Rescue From Planet Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Whatever looks worth keeping.”
    “The driver has a nice watch.…”
    Coyote already had the gold Rolex on his wrist. And wore the Texan’s Ray-Bans.
    Jolie held up a box of Trojans and rattled a prescription bottle of Cialis. “The guy wears a wedding ring. What makes me think he wasn’t on the way to see his wife?”
    “These?” I showed her a pair of banana hammocks—one in red satin and the other in gold lamé.
    She winced and shut her eyes. “I’m getting a visual of that Texan that I don’t need.”
    Coyote snatched the underwear from my hand. “No time for fooling around.” He shoved both man panties into his pocket. Now I was getting a visual I didn’t need.
    “Now we go.” Coyote left the car and proceeded up the hill for a moment before stopping to address me. “Hey, you owe me money.”
    I didn’t but so what as far as Coyote was concerned. Hint that you might spring him a few bills and he’d turn that offer into an ironclad debt. I handed him the $320 I had lifted from the Texan’s wallet.
    “I was expecting more but thanks anyway, ese . I know you’re good for the rest.” He folded the bills and slipped them down the front of his pants. He patted where he’d just stashed the money. “Give the old lady a reason to go treasure hunting.”
    “More like salvage diving,” Jolie quipped. She put her pistol holsters and jacket on.
    I stuffed whatever of mine I could fit into the pockets of my jacket—some makeup, contacts, spare ammo. The rest—including Jolie’s fancy-ass motorcycle helmet—we left in the car.
    Jolie and I hustled to catch up with Coyote.
    She asked, “Where are we going?”
    “Away from here.”
    She turned to me. “Is he always this talkative?”
    “He’s a real chatterbox today.” I threw a regretful glance back to the forlorn Porsche. What remained of its sleek lines was covered in dust and scratches, the high-performance wheels mired in the sand, and the trunk gaped open with clothes and luggage spilling out. The poor car looked like I felt after a bad weekend.
    Jolie’s initial dose of amnesia enzymes had wiped clean the driver’s memory from the moment before he met her, and the pleasure enzymes we had pumped into him during our feeding had kept his mind blank of everything but pleasant dreams.
    “What about the driver?” Jolie asked.
    Coyote waved off her concern. “Somebody will come by tomorrow morning. They’ll take care of him. Gabachos get lost around here all the time.”
    We continued up the rise and past the towers. Jolie and I marched along in graceless un-vampiric steps across the uneven, hardscrabble ground and its checkerboard patches of wickedly thorny plants. As bad as the washboard road had been, at least it was a defined trail through this desert wilderness.
    Jolie halted to pick cholla spines out of her pants. “Coyote, how far are we walking?”
    “Not far. I got a ride.”
    Out here? But he sounded confident and I wanted to believe him.
    We wandered around outcroppings and cactus, down and up dips and reached the crest. Looking across the reverse side, I saw clusters of piñon, scrub oak, and juniper following the edges of a shallow gully.
    Coyote slid down a steep narrow wash to the gully floor and into the shadows beneath the trees. Jolie and I followed him, our asses bumping over rocks and broken sticks. Once at the bottom, I noticed that something shifted ahead, rustling branches and tearing shrubs. Coyote continued straight to the source of the noise.
    It was a little burro hitched with a frayed sisal rope to the branch of an oak. The small beast placidly chewed buffalo grass and twitched its ears at our approach. The remainder of the rope had been knotted into a bridle and reins.
    “This is Rayo.” Coyote stroked the burro’s neck and loosened the rope from the branch.
    “Means lightning,” I explained to Jolie.
    The burro’s withers were almost at my waist, meaning Rayo was small for a pack animal. Coyote grasped