The Lost Ones Read Online Free Page A

water.
    “Stay here.”
    Jason stood still. Hondo stayed, panting, at the boy’s side.
    Quinn crested the levee and spotted a pair of fat water moccasins sunning themselves on the banks. He moved slow and careful through the grass and blasted a fat one in half and reracked a load, sending the other one dropping in pieces into the water.
    “They dead?” Jason asked in a soft country accent.
    “Just scared ’em a little,” Quinn said, toeing his boot at a piece he missed, Jason not seeing the bloody parts as they rolled into the pond with a plop.
    DONNIE VARNER EXPECTED the Mexicans at four, but they didn’t get to his gun range till nearly six, Donnie having to turn on the lights fashioned into his tall pines to give them a decent enough view to shoot. There were four more of them and Alejandro and the girl, the fine-looking one named Luz. She wore jeans and pointy-toed boots and a bright red leather jacket, black hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back, reminding him of a horse’s mane.
    He smiled at her when she climbed out of the back of the black Cadillac Escalade and surveyed the bare hills and ruined land around the range, the trailer where he kept his shop, another he rented to Tiny, and up the hill to the small Airstream he called home. The sign out on Highway 9 read southern comfort.
    He was glad to see her. But, man, Alejandro sure was a freak show.
    The tattoos of the horns and numbers and shit looked even stranger in the harsh artificial light. He burned off a cigarette and reached for another. Three of the other men were big hard-looking Mexes in T-shirts and jeans. The other was just a boy, Donnie figuring him not to be much more than fourteen, holstering a goddamn Glock 9 on his belt.
    No introductions asked for or given.
    “Thought we agreed on just you and Alejandro?” Donnie asked.
    Luz shrugged. “They wanted to shoot.”
    “What’s to stop them from shooting my ass and taking the goddamn guns?”
    She looked to the tree line where Donnie had spread out his boys Tiny and Shane with deer rifles just in case the party got a little ugly. She turned to him and smiled and said, “The guns?”
    He walked the Mexicans over to some tables built with scraps of lumber, a rusted tin roof nailed overhead on four-by-four posts. Donnie snatched a blue tarp from a big table and showed off the weapons along with some ammo. Right then, it started to rain.
    Alejandro, who hadn’t said a goddamn word, muscled by him and picked up the Mossberg 930 and snicked open the breech, knowing how to ghost-load extra rounds. The other two men and the boy joined him, studying the fresh weapons in the light and smiling.
    “Who’s Junior?” Donnie asked.
    Luz stood back, arms folded over her chest. She didn’t answer him.
    “Damn, he doesn’t look old enough to wipe his ass.”
    “Watch him shoot.”
    “That Mossberg he’s got was voted 2009 shotgun of the year,” he said. “A five-hundred-member academy made it so. Just don’t want him knocked on his ass.”
    “You can bring your friends out if you wish,” she said.
    “What friends?”
    “The ones in the woods.”
    “That’s all right, darlin’,” he said. “Excuse me if I don’t trust y’all just yet.”
    She walked back to the Escalade and leaned against the grille, watching the Mexicans shoot shotguns and automatics in the light rain and bright artificial light. She had a graceful way about her as she stood with her hips forward, completely at peace in the middle of a gun deal. Donnie followed and offered her a smoke.
    “How ’bout you and me get a cheeseburger at the Sonic after this deal is made?”
    “Do you know who I am?”
    “Does it make a difference?”
    Alejandro let out six fast, thumping shots from the Mossberg, blowing thick holes in the cardboard target of the black robber Donnie had set up. He looked up the hill to nod his approval of the gun, but his smile faded when he saw Donnie close to Luz.
    “You and Tattoo