Honaker came back on the second day.
He came tapping light and steady along the corridor and through the door with the four missing goons tagging behind, and he'd dropped all his affectation in the switch to pure, efficient business. "Bring him, and the stuff, time to go."
The lackeys swept into action, Book closing his namesake with a soft thump and swilling the last of his coffee into the drain, others grabbing bags that rattled.
On the whole, Sands considered this likely to be a good development. He had confidence in his information - no reason an arrangement that had been rolling smooth on well-greased bearings for some five years should have snagged up during the last one - and yeah, Honaker sounded like he might be a bit pissed beneath the whip-fast orders, but that was just as likely because Sands was right and Honaker had found himself trapped into the kind of deal he couldn't turn down, not necessarily because he'd been chasing so much fairy dust and he was going to shoot Sands' balls off as soon as they got someplace less civilised.
Sands was close to convinced by now that anything had to be an improvement on staying in this room, anyway.
Someone cut his hands loose, retied them in front, freed his ankles, same old predictable deal. Hands on his arms, lifting, the one on his right curling into his muscles to press on bone, and he turned his head to let the lenses stare, smiling faintly.
Well, hello there, Fingerless. Enjoy yourself, it's the last time, fucker.
Down and outside and into fresh air for the first time in a couple of days, snatching breaths of it heavy and deep before he was dumped into the seat of the car. Everything and everyone was inside fast, smooth, tailgate thumping shut behind him, moving off maybe five minutes after Honaker walked in to give his orders. It really was a slick operation Honaker had going, the kind it was useful to have available for side ventures now and then. It was a pity the guy himself had to be such an annoying prick to work around.
Honaker was feeling particularly prick-sharp today, obviously, since he didn't say a word to either Sands or the goons the whole way to the airfield. Nothing to give the slightest hint which way this was swinging, nothing but the rise and fall of engine tones and the dull roll of tyres to fill the minutes, and Honaker was stretching it out to let him sweat, leave him wondering if there was a bullet coming at the end of the ride.
Sands slouched himself as loose as he could without rubbing up against the bugfucker zombies either side, and left a faint smile curled across his face.
Out of the car and into the plane, hands back behind him and all tied in snug to the chair again, everything just the way it should be in this phase of the negotiations. Honaker dropped into the seat opposite and clicked his belt on for take-off, the engines coughing up and revving before the last guy in shut the door.
The plane bumped and rumbled over the earth, irregular shivers through his seat, gathering speed to pull up smooth and bank into a turn.
Honaker waited for level flight and the slight fall in engine noise before he opened up the dialogue. "So far what you've given me seems to check out, Sheldon, so I suggest you start talking again and fill me in on the details you skipped." Fast and certain, like his orders back on the ground, not inclined to play now they were down to real business. Good. Sands wasn't in the mood for dragging this out either, and his wrists were definitely keen for an early exit.
He would have shrugged, but he was tied a bit tight for that, and he settled for a tiny jerk of his head. "There's not a whole lot more to tell. The deal's been around long enough every transaction runs smooth through the same well-greased hands, and it holds as long as none of those weapons start showing up in the hands of potential Zapatistas, since they're still not popular with the military, dialogue or not. Which is why Morel makes a point of shipping them straight out of the country."
Honaker hummed a little in pleased interest. "So anyone intercepting those consignments and distributing locally would end the arrangement."
Sands twitched the edges of his lips in a quick smile. "I only pass on the information. What you do with it from there is your ballpark."
"And you say you've got the same kind of detail on Ardelle and Doering."
"The nature of the information's a little different, but it can be put to similar ends." This time he smiled wider and longer. "You'll appreciate I don't intend to share it with you right away."
"And you'll appreciate it would be a poor choice to hold back when I ask for it."
"Well, obviously." Sands wriggled slightly in the chair and slouched back some, a slow demonstration of getting comfortable. As if that was fucking possible with his hands dragged down behind him and his shoulders locked up tight. "So, now we've got that all settled, we can discuss my end of the deal," he said cheerfully.
"Your end is that I pass up all the cash on offer. Isn't your life enough for you these days?" Honaker's voice had dropped out of the habitual smile again. The guy never had liked finding himself on the unexpected end of a negotiation.
Sands tightened his lips, faintest hint of curl at one edge. "It's not enough for you. If you want that information of mine, you'll have to give me a reason not to kill you the second you turn your back."
"You're making shooting you sound more appealing again, Sheldon." Honaker drawled it out bored, a man checking his nails and contemplating finding another manicurist.
"Your choice," Sands smiled, because that threat was already stretched out in a mahogany display box by the altar with the lilies all round. "It depends just how badly you want what I've got. You know I only fuck people over on deals when I don't feel I'm getting a reasonable trade."
A fast-ticking second before that bee-swarming curiosity of Honaker's broke loose, the double-edged sting of it perfectly on cue. "I take it you've got something in mind to make your end hold up?"
Oh, he did, very distinctly in mind. He'd started this deal to keep his skull intact and his skin from acquiring any more of those little round wrinkles that felt so much like quarters, but that was no reason not to take the bonus. "I want your tame insider to get me everything Langley has on me. I want what they know I did and what they think I did, which rumours they've heard and which they believe. I want their current assessment on the probability of me being alive. I want to know where they're searching the hardest, both inside Mexico and out, and I want to know who's doing the looking. And most of all, I'd really like to know who was dragging their pointy toe-caps through the mud when I put out the call for assistance, and just how far up that decision went."
That lengthy list was always going to get the contemplative response.
Sands held himself relaxed through the studying, till Honaker finally broke the silence. "Aren't you asking a lot from a 'records clerk'?"
"Maybe." Sands smiled, quick and crooked. "I'm embarrassing, but I've been missing quietly enough for a while now, I should be slipping down the priority list."
"I'm not willing to risk my contact for you." Utterly flat, and Christ, Honaker wasn't tracking this the way he might be.
"That's the last thing I want," Sands told him, short. "If this gets screwed up, and their assessment on me flips from ninety percent dead to ninety percent alive, it does me no favours at all. I presume you picked someone with a few ideas about feasibility and discretion."
This time the pause strung out longer, rumbling engines and studied stillness. "Everything goes through me. I'll get you what I can, but I call when it stops."
It wasn't great, but he wouldn't get it any better. He arched his eyebrows lightly. "So we have a deal?"
Honaker's smile was creeping right back in. "I think we do."
"Good. Now untie me and get me a fucking smoke."
Honaker must have nodded at one of the goons, because there were fingers on his wrist and the quick, regular tugging that meant knife. He sat real still till they were gone, and the plastic dropped away with them.
"Sorry, I don't smoke," Honaker said mildly.
No, he wouldn't. Probably still never touched coffee either, or anything else that might take the shine off his goddamn teeth. "One of your people must, I don't much care who's donating." He really wanted to ask for an Advil too, but he was fucked if he'd give Honaker that particular laugh. Honaker would be expecting him to demand the nicotine fix, and the better Sands fitted with his predictions, the smoother the rest of this trip would go.
He stretched out his hands, flexing wrists and fingers deliberately, his ankles too as they were freed - stiffness through him, inevitable, but no warning cramping or deadening of damage. Rustling and plastic crackling over the engine drone, and the movement of feet and air warned him so he skipped over the auto-twitch when fingers put a cigarette to his hand. He stuck it between his lips, holding his hand out for a lighter - and got a book of matches, fuck. That screwed his system over, and he wasn't sitting here in front of Honaker fumbling and burning his fingers.
He left his hand where it was, and tipped his head up to the goon who'd supplied. "On second thoughts, would you mind?" He wriggled his fingers deliberately from the base. "I'm just getting my circulation back and I wouldn't want to risk leaving holes in your boss's upholstery."
A quick pause - the inevitable check with Honaker, and the okay - and the matches were taken away to scratch and flare. He inhaled slow through the cigarette, harder at the first paper crackle and hint of smoke, the match shaken out before him in a rush of phosphorous stink.
