Bones Omnibus Read Online Free PDF Page B

presence and the fact that Webster was still conscious.
    Now that the Golen meet had gone off without a hitch, Monster figured he owed the brothers a visit. He moved through the fire-lit field, nodding to the men who were blowing off steam for real now that the money had come through. As he reached the medic’s, nicknamed Ratso’s, all-weather tent, Monster plucked four beers out of a nearby ice chest. He popped the tab on the first as he entered, planning to hand it to Webster.
    But when he pushed aside the tent flap, he found Ace and the medic already drinking, a somber pall over the proceedings. Webster’s body was stretched out on the ground, two blood-soaked towels covering much of his face, save a single eye staring blankly at the tent roof.
    “What happened?” Monster asked, sipping Webster’s beer.
    “Subdural hematoma,” Ratso, a man who Monster thought resembled more the Cowardly Lion from
The Wizard of Oz
than a rodent, replied. “Bleeding in his brain, impossible to detect, really, without opening his skull. Brain herniated due to the pressure, and it killed him. If that was the case, however, there’s no telling how much was left to save.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Hematomas can crush brain tissue, cut off circulation, limit the oxygen flow around the brain. He could’ve already been brain dead, and we wouldn’t have known it.”
    Monster’s eyes shot to Ace. If he thought his kid brother might’ve been saved if taken to a hospital, the incident could sow the seeds of animosity. But when Ace met Monster’s eyes, he simply shook his head.
    “He wasn’t coming back from that, Monster, so I’ve got no beef with you or anybody else,” Ace admitted, raising his hands. “To tell the truth, I doubt he’d have wanted to keep going on like that. I appreciate you bringing him back, respecting me as his brother, but this is on him. Not you, not Ratso, not me.”
    Monster acknowledged this by soberly raising his beer.
    “He was the first motherfucker to the door, ready to kick ass,” Monster pronounced. “Not naming names, but some of the guys were shitting themselves knowing what kind of guns Ferris had in there. Not Web. He was a Marine about it.”
    Ace nodded, patting his dead brother on the shoulder.
    “Thanks for saying as much, Monster. The one thing I know for certain is that he wouldn’t want to be buried in the city. When Luca died and we did that funeral pyre for him, I remember Web being like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want for me.’ You think that’d be…”
    Ace’s train of thought was interrupted by shouts from outside. Monster grabbed for his sidearm. But then Doyle burst into the tent, a silly grin plastered across his face.
    “You ain’t gonna believe this!”
    Bitch had limped unseen into the camp. Her front left leg buckled as she stepped, the result of a poor landing moments before. Not that she knew this, but her left carpal bone was broken in two places, her metacarpus in one. But none of this would stop her now that the scent she’d been following for much of the past day hung so heavy in the air.
    “Shit, is that a rat?” someone asked, drunkenly heaving a rock in her direction.
    She’d stopped and tensed. When the rock landed safely more than two yards away, she kept steadily moving toward the bonfires, tracking the elusive scent.
    As her features came into view, one of the men, a bullet-headed bruiser nicknamed Zig-Zag, recognized her immediately.
    “Holy shit!” he practically shrieked, a drunken grin spreading over his face. “That’s that bitch from last night!”
    No one was quite sure what to make of Zig-Zag’s outburst, but he was adamant.
    “I was next to Webster when he took the shot to the face,” he explained. “The dog was hauling ass down the hall. See? She even got winged on the ear.”
    “Are you serious?” someone else asked, peering through the darkness at the newcomer.
    “Hell, yeah! Same damn dog.”
    “You mean she followed you