. “That one,” he muttered, nodding toward a nearby Toyota.

“Why this one?” Jack whispered, feeling conspicuous but following D to the car.

“Dusty like it ain’t moved in awhile.”

Jack tugged on D’s sleeve. “No, this one’s better,” he said, pointing to a Buick sedan a few cars down.

D hesitated. “Why?”

“The tags are six months expired. I don’t think anyone’s driving it at all.” The HAL lenses rested on Jack’s face for a beat, and then D nodded. “All right,” was all he said, but Jack detected (or hoped he detected) a note of admiration for Jack’s deduction.
Maybe I could be a ninja assassin too,
Jack thought.

D took a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket, crouched by the Buick, and had the plates off in a few quick twists, then went around to the front and repeated the procedure.

They went back to Jack’s car and D swapped out the plates, carefully peeling Jack’s current registration tags off his plates and putting them on the stolen ones, then tossed Jack’s plates in the trunk. “Shouldn’t we put those on the Buick?” Jack asked.

D looked at him like he was crazy. “Why’n hell would we do that?”

“Well… no one would notice wrong plates on the Buick, but no plates might stick out.”

“Look round,” D said, impatiently. “Folks don’t come back here much; by the time anyone sees we be long gone. Besides, we put yer plates on this car, if it gets reported they’ll know we was here, and they’ll know what plates we got!” Jack nodded, feeling like he deserved that particular
dumbass.
“Right. Sure.” Back in the car, he said nothing as D drove out of town. As they put Vegas in their rearview mirror, the adrenaline began to leave Jack’s body and he slumped against the passenger door, his head aching and his muscles twitching. In the past few hours he’d gone from the safe (albeit dull) life of a protected witness to being on the lam with a man who’d come to his house to kill him. A man who, it seemed, had decided not to kill him but couldn’t be bothered to actually
talk
to him. It yanked all the moorings out from beneath his feet when he could see no more of his future than he could of the highway ahead. “Where are we going?” he finally asked.

“Quartzsite,” D replied

That was about a four-hour drive to the middle of nowhere. “What’s there?” Sigh. “Gotta pick up some stuff.” He sounded put out to have to answer even this simplest of questions, and pique rose in Jack’s throat.

“You know, you could cut me some fucking slack,” he snapped. D glanced at him briefly, then back at the road. “I am stuck in a car with some guy who was supposed to kill me and this is the
second
time in as many months that my whole life’s been pureed and I’m just supposed to sit here quietly and not ask any questions? I’m real fucking sorry to
bother
you, but I’m the one with a bull’s-eye on his forehead here.” Jack crossed his arms over his chest and flopped back against the seat.

D’s visible response to this little tirade was to purse his lips slightly. Jack watched out of the corner of his eye as the man’s jaw clenched and unclenched. Suddenly, he yanked the wheel to the right and pulled off the deserted highway, then parked the car 18 | Jane Seville

and turned in his seat to face Jack, taking off those damned HAL sunglasses.

“Dominguez brothers want ya dead. I was hired ta kill ya. I cain’t be entirely sure was them that hired me. So that’s possibly two parties after ya. Plus the U.S. Marshals gonna be on the hunt for ya now that yer outta pocket. That’s three parties we gotta steer clear of.”

“Why can’t we let the Marshals catch us? If you’re so worried about my welfare, they’re the ones—”

D cut him off. “Hate ta tell ya, but we gotta consider that whoever put out the hit on ya got yer location from inside the program.”

Jack blinked. That was a disturbing thought. “How could they—” D flapped a hand as if this were an insignificant detail. “Bought, stole, hacked, blackmailed. Don’t matter. Point is, cain’t trust ’em no more ta hide ya. Plus, since I ain’t done ya, parties what hired me, be they the brothers or not, gonna be after
me.
Ya gettin’

the picture?”

Jack swallowed hard. “A little too well.”

“None a my hideouts gonna be safe. I got a stash hid outside Quartzsite. Goin’ there fer money ’n’ weapons. Then we gotta get new ID. Gotta go ta LA fer that, but need cash first.” Throughout this speech, D’s unblinking eyes didn’t leave Jack’s face but pinned him there against the passenger door like an amoeba under a microscope.