The smoke wasn't his brand, and not something he'd have chosen, but fuck, it still tasted good, the flow of it hot and burning through his throat. Playing into Honaker's expectations had some satisfying side benefits.
The lackey dropped something light into his lap - metal ashtray, aluminum, and Sands stood it on the little side table that folded out of his seat. He hated having to stick his fingers all over the damn things, but he doubted Honaker would have brought his gloves from Zacatecas. Leaving prints wasn't something he'd had to worry about with his hands permanently tied, but he couldn't go the rest of the trip now without touching anything.
He let the smoke dribble slow from between his lips, and tipped his head over Honaker's way. "There's one thing I've been wondering about - you were following me, so how did you know which car to put the tracer on?"
"I didn't. I had my guys tag around thirty parked by the hotel after you went in."
Magdelene-fucked Christ, he'd been tailed directly by Honaker's people as well as cartel, and he hadn't had a fucking clue about any of them. Next time he got himself an invite to a street party, he'd definitely pass. "That seems a bit extravagant just for me," he said.
"Not really. They collected most of the spares after you left, and I'd proved they worked before I sold them on. It was a double benefit on the whole."
Yeah, that was an entirely Honaker approach. Everything complexities and multiple layers, so what went well all dropped into place like beams in a gantry, but once a section or two started to unravel, the effects spiralled till it was Apollo 13.
He wondered which way this arrangement was going to work out for which one of them.
His seat had turned out to be considerably more comfortable when he wasn't pinned to it like a dried-up bug. Decently cushioned for a cheap, light prop plane, enough room to stretch, since the goons had needed to get round him to tie him, and he settled himself back, head to the fabric, dragging slow on his smoke and stringing it out, flicking ash casual after every few doses to his lungs.
He could sleep now. He had a deal with Honaker that would hold, he had his life, and he could let it go, just a couple of hours till they landed.
Except he couldn't. His brain wouldn't, locked into the holding pattern, to the thoughts, the instant tracking reaction to every sound that broke the drone of the props, every swirling hint of air around him.
And then there was still the second part of this to play out, and the timing on that one was going to be tight.
Tight, and planning for it wouldn't change anything. Not exactly his favourite situation.
He was going to be awake anyway, while his brain churned the butter on it pointlessly rancid.
The plane lurched and dropped, quick high scrape from his ashtray shifting on the table.
Sands inhaled through the cigarette, measured, thoughtful, clinked a fingernail against the ashtray as he flicked ash again. That would get Honaker looking. "I take it that was Angela and Joaquin you sent out to track me," he said casually.
Honaker puffed out air, amused, and his breath and voice were there clear and direct, watching him just as predicted. "They weren't very happy when I told them they had to let you know you'd been found. It offended their professional reputation."
Another long pull on the smoke, breathing it out slow with Honaker fixed in the glasses stare. "You know this deal falls apart if I find them sniffing around again."
"I called them off days ago." Honaker spoke fast, dismissive, and probably the truth. "They'd done their job, what else would I pay them for? Though I think they'll be annoyed when they hear I cut them out before they trailed you to El Mariachi."
Sands wasn't so sure about that - that pair didn't have Honaker's arrogance, placed their bets with more of an eye to the cards instead of their own good luck. And they were sharp enough at counting the cards that had gone before. "They might get more annoyed when they hear you changed your mind about me," he said, letting his lips curl together at the corners. "But while you've put us within the state lines, maybe you can fill me in on just where you lost El."
"Ah, yes, you and the Mariachi and the mutual protection pact." Honaker coughed out a short noise back in his throat. "You know, that would almost be sweet, if it wasn't quite so Dante messy."
Sands raised his eyebrows and smiled with his lips pressed in close. "Whatever label suits your melodramatic tastes. Pooling resources is an established approach to a common problem, so where exactly did you leave my back-up?"
"Right where I was supposed to. My people handed him over as arranged, and I didn't much care where he went after that."
Fuck. Honaker's people must hold it just as tight even when the man himself wasn't around. Still, the drug goons had a record of incompetence repeatedly proven over a number of years. "Neutral ground or Cartel Central?"
"My pick at an hour's notice. Those people make bad businessmen, they don't have the best reputation for honest dealings."
Sands revised his estimate for El's reappearance a little closer again - minimal warning meant local guns, whoever happened to be on the spot, and a good chance El and his escort never made it as far as back to base. "You might like to give me a gun, Robert," he said.
"No, I don't think I would." Sands could hear it in the words, those dramatic eyebrows climbing right up to the tree-line for the birds to nest in.
"Your choice," he said, entirely neutral. "But El's going to be a bit pissed when he gets back, and he won't be inclined to wait while you explain."
This time he got the gap, the reaction, and when the words came there was interest paddling muddy-toed through the amusement. "You seriously do think he's coming back."
"I wouldn't bet against him." He wouldn't, overall, but the guy still could and did fuck up, and he just hoped he wouldn't have picked now as one of those inconvenient times, with no-one around to kick his stupid Mexican ass out of whatever-the-shit mess.
"He really is that good?" Honaker asked, instant switch to curiosity and lightning thought, and while that was never a particularly good thing, it was a lot less wanted when they already had a settled deal.
"Well, he was the best I could unearth at short notice. His methods aren't always the most orthodox, but he mostly gets the job done."
"You know, there are times I could use someone like that."
Sands curved his lips out, stretching quick and thin. "Good luck with that, Robert. Unfortunately, he won't work for cash, you've got to feed him the right incentives."
"So what incentives do you find to offer him?" Honaker asked, with barely half the arch Sands would have anticipated. Coming from Honaker, it might even count as restraint.
Sands shrugged, reaching out to squash the last of his smoke into the ashtray without turning his face from Honaker. "Lately the same people seem to like irritating us both, so I don't have that problem as much as I used to." He settled back into the chair, legs stretching out to cross at the ankles. "Oh, and I hope you kept the guitar case. It might make him less annoyed if he gets it back."
"That went with him as part of the deal," Honaker said. "Supporting evidence for the claim."
And fuck, he said it so easy, genuine absence of interest, and Sands didn't have to fake up his reaction. "You put El in the same car with his own weapons?"
"The case went in the trunk, my people didn't exactly leave things lying around." Honaker's voice hadn't changed at all, and the cock-brained fucker honestly didn't get it. "I kept your bag, though, since you're asking."
Sands tipped his head close on an inch and smiled. "Well, that's very considerate of you, Robert."
"Not really. I was just waiting for the right buyers to come along. You've got quite a nice collection there, though my own are obviously the stand-out pieces."
"I'd certainly hope so - I wouldn't pay your prices for inferior goods. I was willing to tolerate a little wear on the others since they were donations to my cause."
"I don't suppose they were voluntary donations?" Honaker asked, high and lilting.
Sands let his smile show some teeth. "Well, their owners didn't seem to need them any more."
"I'm almost surprised you didn't just borrow from your mariachi friend. He seems to have quite the range of equipment, but I suppose he'd have to, with the nature of the jobs he takes on."
Back here again, and Honaker too interested now to be easily side-tracked. Christ, the last thing he needed was Honaker thinking he could hit up El for assassin duties.
"You really don't want to go there, Robert." This time he kept his words flat, the blunt object that even Honaker's shock-proof skull would have to notice. "He just doesn't like you enough."
"So that's where you come in. You know how he thinks, you persuade him of the benefits."
"It can't be done." Sands let his right hand drift into the air, poking through it for emphasis. "Put too much pressure on too obvious, and he'll refuse on principle. He responds well to a more subtle approach, eventually, but that can mean months." He gave a quick, dry smile. "He has his own inconvenient slant on morality that sometimes needs a little working around. I'm assuming that's not the kind of timescale you have in mind when you want a job done."
"You're making him sound like a complete pain in the ass, Sheldon."
"Well, he is. Stubborn, uptight, guilt-ridden, it's a lousy combination."
Honaker breathed out air fast down his nose. "You've convinced me, I'll pass." Back to business mode again, fast words and straight tones. "We can just finish up our deal and go our own ways. There are plenty of drop-offs I can use, no need to keep that one."
