His jaw opens and closes once.
The rifle wavers.
His face does the small awful thing of a man putting it together. The man who texted him. The man who said come getHadley. The reason that man wanted Todd at this gate today. The reason any of this was happening at all.
Then his face goes hard.
He doesn't have anywhere else to put it.
The rifle comes up to his shoulder one more time.
Three shots from our line, and I don't know whose. Maybe all of ours. Maybe none of mine. My hand is on my sidearm but I don't remember drawing it.
Todd's chest opens.
He goes down on his knees first. The rifle drops out of his hand into the gravel. The bottle goes after it and breaks. The smell of cheap whiskey comes up off the road.
Then he goes the rest of the way down on his side.
Phantom crosses the gravel to him.
The rest of us follow—Holt and Roan to the flanks, Blaze on the rifle, me at Phantom's right hand.
Phantom drops to one knee next to Todd.
The boy is breathing wet. The wound in his chest is doing what those wounds do.
Phantom puts his hand against the side of Todd's face. The way a man would put his hand against the face of a friend's son.
"Son. You got somebody to bury you?"
Todd's eyes find Phantom's. The drunk is mostly gone out of him now. The thing left in his eyes is the boy he used to be before any of this. "My mom. She's back home in Garrison."
Phantom's thumb moves once across Todd's cheekbone. "What's her name?"
"Linda."
Phantom nods. "We'll call her. We'll tell her you died on the road. We won't tell her how."
Todd nods. The nod is small but Phantom catches it.
His mouth moves. Phantom bends his head closer.
"I just… I just wanted her to know…"
Phantom's hand stays on the side of Todd's face. "She already knows, son. She's known since the day her husband died. You go on now."
Todd's eyes go up to the Hill Country sky. His hand twitches once at his side. Then it doesn't move again.
Phantom kneels next to him a moment longer with his hand on the side of Todd's face. Then he stands up.
He doesn't look at us.
He walks back toward the gate.
The radio on his hip crackles. Banshee's voice, fast and torn. "Lubbock! Lubbock! Three operators at the back fence."
That's the code word.
