“Be patient. Let me think.”
Hunter edged toward Ben’s shotgun that he held so loose in his hand.
Anselmo said, “Use your flexcuffs on ‘em.”
“In front?”
“No, cuff them with their hands behind them.”
Adan slipped his hand in his pocket and palmed the small arrowhead, holding it loose, then suddenly coughing and covering his mouth with the same hand. He slid the stone point into his mouth like a surreptitious chicklet, and placed it between his cheek and teeth, where it rested in the gutter. He didn’t know what he could do with it, but if they checked his pockets they would find nothing.
Ben pulled out two black, plastic restraints and cuffed Hunter first, then Adan.
Anselmo asked, “You get them snug?”
“Yeah. I don’t want them getting loose.”
Hunter said, “We’ll behave. You don’t need to do this.”
“How about because I don’t trust you, that’s why I need to do that. Tie their hands, Ben. Quit fooling around.”
He did, and when they were restricted, Ben checked their pockets. He put Hunter’s wallet and vehicle keys in one of Adan’s plastic bags, along with the pitaya fruit the boy still carried.
“Okay, they’re good to go.”
Anselmo led them off, going up the first hill at an angle.
As they walked, Hunter noticed the men stayed on the top or on the slopes of the hills. When she looked down in one of the shallow gullies, she knew why.
“How far to your vehicle?” Hunter asked.
Ben said, “A mile, maybe a little more.” Anselmo glared at him for talking.
They continued, with Adan and Hunter struggling on the slopes because of their hands behind them. After twenty minutes of walking and sliding and stumbling, Hunter stopped walking on the top of the next small hill. “You boys have any water? The kid and I are real thirsty.”
Anselmo leaned close to her, “Nope.”
“How about something to eat.”
The four people were close together on the edge of the hill, with Anselmo closest to Hunter. He turned to lead off, and Hunter whispered to Adan, “Get ready.”
Chapter 12
Adan didn’t know what was going to happen, but at Hunter’s words, he felt a flutter of adrenaline course through his system. He watched for any thing to happen, and yet, when it happened it was so fast he stood frozen.
Anselmo took a path that curved along the lip of the flat-topped hill. Ben walked behind Adan, so close he was only eight feet from his partner.
Hunter let a half-step add to the distance between herself and Anselmo, the lead man. She swung an incredibly fast roundhouse kick to the side of Anselmo’s head. The sound when her foot hit was like a fence post swung into an adobe wall. It was solid and deep, and seemed to vibrate the earth beneath Adan’s feet.
Anselmo went off the hill in a small arc, losing his shotgun and clawing the air as he fell into the rocky hill slope and then face first into the dark brown mass of dog pear at the hill’s base. His hands stretched forward toward the ground to break his fall, and they disappeared into the three-inch thorns, snapping off a dozen of the nodes and flipping them into the air and onto the man’s face and neck where the spines went deep and the cactus hung from his skin. His chest and stomach hit, then his legs. He lay in the thorns,
Ben seemed stunned, and Hunter charged him before he got his wits, ramming her head into his chest and then up into the bottom of his chin so hard his teeth clacked together to send small white chips of enamel into his mouth.
He staggered backward, tossing his shotgun off the hill as he waved his hands for balance. Hunter pushed again, then stepped quickly back as the man rolled off the slope toward the nightmare bed of thorns at the bottom. Sliding and bouncing, he clawed at the slope to stop his descent toward the dog pear. He slowed his fall enough so that he only slid into the edge of the thorns, with each one sending a terrible, burning combination of fire and pain as the rough spines pushed into his skin.
Someone poured gasoline on him and lit it while ramming in acid-dipped needles, that was the sensation on his forearm and leg from the hip down to his knee. It was intense, so much so that Ben could only make hissing noises, not words. It hurt if he even moved a finger.
The two men lay almost stupefied from the intense pain, and both panting in short, fast breaths like scared cottontails. Hunter looked down at them without pity. “Don’t move. I’ll send somebody for you when we get to town.”