***

The line of people at the Lubbock City Police Station in Texas stretched out the door. Dozens of armed Texans were holding the restraints of their Southwestern captives. Once inside the police doors, the former United States citizens fleeing from California, Arizona, and New Mexico were being readied to be sent back to the now exiled territories.

The officer working the front desk of the station was buried behind stacks of documents outlining the personal information of each immigrant trying to sneak across the Texas border, along with the accomplices helping them. Most of them were family members just trying to help get their kids, grandparents, cousins, uncles, or other loved ones out of the mess that was the Southwest.

The chaos of balancing the growing impatience of the line in front of her and the continued ringing of the phone was making her head spin.

“Chuck!” the officer called.

Her voice wasn’t able to penetrate the storm of voices from officers booking criminals, detectives interviewing suspects, and pleas of innocence from everyone who wasn’t wearing a badge. She stood up and cupped her hands around her mouth.

“CHUCK!”

A short-haired, mustached, pot-bellied detective with a mustard stain on his beige tie popped up from his desk with a piece of salami hanging out of his mouth.

“What?” Chuck asked.

“Got a bounty hunter here says he knows you.”

The bounty hunter wore a wide-brimmed black cowboy hat with a rattlesnake hide wrapped around the front. The heels of his alligator boots clicked against the laminate floor. He wore jeans with a knife sheath strapped to his right leg. A white t-shirt was hidden by his Rothco Soft Shell Tactical M-65 jacket.

The bounty hunter kept his head tilted low, only allowing the people around him to see the stubble running along his jawline and chin. The methodical clack of his boots ended once he arrived at Chuck’s desk.

“I want my money, Chuck.”

“Terry, listen. You got the reward money. It’s the same for everybody.”

With one fluid motion, Terry pulled a blade from the sheath on the side of his leg and slammed the tip into Chuck’s desk. The noise silenced the rest of the station and caused a few of the officers nearby to draw their pistols.

“Drop the knife!” the officers shouted.

Chuck started to tremble, and the fat under his chin wobbled along with the rest of him. He looked to his fellow officers and put his hands up. He gave a nervous grin.

“It’s okay, everyone. It’s just a joke. He’s joking,” Chuck said, laughing.

Terry released his grip on the knife, but the blade remained vertical. The officers around him slowly lowered their pistols. The conversation in the room started to pick back up.

“Keep your friend in line, Chuck,” one of the officers said.

“Yeah, sorry,” Chuck answered.

Chuck stood up, ushering Terry into an interrogation room where they could talk. The one-way glass wall was to the left of the entrance, and a small table with four chairs were the room’s only contents. Once Terry was inside, Chuck followed and closed the door behind him.

“Jesus H. Christ, are you crazy?” Chuck asked. “You can’t do that in the middle of a police station. Especially in a climate like this!”

“I brought in four illegals this morning. It’s one thousand dollars a head. The deposit in my account only registered two thousand. You’re two grand short, Chucky.”

“Look, since the Mexicans attacked the other day, funds are being shifted to military applications. They lowered the price of illegal bounties to five hundred this morning because of it. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t give me my money.”

Terry grabbed Chuck by the collar and slammed him against the wall. It was the first time Chuck got a good look at Terry’s eyes. They were dark green. More black than green.

“Look, I don’t have the money, but I did just get another notice for some fugitives that escaped border patrol during the Mexican attack,” Chuck said. “One of them was ex-military, which still gives a reward of five thousand, plus the extra five hundred from the girl he’s traveling with.”

Terry increased the pressure on Chuck’s throat until the cop’s cheeks turned a light shade of purple then released him. Chuck collapsed on all fours, gasping and hacking. Finally, after a few moments collecting himself on the ground, he rose and opened the door.

Chuck led Terry back to his desk and shuffled through the disorganized papers on top. He checked the drawers, then pulled out two sheets of paper and set them down for Terry to see.

“There. One female, aged thirty-seven, one male, aged thirty-three,” Chuck said.

Terry snatched the papers up and examined them with those dark-green eyes. He flipped through the pages, taking in every detail he could. Once finished, he tossed the papers back onto the desk and collected his knife.

Some of the officers kept eyeballing him on his way out, and once Terry was out the front door, Chuck practically fainted into his chair.

One of the other detectives leaned over to him. “Who the hell was that?”

“That was two hundred pounds of vicious, bloodhound, tracking terror,” Chuck answered.

“Bounty hunter?”

“Yeah.”

“God, those bastards have been coming out of the woodwork since the government started offering those rewards to catch folks trying to sneak over the border.”

“Yeah, well, this guy has been doing it for a long time. I feel sorry for these two.”

Chuck looked at Brooke and Eric’s pictures, provided by the DMV’s photos from their driver’s licenses.

“Terry always gets his mark,” Chuck said.