Anselmo looked around from their high vantage point and saw two people moving in the desert. One was Adan, and the other, a slender woman wearing a faded orange baseball cap and coming at an angle to intercept the boy.
**
Hunter Kincaid spotted Adan in the pasture as she drove toward Terlingua to meet with Carlo Diaz. The boy was three hundred yards from the highway, moving steady and sure. When she slowed, he disappeared, and Hunter knew it was because Adan didn’t recognize her. She thought about yelling, but she wasn’t sure if he could hear her or not. Nope, she’d go far enough ahead to park and walk into the desert and wait for him that way.
She parked not far from the many low hills that dotted the landscape, and walked out to a point where she had a good field of vision. She waited there, sitting on a round boulder. She thought as she sat in the shade of a small hill, Raymond was coming to Terlingua just to hang out with her and get out of his house because his wife, Connie, was complaining about him getting three days off without pay. His wife was like that.
A movement out on the desert flat caused her to focus on it. She spotted movement again. It was Adan, about a quarter-mile away, and coming her direction. Good. She would wait on him to reach her.
Seventy yards behind and above her on the hill, Ben and Anselmo crouched behind rocks and looked at one another with wide eyes. Ben said in a quiet voice, “What the hell do we do now?”
Anselmo’s tongue touched his lower lip, “We have to catch both of them.”
“She’s not in uniform, but she always carries. She’s dangerous.”
“Her focus is on the kid. We can use it to trap them both.”
“How?”
Anselmo told him.
Hunter sat on the boulder and waited until
Adan was fifty yards from her before she stood and waved at him. The twelve-year-old stopped and froze, like a deer when it sees movement. “Adan, it’s me, Hunter.”
A smile broke on his face, and he started toward her, slowly at first, then at a trot and finally a full out run. She saw he was crying as he ran, and when he reached her, he clutched her waist hard and buried his face on her chest. Big sobs issued, and she held him, smoothing his hair and murmuring comforting words.
After a couple of minutes, he sighed deep and looked up at her. His face showed his grief. “Dario is dead, they shot him, they killed my friend.”
“There was nothing you could do.”
He held her and drew strength from the contact. “I am glad you found me.”
“You’re a tough one to find.”
The metallic sound of two pump shotguns being racked jerked Hunter’s head to the side, where Ben and Anselmo stood with the weapons at their shoulders.
Anselmo said, “Niño, get the woman’s pistol and bring it here. Hold it by the barrel, two fingers.”
Adan looked at Hunter, who said, “It’s under my shirt on the belt, left side. Go ahead, Adan.”
“You try anything, kid, and I shoot her first, then you.”
Ben was sweaty, even in the dry heat. His palms felt slick, and he lowered the shotgun to wipe them on his pants. Anselmo’s loud voice cracked like a whip, “Ben!”
Ben jerked, and his partner growled, “The hell you doing? Keep your shotgun on that bitch.”
Ben raised his weapon and looked down the barrel at Hunter, who showed no fear, only anger. Her glare made Ben squirm. He thought, if this woman had a gun, she would kill him and not even blink.
Anselmo motioned Adan to bring the pistol. Adan thought about trying to use it, but he had never fired one before, so he did as the man asked.
The man snatched it from the boy’s fingers and turned it in his hands. “A Glock 21, huh? A girl like you carries a .45?” He took out the magazine and counted the rounds. “Thirteen, plus one in the pipe. You expecting a war?” He held it out as if he was aiming. “How does it shoot?”
Hunter held out her hand, “I’ll show you.”
Anselmo laughed, “I bet you would.”
Ben said, “We gonna load them up in the truck, or what?”