No Shelter by Robert Swartwood Read Free Book Online

long moment. I’m thinking about Rosalina of course, and the rest of the girls back at what she calls “the ranch.” But I’m also thinking about another woman I once knew, someone I’d called a friend, someone who had something terrible happen to her and then killed herself.  
    It’s her face I see now as I stare back at Scooter and Nova, her ragged, sorrow-filled face, and before I know it I’m turning away from the boys.  
    “Don’t,” Nova says, and I pause. “Holly, if you go through with this, you’re on your own. I’m sorry, but neither of us can involve ourselves. It isn’t our fight.”  
    I wait there a moment, just one moment, and then I turn away completely, start walking, staring intently at Rosalina until I come to stand directly in front of her.  
    “Rosalina, this place you told me about, the ranch—do you know where it’s located in the desert?”  
    Her eyes shift again, this time toward the floor. They stay there for a moment, then shift back up to stare into mine. Wiping at her face, she slowly nods.  
    I reach out a hand, place it on her arm. “Show me.”  

 
     
     
    10

    After I let the Town Car roll to a stop, I place it in park and shut off the engine. We just sit there then in darkness, neither one of us speaking. Eventually I look over at Rosalina. She looks at me. After a moment she nods and points out through the windshield, at the rocky hills in front of us.  
    “There,” she says. “It’s over there.”  
    Rosalina had taken me down the road that leads to the private drive that leads back to the ranch. I’d backtracked then to the highway, taken that for a half mile north. At some point I turned off the highway, cut the headlights and did a good job of not hitting the brakes, rolling over the sand and rocks and through the sagebrush for a quarter mile, so that anybody driving by on the highway wouldn’t see us. Now we’re wrapped in darkness, the moon almost full, the stars bright, and Rosalina has just confirmed what I already know.  
    “Wait here,” I say.  
    I’ve already flicked the dome light off, so when I open the door the darkness remains. I open the backdoor, reach in and grab the sports bag the boys had given me before I left the garage. They may be cowards but they’re not complete assholes, and they didn’t let me walk away empty-handed.  
    I’ve changed out of the schoolgirl outfit, put back on my jeans and tee. The only weapon I have on me now is my trusty two-shot strapped to my ankle. The other two weapons I pull out of the sports bag: a nine-millimeter and an AK-47.  
    Rosalina opens her door and slowly steps out. Despite everything she still wears her heels and they crunch the sand in the dead silence.  
    “You are really going by yourself?”  
    I set the nine-millimeter on the roof to check the AK-47, ejecting the clip, slamming it back in.  
    “These are very bad men,” Rosalina says. “They will kill you.”  
    I strap the rifle over my shoulder, grab the nine, check its clip then rack the slide. Reach back into the sports bag for its holster, clip the holster to my pants.  
    Rosalina persists. “Why are you doing this?”  
    It makes me pause. Sure, Nova and Scooter asking the same question, that’s one thing, but a complete stranger, an illegal who has been forced into prostitution asking why I’m trying to help save her?  
    Before I can respond, she says, “You are a killer, yes? A ... assassin?”  
    Actually, when people ask what it is I do for work, I tell them I’m a nanny. I tell them I watch two perfect children, a boy and a girl, who I sometimes wish were my own children and who I sometimes wish would shut the hell up and quit being brats.  
    The killing people thing, the non-sanctioned government missions, that’s just work on the side that I keep to myself.  
    “Do you not want me to kill these men, Rosalina?”  
    She takes a moment to think about this, raising her thumb to her mouth, biting