“I overheard one of the nurses say he’d get out tomorrow morning.”
“All right.” He walked to their vehicle, saying, “That’ll be perfect.”
Mike felt a faint thrum of fear in his chest, like a single flick of a bass guitar’s E string and said, “What are you gonna do?”
“Talk to him, one on one.”
RL said, “Make real sure he understands what lying’s gonna get him.”
Mike licked his lips, “That’s all, just talk?”
“What’d you think? Damn, Mike, we’re not the bad guys here, we just play a little hard sometimes, and he misunderstood.”
“Okay. I’m good with that. Long as nobody’s hurt.”
Ellis spun on his heel and put his face six inches from Mike’s. His eyes were gray stone, and carried an implicit threat. “Watch what you say, ol’ buddy. Almost sounds like you’re telling me what to do.”
Mike took a step back and held up his hands, “No, not that, I didn’t mean that.”
“Good. Now, how about you go ahead and wait for us in Terlingua. We’ll be along in a couple hours. We’ll bring some meat to cook on the fire this evening.”
Mike nodded and left, anxious to get away from Ellis, who was usually a fun guy to be around, but not today, no sir.
He drove away, still feeling uneasy as he turned on highway 118 for the long drive to Terlingua, feeling sorry for the boy.
As soon as Mike left, Ellis was on the phone. When he hung up, he told RL, “We’re set, just beyond Elephant Mountain, so it’s closer to where we need to be with ‘em.”
“Who’ve you got?”
r />
“Ben and Anselmo.”
“Good. Did you see Dario’s mom, Erica? She’s kind of hot, got those great boobs.”
Ellis said, “Keep your mind off poon until we clean all this up, you got me? You don’t want to mess this up and cross me, RL.”
“Got ya, hundred percent.” Ellis nodded and walked toward the vehicle. RL muttered under his breath, “You’re gonna turn your back on me once too often.”
**
Hunter and Raymond stood outside the hospital and were at loose ends, now that they were out of work for three days. Hunter said, “You can take the service vehicle to Marfa, I’ll get Lynne to bring my pickup. She’s doing shopping over here today anyway.”
Raymond said, “I guess I’ll go home and do what I do.”
“Which is?”
“Go to the store and buy some meat to cook on the grill this evening. Come on over, if you want. I’m thinking chicken tonight.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
Raymond looked at her, “You’re going back down to Terlingua, check on the kid.” It wasn’t a question.
“Probably.” She added, “I’ll get with Sam Kinney, too. He wants to visit, which for us means drinking beer.”
“Tell Sam to drink one for me.”
“We both will.”