The Water Knife

  Angel laughed at his excuses. “It’s a good thing you aren’t up north. Women up there, they don’t put up with all that shit.”

  The sicario looked exasperated. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, mijo! Don’t cheat on northern women. They will fuck you up.”

  Angel looked at him, confused. “But I only just met her.”

  The sicario raised his hands heavenward, exasperated.

  “He’s too stupid to live, Skinny Mother. I try to tell him, but I’ve seen cholobis who got more brains. Lemme just shoot him. It’ll be better for all of us.”

  —

  Angel woke with a gasp.

  Lucy leaned over him, her hand gentle on his brow. His body felt as if it had been run over by a train, leaving nothing but bruised and shredded meat.

  He was in a half-finished plywood room with exposed studs. A sack of saline hung from a nail in the wall. Beside it Britney Spears stared out at him from a crinkled poster, Botoxed and toothless, promising Granny Time.

  He was roasting in the heat. He tried to throw off the sheet but just found his own sweat-slick skin. Bullet hole puckers and new sutures. A history of all his mistakes.

  Someone had been digging in his chest and guts. New stitches pinched his flesh. He remembered years ago, lifting his shirt to Catherine Case, the first time they’d met. Saying he wasn’t afraid of bullets. Showing off his scars.

  Got a few more now.

  He tried to get up, but it was too difficult. He fell back, trembling.

  Lucy laid a gentle hand on his chest. “Take it easy. You’re lucky you’re alive.”

  He tried to speak, finally managed to croak, “Agua.” It was too hard to say more. “Por—”

  English.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Water.”

  “All I’ve got is Clearsacs.”

  “ ’Sgood.”

  She held a bag and straw to his lips, but she took the bag away before he could really get a good drink.

  “No more?” he asked.

  “As soon as all the organ grafts finish regrowing, you can drink all you want.”

  Angel wanted to argue, but he was too tired, and from the sound of her, she wouldn’t bend anyway.

  “How long…I been out?”

  “A week.”

  He nodded. Let his eyes close. Memories of dreams plucked at him. The sicario poking him full of bullet holes, grinning maliciously. That evil man and his mezcal bottle, all pissed off about women and loyalty.

  Angel opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling, thinking on debts and betrayals. Assassins and old corridos. Songs of violence and revenge. He was alive. A surprise, that. And Lucy was sitting beside him. The woman who’d gotten him shot.

  “So,” he whispered, “you kill me…then you…” He swallowed, his throat sticking with dryness. “Then you save me?”

  Lucy laughed self-consciously. “Guess so.”

  “You’re…” He swallowed again. “You some kind of fucked-up bitch, you know that?”

  To his surprise, Lucy laughed harder. And then he started to laugh too, a painful wheezing that hurt so much that he almost stopped breathing, except that it felt so good to be able to laugh at all.

  He reached out to her. “You’re about…the best thing I ever woke up to.”

  “Even when you’re all shot up?”

  “Especially then.”

  They regarded each other. Lucy was the one who broke eye contact.

  “I didn’t want to be part of it,” she said. She stood abruptly and began collecting syringes and saline bags and disinfectant packs from around where he lay. Suddenly busy. Avoiding looking at him.

  “Part of what?”

  “This,” she said, still tidying, still not looking. “Phoenix.” She made a wave of her hand. “I used to think I could just cover this place, and it wouldn’t affect me. And then all of a sudden I’m sucked in, and I’m part of it. Part of the lies. The betrayals.” A quick embarrassed glance at Angel. “The murders. I’m part of it. And I didn’t even see it coming.”

  “They went after your family,” he said. “That’s powerful pressure.”

  “I thought I was immune.” She laughed bitterly. “I thought I knew this place, and now it turns out that I’m just as wet as when I came down here on my first assignment. I thought I was better than these people, and it turns out I’m the same as all of them.”

