Tell My Sorrows to the Stones by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online Page A

line, which confused Weston until he remembered the fence. They went right or left, they’d never get back across the border before they were caught. The opening in the fence was dead ahead.
    An old man stumbled. A younger guy collided with him from behind, managed to stay on his feet, grabbed the old man by a fistful of white hair and shoved him out of the way. The old guy fell in a tangle of arms and legs, probably breaking something—bones were brittle at that age. The one who’d tossed him aside had a 9mm in one hand and was shouting to some of the other mules. Two young women and a small boy were just ahead of him. He raised his gun and fired once like he was trying to get them moving faster.
    Instead, they stopped short.
    “What the fuck?” Austin barked.
    But Weston understood. The young guy—one of the guards—ran between them and kept on running. He’d commanded them to stop or he’d shoot them, made them stand still, block the Jeep to buy him a few seconds.
    It worked. Austin hit the brakes, swerved around them, then gunned it again.
    “We want that guy,” Weston said. “Probably at least one more. But let’s do this the easy way. Go right past him.”
    “What?” Brooksy snapped.
    “Shut up.” Weston glared back at him, then turned to Austin. “Just do it.”
    Austin held the wheel tightly, went around the guard. They caught a glimpse of his confused expression and he seemed to slow down, wondering what the hell was going on. They passed maybe a dozen others, all mules, some of them still wearing their backpacks.
    “There’s the fence,” Austin said.
    The headlights instantly picked up the hole that had been cut in the border fence. They caught just a glimpse of a few Mexicans returning to their homeland through the opening.
    “Block it with the Jeep,” Weston said.
    “My thought exactly.” Austin actually smiled. He’d been uptight about working with them, but now he was on the hunt, doing the job he’d signed up for. Weston thought maybe he wasn’t an asshole after all.
    The Jeep hurtled across the hard-packed earth. Brooksy let out a rebel yell.
    Austin hit the brake and cut the wheel. The Jeep slewed badly to the left and skidded on the baked desert earth, bumped right up against the fence, and then was still. Austin killed the engine and had the door open instantly. Weston knew he shouldn’t even step across the border, which didn’t leave him many options. The window of the Jeep was open but the door was almost up against the fence. He pushed himself out the window and climbed onto the rack on the Jeep’s roof.
    Brooksy and Austin brandished their weapons at the exhausted, pitiful, starving people who had already had their worst night ever. Weston had nothing against the Mexicans. They were breaking a shitload of laws, bringing coke into the U.S., never mind crossing the border illegally. If he lived their lives, he’d do the same goddamn thing. But the coyotes worked for the scum who couriered the drugs into the States and were taking advantage of desperate people at the same time. He would’ve loved to get his hands on the bosses, the guys who actually hired the guards. But since that wasn’t going to happen—those guys weren’t running coke mules across the border themselves—he’d make do with the guards.
    The one they’d passed—the one who’d shoved the old man—had slowed to a walk and now held up his 9mm, hands raised in surrender. The mules dropped to their knees in exhaustion, knowing it was all over, that they’d likely be shipped back home, where they’d try to cross the border again as soon as possible.
    In the moonlight, Weston studied one of the mules. He had no backpack, but a lot of them had dropped the drugs while running. But this guy wore a decent shirt and, though he had stubble on his cheeks, he’d had a haircut recently.
    “Better watch—” he started to say.
    The guy—a guard pretending to be a mule—pulled a pistol from the waistband of