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rotated the leg down and settled Jazz’s heel on Billy’s own thigh, keeping it elevated a bit.
    “You go after that bullet? That what you did? Damn, boy. You got guts, that’s for sure. Could have made it worse.”
    “Cleaned it,” Jazz whispered. “Bleach.”
    Billy sighed expansively. “Just when you had me all impressed… Bleach don’t clean out infection. Waste of time.”
    Whistling a tuneless little ditty that Jazz didn’t recognize, Billy pawed around in the satchel and began laying out instruments. Jazz couldn’t stand to look at them.
    “This Morales…” Billy mused, as if chatting about the weather over tea and cake. “She wanted me dead, didn’t she? Tracked me halfway across Kansas and through part of Oklahoma, back in the day.”
    “Hand-in-Glove.”
    “Yep. She came close, too. Real close. But I was closer. Walked right past her in a 7-Eleven outside Wichita. Tipped my hat to her and held the door, all gentlemanlike.”
    Well, that was mighty nice of you
, Jazz thought, but did not have the energy to say.
    “She was…” Billy shivered with a tiny frisson of delight. “I can’t tell you how much I had to fight myself not to take her, Jasper. Good thing I’m a man of strong will and good character.”
    The instruments clinked. Billy was organizing things, humming under his breath now. Jazz wet his lips and took a deep breath.
    “Who did you make me cut?” he whispered.
    Billy leaned in close. “What? Can’t hear you.”
    Jazz licked his lips again. “Who. Did you. Make me. Cut?”
    Billy’s expression went blank.
    “Don’t pull that on me,” Jazz told him. “When I was a kid. I have memories of it. Of you telling me to cut someone. And I did it, didn’t I? Which of your victims was it? Which one?”
    “Never made you do nothin’,” Billy said. “Now, did I—let’s see—
guide
you in the proper technique, once you started the cuttin’? I surely did. I care, see? But I never suggested it. Never put that knife in your hand.”
    “I wouldn’t have done it without—”
    “Hush, boy. Dear Old Dad’s gotta think.”
    Despite himself, Jazz went quiet. Right now, his only hope for surviving was Billy. Strangely enough—or maybe not so strangely—Jazz felt safe. Secure. He knew that Billy wouldn’t hurt him, knew that Billy would do everything in his power to keep him alive.
    Just like any other father. God, that’s bizarre
.
    Billy probed the wound with a clinical air that did nothing to blunt the pain his touch caused. Jazz tried holding hisbreath against it, but he had to exhale eventually. With the exhalation came fiery threads crawling up his leg.
    He craned his neck. “Holy shit, Billy—”
    Billy slapped him once across the face. “Language, boy!”
    His father returned to examining the wound, separating the edges with a hemostat. Jazz watched in sick fascination as his thigh opened. Blood welled up.
    “Nothing major hit. Lotta little bleeders in there, though. Hell.” Billy grabbed one of the plastic jugs of water from the storage unit and splashed some water on Jazz’s leg. The blood cleared away, and he pried open the hole a bit more. If not for the look of studied concentration on Billy’s face, Jazz might have thought his father was enjoying this.
    “How bad is it?” he asked.
    “Hush. Daddy’s thinkin’.”
    More blood welled up, obscuring the wound again.
    “No way to get to that bullet,” Billy announced. “Not with what we got here. Not without a proper irrigation setup and more clamps than I got in that kit and maybe some extra hands.”
    Great
.
    “Just gonna have to sew you up. Stop the bleeding.”
    “Leave the bullet
in
?”
    “Don’t go panicking,” Billy said. “I’m gonna sew you up good and tight. That bullet ain’t gonna do any more harm just sittin’ there.” He rummaged in his bag and came up with a curved needle trailing thin blue filament, which he held using something that looked like a pair of blunt-nosed scissors.