  “Everybody breaks,” Angel said. “You find the right weak spot, everybody breaks.”

  “You’d know.”

  “It’s what I do.” He reached out to her. Hurting. “Come here a sec.”

  She looked like a cornered animal, wishing for anything other than to be close to him, but she came closer anyway. Knelt beside him.

  He reached out and took her hand. “Under the right pressure, everyone breaks. You beat someone enough, they talk. You threaten someone enough, they move. You scare someone enough, they sign.”

  “That’s not who I am.”

  Angel gripped her hand tighter. “Nobody would care if you let me die. Might even make you a hero.” He twined his fingers in hers. “I owe you.”

  “No. You don’t.” She didn’t meet his gaze.

  He didn’t bother arguing the point.

  Lucy might measure the weight of his debt against her own guilt, but Angel didn’t blame her for the betrayal. You didn’t judge people for caving under pressure; you judged them for those few times when they were lucky enough to have any choice at all.

  Lucy had saved him when she could have walked away. If she still felt guilt for her betrayals, well, that was her code. Angel had his own, and his code said that betrayals happened all the time, for small reasons and large.

  Betrayals.

  The sicario bitching about his woman putting all that lead in him. Warning Angel not to run around on his girl.

  “You tell anyone about me?” Angel asked. “That we were working together? Before the Calies leaned on you? You tell anyone at all?”

  “You asked that before. I told you, I didn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t be pissed if you did. I just need the truth.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you have your truck?”

  “Sure. I went back to the Taiyang and got it. I didn’t think anyone would be tracking it after—”

  “That’s okay. It’s good.” Angel took a deep breath. “Help me up. I need to get dressed.”

  “Are you kidding? Your stitches haven’t even set. You’re still getting growth drips.”

  “I don’t got time for that. Unplug me.” With a groan, he hauled himself upright.

  “Are you crazy?” she demanded. “You need to rest. Your lungs have grafts. Your kidneys, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  His insides felt like razor blades and rusty gears, hamburger grinding. It hurt, but he made it upright. He sat, panting and trembling, letting the pain wash past.

  “You need to slow down!”

  “Actually, I got to speed up.” He reached for his bloody pants, fighting off scudding blackness and an urge to collapse. “I think my boss put a hit on me.”

  CHAPTER 40

  He gave her directions, guiding them through the city to the burned outskirts.

  To Lucy, Angel looked terrifyingly weak, and the longer he was up and moving, the more she wondered if she was watching a man kill himself.

  “It still doesn’t make any sense,” she said as she took another long subdivision curve. They’d been driving around the city, passing through burned-out suburbs. Smoke still guttered from the blackened ruins in many places, stubborn smolders that refused to die. “It was California who put the pressure on me. Last I checked, Nevada and California aren’t exactly friends.”

  “That’s what’s screwing with me. I keep thinking about something that happened right before I got shot. I tried to use my cash card, and it didn’t work. Like I was dead already. Like someone de
leted me, you know? California couldn’t do that.” He laughed darkly. “But my people could.”

  He pointed at a new road.

  “There. That way. Where those ones haven’t burned.”

  “What are we looking for out here?”

  He gave her a secretive look. “Answers.”

  “Seriously, you’re going to play cute?”

  “Why, you want the exclusive?”

  “Do you really care?”

  “Okay. Without IDs I’m dead. I got no cash and no way to cross borders. I’m about as shit out of luck as a Texan. If I surface, someone will come after me. So I got to find a way to get back in with Catherine Case.”

  “What did you do to piss her off?”

  “Had to be Braxton. That motherfucker has it out for me. He put her against me.” At her puzzled look, Angel expanded: “Head of legal for SNWA.” He shrugged. “We never really got along.”

  “Enough to put a hit out on you?”

  “Well, you know.” He shrugged. “I’d have done the same to him if I had a chance. I kept thinking he was playing angles on us. Maybe selling info on the side.”

  “Even Vegas has moles?”

