Ledgers in the Rust

Ocotlan

Could twenty-four hours of borrowed time buy a bullet or a truth?

I crouched behind a rusted slurry hopper, staring down into the poisoned gut of the Obregon leaching plant. The gray smear of dawn was just beginning to peel the black off the desert sky. Below us, four massive chemical vats sat like bloated iron ticks against the white caliche rock. Between the vats and the sagging chain-link perimeter lay a double-wide dispatch trailer, perched on cracked cinder blocks. That trailer held the freight logs. If I wanted to pull my neck out of Macario's noose before the sun touched the badlands, I had to get inside it.

Tlalli knelt two inches to my left.

Her shoulder brushed mine. Through the torn denim of my work shirt, the heat of her skin hit me like fresh solder. The herbal paste she had smeared over my bullet graze during the flood smelled of crushed sage and petroleum jelly. It stung, but the steady thrum in my blood stung worse.

My wolf paced the cage of my ribs. Mate.

I shoved the animal down. Did my wolf understand that we had six hours before Macario sent his kill squad? Probably not. The beast cared about warmth, teeth, and territory.

"Three sentries on the catwalks," Tlalli whispered. Her breath ghosted against my jaw. "Coyotes. They walk heavy."

"They're paid by the hour," I said. "They aren't looking for wolves."

"They have rifles, Ocotlan."

"Cheap ones. Surplus Mausers with pitted barrels." I studied the yard through the iron slats of the hopper. "The generator is behind the fuel bladders on the north fence. It's vibrating hard enough to shake the grease off the fittings."

Tlalli adjusted the sling of her Winchester Model 94. The lever-action rifle was strapped tight across her back, dark oil gleaming on the receiver. "You want the generator killed?"

"Not killed. If the hum stops, they'll check the main breaker." I pointed toward the low conduit line running from the diesel housing to the trailer. "I need the auxiliary floodlights flickered. Just enough to pull the yard guard toward the transformer box."

Tlalli looked at me. Her dark eyes caught the first pale glow of the morning. "And what are you doing while I play with high voltage?"

"Busting the lock on the trailer door."

"Quietly?"

"I was an enforcer before I was a mechanic," I told her. "I know how to open things without a hammer."

"You used a crowbar on my brother's perimeter fence."

"That was a diplomatic statement."

A faint, dry tug pulled at the corner of her mouth. It vanished as quickly as it came, swallowed by the cold calculation of a tracker. She reached into her vest pocket, pulled out a spent brass casing, and rolled it between her scarred knuckles.

"Two minutes," she said. "When the sodium lights over the vats drop, move."

"Don't get shot, rancher."

"Don't break a lock with your face, highway."

She slipped backward into the creosote brush. She moved like smoke across dry dirt, making less noise than the desert wind.

I watched the empty space where she had been. My chest felt hollow for a split second, cold and raw where her shoulder had touched mine. The mate bond did not like distance. It pulled like a steel winch, begging me to turn around and track her scent through the scrub. Why did the Moon Goddess have to pick an enemy scout with a sniper's eyes and hands that knew how to dress a wound?

I clamped my teeth together and checked my nine-millimeter.

One round in the chamber. Fourteen in the magazine.

I checked my inside pocket. The jagged shard of amber glass from the poisoned border well was wrapped in a greasy shop rag beside the coordinate napkin I had lifted off the dead coyote at the truck stop. The serial code stamped into the glass remained burned into my memory: CN-409-LEACH-088.

Below me, the diesel generator sputtered.

The heavy sodium floodlights mounted to the catwalks flickered once, twice, then died with a dull electrical pop.

The yard plunged into the dim, purplish haze of dawn.

On the metal catwalk above the chemical vats, a sentry cursed loudly in Spanish. A metal door banged open by the transformer housing as another guard trotted toward the north fence with a sputtering flashlight in hand.

I dropped from the slag heap.

My work boots hit the gravel with a muted crunch. I stayed low, using the massive cylindrical base of the first leaching tank as cover. The stench here was suffocating. It smelled of rotten almonds, battery acid, and stagnant mud. High-grade cyanide reagent. The same synthetic poison that had killed the ranch's cattle and fouled the neutral arroyo.

I darted across the open twenty-foot gap between the vats and the dispatch trailer.

I flattened my spine against the corrugated steel siding beneath the trailer's front stoop. Above me, the floorboards creaked under the weight of someone pacing inside, but the footsteps moved toward the far back room where a small window looked out onto the north yard.

I crept up the wooden steps.

The door was secured with a heavy iron hasp and a rusted American Master padlock. But the real problem was the thin copper wire running from the door jamb down into an old marine battery stashed under the porch. A horn alarm. If the circuit broke without flipping the toggle under the sill, the horn on the roof would howl loud enough to wake every coyote between here and the interstate.

I didn't reach for a pry bar.

I drew my side-cutters from my belt. I slipped the jaws under the stoop, traced the ground lead, and clamped the cutter onto the secondary earth wire. I grounded the battery loop against the trailer's steel frame with a spare strip of lead wire from my pocket.

The horn circuit stayed silent.

Next came the padlock. I pulled a thin steel feeler gauge and an angled tension pick from my pocket. The lock was rusted from years of desert rain and chemical fumes, but the brass pins inside were loose.

I inserted the gauge. I applied light torque.

Click.

The cylinder gave. The shackle popped open with a faint metallic scrape.

I slipped the padlock into my pocket, eased the trailer door open half an inch, and slid inside.