Page 27 of Coyote

I'd lasted until dark in the bunkhouse. Then Cruz started snoring, Mateo started talking in his sleep, and the mattress sagged under my knees with both feet hanging off the end. I told Cruz I was moving to the equipment shed and carried my bedroll across the yard.

The shed was quiet. The floor was flat, and the motorcycle Coyote stole sat beneath a tarp on the other side of the room. Best decision I'd made all week, right up until somebody put a knee on my sternum in the dark.

The younger Javelina stood near the bike with a cigarette burning between his lips. He pulled the tarp away.

"You know whose this is?"

"Not mine."

"It's ours, asshole." He crouched and knocked two fingers against the fuel tank. "Zaroff doesn't lose things. He gives them some distance first. Makes it more interesting when he takes them back."

The third man stayed by the door, a pistol loose against his thigh. He was the largest of them, though nowhere near my size. None of them were. The man on my chest knew it too. He kept his weight forward, and the knife pressed hard enough to dimple the skin beneath my jaw.

"That's a long drive for a motorcycle," I said, and kept my hands flat on the straw where all three of them could see them.

The smoker laughed. "We came for four bodies. Your little boyfriend put four of ours in the ground, so we take four out of this place. Then it balances."

"If you wanted me dead, I'd already be dead."

"Sure." He took another drag. "But Zaroff wants a message sent, and a message doesn't do anything if nobody can tell who signed it."

"Take the bike. Let me up, and I'll go with you. No trouble."

The man on my chest laughed. "Five months in that pit, and you never once laid hands on one of us," he said. "Not when we chained you. Not when we threw you in with the hogs. Not even when Zaroff had you beaten for refusing a fight." The tip of the knife pressed harder. "Boss said we could sit right on top of you and you still wouldn't do shit. Looks like he was right."

He shifted his weight to climb off me, and the knife left my throat.

I caught his wrist in both hands and cranked it backward until the joint broke.

He screamed and fell sideways. The knife dropped into the straw.

The smoker reached for the pistol at his waist. I kicked him above the knee. His leg folded, and the gun came loose as he went down. It hit the floor and skidded under the workbench.

Then the third man jumped on my back. His forearm closed around my throat. I planted one foot under me and stood with him hanging off my shoulders, choking me from behind. I drove backward into the wall until the whole shed rattled. Once. Twice. His grip loosened the third time, but he still didn't let go.

The smoker came off the floor and buried a fist in my stitched side.

Pain ripped through me. My knees gave out, and the man on my back rode me down into the straw. A boot caught me in the ribs. Another clipped the side of my head.

I rolled to one side and brought my arms up to protect my face. Warmth spread under the dressing on my ribs. Dammit, I'd torn something open.

The man with the broken wrist sat against the wall, holding it to his chest and cursing me, my mother, and several generations of my ancestors in Spanish while the smoker kicked me onto my back.

"Not so big down there, are you?"

"Still bigger than you."

He kicked me again.

"Yo, Doc!" The door banged open, and Cruz stepped in. "You good? I heard something hit the wall and thought maybe you fell off that bedroll you swore was better than a real bed, which, for the record, I still think you should've cleared with Coyote like I said, but you said you'd square it with him yourself and I figured—"

He stopped.

The third man swung his pistol toward him.

"Cruz," I said. "Run."

Too late. The smoker caught him by the collar and dragged him inside. Cruz's hands came up. He looked at the blood, then the knife, then me on the floor.