HARDCORE: Storm MC(91)

And to her credit, Missy really had tried hard in school. But she'd hated P.E., math and science had bored her senseless, she'd never gotten into reading that much, the kids in drama class had seemed self-absorbed and silly, and she'd never felt creative enough to write anything worthwhile in English. When a high school guidance counselor had asked Missy what she wanted to do with her life, she honestly couldn't give him an answer. There was no career that seemed like something Missy could do for the rest of her life without going insane from tedium.



So she'd allowed life to carry her forward like a surfer on a wave, and now she found herself 24 years old, unfulfilled, and cleaning up after well-meaning but oblivious motorheads just like her mother had.



Missy finished cleaning the final plate in the sink, then drained the water and wiped her hands. She decided that when Cain got out of the bathroom, she didn't feel like being around for his rotten attitude. She'd had enough for one evening. If he wanted to be left alone so badly, he could spend the rest of the night taking care of himself, and maybe he'd have a slightly less hostile tone the next morning.



I know Hunter wanted me watching his every move, Missy thought, but tough shit. He can come over and babysit the bastard himself if he's so fucking concerned.



She went to the hallway and pushed on a partially-opened door, hoping to find a room to spend the night in. What she found was a bedroom—or at least, that had been its intended purpose. Now it appeared to be a storage space for whatever random crap Cain decided he didn't want or need anymore. There were messy piles of old clothes, broken appliances, busted furniture, and cardboard boxes that were falling apart. From the look of it, she doubted Cain had even been in this room in years.



Missy stood in the doorway for several long moments, weighing the relative merits of sleeping in her car instead. It was tempting. But ultimately, she knew she'd have a better chance of making sure Cain didn't try to sneak out if she stayed in the house.



“Sneak out,” she thought derisively. This is what it's come to. He's like some dumb teenage boy who's been grounded, and thanks to Hunter, now I'm the nagging mother who has to keep him from creeping off in the night to hang out with his delinquent friends. Wonderful. Fuck my fucking life, I swear to God.



She stepped in and shut the door behind her, grabbing a handful of old shirts. She used them to dust off a decent area of the floor, then sat down and pulled off her shoes. There was nothing in the room that looked clean enough to use as a pillow, and she couldn't bring herself to take off her shirt and fold it up under her head in case Cain came barging in.



So she rested her head against the hardwood floor and shut her eyes, trying to clear her mind of her mother's tired, lined face, and the disappointment she knew she'd find there if her mother were still alive.



It took hours before she settled into a fitful and uneasy sleep.





Chapter 16



Gaspar Hernandez



On the other side of Micanaw, past the Teepee Motel and near the border that separated the town from neighboring Braintree, there was a wooded area where the locals hunted deer when they were in season. As a result, the grass and branches there were often flecked with old dried blood, and its rich black soil always seemed to carry the weight of death repeating itself upon it, autumn after autumn.



In a clearing in the center stood a dilapidated trailer that looked abandoned. Indeed, in the brief periods when men with boots and shotguns came stomping through the woods in search of game, it remained empty.



But during the rest of the year, it was where Gaspar Hernandez made his home.



When he'd lived down in Juarez, Gaspar had seen the gaudy mansions the cartel bosses lived in—gilded fortresses crammed full of expensive works of art, trophies from rare animals, and antiques that had originally decorated the palaces of Europe. He knew that one of the reasons the bosses tended to surround themselves with such excess was to inspire their flunkies. The message was clear: “The whole world is yours for the taking! Work hard, stay, loyal, and you too could live like a king and afford to indulge your every whim!”



Like most soldiers in the Barros Cartel, Gaspar had been raised in poverty and had tried to escape it by serving in the Mexican Army, only to find himself going hungry as often as he had before. He liked his new life much better—always having money in his pocket, never having to worry about where his next meal would come from.



Still, unlike the others, he'd never been impressed by the bosses' vulgar displays of wealth. He hadn't joined the cartel to become some kind of bureaucrat, dripping with jewels and surrounded by sycophants.



No, Gaspar had joined them simply because he was a man who adored violence in all its forms, and he knew that the cartel would give him plenty of opportunities to explore his passion as long as he remained faithful to them.