“She ain’t dead but she might be in shock,” Ike said. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He dialed Mya’s number. His fingers left muddy splotches on the touch screen.
“What’s your address?” Ike asked as the phone rang.
“Huh, what?” Buddy Lee said.
“We need to get her looked at and we can’t go back to my house. They don’t know where you live. What’s your address?” Ike said.
“Oh, 2354 East End Road,” Buddy Lee said.
Mya picked up on the fourth ring.
“Ike?”
“Meet us at 2354 East End Road. Bring your first-aid kit. We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Ike said.
“Are you hurt?” Mya said. Ike winced. There was something broken in her that was just starting to heal. He heard it rip wide open with that question.
“Not me. Not Buddy Lee. But we need your help,” Ike said.
“Alright,” she said. She hung up before he could say any more.
“Shouldn’t we take her to the hospital?” Buddy Lee asked.
“Doctors gotta report all gunshot wounds to the cops. There’s three dead bodies back there. You wanna explain that to the police?” Ike asked.
“What if she dies, Ike? She’s the only one who knows who this son of a bitch is,” Buddy Lee said.
“Buddy, we could both get hemmed up for this shit,” Ike said. Buddy Lee bit the corner of his bottom lip.
“But if she tells the cops—”
“Did you hear what she said? This guy sounds connected. He might have the cops in his back pocket,” Ike said.
“Can’t be all of them,” Buddy Lee said. He took a sharp curve at sixty miles per hour, then kicked the truck back up to eighty. A groan escaped Tangerine’s lips. Ike leaned her head back to make sure she could breathe.
“We can’t win.… We can’t,” Tangerine whispered.
“Stay with me, girl!” Ike yelled. He put his arm around her and let her lay against his bare chest.
“Buddy Lee, listen to me. We go to a hospital we gonna have a lot of questions to answer,” Ike said.
“You told me you was willing to do anything to get the people who killed the boys. Did you mean it? Because I did. If I gotta go back inside for this bastard to get caught, then I’m gonna be getting a new orange jumpsuit and some slippers. Now how about you?” Buddy Lee asked. Ike closed his eyes so tight he thought his eyelids might pop off his face.
“She said him and his people was rich, right? That means he gets rich-man justice. We’ll be inside, the boys will still be dead, and he’ll get a fancy lawyer to make everything go away. He’ll probably still kill Tangerine for shit and giggles. Buddy Lee, we can’t fix this if we doing twenty-five to life,” Ike said. Buddy Lee took his eyes off the road for an instant and looked at Ike.
“Did we get that girl’s mama killed, Ike? How did them peckerwoods find us? Did they follow us? Cuz if they did, they was mighty slick about it. Ain’t like you can sneak up on a body if you on a Harley,” Buddy Lee said. Tangerine mumbled again.
“No … win … we can’t.…”
Ike smoothed down her hair. Her skin was clammy to the touch.
“The only person who knew where we were going was Slice,” Ike said. That statement didn’t need any more explanation. Buddy Lee struck the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.
“That cocksucker! But why? Didn’t you say you took care of the boy that killed his brother? Why would he double-cross you like that?” Buddy Lee asked.
“I don’t know. I think the thing about Luther might be a part of it. Deep down inside he’s pissed at himself because he didn’t handle it, and pissed at me because I did. Still don’t explain how him and the Rare Breed know each other. I didn’t think they ran in the same circles, but Slice has his fingers in a lot of pies, I guess. We gonna have to circle back to that another time, though,” Ike said. Tangerine mumbled something else, but it was so insubstantial Ike couldn’t catch it.
“We in over our head, ain’t we, Ike,” Buddy Lee said. It wasn’t a question.
Ike smoothed Tangerine’s hair again. “It don’t matter. We gotta finish it.”
* * *
They pulled up to the trailer so hard and fast Buddy Lee had to stand up on the brake. The truck slid across the gravel and came within five inches of Mya’s car, which was parked a half a step away from Buddy Lee’s front door. Ike was out and running to the house with Tangerine in his arms before Buddy Lee had shut off the engine. Mya hopped out of her car with a diaper bag over her shoulder and Arianna in her arms. Buddy Lee killed the engine and climbed out of the truck with his keys in his hand.