Sands simply sat, unmoving, letting the pause hang till he could be sure he'd have all of Honaker's attention, focussed pinpoint sharp. "You really have no idea, do you?" he said slowly. "All the things you hear, oh, they get some tinsel wrapped around along the way, but most of them aren't too far off. He's the original goal-oriented type; you might say a complete obsessive." He tilted up one corner of his mouth, something not even close to a smile. "If he decides he wants you, he won't ever stop looking, even if it takes years."
"So you get hold of him and tell him the deal's changed," Honaker said, not a hint of ruffle through that sharp-cut suit he'd be draped in.
"How the fuck should I know where he is? I don't even know where he was. And he doesn't carry a cellphone." Though maybe that was something that needed working on, since this entire fucking mess wouldn't have gone down this way if he'd just been able to reach El when he wanted to.
"But you know where he's going to be, or you think you do. I don't have anything pressing lined up, I can wait a day or two and see if you're right."
Sands breathed out air, deliberately slow. He did have to credit Honaker with the full set of bowling balls. Not many people told that El Mariachi was out to hunt them down would deliberately hang around for a meet. But Honaker had never been the type who'd enjoy constantly checking back over his shoulder.
Neither had Sands, but he lived with it in preference to the alternatives.
The plane had started bouncing around more the last few minutes, and there was the first splatter of rain now against the fuselage, hard with the winds.
Honaker unclicked himself from his seat, going forward the few steps to talk to the pilot. The conversation was lost in the pulse of the engines, but he'd likely be checking on conditions.
The flight calmed again not long after, the pilot flying out of or around the low front, to Sands' relief. He had no desire to find out if his new-found puking reaction to boats was just as responsive to turbulence.
The plane started its descent after the right number of hours, pressure change heavy and muffling in his ears, dulling the engine noise. He circled his jaw repeatedly to pop them, not liking the loss of clarity, the glass cage sensation shrinking in around him.
They landed on the expected dirt, an impressively smooth touchdown considering, but jolting over ridges to a short stop. Someone went for the car and pulled up alongside, misting of light rain on Sands' face as he crossed between the vehicles.
He stayed alert for the timing, for the changes, and his cues matched up with the trip out in reverse order. They were definitely headed back to the same place, wherever that had been.
The car stopped along the dirt road and the front seat passenger got out, metallic squeak and groan of heavy hinges as he dragged open the gates.
Sands wondered if they were being watched, right now, glasses trained on the windows.
The door slammed a second time and the car pulled forward, slow and uneven, halting again a minute later. Everyone else was getting out, so Sands did too, sticking close to Honaker's wet crunch of mud and stone in the mass of goons, trailing him to the warehouse door.
The lackeys fanned out away in various directions, making Sands wonder if there were more buildings here or if they were just going to guard the fence. The breeze seemed to swirl, disrupted as it blew in from the direction of the gate - that might be down to the trees, but they didn't sound nearly close enough. He'd bet on a little more storage space, and maybe not all of it so empty as the familiar warehouse accommodations. Honaker was likely combining his business trips again.
Sands followed Honaker inside at much the same angle from the door they'd used before, that high-stressed wooden creak right after he stopped. Sands took another two steps, fingers just in front of his thigh finding the desk, and he settled back against it the other end from Honaker. His hand crept to his pocket for a smoke before he remembered, and fuck, he should have demanded another before his supply wandered off.
"You might want to move some of your men out of here," he told Honaker. "It seems a shame to waste them all."
"It doesn't suit anybody's purposes if this devolves into a mass gunfight," Honaker said easily. "My people won't start anything."
"That's nice," Sands commented, "but El won't wait to see if he gets shot at."
A flicker of movement from Honaker, and Sands could imagine the look that went with it.
He thought maybe Honaker was starting to see the full impressionist wall painting now, and too late to re-evaluate the strategy.
Decisive shift beside him, and there was the heavy crackle of a radio at Honaker's hand as he listed orders sharp and quick, instant replies of acknowledgement with no discussion. The whole outfit really did seem to run with complete efficiency, even when the plans were being rewritten as they went along. If the CIA had managed to work half this well, he might just have been tempted to stay, but the bureaucracy had thoroughly outweighed the amusement value.
Sands listened in almost casually as Honaker sent a group of men out of the compound in one of the cars, leaving four to watch the boundaries. "I'll keep a few around - they'll let me know when he's coming," Honaker said, as he clicked the radio off. The echo-tipped quiet was nearly physical after the buzzing interference.
"Well, depending how he plays it, they might." If El was feeling unsubtle, they'd get to be the warning instead, but it was all the same thing in the end. Sands hoped one of them was the fucker who'd been groping him every time he took a leak the last couple of days. One name on the stay list he knew by now was definitely Fingerless, which was pleasant to keep in mind for later.
The desk creaked beneath his ass as he shifted his weight, easing out his left knee. Shit, it was gonna take a few days to work all the stiffness from that muscle again. He should add 'being tied up for days' to the list of things not to do within a few months of a gunshot wound.
His watch bleeped out another quarter hour.
And even though he half-knew something was coming, he couldn't stop the quick jerk of his head as the world exploded off to his right, shattering over everything, rippling along the muffling metal of the walls. All some distance outside, but still a shiver from the concrete, alive through the soles of his boots.
Ah. Definitely one of El's less than subtle days. That didn't bode so well.
He turned to Honaker, expression still and flat. "Decision time, Robert. But your only way out of this is me with a gun and you without."
Honaker snorted out the irritating, choking laugh he kept for idiots he didn't have to schmooze. "You're not expecting me to go unarmed?"
"Well, no, but I'd suggest you don't start waving them around." He waited for the second explosion to roll past and die back into resettling roof beams; this time he didn't even flicker towards it, fixed on Honaker all through. "And you should find yourself somewhere else to be while I explain the new arrangements."
"I'd prefer to stay and listen in on that little chat, if you don't mind," Honaker said smoothly.
Everything rigid, no reaction because that wouldn't change things now. "It's your risk to take."
"You believe you can stop him."
Sands tipped his head, ignoring the hair that slipped forward to swing across one raised eyebrow. "And you're going to trust me on it?"
Honaker was smiling again, the voice of unbeatable argument. "I know how much you want that information."
Sands could smile just as hard. "Well, if you know that, there's no reason I shouldn't have a gun."
Honaker actually laughed then, breaking through the snapped burst of gunfire from outside. "That's true enough. Here."
Sands reached out to take the gun Honaker was rattling, slid his fingers fast over the surface, finding features and ridges. Semi-automatic, not a model he instantly recognised, but standard enough. He checked the safety and the magazine, a thirteen or fourteen round double layer clip by size and fully loaded by weight. He slammed the clip back in, and chambered the first round. Slid away from the desk to stand upright, angling himself slightly to the door; reaching, waiting.
"He does like to make a lot of noise, doesn't he? The legends got that bit right, at least." Honaker's voice had shaken out drier than a 007 martini, a look that would go so well with the suit, and Sands didn't have the fucking concentration to spare for him right this minute. "Shut up!"
"Ah, sorry," Honaker said conversationally. "I suppose I should be making allowances, shouldn't I?" And then mercifully he did shut the fuck up, only the too-heavy breathing and the restless shifting of cloth there at the other end of the desk.
Sands tipped his head into the sounds, the gunfire outside, not hearing the right patterns in the bullets as he strained around the occasional explosion, and there had to be something –
There. Barely. The steps quiet and unevenly spaced, one leg crossing before the other, crabbing sideways along the wall, caution and speed coiling together in smooth consistency.
Sands raised the gun towards the doorway, slow and obvious as El's feet reached it. "Wait! Don't shoot him." Snapping it out short and inflexible, whip-contrast to the steady flow of his arm.
The footsteps jinked through the door and half-slithered as they stopped beneath his words, Sands adjusting his aim with the movement, silence in the room blazing over the explosion outside.