“Okay,” Jack said, nodding.

D sighed. “But don’t go thinkin’ it’s jus’ you with a bull’s-eye on yer forehead.” He turned toward the road again and pulled back onto the highway.

They drove in silence for a good half hour. Jack watched the spare expanse of southwestern scenery scroll by outside the car, trying to empty his mind of thoughts…

but one kept recurring. “What did you mean when you said it might not have been the Dominguez brothers who hired you?” Jack asked.

It took D long enough to answer that Jack started to wonder if he was going to. “I got no proof was them.”

“Isn’t them wanting me dead proof enough? I don’t think anyone else is that mad at me.”

D cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “Mighta been more about me killin’ ya than you bein’ dead.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Possible some parties wanted ta see if I’d do it.”

“Why would they think you wouldn’t?”

“Don’t matter.”

“Fine, whatever.” Jack fell silent again. The sun was setting, and he was starting to get sleepy. He squinted into the spectacular sunset that was, sadly, lost on him in his distraction and let D’s words percolate into his brain. He tucked himself into the corner of the seat and rested his eyes on D’s profile as he faced relentlessly forward, both hands on the wheel, the picture of steely resolve even engaged in such a mundane task as driving.

With his shorn hair and stubble, D’s head looked like it had been sandblasted and weather-stripped. Jack had spent most of his professional life cutting people’s faces open, and his surgeon’s eye showed him the bones beneath D’s skin, although his seemed much closer to the surface than most people’s. His jawline was like a flying buttress, his brow like one of the table mesas that lurked on the horizon. His skull was geologic in its architecture. One could only imagine the seismic events and plate tectonics that had gone on in his life to shape him into this… whatever he was.

Zero at the Bone | 19

Jack knew that he ought to be afraid of D, and in a way, he was, but he got no sense of evil or malice from the man. He just seemed so rigidly defended that Jack wondered if any emotional considerations were even possible, and yet he’d displayed emotion in Jack’s own living room when faced with his homicidal task. Since then, however, he’d been about as accessible as the saguaro cacti dotting the landscape.

How accessible would you want to be if you were a hired killer?
Jack suppressed a shiver. How many people had D killed? Dozens?
Hundreds?
How many had begged for mercy? How many had families, children, spouses to support? How many, like him, had done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time? He looked away, having managed to give himself the creeps.
This guy could decide to kill you at any moment,
Jack. Just because he gave you a pass today doesn’t mean you’re in the clear, and you
better not forget that, not for one moment.

Jack reconsidered the wisdom of trying to get away. He’d probably have the chance if he stayed on his toes. He’d already had chances.
Get to a phone and call your contact
in the program.
It was tempting, but D had said that might not be safe.
He could just be
making that up so you won’t call the authorities.

Jack rubbed his eyes. He was talking in circles, and giving himself a headache to boot. The plan D had described seemed like a good enough one to Jack, and he was just too tired to think of a reason why he shouldn’t go along.

FRANCISCO had been watching him for most of the drive. D let him, not acknowledging Francisco’s observation or asking why. If he were in Francisco’s position, he would have been trying to figure some shit out too.

The deserted two-lane blacktop wasn’t the fastest way to Quartzsite but it was the loneliest, and that was what he wanted. Easy to spot a tail, hard to get snuck up on. He was feeling off his game and unbalanced and wanted to give himself every advantage he could. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t in the clear, even though he’d seen no sign of surveillance at Francisco’s house or since.

As for Francisco? The man had surprised him. The thing about the tags on the license plates they’d stolen had been a sharp note, and D had kicked himself a little for not picking up on it himself, but then his spy-novel ideas about long-term airport parking and putting the Taurus’s plates on the Buick had taken him right back to a little kid playing cops ’n’ robbers. Francisco might have had some book-learning and a little backbone, but in those eyes of his D could see the deep thread of gonna-be-okay running through him, made more remarkable by what he’d been through lately.

Francisco was still watching him, but now he was trying to hide it. He didn’t know that D could feel anybody’s eyes on him, the weight of their gaze sitting on him, heavy like a drop of rainwater. He hated being this close to the man and this easily watched.

