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“Fuck you,” he said.
This time, Boone kept hold of him a little longer while he struggled to breathe. He counted down the seconds in his head. One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand, and then he let him go. The man coughed.
“Are you going to answer my question?” he asked.
“Valdez asked me to keep an eye on you. I’ve been trying to get in contact with him, to alert him to your location. I’ve got nothing. I need to know what to do with you.”
Boone snapped the man’s neck, grabbed his cell phone, and used the man’s thumb to get into the cell phone. Checking through the texts and calls, he saw the instructions to follow Boone and not to report any location through text. He shook his head. There was no place safer for Lucia, and he only had to hope this piece of shit hadn’t alerted Valdez. He was not going to step up his timetable, but he had the next three days to prepare for an attack.
Shoving the man back into his car, he went to the trunk of his own. He glanced in to see Betty on Lucia’s lap.
“Is she okay?” Boone asked. “Do we need to take her back to the vet?”
“No, I think she’s fine. The glass hasn’t cut her.”
“Good. I’ll just be a moment.”
With that, he pulled out the gasoline he kept, tossed it over the car, and set fire to it. Taking his now empty gasoline can, he tossed it in the trunk, climbed back into the car, and took off in the opposite direction. They were several feet away when the car exploded, and the fire got even more fierce.
“What the hell?” Lucia asked.
“That was one of your father’s men,” Boone said.
He drove back to his home. Typing in the code, he drove down the long driveway, heading toward the main house.
“Boone! Boone!”
He turned to look at Lucia, who was staring down at his shoulder.
“You’ve been shot!”
The adrenaline had been coursing through his body, and he hadn’t even felt the gunshot.
“It’s fine.”
“Fine. This is not fine. Boone, you have been shot.”
He climbed out of the car and went around to pick Betty up.
“You shouldn’t be carrying her,” Lucia said.
“Don’t worry about it. Come on, there’s a first aid kit in my office.”
Once they were inside the house, he let Betty go and followed Lucia into the office. Removing his jacket, he let out a wince as the movement was quite stiff. Lucia’s hands were shaking but she looked at him with such concern.
“You’ve been shot,” Lucia said.
“Did it go through?” he asked.
He’d already tried to look out the back.
“Through?”
“Yeah, see if there is an exit...” He thought he had dodged the bullet that came out of the gun, but seeing as it was in front, it must have caught him. Little fucker.
“No, there is no wound out the back. We have to get a doctor.”
“No, there’s no need for a doctor.”