Zero at the Bone (8 page)

“You don’t gotta explain,” D said, quietly. They pulled up to a red light and D

turned to face him. “I’m, uh… sorry ya hadta see it.” Jack nodded. “Thanks.”

D COULD smell the sharp ozone tang of fear and adrenaline coming off Jack, and he was surprised at how it was affecting him. When Jack looked at him, right after he puked…

the expression in his eyes gave D a bad turn. Was like he was disappointed, almost, more even than scared, which he obviously was. Man wasn’t hardened like D was. D had just reacted how he’d been taught, had done what he had to do to make sure they were safe.

Signor had been in the way, he’d been a real immediate threat, and D had but one thought: neutralize. When he’d seen Jack’s face in that alley, his stomach had flopped in a way it hadn’t for years. Shame came over him, and he almost hadn’t recognized it.

Broke a man’s neck right in front of him, how’s he s’posed ta trust ya now? Probly jus
thinkin’ yer a killin’ machine again.

Get him talkin’. Get his mind off it. Don’t let him sit there and stew in silence.
“So, uh… what kinda doc you say you were, again?”

“Maxillofacial surgeon,” Jack said. His voice sounded dull and dusty. He sounded like those tacky motels looked.

“What the hell’s that?”

Zero at the Bone | 31

Jack took a slow breath and released it before answering. “Maxillofacial surgeons treat injuries, diseases, and defects in the skull, jaw, neck, and face.”

“Like a dentist?”

“I am a dentist.”

“Thought you were a surgeon.”

“I’m a dentist and a surgeon. I got my dental degree first, then went to med school.

That’s usually how it goes for doctors in my field.”

“So… you could pull out these fuckin’ wisdom teeth fer me, then?”

“Sure. Got a pair of pliers and a hammer?”

“What’s the hammer for?”

“To knock you out before I start yanking.”

D looked over at him. The ghost of a smile curled his lips as he cut a glance at D.

That’s better.
“That’s a fuckin’ lotta school, Jack.”

“Fourteen years.”

D almost drove the car off the road. “Shitfire, fourteen fuckin’
years?
”

“Four in college, four in dental school, and six in medical school and residency.”

“So… yer just barely done!”

“Just finished my final residency three years back. Now I’m an attending.”

“Fuck me.” D was legitimately impressed. He’d known Francisco was sharp, but he had to be pretty damned determined, too, ta get through all that. “So, what kinda diseases and defects? Ever see anyone with an empty skull?” That got a chuckle. “Well, I might have thought so. I don’t deal with the brain; I leave that shit to the neurosurgeons. You want to see insane, those guys are insane. I specialize in reconstructive surgery. I operate on people who were born with defects in the bones of their face, or were injured in accidents and need repair.” D pondered this. “So… you fix people’s faces when they’re broken.” Jack looked at him. “Yes.” He turned to look out the window. They were on the freeway now, passing through a jungle of dark shapes of buildings laced through with ribbons of car headlights and streetlamps. “Just before the Dominguez thing, I operated on this little girl who’d been born with a really terrible congenital skull abnormality. She had no chin and virtually no forehead, her nose was practically inside out. It was the third operation I’d done on her. This one was to build her a functional nasal cavity. I had to take her face completely off,” he said, a note of wonderment entering his voice.

D blinked. “Her face… off?”

“Yeah. I had to peel it all the way down to her chin from her forehead so I could work inside her sinus cavity. There was a moment when I just looked down at her, and I could see through her skull plate into her brain. And I thought, damn. This is a view that no one ever has on a living person. It was one of those moments when what I do really hit me, you know? I was giving that girl a face when she didn’t really have one before.”

“Damn,” D said. “That’s a helluva thing ta do, Jack. Whole lot more than most people will ever do.”

Jack was quiet for some time. “D?”

“Yeah?”

“Does what you do ever really hit
you?
” D stared straight ahead at the taillights in front of him. “Every damned day.” 32 | Jane Seville

BY the time they got back to the motel, Jack’s ass was dragging. “Fuck, am I tired,” he said.

