Free Box by John Locke Page A

says.
    Faith looks at me.
    “Get out of my house,” she says. “We’re through!”
    “Neither of you are goin’ anywhere,” the woman says. “Except in a pine box.”
    The man picks the door up and props it against the frame to block the view from the road. Not that anyone would be driving this remote stretch of road in the first place.
    “Sit down,” he says.
    I frown. “Why?”
    “So I can shoot you, you dumb shit.”
    “Look,” I say. “I realize I didn’t stop to help you a few minutes ago. But don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
    “Am I, motherfucker?”
    “It’s just an observation,” I say.
    “Shoot him where he stands, Cletus,” the woman says.
    He turns on her.
    “What did you just call me?”
    “Sorry. But when you kill ’em it won’t matter I used your real name.”
    “What if I was just plannin’ to scare ’em, and steal their money?”
    “I didn’t say your last name was Renfro, you dumb shit.”
    Faith and I look at each other.
    Cletus cocks his gun.
    His companion says, “Wait. Get his money first.”
    “Why? It’ll be easier to go through his pockets when he’s dead.”
    “You might get blood on your clothes. Ever seen CSI?”
    “Of course I have. I aint’ stupid.”
    “Then get the money first.”
    “You get his money. I’ll hold the gun on him.”
    While they’re sorting out who’s going to do what, Faith flings something at them that explodes into a giant ball of smoke.
    They scream, cover their eyes, and fall to the floor, shrieking.
    What the fuck?
    The gun hits the floor, discharges, and shoots the woman in the leg. Blood spews from her wound like water from a sprinkler head, which tells me the bullet lacerated her blood vessels. She’ll be dead within a minute. Faith makes a move for the gun, but the woman finds it first, and starts shooting blindly, while writhing in pain, until she’s out of bullets.
    Five shots, five direct hits.
    All into Cletus’s body.
    Faith and I look at each other again.
    “I’m not cleanin’ this mess up by myself,” she says.

27.
    “WHAT THE FUCK was in that smoke thing you threw at them?”
    “My home-made blindin’ powder.”
    “Where was it?”
    “I just killed two people,” she says. “Who were about to kill us.”
    “So?”
    “So this is what you want to know? Where I keep my powder?”
    “Yes.”
    “In my dress.”
    “Where in your dress?”
    “In the back.”
    She turns around and shows me a pocket in the back of her dress. I’m a little concerned to see another packet in there.
    “What sort of person carries around bags of powder that can blind people?”
    “The sort who lives in the middle of nowhere and has a business to protect.”
    “Have you ever used it before?”
    “Not the permanent one.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I make two kinds of powder. Bad and worse.”
    “What’s in the worse one?”
    “Soot, seeds and dust.”
    I give her a look. “I don’t think so.”
    She smiles. Then says, “That’s all it is. Soot, seeds and dust. Ask me what kind.”
    “What kind?”
    “One-third soot from a wood fire, one-third ground up ghost pepper seeds, one-third glass dust.”
    “What’s ghost pepper?”
    “Extract of Naga Jolokia chili peppers.”
    “I’m not sure you’re pronouncing that correctly.”
    “Does it really matter?”
    “Not really. You get those around here?”
    “I buy ’em from a customer runs the Fire Festival in Albuquerque.”
    “The Fire Festival?”
    “It’s an annual chili pepper event.”
    According to Callie Carpenter, the assassin, Naga Jolokia is one of the hottest chili peppers in the world. When distilled into a powder it registers two million plus on the Scoville heat index, which makes it more potent than the pepper spray used by police. But when you add ground glass to the mix? And soot?
    Holy shit!
    Those components attack not only the eyes, but the lungs as well. Faith’s little smoke bomb could have killed both intruders on its