Page 90 of Constantly Cotton

“Ace,” I said. “He’s not here.”

“Where’d he go? Our contact says he and a big Russian guy work here. They did bad things.”

Like saving children. I got it.

“He went up north,” I said, figuring I was steering these guys away from Las Vegas, which was really the only other direction they had. “There’s a car up in Bakersfield he’s gonna go look at. Took Jai to see if it could be raced. You gotta go now, I’m closing up.”

The two guys looked at each other, ugly expressions on their faces, and then quicker’n rattlesnakes they both reached for their pieces.

I had mine out first and shot one guy in the leg and then had the gun on the other guy before he even knew what was going to happen.

For a long, sweaty moment, we stared each other down while the guy I’d just shot writhed in the oil-soaked dust that marked the entrance to the garage bay. He was making a whole lot of noise, and I admit, it was making my hands shake a lot more, but still I kept the gun trained on the guy who was trying to inch his fingers toward his own.

Both guys were midsized, the wounded guy shorter than the nonwounded guy, and both had dark hair and dark eyes, with the sort of high cheekbones that Jai had.

“You need to put your hands out right now!” I shouted, seeing the guy reach for his gun again. “Out! Out! I’ll fuckin’ put the next one in somebody’s head!”

“We’re just here for that Ace guy!” he yelled back. “Give us Ace and we kill him and it’s all—”

And then Ernie yelled, “Augh! Fucking boom!” and shot the guy in the head.

I stared, stunned, as the guy fell to the ground, brains leaking out of his ears, and the other guy whimpered and put his hands up over his head as he curled up in the dust.

I kept my gun out and called to Ernie without looking away, “Ernie? Ernie, why’d you go and kill him?”

“’Cause he was gonna kill us both if I didn’t,” Ernie said shakily, walking out from the cubicle. He’d had a real clear shot from there, and I don’t think the dead man ever saw him.

“You know that for sure?” I asked, my gun a little shaky but still trained on the wounded guy.

“Saw it real fuckin’ clear,” Ernie muttered.

“What about this guy? Do we get him to a doctor?”

Ernie made a rasping sound in his throat. “No. And George can’t know.”

And that’s what clued me in that this was really bad. ’Cause George was good. He was a good guy. We all knew Jai’s boyfriend was sacred or something. We only involved him in good things, and this was a bad thing.

Ernie had taken this mobster’s head off.

“I…” I lowered the gun a little but still kept it midway. “Uh, Ernie?”

“Yeah?”

“Ace wouldn’t want me to kill this guy when he’s helpless.”

Ernie stared at the guy. “I know.”

“What do we do with him?”

“Shit. Well, first, let me get his gun,” Ernie said. Then he blinked. “All of them.”

The guy moaned and put both hands flat on the ground and Ernie walked over and took a semiauto, two Glocks, and a knife bigger’n Ace’s off the guy before doing the same thing to the dead man.

“Maybe put those in the SUV,” I said.

“What’re we doing with this guy?” he asked.

I looked at the garage and the coils of rope in there. “Tie him up?”