“My girlfriend is innocent. She wasn’t part of anything that happened at that church.”

“A child is created from its parents’ fornication. Ain’t none of us innocent.”

“What were you told to do to us?”

“None of your business.”

“You’re not on the same page as the guy in the SUV, though, are you?”

“That’s something you ain’t got to worry about.”

“That’s right. I don’t. But you do,” Pete said.

Pete saw T-Bone wet his bottom lip. A drop of blood from the cut under his eye slipped down his cheek, as though a red line were being drawn there with an invisible pencil. “Say that over.”

“Why would Hugo send you after us and not tell Bobby Lee? Bobby Lee is working on his own, isn’t he? How’s the guy named Preacher fit into all this?”

T-Bone glanced sideways, the shine of fear in his eyes. “How much you know about Preacher?”

“If Bobby Lee is working with him, where’s that leave you?”

T-Bone sucked in his cheeks as though they were full of moisture. But Pete guessed that in reality, his mouth was as dry as cotton. The dust from the SUV was corkscrewing in the pickup’s headlights. “You’re a smart one, all right. But for a guy who’s so dadburned smart, it must be strange to find yourself in your current situation. Another thing I cain’t figure out: I talked with your girlfriend at the steak house. How’d a guy who looks like a fried chitling end up with a hot piece of ass like that?”

Up ahead, the brake lights on the SUV lit up as brightly as embers inside the dust. To the south, the ridges and mesas that flanged the Rio Grande were purple and gray and blue and cold-looking against the night sky.

Bobby Lee got out of his vehicle and walked back to the truck, his nine-millimeter dangling from his right hand. “Cut your lights and turn off your engine,” he said.

“What are we doing?”

“There’s no ‘we.’” Bobby Lee’s cell phone hung from a cord looped over his neck.

“I thought we were working together. Call Hugo. Call Artie. Straighten this out.”

Bobby Lee screwed the muzzle of a nine-millimeter against T-Bone’s temple. The hammer was already cocked, the butterfly safety off.

“You use your nine on your-”

“That’s right, I do,” Bobby Lee said. “A fourteen-rounder, manufactured before the bunny huggers got them banned. Hand me your piece, butt-first.”

T-Bone lifted his hand to eye level, his fingers clamped across the frame of his.25. Bobby Lee took it from him and dropped it in his pocket. “Who’s down here with you?”

“A couple of new people. Maybe Hugo’s around. I don’t know. Maybe-”

“Maybe what?”

“There’s a lot of interest in Preacher.”

Bobby Lee removed the nine-millimeter’s muzzle from T-Bone’s temple, leaving a red circle that seemed to glow against the bone. “Get out.”

T-Bone stepped carefully from the door. “I was supposed to grab the girl and call Hugo and not do anything to her. I didn’t pull it off, so I saw the kid carrying his groceries on the road, and I took a chance.”

Bobby Lee was silent, busy with thoughts inside of which people lived or died or were left somewhere in between; his thoughts shaped and reshaped themselves, sorting out different scenarios that, in seconds, could result in a situation no human being wanted to experience.

“If you see Preacher-” T-Bone said.

“I’ll see him.”

“I just carry out orders.”

“Do I need to jot that down so I got the wording right?”

“I ain’t worth it, Bobby Lee.”

“Worth what?”

“Whatever.”

“Tell me what ‘whatever’ is.”

“Why you doing this to me?”

“Because you piss me off.”

“What’d I do?”

“You remind me of a zero. No, a zero is a thing, a circle with air inside it. You make me think of something that’s less than a zero.”

T-Bone’s gaze wandered out into the pasture. More Angus were moving into the arroyo. There were trees along the arroyo, and the shadows of the cattle seemed to dissolve into the trees’ shadows and enlarge and darken them at the same time. “It’s fixing to rain again. They always clump up before it rains.”

Bobby Lee was breathing through his nose, his eyes unfocused, strained, as though someone were shining a light into them.

T-Bone closed his eyes, and his voice made a clicking sound, but no words came from his throat. Then he hawked loudly and spat a bloody clot on the ground. “I got ulcers.”

Bobby Lee didn’t speak.

“Don’t shoot me in the face,” T-Bone said.

“Turn around.”

“Bobby Lee.”

“If you look back, if you call Hugo, if you contact anybody about this, I’m gonna do to you what you did to that Mexican you tied up in that house in Zaragoza. Your truck stays here. Don’t ever come in this county again.”

“How do I know you’re not-”

“If you’re still sucking air after about forty yards, you’ll know.”

Bobby Lee rested his forearm on the truck window and watched T-Bone walk away. He slowly turned his gaze on Pete. “What are you looking at?”

“Not a whole lot.”

“You think this is funny? You think you’re cute?”

“What I think is you’re standing up to your bottom lip in your own shit.”

“I’m the best friend you got, boy.”

“Then you’re right. I’m in real trouble. Tell you what. Pop me out of this safety belt, and I’ll accept your surrender.”

Bobby Lee walked around to the other side of the vehicle and opened the door. He pulled a switchblade from his jeans and flicked it open. He sliced the safety strap in half, the nine-millimeter in his right hand, then stepped back. “Get on your face.”

Pete stepped out on the ground, got to his knees, and lay on his chest, the smell of the grass and the earth warm in his face. He twisted his head around.

“Eyes front,” Bobby Lee said, pressing his foot between Pete’s shoulder blades. “Put your hands behind you.”

“Where’s Vikki?”

Bobby Lee didn’t reply. He stooped over and hooked a handcuff on each of Pete’s wrists, squeezing the teeth of the ratchets as deep as he could into the locking mechanism. “Get up.”

“At the A.A. meeting, you said you were in Iraq.”

“What about it?”

“You don’t have to do this stuff.”

“Here’s a news flash for you. Every flag is the same color. The color is black. No quarter, no mercy, it’s ‘burn, motherfucker, burn.’ Tell me I’m full of shit.”

“You were kicked out of the army, weren’t you?”

“Close your mouth, boy.”

“That guy, T-Bone, you saw yourself in him. That’s why you wanted to tear him apart.”

“Maybe I can work you in as a substitute.”

Bobby Lee opened the back door of the SUV and shoved Pete inside. He slammed the door and lifted the cell phone from the cord that hung around his neck, punching the speed dial with his thumb. “I got the package,” he said.

22

VIKKI DRIED HERSELF and wrapped the towel around her body and began brushing her teeth. The mirror was heavily fogged, the heat and moisture from her shower escaping through the partially opened door into the bedroom. She thought she heard a movement, perhaps a door closing, a half-spoken sentence trailing into nothingness. She squeezed the handle on the faucet, shutting off the water, her toothbrush stationary in her mouth. She set the toothbrush in a water glass. “Pete?” she said.

There was no response. She tucked the towel more securely around her. “Is that you?” she said.

She heard electronic laughter through the wall and realized the people in the next room, a Hispanic couple with two teenage children, had once again turned up the volume on their television to full jet-engine mode.

She opened the door wide and tied a hand towel around her head as she walked into the bedroom. She had left only one light burning, a lamp by the table in the far corner. It created more shadows than it did illumination and softened the neediness of the room-the bedspread that she avoided touching, the sun-faded curtains, the brown water spots on the ceiling, the molding that had cracked away from the window jambs.