by Loki Renard
A dark chuckle proceeded Tex as he entered her bedroom and went down on one knee, peering under the bed. “Come on out from under there. I'm not going to hurt you.”
“That's what someone who was going to hurt me would say,” Zora argued, buying herself a little time.
“You can come out from under there yourself, or I can drag you out. Your choice.”
Zora was barely listening to him, she was rustling through her backpack, looking for something she was sure she'd stashed inside it. There was so much loose cash cluttering up the thing it was difficult to find anything else, but her fingers eventually closed around the smooth butt of a loaded pistol. She clicked the safety off and pointed it at him. “Leave me alone.”
“I can't do that.” His expression had not changed, and even though she was viewing him through beer goggles and at a very weird angle, she found that odd. Most people got at least a little perturbed when you pointed a loaded weapon at them.
“Go away,” she said, waggling the nose of the pistol at him. “Get in your nice car and go.”
His expression remained impassive, his voice calm and low and patient. “Come out from there Zora.”
“I'll shoot you! I'll shoot you right between the eyes.”
“No you won't.”
“How can you be so sure of that?”
“Because you're trying to bargain with me. You don't want to shoot me. If you wanted to shoot me you would have done it al...
BANG!
Zora discharged the weapon at Tex, disproving his statement. The bullet missed him by a fraction of an inch, slamming into the floorboard just in front of his knee. “I almost made you a cripple,” she declared triumphantly. “You still want to argue with me?”
“You didn't shoot me.” It was his turn to move quickly, he reached for the hand holding the gun and managed to catch Zora's wrist. It was enough of a grip to allow him to yank her out from under the bed in one strong movement. She fired the gun again, but the bullet didn't go anywhere near Tex, it hit the wall and kept going.
“Cut that out,” he growled, wresting the gun away from her. “Cut it out and calm down already.”
Zora didn't have much choice but to calm down, he had her pinned on the dusty floor, her cheek pressed against the rough floorboards, one hand held behind her back to stop her struggling.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Two questions that would have been far more useful asked up front if only she'd had the presence of mind to ask them before diving under the bed like a frightened cat.
His voice rumbled above her, sounding like he had a bunch of gravel stuck in his throat. “My name's Tex, and I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?”
“About Savage.”
“I don't know anyone called that,” she lied instinctively.
His grip on her tightened. “Don't lie to me.”
“You're lying to me,” she argued.
“Well maybe I am and maybe I'm not, but I'm the one on top and the one with the gun and that should probably count for something,” he tried reasoning with her.
“I don't care,” Zora growled defiantly. “I'm not telling you anything.”
Tex hauled her up onto her feet, lifting her into the air as if she barely weighed a thing. He was a lot stronger than he looked. “Here's what's going to happen,” he said, laying down the law. “We're going to go to the kitchen, sit down and have some coffee and a talk Nobody is going to shoot anyone. We're going to play this out nice and friendly.”
Zora shook her head emphatically. “I'm not having coffee with you and I'm not telling you anything.”
“Listen,” Tex said, turning her so that she was forced to face him and his mustache. “Savage is my friend too, okay? He's gone missing. I need your help to find him. Now can you do that for me?”
Zora nodded slowly. “Maybe.”
“Good. Now let's get you sobered up a bit.”
Zora was still scowling, but she followed Tex out to the kitchen and sat in a chair, watching as he put the kettle on the stove. She didn't trust a word he was saying, but he definitely knew about Savage and he knew about her and if he knew that meant that other people might know, other people who might shoot first and ask questions later.
“How do you know Savage?” She tested his knowledge a little bit.
“We first met on Desert Storm,” Tex said, leaning back against the counter with his arms folded over his chest. “He was special ops. I was intelligence.”
“Why do you want him now?”
“Like I said, he's gone missing.”
She shrugged. “Maybe he's just been sent somewhere. They'll do that to you.”