Sands would have given quite a lot to see the look on El's face.
"Why not?" Flat, clipped demand, and no question he was talking to the killer.
"We came to an alternative arrangement while you were gone." He wondered vaguely where El's second gun was pointing. At least one would be on Honaker, but he'd be interested to know if the other was aimed at him.
"He sold me. For money." Heavy-accented and vicious, and that was understandable, and might be a little tricky to work around.
"That wasn't anything personal, El, it was just business. And now we've got a better deal that suits everyone concerned and doesn't involve anybody leaking brains."
"He was going to shoot you too."
Yeah, and he really hadn't forgotten, didn't need El to poke that fact into life. He pushed his voice a little lighter, sliding it smoother between the words. "Well, that wasn't personal either, and he agrees now it was a bad idea."
More footsteps just outside, slower, more careful, someone else coming, and his gun barrel swung instant from El to the door.
"No! Don't!" El's voice, high, stressed, and Sands kept the gun on the door and his finger shivered at the sounds, but he held the final half inch.
"Who the hell is it?"
"A friend." El shifted, one step, his voice aimed now towards the door. "I told you to stay outside." Oh, and wasn't El just pissed at everybody today?
"What the fuck's going on here, El? I thought this was about bailing out a friend of yours." It was a young voice, and distinctly irritated, which wasn't so surprising with El in this mood. Obviously El had roped in one of his crazy sidekicks for this.
"So did I." Double espresso answer from El, and all unsweetened.
Correction, both of El's crazy sidekicks had been recruited, Sands decided, as another explosion sound-shivered outside. He raised an eyebrow towards El. "You thought I was going to sit around and wait to be rescued? It's not really my style."
"So maybe you should've let us know that before we dragged our asses all the way out here." That was Irritated at the door cutting in again, and shit, but this conversation was handling smooth as a Chevy truck with a slipping transmission just with El on board - adding this guy too was packing ice under the wheels.
"Leave me your number, I promise I'll call next time. But since there are no damsels here, how about you fuck off now while I finish my chat with El?"
"Go check on him." El's voice was reeled back, moderated, but Sands knew too much to buy into that. "It's all okay here."
"And tell him to quit blowing up my stuff, too, won't you?" Honaker said mildly.
"Who's he?" Irritated demanded.
"A dead man."
Irritated turned distinctly more cheerful at that. "Finally, something's making some sense."
The footsteps trotted away, and Sands swung his gun back around onto El. "We're having a civilised conversation here, El, can't you leave out the death threats for five minutes?"
"I'm inclined to agree," Honaker commented. "We've got your opinion clear by now, the repetition's getting dull."
Sands turned his head to face him, expression set flat and taut. "You shut the fuck up." Christ, El at least had the brains to know when to keep dumb, why the screaming well-fucked Madonna couldn't Honaker manage it?
No external reaction from El, but there didn't need to be one. The Mariachi sliced it back when he got to this place, too much happening inside while he waited for the move.
"You want him alive."
It wasn't a question, El's words mud-thick and slow with contempt, but it was easiest to answer anyway. "Well, it'll be hard to get our deal wrapped up neatly if he's dead."
"Of course he wants me alive," Honaker said, almost smooth. "I'm assuming he doesn't point a gun at you every day. Though with Sheldon, I suppose I shouldn't be assuming anything."
El didn't move, no telling whisper of fabric or metal before the warehouse split into waves of sound, gunshot over gunshot over echoes and shattering wood.
The blood stench got very strong very fast.
The reports went on past the thump of the body hitting concrete, too fast to count, but way more than a single clip.
So both guns had been on Honaker the whole time. That was good to know.
Sands lowered his pistol to hang by his thigh. "Well fuck, El, you didn't have to shoot him."
"Oh, yes, I did." Instant, and drawn out near-flat. "He gave me to the cartel."
"So did I, once," Sands reminded him. "You haven't gotten around to shooting me for it yet."
The pause drew out through seconds, moments of silence punctuated by quick bursts of gunfire outside, but when El spoke it was the same tone. "You expected me to live."
"I hoped you would, since I'd have wasted a good bit of time and cash otherwise," Sands admitted. "But I did stack the decks against you, with that small matter of you being unarmed."
"No, I wasn't." Iceberg smile lurking there, satisfied under the words, and Sands tipped his head obviously to consider.
"Well, I guess that really isn't so surprising, given Cucuy's well-demonstrated lack of good judgement. I should have checked you myself."
"You wouldn't have found anything." The Mariachi was winding back some with the conversation, humour starting to seep upwards, chinks glowing in the flat vindication.
Sands dipped his chin and lifted his eyebrows all the way. "El, I know everywhere you keep guns, and none of them are places I wouldn't have looked."
"You wouldn't have checked the guitar."
"There was a gun built into the guitar?" The words stretched out as he smiled, because oh fuck, as a reveal that was genuinely funny. "Maybe I should have placed more faith in Belini's stories."
"I saw no reason to be unarmed. Nobody else was," El said pointedly.
"Well, that would have been a little stupid for a meeting with a notorious killer. But waving guns around at you wouldn't have been too productive either."
"That didn't stop you today."
"I notice it didn't make a difference." Sands angled his head a degree more. "I only half expected it to, since you are crazy."
El half-shrugged, quick rub of jacket beneath his arms. "I knew you wouldn't shoot me."
A little too much casual confidence in there for Sands not to like, and his own words were darkly neutral. "You sound very sure about that."
"You knew I wouldn't shoot you. It's the same thing."
He had known that, but he hadn't expected El to say it. "Your assumptions and mine obviously aren't quite the same thing, El."
"You pointed a gun at me." El's voice drifted like sand, drier than the Sonoran desert. "I don't believe you are suicidal, and if you were going to shoot me, you would have done it right away when I came in."
Well, that part was true enough. No point giving people time to react, after all. "I might have shot you for killing Honaker."
"Why?" El sounded almost amused. "You weren't going to let him live."
"Well, not for long, no, but I'd have made a point of getting what I wanted from him first. It really was a sweet deal you screwed over." He turned his head back in the direction of the corpse beside him. "I guess I should have known you'd have to kill him after I told him you were queer."
That same tone from El, with something that was close to humour. "I think you actually told him I was a queer whore."
"And now you're going to say it doesn't bother you, and some of your best friends are whores, right?" There, the slight catch in El's air, and Sands smiled just as quick. It was always good to keep El interested, keep him wondering just how much he knew.
He tipped his head into the sprawling silence, no gunfire or explosions, just tree-breeze and El. "They've gone very quiet out there."
El took a half-step, swinging back towards the door. "The place should be clear now. There weren't so many."
"I had Honaker send a few guys away. I was trying to avoid you rushing in here all hopped-up and trigger-happy."
Slight shift from El as he considered. "It worked, a little," he said.
Yeah, it had, to the point it was ever going to, and the shock of Sands with a gun on him had broken the immediate reaction sequence. But that capacity in El to be the deliberate, calculating assassin was one of the things he liked about the guy, and it had always been trying to stop El the decisive murderer that was the delicate call.
"You should have a quick look over the warehouse before we leave," Sands said. "Honaker said he'd kept my stuff around here someplace. I hope your friends haven't blown it up."
El turned on the spot and sniffed at the air. "At least they haven't set fire to anything."
"That would have been somewhat stupid around an arms dealer. Not that I'd be advocating explosives either, mind you."
"That was mostly for show," El said easily. "Or it was when we planned it."
"I take it they stick to the plans as well as you do."
El was already moving off across the warehouse. "I don't think you would be so keen to work with someone who couldn't improvise either," he called back.
Sands angled himself to keep track of El's footsteps through the echoes, squashing back the immediate instinct to follow. "There's improvising, El, and then there's hurling yourself from a third floor window and careering through the guard dog run to make damn sure you leave the plan helplessly staring after you inside the first five minutes." He turned to the desk behind him, running fingers across the bottom of drawers, most of them empty. Not something he liked doing without gloves, but his prints were already all over the thing, and if he took it slow he could avoid stabbing himself on the bullet splinters. He was finding a few pens, stray paperclips, the kind of crap that built up in any desk even if it wasn't a sometime office.
