Hunter was hot. She wished she had her pistol, or a PR-24 baton, or even a sturdy stick.
Ike studied the two men with Solomon. They were new. Both men flanking Solomon had hands on the pistols under their jackets.
Ike said, “You want me to take Anita home?”
Solomon held the infant towards Ike, who took the sniffling child and held her close. She quieted in a few seconds.
Ramona rose to her feet, still unsteady, as a trickle of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. Ike handed her his unused handkerchief and she used it to wipe away the blood. Ramona picked up her purse and motioned for Ike to follow her out the door.
Ike hesitated as he looked at Hunter, and then followed Ramona.
Everyone else in the café left at the same time. Solomon said to Hunter, “Don’t think that because you are la Patrulla, the Patrol, that you have special privileges, that you are looked at as being held to a different standard. You don’t. Remember this and let it burn into your memory: Never. Cross. Me. Follow that rule and you might live.”
Hunter said, “Who took your child? That’s what I’m trying to find out so they never do that again.”
Solomon said. “When I find them, you won’t have to worry.”
He led the others out of the Abbey Road Café, and Norma sat down in a chair. “Sweet Jesus, Hunter, I’m shaking all over.”
Hunter sat down, too, and Norma scrooched her chair closer to examine her friend’s face. “Looks like you’ll have a moose lip out of it, but nothing else.” Hunter raised her hand and put the steak knife on the table. “You were gonna stab him?”
“If he tried to hit me again, I was ready to whittle on him a little.”
“I’m glad he didn’t.”
“So am I. These steak knives are dull.” She winked at Norma. “Let’s boogie on out of here.”
Both women rose as Norma said, “Hell, yes.”
Chapter 3
Hunter asked Norma to go thru the drive-thru at Whataburger so she could get a large cup of crushed ice, and when they reached Norma’s house, Hunter dumped half of it in
a baggie and wrapped a thin dish towel around it before putting the cold against her swollen upper lip.
She hissed, “Hoo-wee,” and her eyes watered because the lip felt some kind of tender. Solomon struck her open handed, but his hands felt hard, calloused, and not what one would assume after looking at the man’s mode of dress and his model’s face. Solomon had the hands of a cowboy, maybe a miner or bricklayer, but for sure, someone who did years of hard manual labor.
Norma watched her as they sat on the couch and said, “Want a shot of tequila? Might burn the hurt out of it where the inside of your lip is raw.”
“Good gosh, no.” Hunter laughed, which made her lip hurt more. “Now watch TV and be quiet. I’m healing here.”
Norma put the bottle of Fortaleza on the kitchen counter where Hunter could see her favorite tequila, and poured a shot for herself, which she carried to the couch and sat close enough for Hunter to smell. Norma sipped it and sighed. Hunter laughed again and said, “You huzz!”
They watched Netflix the remainder of the evening and decided to go a different route tomorrow, up the Devil’s River arm of the lake to the hills at Indian Springs where water gushed out twenty feet above the river. Norma told her friend it would be a perfect place to get in the water and chill a while.
“Is the water cold?”
“It is if you’re right in the springs. There’s a handmade place, like a large hot tub a couple feet below the springs that fills with the water. Somebody built it by stacking rocks, and that water’s cold. Feels nice on a real hot day, but the river where the springs run into it is nice. Usually not too many people there, either.”
They slept late the next morning and boated up the Devil’s River arm of the lake at ten AM. Hunter spotted a number of pictographs on the high bluffs rising above the river, most of them pinks and reds, but a few were black. She wondered about those artists who scrambled up and down the steep stone to leave their messages for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. What were they like; did they have families, were they holy men, or ordinary natives with artistic talent?
Norma nudged Hunter’s forearm, then handed her a glass of ice and filled it from a plastic jug filled with micheladas they made that morning. The two friends sipped the cold, spicy, tomato juice, lime and beer mixture and enjoyed the building warmth of the day.
Norma said, “Your lip is almost back to normal. Hurt?”
“Sore.”
“For a while there your upper lip looked bigger than Angelina Jolie’s.”