  “Everybody’s hedging.” He pointed ahead. “Here. This is it.” Lucy pulled to a stop, seeing nothing in the abandoned subdivision that distinguished it from any of the others. The recyclers had been at the houses, tearing out all the wiring, some of the timber, even some of the glass. Lucy wondered if Charlene had done the work. It was thorough enough to be one of her jobs.

  “What is this place?”

  “Bolt-hole stash. Help me out.” He leaned against her and pointed her into one of the ripped-to-pieces houses. “We put these all over the city,” he grunted. “For emergencies. In case our people ran into trouble.”

  “How many?”

  “I knew a couple dozen. Probably there are more.”

  “You had Phoenix completely infiltrated, didn’t you?”

  “Did our best. Had people taking payoffs in all the city departments. Promised them all kinds of things. Moved their families into Cypress developments up north. Those were the best informants.” He glanced at Lucy. “Family makes people reliable.”

  Lucy found she still couldn’t meet his eye.

  “Hey.” He reached out to touch her arm. “I already told you, it’s not on you.”

  His voice was surprisingly gentle, the empathy of someone who had been under the control of others and knew how easily a person’s ideals could be broken. Lucy felt an almost overwhelming flood of gratitude at the forgiveness in his voice.

  “That was who Jamie approached, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Someone inside his office who was working for you. Some mole of yours.”

  “You’d have to ask either Julio or his guy Vosovich. They’re the only ones who know for sure.” Angel knelt slowly, panting, and tugged at a chunk of carpet. It was glued down. “Help me,” he wheezed. “I’m still a little…not myself.”

  The carpet came away with a ripping sound, revealing a trapdoor.

  “It’s like a pirate’s treasure house.”

  “Hide it under the junk that even junk people don’t want.” Angel shrugged. “Plus there’s enough of these around that even if we lose a few, it doesn’t matter.”

  “You mean if half of Phoenix burns?”

  “Something like that.” He pried open the door, revealing steep steps descending into darkness. “Help me down.”

  She went down first and guided him slowly into the basement. He flicked a switch, bathing them in pale light from a few tiny micro bulbs.

  “Batteries still work,” he said, sounding relieved.

  He’s winging it, Lucy realized, as she scanned the stocked shelves and drums of water and bundles of Clearsacs.

  Angel looked so confident that she could be fooled into thinking that he knew what he was doing, but the man was on his last legs, struggling for a chance that, if she was honest and looked at his broken body, was slipping away from him, even as he rifled through the basement’s stored equipment.

  He pulled down a pistol and checked it. Started pulling down boxes of bullets and loading magazines. Practiced comfortable motions. He dragged a ballistic jacket out of another box, wheezing with the effort, tossed it to her. “This one’s for you.”

  “Is someone shooting at me?”

  He glanced back, smiling. “If you’re standing next to me? Probably.” He pulled out another jacket. “Gimme a hand?” He held out an arm. “I can’t quite…”

  She helped him shrug into the bulletproof armor, then did her own inspection of the stocked shelves. There were sealed metal ammo boxes labeled with protein bars and powder packs of rehydration supplements. When she cracked one open, it was full. A fifty-gallon drum of water sat in the corner. Months of life, maybe more, considering the Clearsacs.

  “It’s a prepper’s dream down here,” she said.

  Angel snorted. “Fucking preppers.”

  “You have issues with them?”

  “Just when we pump their wells dry.” He laughed cynically. “Never could figure out why people would think they could survive all out on their lonesome like that. All of them sitting in their little bunkers, thinking they’re going to ride out the apocalypse alone.”

  “Maybe they watch too many old Westerns.”

  “Nobody survives on their own.” Angel’s vehemence made Lucy suspect he wasn’t really talking about preppers.

  He was going through boxes of medicines, reading labels. “Painkillers. Ah.” He popped a couple pills and swallowed them dry. “That’s better.”

