Hunter's Moon (A Hunter Kincaid Novel)

Sixto shook his head, “No, amigo.”

The van followed Art’s car into South El Paso where it pulled into a small junkyard on Alameda Avenue. The van followed it through the open gates and waited by the office.

Art watched through the van’s windshield as the cowboy talked to another man who wiped his hands with a greasy rag. They talked for a bit, then the cowboy gave the man the keys and walked to the van, sliding into the passenger seat saying, “He’ll take care of it.”

“Good,” Marco said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What do you want with us?”

Marco said, “Information.”

“You could just ask.”

“It is a matter of being sure about what you say.”

They rode in silence for the next half hour, finally pulling into the driveway of a modest home in an almost abandoned subdivision with sand and tumbleweeds filling most of the lots and front yards.

The cowboys exited the van and opened the front door. A moment later the overhead garage door opened. “Get out,” Marco said.

Art hobbled on his walking cast and Sixto staggered as they entered the garage. Art looked around for anything to use as a weapon, but only saw two big rolls of clear plastic sheeting, the type that painters used to cover floors, a small roll of green, plastic-coated clothesline wire on a shelf beside a pair of pliers, a wooden three-legged stool, and a couple of stained blankets that had been tossed into one corner. Maybe I can get the pliers, he thought.

Once inside, Marco pulled down the garage door and secured it with a padlock hooked through a steel ring anchored in the concrete.

The men guided Art and Sixto to the blanket and forced them to sit. Sixto pointed at a dark stain near them, his eyes large. The hair on Art’s neck rose. The pillow-sized stain was dried blood. Other stains on the blankets were the same, only of different sizes.

Marco walked to the door that opened to into the house and turned the knob, pushing it open. The other cowboys went to the shelf and removed the green-coated wire and the pliers, taking them to the rails on the overhead garage door, never saying a word.

Art watched as they used the plastic covered wire to wrap a half-dozen turns around the rail, pulling it taut, leaving a two-inch loop dangling down below the rail. The cowboy standing on the stool double-checked the loop’s strength, hanging his weight on it, then he hopped to the floor. He grinned at the two captives, and the grin sent chills through Art.

The cowboys went into the house, leaving Art and Sixto alone in the garage. Art hurried to the door, but the Master lock had it anchored to the steel ring in the concrete floor. He looked around, but the garage door windows were too small to break out and escape through. The only other exit was through the house where Marco and his men were.

He returned to sit beside Sixto as the man said, “We can take the stool, break it into weapons.”

“They have knives and pistols.”

“We have to do something.”

The door opened and all three men came into the garage. Marco carried a baseball bat on his shoulder. He said to his two men, “Go ahead.”

They picked up one roll of the clear plastic sheeting and unrolled it on the floor, covering the concrete under the garage door railings. Marco saw Art watching him, and he said, “I like to do things neat.”

Art said, “You don’t have to do this. We’ll tell you whatever you want to know. We aren’t heroes.” Sixto nodded in agreement, swallowing so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork.

Marco sighed, “I have to make sure.” He looked at Sixto and said to the sicarios, “Get him up.”

Sixto tried to kick them away, but the men were too quick and had his ankles, dragging him across the plastic until he rested under the green wire. When he wouldn’t stand, they slapped and punched him until he stood. Sixto felt surprise when they cut off the zipties on his wrist. They grinned at him and pulled his arms in front, crossing his wrists. The taller one wrapped several turns of the wire around them and tied them hard, the wire biting deep into his flesh. They then ran the wire through the loop to lift his arms above his head as a trickle of blood ran down his wrist from the wire.

He was so tall that his hands reached the loop with his feet on the floor, so he didn’t hang.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Marco said. He walked to the captive and had the sicarios join him. They lifted one leg, but Sixto kicked and twisted, trying to pull his foot away from them. Marco said, “Hold still or I will use the Taser.”

When the captive stopped fighting, Marco worked a wire loop around Sixto’s ankle, then stretched it to the far garage door railing and tossed it over the top. He pulled down on the wire until Sixto’s leg was a foot off the floor and he balanced on one leg. Marco tied off the wire, and then stood in front of the man so their faces were six inches apart.

“I’m not gonna ask you questions, I want you to start talking and tell me everything.”

Sixto said, “How can I talk if I don’t know what you want?”

Art watched, barely breathing.