"That way, I usually leave the bullets behind too," El's voice carried across the warehouse. "And your bag's here."
There was an engine outside and tyres heavy on wet dirt, but it didn't sound like whatever Honaker's people had driven away, and El was ignoring it. "Anything missing?"
Pause with zipper and rattles and rustles. "Everything I know of is here, and a few extras." They were both talking about the guns, because El wouldn't give a cow's tits about any changes to Sands' wardrobe over the months.
El skipped most of the warehouse tour - obviously not a lot around, as Sands had suspected, good lines of sight. He was back with Sands in under a minute, metallic thunk as he dropped the bag on the desk, opening more drawers alongside him. "Here, have these." Sands handed El a couple of pieces of paper to check, not expecting much from the small, crumpled strays.
"Packing crate receipts," El said dismissively. "There's nothing useful here." He shut a drawer with a rattling slide and a slam.
Only what Sands had guessed, but it never hurt to check.
He picked up his bag and strolled over to the door, waiting against the wall for El to pass, his adequate level of knowledge severed at the step.
It was still quiet outside, the sun slanting warm across one side of Sands' face. He could smell the earth from the earlier rain, feel it give, squishy beneath his boots. Knew the way the steam would be drifting up from the soil in the heavy humidity against his skin, coiling in front of the wall of trees.
There were other footsteps sounding wet through the thin cling of mud, but El kept walking, relaxed, and Sands' finger stayed loose on the trigger.
"It looks clear out here," Irritated said a little dubiously as he got closer, "but we only found four."
"Well, four sounds about right," Sands told him with a quick smile. "If I'd known you wanted more, I could have kept them around to entertain." It would mean Fingerless had gotten to keep his digits in the end, but dead worked just as well for Sands. Unlike El, he didn't feel it important to deal with everything personally, as long as the result came out right.
More feet from the far side of the warehouse, and something heavy slapping alongside a leg with every other stride; neither of the other two raised gun-hands, so it had to be Sidekick Number Two.
"There's no-one else along the fence." The newcomer stank of booze, and more than one kind, which made him Fideo, and Irritated defaulted to Lorenzo. No other names for either of them that he'd ever dug up, but one name was one more than he might have expected from El's little assassin coterie anyway.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friends, El?"
"No."
That was succinct, even by El standards, and Sands smiled slightly. Nice to know El still had some of his Sands lines uncompromisingly diamond-carved.
Fast swish of air from Lorenzo, the presumed guitar case hitting the dirt with a wet thud. "This was a complete waste of fucking time."
"No, it wasn't." Something not quite a smile in El's answer, satisfaction with Fideo-strength fumes at ninety-eight percent proof, and yeah, El had been jonesing after Honaker right from that first meeting.
"Well next time you decide to do the heroic rescue bit, you should make a point of showing up a little sooner," Sands said, turning his shades on Irritated. He was sticking with his first choice of name, it suited him better.
"It would have been quicker if you'd stayed where you were," El said beside him, and Sands whipped his head back around his way.
"Much quicker, yeah, I wouldn't have been going anywhere with a bullet through my brain."
Instant snap through El's body, breath stilled under the flick of hair, feeling El's eyes on him.
"Take a look around some of the buildings," Sands drawled towards Irritated. "Unless you blew up absolutely everything, there should be more than enough here to cover your expenditure." He tagged on a quick, curving smile. "And while you're investigating, see if you can find me some grenades for an M203. I need to do some restocking myself."
"I'll check the crates in the sheds behind the main warehouse," Number Two said, wandering off the way he'd come, completely non-reacting to the rest of the conversation.
"El."
Some signal there from Irritated that Sands was missing, because El was turning away after him. "Wait here." Edged tones that made him feel like some fucking mutt being told to sit and stay, but tagging along anyway would look pathetic and desperate, and going wandering over unknown ground without a cane didn't appeal either. Not with El's merry mariachis all ready to watch him stumbling and sprawling in the mud.
He back-tracked to the warehouse and arranged himself against the metal doorframe, feet crossed at the ankles and face turned up to the sun. Attention following El's steps over loose-packed grit, with Irritated before him.
They didn't go so far. Maybe Irritated thought he was deaf as well as blind. More likely he just didn't give a rat's dick, it fit the personality type.
He really should watch that attitude, it might lead him some unwanted places. Probably at gunpoint.
"Whatever you owed him, El, I hope you're all paid up after today." Of course there was still the sideline possibility of another dumb Mexican assuming the gringo wouldn't speak Spanish too well.
"It's not about payment." El's words were just as tight for Irritated as for Sands; good to know he was sharing the delights of his mood equally.
"I know what you told us, but he's vicious."
"And you think I'm not?" When El had a point, he knew how to use words to make it. Personally, Sands would have left any critical debate till El had wound down from the gleeful murdering an hour or two - well, unless he was deliberately going for the poison ivy to the balls effect - but Irritated wasn't striking him as the patient type.
"You can turn it off. With him, it's part of the basic package." To extend him some small line of credit, he wasn't letting himself be hassled any by El's attitude. Sands supposed everyone had to have one sentence to be said in their favour, even Irritated.
"I told you that, if you remember, when I was telling you not to come inside."
"I know, but -"
"But you didn't believe me."
Irritated was scowling audibly at the interruption. "You don't normally choose to hang with psychopaths."
El laughed then, as charcoal bitter-warped as Sands had ever heard him. "Did you think I was taught to fight, to kill, by 'nice' people?"
"Hey, you told us about them, remember? You learned from okay people, people like you."
"Sometimes. But I worked with anyone who had something to teach me, and not all of them are good to talk about."
Footsteps past the side of the building, Sands' attention snapping back round, gun up, but the boozehead had been over that way - feet at the corner now, no surprise, no hesitation when they rounded and found Sands and a pistol barrel, they just carried right on his way.
"You're not going to join in?" Fideo asked, and that was a definite win for the leading 'Irritated just doesn't give a fuck' assumption. The guy's steps were different now, more weight as the heel went down and a little slowed - obviously he'd found something worth carrying.
"Aren't you?" Sands smiled. "Not trying to save your friend from evil influences?"
The footsteps paused. Quick brush of cloth, a shrug or a headshake, and a distinctive rattle-ching of weaponry with it. "I don't like him telling me what I should do either."
He walked on past, rhythmic metallic scrape of a top being unscrewed.
Sands might almost have called him smart, if he didn't permanently steep his brain in the pickling juice. Alcoholics, even the still-functioning ones, didn't climb so high up his evolutionary scale.
He tracked after him anyway, because it held more potential to be interesting than draping himself over a damp doorway, catching up with him as he clanged metal at chest height. Sands took a guess he was loading the something interesting into the bed of a pick-up or the tail of a mini-van, and swept his hand forward to lean his forearm along the bodywork.
"I don't suppose that would be my grenades?"
"Not yet, but I think there'll be some." Sidekick Two here didn't seem to do antagonism or confrontation, every line basic acquaintance-friendly conversation. Sands wondered how the hell he coped with Irritated's moody attitude and demands, or El's come to that. He must have developed indifference through exposure and self-preservation.
"So what are you taking?"
"It's not really taking," Two said with a thin trace of humour. "Like you said, we're compensating." Steady metallic twisting back there under the words, his arm lifting the (bottle? flask?) again. "And it's only ammo. We don't need anything else."
"You could take the rest and sell it," Sands suggested.
More liquid sloshing before he answered. "We don't need to do that either."
Sands smiled, tight all along his lips. "No, I don't suppose you do."
Fideo didn't answer, wandering off again, back in the direction of the warehouse and the other buildings.
Irritated had given up on lecturing El by now, which wasn't surprising since he must have known it wouldn't work in the first place. Obviously he was the type who liked to make a worthwhile gesture. Both men headed off after Fideo, who was already on his way back carrying more stuff for the truck.
