Page 10 of Burn Bag

Fox scoffed out a laugh, punching me in the shoulder. “Well, come on. It has to look like he’s really dead! I mean, to her, anyway.”

That rage inside me boiled over to a new height as I replayed his words over and over in my head.

Fox’s face morphed into confusion as he stepped toward all of us. “Wait, did you guys think Iactuallykilled Cash?” He tossed his head back and howled in laughter. “Man, that’s what you guys are so pissed about? Fucking hilarious, man!”

I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him toward me. “You’d better start talking right fucking now!”

He grabbed my hands and carefully pried them away with a chuckle. “No problemo, mi compadre. See, it’s really not that hard to figure out. At first, I was pissed as hell that Knight took a bullet from Cash. Who wouldn’t be? Am I right?”

When no one answered, he continued.

“Anyway, I stalked Cash to the ends of the earth, watching as he did some of the most unspeakable things, and that’s saying something from a guy like me. So, anyway, I started getting this feeling that someone was watching me. It was really fucking creepy. I startedhiding in garbage cans and dressing like a homeless person just to avoid being spotted. Let me tell you, I really stank.”

“Fox,” I hissed in irritation. “Get to the point.”

“Right, so I never caught anyone watching me, but I knew they were there. Always watching me, always waiting for the moment to pounce. And then I’m pretty sure someone snuck some drugs into my food because I started hallucinating and acting crazy.”

That was a stretch. Fox hallucinating and acting crazy was just another Tuesday.

“What did you hallucinate?”

“Man, I could have sworn I saw Cash praying. And his old man was there, and he was crying. Ooh, and then some old bastard hugged them both. It was really fucking weird.”

“Someone hugged them? How?” I asked curiously.

He snorted in laughter. “Like, an actual fucking hug. But how insane is that, right? Who would hug the two of them?”

He had a point there.

“So, that’s about the time I started to think that maybe there was more to the story,” he said with crazy eyes. “That maybe, someone was drugging me to make methinkI was seeing these things. Like, it was all an illusion, you know what I’m saying?”

The problem was, Fox was crazy on the best of days, so figuring out if any of this really happened was impossible. Not to mention that he was in one of his states over Knight nearly being killed. Maybe he accidentally drugged himself with magic mushrooms.

“Right,” Red said, “So, you saw some weird shit and then you decided to blow up Cash?”

“Ooh, that’s the good part,” Fox said excitedly. “So, there I was, lying in my garbage pile as the rain beat down on me. And this mouse came over and got in my face, and he started whispering information to me.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face, wondering where the fuck he was going with this. I was starting to think Fox had imagined the whole fucking thing in a state of mental distress.

“And what did the mouse say?” Dash asked.

“That’s the best part,” Fox grinned widely. “He said that Cash needed to be blown up to set the stage.”

“What stage?” Eli pressed.

Fox snorted. “Dude, it was a mouse. I don’t think he understood English.”

“So, you didn’t ask,” I muttered. “You just took the word of the mouse.”

“Well, when you put it like that, maybe I should have asked him a question or two, but he was really convincing, you know?”

“Why?” Red snapped. “Did his squeaks follow a pattern that sounded like the munching of Funyuns?”

“No, but how cool would that have been?”

“Fox,” I snapped.

“Yeah?”

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