Hunters Run Page 0,79

paranoid, ese," Ramon said. His voice was steady and strong. He tried to gauge his chances of wrestling the knife away. If he threw himself back, out of the man's reach, he could get a few seconds. And the man was going to be fighting offhand. But Ramon's twin was scared and angry and crazy as a shithouse rat from what he'd been through these last days. Ramon gave himself a-little-worsethan-even odds.

For a half second, he wondered what the man would do if Ramon told him the truth. Kill him? Run away? Accept him as a brother and move on? Only the last one seemed laughable.

"And then you asked about the El Rey!" the man shouted. "What the fuck do you know about the El Rey? What the fuck are you?"

"I'm a cop," Ramon said, surprised as soon as he heard his own words. But it was clear. It was the story he had already spent days telling himself. All he had to do was turn it around. "My name really is David. The European ambassador got killed. There were some people in the crowd who said you were there. And the knife man, he matched your description."

His twin nodded, encouraging Ramon on as if he were confirming his suspicions. Which he probably was, if only because he was making it all up. Ramon swallowed, loosening the knot in his throat. As soon as he could, he went on.

"Then you take off. Skip town. The constabulary think it's a little weird, so they send me out to track you. I have spent a lot of time up north. It's why they picked me. So I find your van blown up like you had a bomb in there or some shit. I start poking around, looking for maybe your arm or something. The next thing I know, there's this flying box thing. It's just hanging there. I go to take a look, and then bam! These big-ass things with quills on their heads take my clothes, they take my badge and my pistol, put me in this fucking baby-shit outfit and start marching me around telling me I was supposed to find you."

"And so you did it," the man said, stepping an inch closer, the metal of the blade digging into Ramon's flesh, stinging like the sahael. "You followed their orders like a dog!"

"I tried to go slow at first," Ramon said. "I thought maybe I could buy you time. You know. You get back to the city, you can tell people what's happened, send help. But then we found that camp. We were too close on you. The only thing I could do was wait and hope you were smarter than the pinche aliens. And you were. So here we are." And then, because he couldn't help himself, "You would have done the same thing in my position, man. Seriously."

"I didn't kill the asshole European," the man said through clenched teeth. "It was someone else. I didn't fucking do it."

"Ramon," Ramon said, and shook off a moment of vertigo at using his own name in this way. "Ramon, you saved my ass from those demon pendejos. As far as I'm concerned, you were at my house the night the ambassador got himself cut up. The whole time."

In the silence between them, Ramon heard the distant chimes of a flock of flapjacks, like church bells. The blade wavered, but Ramon didn't move. A thin flow of blood tickled his collarbone. The knife had broken the skin. A confused, distrustful expression came over the man's dark eyes.

"What are you talking about?"

"I owe you," Ramon said, putting as much sincerity into his voice as he could without sounding weak.

"Guy got killed," his twin said. It was an objection.

Ramon shrugged. If he was lying, he might as well lie big. "You know Johnny Joe? You know who he is?"

"Johnny Joe Cardenas?"

"Yeah. You know why he gets away with so much?"

"Why?"

"Because we let him. You think we don't know how many people he's killed? Thing is, he works for us."

The man rocked back an inch. The blade was no longer touching Ramon's neck. Maybe sixty-forty in his favor now. Ramon kept talking. That was the thing; keep the two of them speaking.

He had to make it a talking fight.

"Johnny Joe's a snitch?" the man asked. He sounded stunned.

"For the past six years," Ramon said, trying to remember how long Johnny Joe had been in Diegotown. The man didn't seem to think the number implausible. "Keeps