Sands kept himself out of their way, using his feet to follow the edge of the road where the wet-packed dirt became grassier. If El's sidekicks wanted payment for their pointless, noisy attempt at a non-rescue, he wasn't volunteering to play porter for it.
He tracked the road round to the gates, which were closed again - that would be El's mariachi pals allowing themselves some extra warning if anybody came back. He trailed fingers light along the fence, turning his face into the fresh dampness of the air after the days shut away inside. The rain kept the cloying dust down for a few hours and it felt good to breathe, the flow of it easy with humidity. He walked the perimeter circuit, getting a feel for the size of the place and its potentials. The information was far less likely to be useful to him with Honaker dead, of course, but sometimes the oddest little things came in handy at surprising times, and he wasn't one to pass up an opportunity.
He tracked around to the gate again, and followed the road back to the truck. The other three were done with the load-bearing part, and had started up with some traditional male bonding crap instead.
"You know you can call us, anytime," Irritated was saying. "Don't wait till it gets bad."
"I know," El said, in the tone that meant he wouldn't.
"You better had, else I'll shoot you myself," Irritated threatened, and then there were heavy fabric sounds and back-slapping that went on far too long. Fucking Hispanics and their weird-ass ideas on masculinity. "Look after yourself, okay?"
"I will." El was smiling, the genuine one that hardly ever showed, all through his voice. "And you too. Watch that weight before you end up like him."
"Hey! I look good for my age." Sands smirked lightly - so Number Two would join in the idiocies when he came under a direct attack.
"See you stay that way," El told him, and there was more of the obvious hugging shit.
Sands tapped fingers lazily over the metal of the truck as he reached it. "When you're done reaffirming," he drawled, loud and precise enough to carry across the gap through the breeze, "I've spent more than enough of my time in this mud-pit over the last few days, and I'd like to get somewhere more civilised before tonight."
"It's not someplace we'd ever have chosen to hang out either, in case you'd forgotten," Irritated said. He opened the door and swung himself up into the truck.
Sands took a step along the truck towards the passenger door, metal sun-warm beneath his fingers.
"Not with them," El said. "My car's over this way."
Assuming not even these dickbrains were dumb enough to let the boozehead drive, that left Irritated with the Mine's Bigger Than Yours style in vehicular ownership. Figured. Sands had a vivid mental image of something all tripped out with the latest in High Bling chrome, and maybe some tasteful neon underlights. He wondered vaguely if he used it for picking up tourists, or if he'd quit that particular sideline when he stopped needing the cash.
Sands moved to follow El, the ring of metal heavy in each footfall ahead, no attempt to lose it now in stealth. He stopped after a few steps and turned back, El instantly halting and scanning with him. "Oh, Lorenzo, Fideo, I almost forgot. Whichever one of you owns that nice place up near Zacatecas, you might want to get a plumber in to fix the shower. It feels so impolite greeting guests when I'm not at my best."
He twisted away to head smoothly after El, not waiting for the response. No reaction from El anyway - he just went on walking, once he was reassured there was no danger - but there was some resentful muttering from Irritated in those high-pitched tones of his, and a low, steadying comment from Fideo.
El's gait was a little off as Sands followed him to the car, faint scrape with the left boot, slower and flatter, not reaching forward the same. Sands hadn't picked up on it back in the warehouse, but it probably hadn't been there then. Anything minor El would have ignored for the duration, buried it under adrenaline till the job was done and he could allow a weakness.
El stopped, unlocking what was obviously the trunk, and crouched down to speak from the level of Sands' waist. "You want to give me a hand?"
Sands bent, feeling forward to the edge of a metal case and a handle. "What's this?"
"You wanted some grenades."
Sands smiled. "So I did."
He lifted right-handed, the left feeling for the lip of the trunk, struggling to stay level with the mariachi as they straightened; there was nothing fluid or easy in the movements from El's end of the case.
He slid into the car and found himself sitting on leather instead of the usual vinyl, the seat shaped at the sides and curved along his spine. The interior handle was soft and smoothly recessed, successive controlled, low thunks from the doors as they closed that absorbed into the interior.
He tipped his head El's way. "This isn't quite your usual style, El."
El fired up an engine that whuffled instantly, low and smooth. "It was Lorenzo's choice. He said he'd fight, but he wouldn't play mechanic for a breakdown on the way."
Sands smirked at that - the pretty boy Cucuy had described was likely worried about his manicure. "I take it he paid for it too."
"I didn't have a lot of cash with me at the time," El said, stake-dry and pointed.
"Well, it's good to know that money still shows up working to my benefit now and then. Though I've got to say, I prefer this example to the other night's pied-à-terre." Sands snagged the pot of painkillers from the glove compartment - El might have had the car barely a day, but the essentials were already guaranteed - choking a couple down through his desert throat. It wasn't even a straight headache any more, more like a continuous brainbuzz, but what the hell, it might help. He rattled the tub towards El. "Want one?"
"Not yet."
Obviously he was off El's schedule.
"There's a water bottle under the seat."
He reached down, and finally got his fingers on it after a bit of groping around - damn thing wouldn't keep still while El was driving over potholes. There were limitations even to decent suspension, and this road was a thousand feet the wrong side. He swigged back what felt like half the bottle, barely cool, but enough to strip the gritted layer from his insides. He waved the bottle at El, who took it for a few quick swallows, still steering jerkily round the worst of the bumps one-handed.
He reached out his hand for the bottle when El finished glugging, and stopped the cap. "So where are we going now?"
"Before we were interrupted, we were going to Lázaro Cárdenas," El said.
Sands turned his way, and smiled with his lips curved together tight. "Sounds good to me."
"We can stay overnight in Guadalajara."
"That would be more helpful if I actually knew where we are." He'd have screwed himself with a Chipotle-coated dildo before he'd have asked Honaker.
"Nayarit, north-east of Tepic."
That put Guadalajara just a couple of hours down Highway 15. It wasn't that late in the afternoon yet, but no surprise El wouldn't be keen to keep going the whole day.
Sands spent a good part of the trip trying to figure if there was any way he could track down Honaker's insider, and had to reluctantly conclude there wasn't. Honaker would have buried those trails so deep nothing short of a full official investigation would find them. The money would have gone four or five different places after leaving Honaker's accounts before it got to the mole's, and he'd never trace it. Not on his resources.
Shit, maybe he should have shot El for getting over-hasty with the bullets.
Somehow he didn't think Irritated and the alco-sponge would be giving him a ride back to civilisation right now.
He definitely should have shot Irritated and evened things up a bit.
He could almost wish El had turned a gun on him, then Honaker might not have been so ridiculously confident that El would just do as he was told.
But only almost.
El had stayed oddly quiet the whole time Sands had been running his situational assessments. The guy could do Silence as an art form through Ice Ages, but he scored amusingly high on the nosiness ranking too, and without so much in the way of tempering patience.
El rustled and whispered now only with the car, the necessary movements of hands on wheel and foot between pedals, the brush of hair with the smooth idle as his head turned at intersections, even that much dying back with the highway. He lit a smoke once, an offer Sands declined, though whatever El had scrounged up along the way didn't have the ash-bitter edge like the last pack. El smoked with it fixed between his lips, breathing distinctive through and around it, minimal. No radio, no fiddling with controls for airflow, no shifting in his seat with the miles.
Having El around was a physical presence in his life different from anyone else, and not just as the hand on his cock and the dick in his ass, though they were quite the side benefit. El was the dozens of meaningless touches as they passed food and cigarettes and bullets between them, the dry, calloused brush of feet against his own in the night, another level of sensation merged into his reality.
Before they'd fucked, El had never come near him at all, and when Sands thought about it, there was no transition marked in his mind. The first time El had touched him other than to push him up against a wall or down onto the sheets should have run a purple flag with pea green stripes up a fifty foot pole.
It wasn't there.
