Page 97 of Coyote
Zaroff didn't wait. He didn't have the pride left to argue. He dragged himself up onto his bare feet, his knees knocking together, and took his first step.
His foot came down on the sharp gravel of the wash. He flinched, his whole body jerking as the stones bit into his soft sole. He didn't look back. He just started to limp out into the dark, his white shoulders bobbing in the starlight until the blackness of the desert swallowed him whole.
Nobody had anything to do for an hour. The cold came up out of the ground and settled in my feet.
The pain had turned cold, a dull, heavy throbbing that kept me awake. I sat down on a flat boulder near the mouth of the pass, my left hand still clutching the wire necklace. The filed points of the tusks cut into my palm. I kept my fist closed around them.
John came and sat down beside me with the kit and made me show him my hand. I winced as he unwrapped it and looked away while he bound it again, correctly this time. When he was done, he put two fingers on the inside of my wrist and held them there, counting, and then he tipped my chin up with his knuckle and thumbed my good eyelid open and looked into it.
"Pulse is a hundred and thirty and thin. You're two quarts dry and your pupil's slow," he said. "That's a concussion. Any other night I'd have you flat on your back with a line in your arm and I'd sit on your chest to keep you there." He taped the last of it down and didn't let go of my wrist. "I can live with an hour. I can't live with three."
"Okay," I said.
He started packing the kit. I made myself say it before I lost the nerve.
"I told you I'd take Cruz."
He didn't answer.
"I never meant to. I said his name back to you in the shed so you'd let it go, and then I saddled the mare and went up alone. You didn't stop me because you had my word. That's what I used. Not the horse and not the dark. You." My throat closed up, and I made it open again. "I lied to you and I’m sorry."
John was quiet for a second. "You’re alive," he said eventually. “That’s what matters now. But if you ever lie to me again—”
"I won’t," I said. "I can’t. I won’t ever lie again."
I reached out. My good hand found his leg, the rough denim of his jeans, and I pulled myself up until I was leaning against him. He didn't pull away. He let my weight settle against his side, his big hand coming down to rest on my shoulder, his fingers heavy and warm through my dirty shirt.
Through his shirt, through the thick flannel and the undershirt, I could feel the hard, puckered scar over his heart.
"Still thumping," I said, my head resting against his ribs.
His hand shifted, his thumb rubbing the back of my neck, his touch rough and warm. He was the only warm thing anywhere I could reach.
Behind us, the others were quiet. Sierra was checking on the horses. Cruz was pacing back and forth, his shoulders hunched against the wind. Mateo hadn't come down from the ledge. He wasn't going to, not until it was over.
"You won't go after him," I said to John.
"No," he said. "He's yours."
"But you'll stay here."
"I'll stay right here. If he tries to double back, he'll find me. If he tries to make the road, he'll find me. I'm the fence, Coyote. But the hunt is yours."
I closed my eyes. The hour ran too long, and it wasn't long enough. I wanted to lie down and never get up. My feet were swollen, the skin cracked and bleeding. The splinted hand burned. But the desert was waiting, and Zaroff was out there, his feet bleeding into the caliche, his heart pounding against his ribs.
He was running from me now, the way it should be.
"Time," Ransom said from the ledge.
I stood up. My joints cracked, and for a second the world grayed out and spun around me. I held onto John's arm until the ground stopped moving.
"Don't die out there," John said. His fingers tightened on my shoulder until the bone ached.
"I won't," I said.
I looped the wire over my head so my hand would be empty, and the tusks sat cold against my breastbone.
I didn't take a gun or a knife. I had my teeth, my good left hand, and the dirt.
