Dan laughed out of the corner of his mouth. “Okay, fine.”
He gave me a cigarette, his other hand never straying. I held mine out for the Zippo lighter and he gave me that too.
I really hoped Gus was right about Coffee Mate being extremely flammable, and that the theory extended to all non-dairy creamers, not just the name brands. If he was wrong, we’d be dead. But if I sat there and did anything else, we’d be dead too. The minute either of us would reach for our guns, he’d know and pull the trigger. He had the upper hand. I had the lower cut.
I started playing with the flame, running my thumb over the wheel again and again. “So you don’t know what Javi’s plan could be? I thought you were good friends.”
Dan stiffened. “We are not good friends. I admire him. He’s done a lot for us and he’s stayed loyal, unlike Travis.” So much animosity seethed off of his words. I knew what had happened to Dan’s wife now. “Travis knows how hated he is. I think he’s even a threat to the Zetas. No one just switches sides like that for no reason. He has people following him everywhere he goes and, as you would think, he doesn’t leave his house all that often. Just to the market on Saturdays where he walks around like he’s Marlon Brando.”
I made the flame dance back and forth. Dan’s one hand stayed under the table. With his other he put a cigarette to his mouth.
I tilted my head to look at Gus. His face was drawn together, looking incredibly sad. It must have hurt, what he was realizing about his friend.
“Hey Gus, would you mind passing me that non-dairy creamer over there.” I nodded at the container.
He swallowed hard and handed it to me.
“Our coffee too strong for you?” Dan asked.
“Yes, quite.” I poured some of the powder in my coffee and then screwed the lid off of it. I held the container in my hand. Dan was watching me, puzzled.
Finally he said, “Checking for poison?”
I shook my head. “Want your lighter back?”
He frowned but nodded and put his cigarette between his lips. I reached across to give him back the lighter and said, “Perhaps Gus and I should be going. We seem to be taking up a lot of your time.” I wanted to get this show rolling.
His eyes flicked to Gus and back to me. His hands grasped the lighter but I didn’t let go. I stared deep at him and gave him a little smile. “You wouldn’t happen to have a gun under the table would you?”
The corner of his mouth hitched up. “You’re pretty observant for an American. What gang are you from?”
“I’m a tattoo artist.”
“Dan,” Gus said in a long breath. “It’s me. I didn’t come here to cause trouble, you know this. I only want to know where Travis is.”
Dan avoided his friend’s eyes and kept them on me and the lighter I was refusing to give up. Not now, not yet. “You want to stop something that should happen. I can’t let you do that. You are my friend but my loyalty to my family comes first.”
“Revenge over love,” I said.
“Yes, though not that poetic.”
He adjusted the gun under the table. I chose that moment to let go of the lighter. He leaned back in his chair and brought it under his cigarette.
“I’m sorry,” he said, flicking the Zippo.
Here went nothing and everything at the same time. “No, I’m sorry.”
I flung the contents of the non-dairy creamer out into his face just as the flame produced. The particles hung suspended in air for one moment, a cloud of white that enveloped his face, before the flame interacted with them.
It went up in an orange blaze, the heat and flames making me fall backward out of my seat. Dan was screaming, his face, hair, everything, ignited in a horrible fireball that had momentarily stretched to the roof before simmering back down into a puff of curdling black smoke.
There was no time to take it all in. I scrambled to my feet and ran out of Dan’s house, Gus right behind me.
I got behind the wheel this time and the moment Gus was in the car, I started peeling backward through the dense sand. Once the GTO hit the solid dirt, I spun it around with a hit to the E-break and bolted forward. We bounced and pitched and crunched down that pale dirt road, the car feeling alive beneath my hands, willing to take us anywhere we wanted, as fast as it wanted.
Gus wasn’t driving anymore.
We didn’t say a word to each other until we finally whipped out onto the main paved street that would take us back to the highway, overtaking a cart pulled by donkeys as we did so, chickens squawking in our wake.
“I’m sorry, Gus,” I told him, my eyes darting to the rear-view mirror to make sure we weren’t being followed. I don’t know how badly Dan was burned, if he was still alive with only minor redness, or if he was rolling on the floor suffering as his skin melted away. I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t.
“He would have killed us,” he said gruffly, his attention turned to the window. I noticed he was wringing his hands together.