who wasn’t trafficking kids for God knows what to God knows where. Which you will tell us right—”
The sound of chopper blades took him by surprise. He and Jai looked at each other and then up as the small black helicopter that had suddenly appeared above them began a slow circle and started to lower itself to the ground.
And the guy on the ground took advantage of their inattention and grabbed Ace’s gun—and pulled the muzzle into his mouth while Ace gave a jerk with his hand to pull it out.
He’d had the safety on, but the man’s scrabbling hands clicked it off, and as Ace jerked, the gun went off, and gore spattered up Ace’s arm and onto his coveralls.
“What the—” He stared, appalled, as a loudspeaker from the chopper began to blare.
“Put down your weapons and stand, hands over your heads. Put down your weapons and stand slowly, hands over your heads.”
As Ace stood, horrified, he and Jai met eyes.
“The actual fuck,” Jai said.
“You are telling me.”
This was it. He was going to be arrested for a murder he hadn’t really committed and let off for one he had. He knew it. In his head, he was reciting Ellery Cramer’s number, because Cramer was a lawyer and knew about the worst thing Ace had ever done.
The figure who leaped from the passenger’s side of the helicopter and bent down to run toward them was not a policeman, however, and he wasn’t holding a weapon aimed at them.
“Are you Burton’s friend Ace?” he asked. He was a handsome man, in his midthirties, with tired brown eyes and curly brown hair that had gone two haircuts past the military requirement under his cap. He was dressed in fatigues, with a few shiny stars and bars on his shoulder that showed his pay grade was so far beyond Ace’s that he could have eaten Ace for lunch. The patch over his pocket read “Constance.”
“So,” Colonel Constance said, “you’re the one he keeps tabs on in the desert?”
“Yessir,” Ace said.
“Ernie said you’d come to stop this man from trafficking minors?”
Ace nodded to the RV. “In there, sir.”
Constance’s dark eyes took in the gore on Ace’s arm and the very, very dead man missing the back of his head at their feet. “So, uhm, what in the actual fuck?”
“That would be our question too, sir,” Ace told him, a tiny part of him relaxing. Maybe he wouldn’t need Cramer’s number after all. “He started firing on us. My friend here subdued him, and I was just asking him some questions when he grabbed my gun and gave it a blowjob.”
Constance’s eyes widened, but other than that his expression remained impassive. “Think that was the happy ending he had in mind?”
Ace thought about it seriously. “He was real fuckin’ scared,” he said at last. “Kept talking about how someone’ll kill him if he doesn’t get his ‘product’ to its delivery drop-off.” Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades and coated the top of his ass. “Speaking of which, sir, is there any way we can get those kids out of there and give ’em some water.” He grimaced. “I should check the car and see if Ernie’s got some bottles or something in—”
“He’s got three cases in the trunk,” Constance said, shifting as he stood. “Uh, he mentioned that when he called Burton and had Burton call me.”
Ace met those tired brown eyes with his own and wondered if his expression was that same mix of uneasiness and acceptance that Ernie’s gift seemed to fill Constance with.
“That was right fortunate,” Ace said with a slow nod. “Can we…?”
Constance nodded. “But you might want to take off your coveralls and wash off your hand,” he said, and Ace grimaced.
“Well, Ernie said the blood wouldn’t be mine.”
Constance got on the radio while Ace and Jai let the kids out of the RV. They were all young—between eleven and fourteen, maybe—and all terrified.
And only a few of them spoke more than a few words of English.
“Russian,” Jai said shortly. “And Polish. Some Ukrainian. I speak.”
Ace followed him dutifully, giving each kid a bottle of water and a wet wipe so they could wash their hands and faces and maybe cool off a little. He’d rummaged through the trunk of the Sentra and had also found several five-packs of kids’ T-shirts, rainbow colors, and exactly fourteen pairs of shorts in various kids sizes.
There were fourteen kids.
By the time Jai had talked quietly to every kid who spoke one