El's touches never surprised him, never made him still in studied non-reaction. And maybe that was because his ceaseless, unthinking monitoring of El made him aware of all those moves before they happened, or maybe it was just the tolerance of chronic exposure, the arachnophobe surrounded by pictures of hairy, eight-legged friends.
He didn't think it would have happened that way if El had tried to get touchy-feely from the start.
It was odd now, sitting alongside an El without those things.
Whenever El got to thinking too hard, the results had a tendency to be annoying. At least when Sands hadn't anticipated and allowed for it.
He stretched himself back in his seat, crossed his feet casually and tipped his head a few degrees El's way, hair tug-sliding over the rest. "So what's your name, anyway? It only seems an even trade to cough it up now you know mine."
He got movement then, the twist his way in the expected spinning pause. "You don't know?"
But not the expected answer. "How the fuck would I know? Nobody else does."
"I always thought you knew." El's words were slow, careful, dragging along behind his brain on a short length of rope - Sands could almost see the furrows in the mud. "You knew about Carolina, and César."
This conversation was jinking off on some weird tangent every sentence so far, and it wasn't a feeling Sands much liked. "Who the hell's César?"
"My brother." El's voice was high, surprise speaking out immediate, then tailing off.
The air slipped from him fast, amusement real and uncontrolled. "El, I know shit about your brother except what you told me."
"You were bluffing..."
"Well, of course I was, you gave me an opening like the Lincoln Tunnel." Christ, but El had been entertaining that day - all clammed up after that opening threat, and twitching like a fish on a line, ripples spreading for fucking miles.
Just like he was broadcasting now, spamming every frequency unencrypted, confusion swirling mud-brown in uncertainty, reassessing past conversations with the new information, and -
"César was Bucho."
Well, that did explain quite a lot. "Interesting family you had there, El, I can see why things soured up a bit."
"Things, as you say, had soured a lot some time before. Bucho was only how it ended." Flattening out as the words went on, drawn in tight like balls in chilled water, and the pills had half-worked but his head was still humming high voltage, and now would be a shitty time to steer El any further north.
No name then, ah well. Could have been interesting to look into, but El worked just fine. It was probably better not to know if he was taking it up the ass from a guy called Pedro or Agapito.
El was quiet again beside him, but not the same quiet, movement through it now, and all Sands had to do was wait.
Wait through the watching for the flare.
"What was it you wanted from him?" There it was now, the curiosity, and this was how it should have been going all along. Sands might have smiled if the subject matter didn't piss him off so thoroughly.
"Access to some information I don't have. Including the name of whoever set me up for a long, slow, Mexican deep fry."
Tick-tick-tick, paused seconds with only the low notes of engine and wind. "He would have broken the deal."
"Well, of course he would, and so would I. And we would have traded off happily enough inbetween, before one of us decided to get our bullets in first."
"If you can't do anything about it," El said quietly, "maybe it's better not to know."
"Very philosophical of you, El, but somehow I don't see you saying that if it were you."
"Probably not," he admitted. "But it would still be true."
The tension only bit deeper all along his jaw. "I don't know if there's anything I can do. Not while I don't know who it was."
El wriggled and shuffled briefly in the seat beside him, lit a cigarette with a click and a long, smoky exhale. "You want one?"
Sands sniffed a little deeper, weighing the heavy taste of it in his throat. "I think I'll pass." He'd buy himself a pack of something decent later.
El brushed his hand along the door to buzz his window barely open, fingers rubbing over the plastic because his eyes were still on Sands. "You do smoke less."
Sands tipped his head to El and angled his eyebrows. "As you've mentioned before. So why the ongoing interest in the state of my lungs?"
"I thought maybe you'd decided you don't want to die."
Every muscle shrank tight along his face. "Fuck that, I never did."
"But you thought it was inevitable."
Sands tilted the corners of his mouth up uneven. "I'm still inclined to be realistic about it."
"And now realistic means leaving Mexico."
He let his lips curve distinctly wider. "Well, the thing about your country, El, is she doesn't seem to grace me with much good fortune."
Light shift from El, and when he spoke again, his words echoed hollow from the glass. "I've seen no real proof she's lucky for anyone."
"And yet I don't see you leaving."
El shrugged, rustling brief in his seat. "It's my country."
Dumb patriotism wasn't something Sands had ever subscribed to, but no big surprise El stuck to the plate, even when every ball pitched him was a no ball.
He'd almost changed his mind about the smoke, and he reached out, trailing fingers light over the roughness of El's jaw to pluck the cigarette from him. Two quick drags, just enough to take the edge off before he put it back where he found it, El's lips moving dry against his fingers to take it.
It didn't taste so bad.
He still wanted his own.
They drove into Guadalajara as afternoon slid into evening, and El didn't waste his usual half hour circling the streets, just pulled over somewhere not busy enough to be central. Sands grabbed his bag and followed him from the car till El made a right turn, someplace narrow with echoes, the ground cracked and uneven. "Where the hell are we going? I'm not signed up for the mystery tour till later."
El stopped then, put a hand on his shoulder while he walked round behind him and through the full circle. "You should change your clothes."
"I'd love to, El, right along with a shower, so why don't we go inside?"
"I think it's your turn to reserve the room. You look less conspicuous than I do for now."
Given how he felt, that must be putting El pretty low on the scale. "Jesus, El, you're not being a little impractical here? I don't know where we are and I don't have my cane." El didn't answer, and Sands just wanted to get indoors someplace with a bed. "Then I guess that makes you the helpful if slightly freaky cabbie. Here." He pushed the handles of his bag at El to hold while he groped inside for a clean jacket and pants. The T-shirt could stay - not much of it went on show if he buttoned up, and his holsters made changing it too much hassle. He pressed himself to the cooler side of the alley behind El as he tugged off his belt. "If the cops drive by while I'm stripping, you're fielding the indecent exposure rap." It was pretty disgusting anyway, dressing in clean clothes when he felt like a baby-oiled porn star rolled in grit and jello. The brush of cool fabric on his skin only lit up his all-over clamminess in stage-spec spotlights, and he'd been making a pretty good job of ignoring it.
He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging out the worst of the tangles and smoothing it down, feeling it hang forward greasy along his cheeks. "Do I pass?"
El leaned and shifted, peering at various angles. "No," he said eventually, "but I don't think it can be fixed."
"Thanks for the vote," Sands said dryly, pulling on his gloves; his fingernails probably weren't doing anything for the image either. "So now you're done with the fashion check, get moving, Señor Taxista."
Back to the main street and along the block, and it was almost a shock just to walk.
Cane, laptop, bag, gun - he'd gotten so used to clutching part or all of his life, always, everywhere he went, the things he couldn't let go of, couldn't get through the days without, and now both hands swung free at his sides, empty and unnatural. And he was tracing El's sounds, following his steps, but that was automatic, unthinking, and he hadn't just walked, unencumbered and unthreatened, in so many months. Not since they left El's morgue of a village. The street around him, the people, the traffic, everything there in the most casual way, and he used to do all this time, when the only thing he might need in his hand was a cellphone.
"Two steps, wide and low," El said, and his concentration was back on the sounds, on the differences, reaching for when El made the step.
Abrupt wall of air-con as they walked through the door, and maybe El's choices were moving up-market.
They walked on through the lobby - big, empty lobby - and when El stopped, Sands stepped up to halt right next to him. El put their luggage down deliberately either side of him, the guitar case the harder, more defined sound on his left. "Stairs," he said, quick and low, "seven metres, eight o'clock." Sands made an open show of fishing out notes and handing them over, and then El turned and chinked away, back towards the doors.
Sands reached forward to the desk and slid his hand up onto the surface, tapping gently through the glove, a man trying and failing to hide impatience. With his hand already there, it wouldn't stand out when he ran his fingers over the surface to pick up the key.
He fished out a passport for ID when the desk clerk finished her phone call and came his way; she had a room free and pushed a guest card over in front of him.
"Could you show me where I need to write? The print's a bit small." He smiled apologetically. "I'm partially sighted." He'd found that line worked a lot better for brief contact than admitting to being blind. Partially sighted covered quite a range, so well-meaning fucktards didn't instantly assume he was a helpless idiot, and the less well-meaning didn't assume he'd be the too-obvious fleece. It got tiresome clearing up the after-effects.
