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But Cooper was not satisfied. He reached into his jeans and pulled out his own Zippo.
“No! Please!” Cooney screamed. “I gave you what you want! I’m not lyin’!”
“This is for calling me names, you racist fuck,” he said and set Cooney’s hair on fire.
He began screaming at once as the fire ate through his scalp and chased the rivulets of gasoline down his face. The Bulls stood back, in a malformed line, and watched.
It took mere seconds for the flames to reach what was pooled inside the tire. When that pool caught, and Cooney’s screams reached a pitch nearing the limit of human hearing, Cooper pulled his gun out and shot his flaming head.
“And that’s the bullet I promised,” he said when the screams stopped.
The Bulls stood grimly and watched as Cooney’s fiery corpse warmed the desert night.
“Jesus God,” Reed muttered. “Who are we?”
“Steady, son,” his father growled.
“We’re crew killers,” Cooper answered.
Reed gave him a long look. Then he nodded once.
No one spoke for several minutes after that.
“We should burn Scott, too,” Zach said. “And the truck.”
Cooper agreed. “Let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Physically, Siena feltfine, all things considered. Her chest was a little tight and heavy, her throat hurt, and her eyes itched, but no worse than getting over a bad cold. Her coughing had decreased steadily throughout this day, and she wasn’t bringing up any of the black phlegm she’d coughed up at the hospital.
The TV showThis Is Uskept rising up in her mind, but she kicked it away every time. There wasn’t much she could do about it if she went out that way.
Emotionally, she was kind of a mess. Everything she and Geneva owned was gone. Literally everything. The house was insured, because she had a mortgage and insurance was required, but, like everything else in her life, she’d bought the cheapest possible option because she couldn’t afford more. The cheapest possible option would cover the house—which was far more the bank’s property than hers—but not its contents.
She really had nothing. Geneva had nothing. Yes, their losses were all material possessions, but material possessions mattered—and not only the precious irreplaceable mementos, like all the old family photos, taken long before smartphones, which had been hanging on the hallway wall. Or Grammy Joan’s ancient photo albums, dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, which had been stashed in a box in the spare room, waiting for the day Siena could afford a scanner so she could digitize them.
They’d lost their beds, their dishes, their towels and clothes, their laptops and phones, their birth certificates and vaccination records and other important papers. It was all replaceable, but it all costmoney.
Brock, her boss, had been completely sympathetic and solicitous when she’d called in to say she couldn’t make her shift. He’d first asked if she and Geneva were okay. Then he’d told her not to worry about the destroyed uniforms that had hung in her closet, to take the time she needed and not worry about the job, which would be waiting for her when she was ready to come back.
That was great, and she was genuinely grateful, but it wasn’t like cocktail waitress was a salaried job. Every shift she missed was a shovel scooping out her already shallow bank account.
Yes, it could have been worse. She and Geneva were healthy and whole. They had each other. That was more important than anything. But the losses they’d suffered were real and disastrous.
