Spy by Ted Bell

fly to the town of Madre de Dios. From there, I can get you somehow to Manaus. And, from Manaus, well, there are many flights to Rio. You look like you could use a good doctor.”
    “Let’s fly. Now.”
    “We will fly, m’lord. Give me a few seconds to straighten things out in the office.”
    Saladin got to his feet, picked up his carbine, and went inside.
    A loud staccato roar of automatic gunfire erupted inside the small office. The lights were instantly extinguished and glass exploded outward, showering fragments on Hawke in his bamboo prison. There were loud screams and curses. Then another burst silenced the cries from inside.
    Saladin Hassan stood in the doorway with a smoking carbine in his hand. He pulled a blade from a sheath on his belt and started working on the cage.
    “What was that all about?” Hawke asked.
    “I had to shred your paperwork.”

7
    P RAIRIE, T EXAS
    C ome on in, why don’t you, it’s open.”
    Daisy hadn’t even heard the cruiser pull up in the drive out front. Now she could see the good-looking boy from the kitchen table. Standing out on the front porch, plain as day.
    “It’s Homer, honey,” she said.
    “I can see who it is.”
    Homer Prudhomme was right outside the screen door under the yellow bug light. Reason he wasn’t in any big hurry to come inside, Daisy guessed, was the bad news writ all over his face.
    “Homer,” her husband said to the boy, swallowing his macaroni and scootching his chair back from the table a few inches. “Come on inside the house, son. You are not interrupting anything special in here. We eat supper every night.”
    Homer pulled open the flimsy door and stepped inside the parlor, taking off his hat and riffling the dusty brim through his fingers. His big dark eyes were a little puffy and red. He had waves of dark hair and a cowlick that just wouldn’t pay any mind to Brylcreem.
    “Sheriff,” he said, nodding to Franklin. “Evenin’, Miz Dixon.”
    “Hey, Homer,” Daisy said to the boy, “You got something in your eye, baby?” It was true she wanted to mother this child. Nothing wrong in that.
    Homer wiped the back of his hand across his face. “No, ma’am. Had the windows down driving out here, that’s all. Just a gnat or something flew in my eye.”
    They waited for the boy to say something else, but he didn’t. He had been crying, that much was plain to see.
    “What brings you out here this time of night, son?” Franklin said.
    “Bad news, Sheriff.”
    Homer was a tall, good-looking kid with the uniform hanging off of his bones. The Tuesday Girls down at the Bon Jour beauty parlor all had a crush on him. Hell, every churchgoing one of them, every lady in Prairie had a sneaker for that boy. The general consensus was he looked like Elvis right before he got famous, when he was still living at home with Gladys and Vernon.
    Homer was older than that, shoot, he was almost twenty now and a high school graduate. But he had those same sleepy eyes and those long silky eyelashes. Behind his back, all the gals called him La Hilacha. The threadbare one. Homer had grown up semi-Anglo in the barrio part of town.
    “Speak up, son.”
    You could see the boy’s mind looking for a way to say it, whatever awful thing it was he’d come out here to tell her husband.
    “Let it out, Homer. It’s all right, honey,” Daisy said.
    Those bedroom eyes looked like they were liable to start filling up again. But Homer bravely took a deep breath and got himself under control.
    “They’ve done…I’m sorry, Sheriff, seems like they took another one.”
    “Another girl.”
    He rubbed his sleeve roughly across his eyes. “Yessir. I reckon I’m not too good at being the bearer of bad news. I just came from telling Mr. and Mrs. Beers about what happened to their daughter. They’re pretty shook up.”
    Daisy wanted to get up and hug the boy.
    She would have, too, if not for how embarrassed he’d be in front of Franklin. It had been a tough year for him.