"Oh, I can fill it in, if it's easier," she said, dropping right into full helpful smiling mode. "I'll just copy your details." Paper rustles and the press of a pen, before she pushed it back towards him. "Just sign here, at the bottom." Faint scratch of a nail, and he found the lower edge of the card and scrawled deliberately big and looping parallel to it.
"Here's your key, it's two-twenty-six. I'll call someone to take up your bags."
"No, it's fine, I'll take them." He didn't want some fucking valet swinging them around and wondering about all the rattling. There was something of a knack to the handling.
He pocketed the key and reached for the handles on his own bag, groping around a bit with the less familiar guitar case.
Eight o'clock. Right.
There hadn't been any unwanted sounds from that direction since El gave him the clear route, no maids with vacuums or would-be-guests dumping luggage. He took it slow - not enough to look odd, and it'd fit right in with a guy stiff and dusty from a day travelling. Counting, judging distance, and of course the fucking guitar case was the first thing to smack into something solid. A doorframe when he got his hand on it - only just off, not bad for a whole shiny new place. He found the handle - natural enough to be clumsy about it, juggling bags and guitars with not enough hands - and it didn't echo like a stairwell the other side, but El tapped his spur up ahead and the stairs were there further along the corridor.
El's limp was worse despite the painkillers, and even more on the stairs; more of a lag between steps, extra weight obvious in the ching-thud with the right foot. Definitely nothing he'd picked up at the warehouse, there hadn't really been any action. Must be a souvenir he'd collected courtesy of the cartel - that wouldn't have been a fun experience, no matter how short he kept his stay.
He didn't bother mentioning it. El could chat about it himself, if he felt inclined, but the Mariachi wasn't much of a disciple of trauma counselling.
The room brought its impressions on a wave of cool air when El opened the door, neutral and fresh through his nose, nothing immediate or overwhelming. He dropped his bag by his feet and made use of the doorframe while El gave him the standard run-down. The place was a decent size with a regular spacing of furniture, the layout logical and pre-planned. El's taste for slumming it had definitely been more than satisfied by the last few days, and Sands wasn't going to complain.
"You shower first," Sands told him. "You stink even worse than I do."
He could hear the eyebrows right there in El's voice. "I think you only say that because you're not so aware of yourself." But he wasn't turning down the offer, boots ringing uneven across the tiles.
Sands left his bag on the bed out of the way while he ran fingers over the room; fast double-check on layout out of habit, slower and detailed with locks and handles. El would be in there a while, checking over and working through the bruises and the stiffness.
He picked up the phone and got reception on the second guess, ordering in room service and a pack of his own smokes from the bar, because he sure as hell didn't feel like going anywhere else today, and it seemed unlikely El would be volunteering.
The food showed up before El did, along with chilled water, and he downed half of that right off because it was El's choice to still be in the shower, and no point leaving it to get warm. He figured he ought to be more hungry than he was, beneath the ache and the sleepless fuzz balloon-inflating in his head, and he nibbled on some fairly mediocre tamales. The standard of a tourist hotel was never a reliable guide to the standard of the food.
He ate enough to take him through to morning without his gut bitching at him and left the rest. Still no hint El was close to done, and he went through into the bathroom, heavy with soap and steam and rattling water, because drinking had brought on the need to piss. El was there as the squeak of feet on tub and the irregular breath of a head pushed under the shower flow, and Sands' brain drilled on slow and relentless beneath it all, sampling cores through the ice.
He washed his hands, and then went through El's pile of clothes folded neat beside the doorway, sniffing tentatively at each gun for the bitter-choking cordite. Just the two pistols, and he took a towel and sat on the floor, back against the bed, to clean them. It might not be a perfect job without El's sparse tips along the way, but it would be good enough for a one-off, even for the Mariachi.
El came out as he was finishing up, distinctive slap of wet feet on tile, and drank down the rest of the water - light, hollow tap as he put the jug back on the table.
"I'm done with the food," Sands told him, running the cloth over the pistol to lift off the prints. "It's all yours."
El sat back onto the bed above him, and didn't reach for the plate. "Thank you," he said softly.
Sands twisted his head to face up towards him. "Don't expect it to be a habit. I didn't want you rattling while I'm trying to sleep."
He left the guns where they were and went to strip off his own grease and grit, scrubbing it fast from his hair and body. He shaved there in the shower, water flowing warm down his back as he slid the blade over his face, and Christ, it got more of a hassle with a few days' growth to fight, and it hadn't exactly been easy for a while now. But getting rid of it made him start to feel something more like a human being again, and not a freaking Sasquatch.
He towelled off the worst of the water from his hair, and tugged on a T-shirt and slacks over still-damp skin. It was too early to sleep, but he hadn't been keeping quite to his routine the last few days, and he doubted El would have been working round a regular eight hours either. He threw off most of the bedcovers and shoved his guns under the pillows. Climbed in under just a sheet, while El padded off back to the bathroom to brush his teeth.
Tracked El's sounds automatically with the dregs of his mind, the quiver through mattress and sheets as he joined him.
He'd figured there'd be no sex tonight, with El all bounce-less and limping despite the drugs, but El reached over and moved up against him and kissed him anyway. And Sands pressed back and kissed back and touched back, and the whole combination had its usual effect of making him really horny and at the same time more relaxed than he ever got, and Christ but he needed some of that after the past few days. He really liked the idea of his brain just shutting the fuck up for maybe ten minutes, 'cos it was like he'd been treading the goddamn Grand Canyon in the carpets up there the last week, and he just wanted to sleep without the circling chainsaw buzz in his head.
Damp hair straggling between them, between his fingers as he pulled El in, and El flinched just barely against him with quick breath. He stopped the push, drew his fingers from El's hair, wondering - El's lips intact beneath his tracing tongue, maybe his nose?
He angled the kiss a little more, and El pressed a little deeper.
They didn't bother to undress, opening clothes and pushing them aside, reaching through to the skin beneath.
It was eased back from how it often was, Sands finding the scabs fresh and ridged on El's body, the places the muscles tightened beneath his fingers, and then avoiding them, because there was fuck all erotic about those sorts of bruises and he had something of a vested interest in El keeping his hard-on. El moved slower and less forceful against him, and they curled and rubbed themselves together, hair straying between lips and skin, working each other with hands. He thought about turning El on his back and fucking himself on him, but his thighs still ached after having his ankles strapped to a chair for most of three days, and what they were doing was just fine and didn't need him to dig out the lube.
It took a while, building rhythmic and steady instead of desperate and hurried, but there was nothing bad about sex that lasted. His hand slow on El's cock, skin sliding easy beneath his fingers till El came sticky over him with his lips and tongue touching lightly on Sands'; lost his movement on Sands through it, dragging Sands from slow-fucking lethargy long enough to curse him; gathered himself to grip with a perfect hand, slicker and smoother on him, and Sands came with his mouth over El's collarbone and El's breath damp and close through his hair.
Messy and sticky, and he was too lazy even to think about cleaning up, reaching out to wipe his hand on the sheet down the edge of the bed. The maids didn't give a shit, they'd seen it all twelve hundred times already.
El rolled away afterwards, mattress firm for once under the movement; reached over to click off the light Sands hadn't thought about.
Rolled back in again to touch, shaping deliberately around him, arm sliding over him.
El was instant furnace against him, but Sands ached, and kicking him away would be too much effort.
It was kind of good to know it wasn't just him being (pathetic and clutching) blind and paranoid. That an exhausted and battered Mariachi liked it better having someone else there, someone to cover the drop in his guard.
His T-shirt was wrinkled under him where El had pushed it aside as they moved, the weave of El's pressing into his skin along his back. His jeans hung open, belt buckle touching cool at his waist by El's still-damp hand, and it was easiest to ignore all that and sleep for however long his brain was willing to shut down and let him.