Wasn’t anything personal; it just wasn’t his way. And he’d have to keep him this close if he didn’t want him bumped off right from under his own nose.

He saw Francisco shudder a little.
Probly rememberin’ the gun ya had in his face a
few hours ago,
D thought.
Oughta throw the guy a bone, leastways so’s he knows you
ain’t gonna pop off and shoot him after all. Gotta make him trust ya a little, else he might
try ’n’ get away. Cain’t have that. Cain’t chance him goin’ ta the cops or runnin’ off on
his own ’n’ getting his damned fool head blown off.

Goddamn, I hate this.
D cleared his throat. “Hour ta Quartzsite,” he said.

20 | Jane Seville

Francisco jumped a little at the sudden noise after an hour of silence. “Oh… uh, good. I guess.”

“Find a motel, hole up fer the night.”

“Okay.” Francisco was sitting up a little straighter, and watching him openly again.

“So… you don’t work for the brothers normally?” he asked, taking the opening D had laid at his feet.

“Don’t work for nobody.”

“You’re a free agent?”

D sniffed. “Guess so.”

Francisco nodded, mulling this over. “Never thought men like you were real.”

“Men like me?”

“You know. Hired assassins.”

That surprised a brief snort of laughter out of him. “
Hired assassins?
How many Tom Clancy books you read, anyway?”

Francisco blinked, and then chuckled a little. “I guess that does sound kind of melodramatic, doesn’t it?”

“Bit, yeah.”

“You tell me, then.”

D fished a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit one, cracking the window. “Just do what I do.”

“But just so we’re clear, what you do is murder for hire, right?” Hearing it put like that made D’s lips clamp down a little tighter on his cigarette.

“S’pose so.”

“So why would anybody have thought you wouldn’t kill me?”

“Huh?”

“You said before that somebody might want to see if you’d kill me. Why wouldn’t you?”

“’Cause ya don’t deserve it,” D said, quietly.

Francisco blinked at him. “What?”

“You ain’t done nothin’ ta bring it ta yer door, Francisco. You witnessed a crime ’n’

were gonna help put them bastards away. Ain’t no reason ta kill ya, not by my reckonin’.”

Francisco had turned in his seat and was now staring at him with unabashed interest. “Are you telling me that you only kill people who
deserve
it?”

“Them’s my rules.”

“And who gets to decide that? You?”

“Who the fuck else?”

“What kind of people? Who deserves it, tell me that?” Francisco was getting agitated. D had thought this line of discussion would calm him down, but it sure wasn’t working out that way.

“Well… some a them killers themselves. Done some child molesters. Done a few a them fer free, matter a fact. Lotta crime-boss types. Few pimps. Bad folks.”

“Bad folks,” Francisco repeated. “Like you.”

D sighed. “I’m jus’ cleanin’ up the scum, Francisco.” He shook his head. “Didn’t mean ta piss ya off none,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Francisco snapped. “I’ve just never met a professional killer before, and I’m having a little trouble with the degrees of morality here.” He sat back in his seat, exhaling. “I guess I shouldn’t judge. Your rules saved my life, didn’t they?” Zero at the Bone | 21

“Reckon so.”

A few tense minutes passed until Francisco sighed and his shoulders sagged.

“I’m….”

“Don’t worry about it,” D said, cutting him off. “Yer right. I
am
bad folks.” Francisco said nothing for a few beats. “I don’t think you’re bad,” he murmured.

JACK woke with a start, a finger poking his shoulder. “Huh?” he said, sitting up straight.

D was leaning over him, nothing more than a darker outline in the general darkness.

“We’re here,” D said. “C’mon, need an extra pair a hands.” Jack got out of the car. It was so dark he couldn’t even see his hands in front of his face. “Christ, it’s dark out here. How do you know we’re in the right spot?” The soft glow of a green LED screen briefly lit up D’s face as he handed Jack a flashlight. “GPS.” He turned on his own flashlight and Jack followed along. As his eyes adjusted he could make out hulking hills nearby, and the flat desert ground at his feet. D