Hunter is fed up. Time is standing stock-still. This guy breathing on him smells like bad feet that had stepped in vomit. Spitting when he spoke. Strung out. Then something breaks internally. Itch hollers, “Get that fucking gun outta his face!”

Turning his attention to Itch, the guy says, “Or what?” He turns his head sideways. “What are you gonna do? Oh, I see, your boyfriend over here is the real tough guy.”

Pulling the pistol from Hunter’s face, he turns to point it at Itch.

Hunter doesn’t wait. He drives a left cross into the guy’s temple. His right hand grabs the guy’s wrist, twists, controls the gun. Then his left shoots out, open hand to the throat. The guy makes a gagging cough, releases the revolver. Hunter grabs the pistol as the guy buckles at his waist. Can’t catch his breath. Heaving for air, he sounds like someone with the whooping cough. His hands go to his throat, as if to pry open a shocked airway. His eyes weep, and a rope of spittle hangs from one corner of his mouth. He drops to his knees. Cheeks red but fading. He can’t breathe. And Itch is on the guy. Treating him like a speed bag. Driving his knuckles into the guy’s face.

Cory screams, “No! No! Dad!”

Hunter slides the pistol into his waistband, then pulls Itch off Dad, who lies motionless on the floor slats, surrounded by trash. Cory kneels down to his father.

Red-faced and glazed by tears, this is all he knows. This way of living. Survival. Hunter just hopes Itch hasn’t killed the son of a bitch.

JACK

JACK

The battered old Toyota Land Cruiser coasts down the grade and labors up the other side, gears grinding, the engine easing and revving with each drop and rise of the terrain. Moments of his life flash and fade. Memories of his wife. His daughter. His son. All the things he’d missed: school events, birthdays, court hearings, doctors’ appointments. Graduations. Anniversaries. With this realization, guilt floods him. Panic seizes in his gut. The arches of his feet ache as if they had been beaten with a truncheon. The pain travels up his calves, around his shins, running up the hamstrings to his lower back. He is a weak man.

The seat is leather, worn slick. He feels his body sliding around with every lurch and sway of the Land Cruiser. Feels the presence of two bodies, one on each side. They give off heat, though they do not reek as he does. Rather, they exude the thick, overpowering smell of cheap cologne. They seem to have bathed in it.

Will they kill him? Torture him? Do they want the reward? Is this even about the reward?

Rap music blares from the speakers, and someone speaks broken English with a Spanish accent. “You like Mos Def?”

“Pues, sí,” says the man sitting to his left. “And the Eminem.”