Page 28 of Coyote

"Okay," he said. His hands stayed up. "I didn't see anything. I'll walk out, go back to bed, and forget the entire concept of this building."

The smoker locked an arm around his throat. "That makes two," he said. "Two more, and we're even."

I pushed myself up. The larger man planted a boot between my shoulders and forced me back down. His pistol pressed against the base of my skull.

"Easy, Doc."

The smoker looked at me over Cruz's shoulder. His cigarette had burned nearly to the filter, but he kept it in the corner of his mouth. "Go ahead, big man. Do something. I fucking dare you."

Cruz stared at me. The dropped pistol lay beneath the workbench, less than a foot from my hand.

My grandfather put a gun in my hands before he gave me a fork. Traveling shows were already dying when my grandfather kept his running on trick shots and three generations of bad judgment. He taught me to shoot a candle out at thirty feet. A card from a woman's fingers. A cigarette from a man's lips. The rule was the same every time. Never point a loaded gun at a person.

I reached under the bench and closed my fingers around the pistol.

The boot pressed harder between my shoulders. "There you go," the man above me said. "Now we find out what kind of man you are."

I rolled onto one hip and brought the gun up. At this distance, I could have killed the smoker before his finger tightened. The man above me would have been next. The broken-wrist man sat against the wall with nowhere to go.

Three men, three shots, and I had the placement on all of them before I finished the thought. Chest, chest, throat. Thirty years of putting my hands inside people had taught me exactly where they came apart.

Cruz shut his eyes.

I moved the sights off the smoker's face and settled them on the burning tip of the cigarette. Then I fired.

The cigarette vanished from the Javelina's mouth, and a red welt opened at the corner of his lips where the paper tore skin. He jerked backward, both hands flying toward his face, releasing Cruz. "What the fuck?"

Cruz shoved him hard and ran.

"Coyote!" he screamed before he cleared the doorway. "COYOTE! THEY'RE KILLING JOHN!"

The man above me kicked the pistol out of my hand. It disappeared into the straw.

The smoker touched the blood on his mouth, stared at his fingers, and came at me. "You motherfucker."

He drove his boot into my stomach. I folded. The next kick caught the side of my head and put me flat.

Then all three of them were on me. Even the one with the broken wrist found something to contribute. He kicked my injured thigh while the other two worked my ribs and back. I covered my head and kept my hands open. A boot struck the back of my skull. White light flashed behind my eyes. I dug my fingers into the straw and hit nothing but dirt.

I'd kept that promise in rooms where keeping it cost me blood. Maybe it was about to cost me everything else. I still couldn't reach for the gun.

A wet choking sound came from above me, and the weight disappeared from my back.

I rolled over.

Coyote had the largest man by the hair. He hauled the man's head back and sank his teeth into his throat. The Javelina screamed once, the sound collapsing into a gargle when Coyote tore his head sideways and came away with blood running down his chin.

Warm spray hit my face, and Coyote spat red into the straw.

"¡Chinga tu madre!" The smoker dove toward the pistol under the workbench.

Coyote caught the back of his jacket and dragged him away from it. The man twisted, swinging blindly. Coyote slipped under the punch, buried his knife beneath the man's ribs, and drove him backward into the wall.

The smoker sagged against him. Coyote lowered him to the floor, pulled the knife free, and turned.

The man with the broken wrist was already running. He made it three steps.

Coyote caught him at the door and kicked the back of his knee. The Javelina went down hard. Coyote dropped onto his back, hooked one hand beneath his chin, and opened his throat with the knife.