“Well, don’t get comfy,” D said, going ahead with the key. “We ain’t stayin’.”

“We’re not?” Jack said, hearing the whiny note enter his voice but not being able to help it. “Can’t we at least get some sleep?”

“Gotta hit the road. Too risky. Just took the room fer a place ta stash the guns ’n’

such. You can take a shower if ya want.”

“Gee, thanks,” Jack groused, getting out his bag. “Where are we headed now?”

“Stockton.”

“What’s in Stockton?”

“Not a goddamned thing. That’s why we’re goin’.”

“Then what?”

“Then….” D sat down on the bed with a weary sigh. “I don’t fuckin’ know. I need ta hole up somewheres ’n’ gather my thoughts.”

“I’m all for that,” Jack said. “I got first shower.” D just nodded as Jack went into the bathroom and shut the door.

He stood under the hot spray, as hot as he could make it, eyes shut, the water not quite loud enough to drown out that horrible crunching noise. He’d heard bones make a lot of sounds, some of which had been under his own hands, but never that grinding, wet crunch of vertebrae separating, spinal cord snapping. Jack bent over, feeling his gorge rise again, and put his head between his knees until the feeling passed.

When he emerged, dressed in clean jeans and toweling his hair, D was sitting shirtless on the bed peering down at some bruises on his chest. He moved his arm, hissing in pain a little. “Let me see,” Jack said.

“It’s nothin’,” D said.

“Come on. Let me be the one with the expertise for once.” D sighed and put his arm down, giving Jack a raised-eyebrow, come-on-then kind of look. Jack bent over him.

There was an abrasion and the beginnings of a nasty bruise on the far right side of his chest, wrapping up into his armpit. “Can you move your arm?”

“Yeah. Little sore is all.”

Jack palpated the bruise. It wasn’t bleeding. He shrugged. “You’re right; it’s nothing.”

“Gee, thanks, doc. You gonna charge me two hundred bucks now?”

“Least I know you’ve got it,” Jack said, smiling. “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” D started to smile back, but then it vanished like a puff of smoke. He turned away, mumbling something, and went into the bathroom.

Jack pulled on a shirt, frowning. The man was an enigma, that was for certain. He sat on the bed and flopped onto his back, letting his eyes fall closed as he heard the shower running in the bathroom.

He didn’t know he’d drifted off until D was shaking him awake. “C’mon, doc.

Gotta hit the road.”

Jack hauled himself up and shouldered his bag. He took one of the aluminum cases, D took the other, and within minutes they were back in the car and headed for Stockton, and this time, that blankness ahead of them on the road was a comfort.

Zero at the Bone | 33

D KNEW that if he were any kind of a normal person, he’d be struggling to keep his eyes open. It was after midnight, he hadn’t had much sleep the night before, and he was driving at night on a really boring stretch of highway across the California no-man’sland. But he wasn’t no normal person, and he’d had to acquire the ability to function on very little sleep long ago.

He glanced over at Jack, fast asleep in the passenger seat, curled up like a kid with his folded hands tucked under his cheek and his head resting against his balled-up jacket that he’d shoved into the corner. His forehead was furrowed with faint worry lines even in sleep, and every so often he’d mumble or shift, making little sleep noises and snuffling. D let his gaze linger for a moment and then turned back to the road, his jaw clenching.

He’d been arguing with himself for a good portion of the trip.
You oughta get him a
new identity and dump him off somewheres. Ain’t no good fer you ta keep draggin’ him
along. He’s gonna get caught in the crossfire. You tryin’ ta help might get him killed.

But… ain’t no one else can protect him like me. I know these assholes, I know how
they work, ’cause I’m one of ’em. No cops, no Witness Protection know how ta anticipate
what they’re gonna do. He’s safest with me.

But that ain’t the real problem.

Shut the fuck up.

Yer gettin’… attached.

Toldja ta shut the fuck up.