  He was almost manic, rifling through the stores. He pulled down a cell phone and cracked open a pack of batteries. Charged the phone and dialed. A second later he was speaking in codes to someone on the other end of the line: strings of numbers and letters. His voice became distressed. He was smiling at Lucy, but his voice rasped desperation and panic.

  “I need extraction,” he gasped. “I’m at…Aztec Oasis. Please…hurry. I’m bleeding.” He set the cell phone down.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing her arm. “Time to go.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Testing a theory.” He dragged her to the steps, gasping. Leaned hard on her as they went up.

  Outside the house, Lucy started for her truck, but Angel yanked her in the opposite direction. “No! Not that. Too obvious.”

  “Too obvious for what?”

  But he was already limping down the street. “This is a good house.”

  Except he passed through the front and out the back, crossed the yard, and lurched across another empty street, before finally stumbling into another house.

  “This should be good.” He coughed and absently wiped blood from his lungs on his jeans. “Yeah. This is good.” He pointed at stairs.

  “You want to go up?”

  “I need to see!”

  His eyes were wide, almost mad.

  Halfway up he almost fell, and Lucy had to catch him. Instead of stopping, he crawled.

  At the top of the stairs, he went from bedroom to bedroom, gasping, inspecting each one until he found one with an intact window.

  He stumbled to it and sank down, staring out. His breathing was ragged, eyes wide, glassy with narcotics and pain and effort. “How long has it been?” he asked.

  “Since when?”

  “Since I called!”

  “Maybe five minutes?”

  “Come on, then.” He grabbed her, dragging her across the room. “Here is good.”

  “The closet? Are you high?”

  For a second, Lucy thought he was trying to screw her, that somehow he’d become so addled on his painkillers that he actually thought he was up for sex, but he wasn’t looking at her as he pulled her down; he was staring at the window.

  He crouched, his breathing ragged. She could hear his damaged chest, the bubbling wheeze of bullet wounds and blood deep in his lungs.

  “Shhhhhh,” he said when she tried to questi
on him again. “Listen,” he whispered. “They’re coming. They’re coming for me.” He sounded almost reverent.

  “I don’t…”

  It came first as a whisper. A buzz high above, growing, and then suddenly shrieking.

  The window shattered. Glass and flame showered them. The house rocked. Lucy cowered as scorching air enveloped them. She clutched close to Angel, fire burning against her retinas. Her skin was searing.

  “What the—”

  Another wave of heat and shock hit the house. Shrapnel ripped the walls, a fury of flames and destruction.

  Amid the firestorm she could just make out Angel. He was smiling. Happy. Pleased and satisfied as if he had been given a precious gift.

  She started to get up, but he yanked her down again, pulling his jacket around her.

  A second strike hit. The blast rained over them.

  “They like to make sure,” he whispered as he held her.

  He was smiling. In the orange blaze of the missile strikes, he looked wildly alive, a fervent believer seeing the manifestation of his god.

  Slowly her hearing returned. No more missiles fell from the sky. She struggled to her feet and went to the window, her boots crunching over glass shards.

  Two streets over, a thick cord of smoke spiraled black into the sky, flicking with fires.

  “Your people really don’t like you,” she murmured.

  “Yeah,” Angel said. “I’m starting to get that feeling.”

  CHAPTER 41

  They came at dusk to make sure of their kill.

  Angel closed his eyes, preparing himself as the SUV’s tires crunched over glass and the electric whine of the motor died.

  Doors clicked open and slammed. Men’s mutters carried easily as they swept the wreckage with flashlights.

  Angel nestled deeper in the burned wreckage, hoping that Lucy was up for what he needed from her. When things got ugly, it was hard to tell how a person would act. He’d known Desert Dogs who hadn’t been able to stomach pushing refugees off the border, and he’d seen Nevada guardies choke in a firefight. He’d seen cholobis deliberately miss rather than take a life.