Kinda like him, don’tcha? He ain’t no preppy asswipe like ya thought he’d be,
moaning about missin’ his tee time ’n’ afraid ta get dirt on his fuckin’ J.Crew. Guy’s got
some smarts ta him, some nerve. Kinda guy ya could get ta be friends with.

Ain’t gonna know him long enough ta be no friends.

Ya crossed that line when you was rubbin’ his back while he fuckin’ puked and ya
know it. Gave you a bad feelin’, didn’t it? Ta kill that guy in front a his eyes? Don’t want
him ta think bad a you, do ya?

Need him ta trust me so he won’t try ’n’ run off.

Bullshit. You want him ta like you. You want him ta turn them big, pretty eyes on
you and look atcha like yer his fuckin’ hero. You wanna BE his fuckin’ hero. Well, you
ain’t no hero, Anson Dane.

That ain’t my name no more.

That’s the name ya done cut off when ya cut yerself off… after. Thought you was
done havin’ feelins, didn’tcha? Thought you was safe? You ain’t safe. Shut it all down
34 | Jane Seville

’cause no feelins at all was better’n all them bad feelins. Seeing their faces, hearing yer
little girl’s voice in yer head over ’n’ over, callin’ fer Daddy but you ain’t comin’. No
feelins was better’n THOSE feelins.

Don’t know what yer talkin’ about.

Sure ya do. Those feelins. Like fer girls. Except… maybe not.

Shut the fuck up. How many times I gotta tell ya?

You cain’t tell me ta shut up, ’cause I am you, asshole.

D sighed and put that fight from his mind as he’d done a thousand times before, that voice of his long-ago self made wiser than his real self had ever been by watching his own folly and hearing his own torment inside his head.

Maybe you oughta jus’ kill him. Maybe you get outta this alive if ya just do it. Do it
quick, right now while he’s asleep. He’ll never know; he jus’ won’t wake up.

D gripped the steering wheel tighter.

You keep on, both a ya’s gonna end up dead.

He looked over at Jack again, and his knowing that maybe killing him was the smart thing to do didn’t affect the fact that he couldn’t.

They passed a sign saying it was 100 miles to Stockton. He ran through what had to be done now. First, find a place to hole up for a few days. Get their shit together. Catch their breath. Make double damned sure they weren’t being tracked. Eventually, Jack would have to contact the Marshals, because they had to be told that he still intended to testify. If he just disappeared without a word, the trial might get postponed. That’d be tricky, though. They’d have to do it in some way that the Marshals couldn’t take him into custody, so D could continue to protect him.

He wasn’t forgetting the threat to himself, either. The Dominguez brothers might want Jack’s head on a pike, but the more he thought about it, the more he thought that they were not the ones responsible for his own involvement here. If they wanted a hit man, there were a lot less scrupulous ones than himself available, and for them to go to such lengths just to blackmail him into doing something that a dozen other men would do for the paycheck made no sense… unless it was somehow about him.

He had no doubt that the Marshals knew by now that Jack was out of pocket too. So that was possibly three parties on his ass, and it was starting to feel mighty crowded back there.

He pulled into a remote gas station just after four o’clock in the morning. He’d used this gas station before, feeling comfortable here because of its very remoteness and its lack of security cameras. The place was deserted, which was just fine with him. Jack twitched a little and blinked, straightening in his seat. “Are we there?”

“Not quite. Need gas.”

“I gotta pee,” Jack muttered, rubbing his stubbled face and unfolding himself out of the passenger seat. D had to smirk a little at Jack’s bed-head as he shuffled toward the station. He hesitated and turned back. “You want a soda or anything?” D almost responded with a knee-jerk “no,” but then reconsidered. “Guess so.”

“What kind?”

“Ginger ale. Vernor’s if they got it.”

“You drink ginger ale?”

D frowned at him. “What’s wrong with that? Toldja got a bad stomach.” Jack shrugged. “Just thought you’d drink something more… intense.”

“Which sodas are the intense ones?”

“I don’t know. Mountain Dew?”