“Maybe,” Tex said. “But I have pretty high clearance and there's no record of any missions. And I got this in the mail.” He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a small white envelope and tossed it on the table in front of Zora.
She picked it up, opened it and squinted at the contents. There was a slip of paper with her name, her address, and a symbol she didn't recognize.
“What's this?” She pointed to a circle with two horizontal arrows through it.
Tex chuckled as if something was funny. “It's a hobo symbol. Means hit the road quick.”
“So he sent you after me,” she mumbled.
“He did. You must be special to him.”
Zora felt his keen eyes boring into her head. Tex was making a good job of playing the concerned friend, but she could sense danger so thick she could almost smell it. The man standing before her was no friend of Savage's – and he was no friend of hers either.
Chapter Two
Ever the model captive, Zora sat in the passenger seat next to Tex snacking casually on cheesy chips they'd picked up at one of their stops for gas. She'd been surprised when the evil bastard had been nice enough to get them for her. She mentally called him an evil bastard because he'd handcuffed her to a railing in the car, which seemed to have been added for the express purpose of handcuffing people to it. It stood to reason that only evil people had their cars modified to facilitate casual prisoner transport.
“You're very calm now,” he noted in his low, growling voice that made everything he said sound dreadfully dramatic.
Zora looked out the window. The people in the cars whizzing by them on the other side of the road would have had no idea at all that they were passing an abduction in process. There was a certain elegance to the entire affair that she had to admire.
“I guess,” she replied at length. Truth be told, part of her was glad just to be out of Iron Horse. The fact that she was being abducted was almost incidental. It was hardly her first go around with incarceration, Savage had been the man to pop her kidnap victim cherry and everybody knows that there's no time quite like your first time. Besides, she'd already tried an alcohol-fueled hysterical tire squealing escape and it hadn't worked. She was sobering up quite quickly thanks to copious amounts of coffee and junk food and had come to the conclusion that it was probably best to go with the flow until there was an opportunity to make a better, less wildly obtrusive escape.
“You know where he is?” Tex tried a casually probing question, evidently hoping she was dimwitted enough to give Savage away in general conversation.
“I have no fucking clue.” She swore languidly, with no great passion or malice. She should have been terribly upset with Tex, but she found herself feeling rather numb instead. She theorized that it was because people are only capable of feeling so much emotion. The first time something terrible happens they tend to react quickly and with a sense of outrage, but the more often terrible things happen, the lesser the reaction. Maybe she was just at a point in her life where being kidnapped by a strange man just wasn't enough to evoke sustained panic. Or maybe the cheesy chips were just really good.
Tex frowned slightly. He was driving with one hand on the steering wheel, the back of his index and forefinger against his lips. His window was cracked a few inches and the wind strea
ming into the vehicle caught the longer strands of his dark hair and swept them back in a dashing sort of way. “Do you know what he does?” He asked, referring, presumably, to Savage.
“Hardly,” Zora snorted. It was sort of a lie, but not entirely a lie. She really didn't know what Savage did, especially not these days.
He glanced over at her. “Do you know what I do?”
“Kidnap people and lie to them, I'm sure for some wildly noble cause,” Zora muttered, fishing around in the bottom of the bag for the little crunchy bits with all the flavoring on them.
“If you know I'm lying, you obviously know more than you're letting on,” he deduced from her insightful reply.
“Why? Because I can tell you're not really a friend?” She jangled her cuffs. “Doesn't take a genius to work that out.”
Tex smirked unrepentantly. “Better to be safe than sorry. I don't want you running off.”
“Sure,” Zora shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat.”
He laughed. “You really don't care, do you?”
“Does that ruin the fantasy?” A little snark slipped into Zora's voice. “Would it be better if I begged you to let me go?”
He raised a brow at her, just one brow, a rather grim brow. “Let's not let a pleasant afternoon turn into something... less pleasant.”
“Is that a threat? Because if it is, it's got to be in the running for vaguest threat ever.”
“Zora...” Her name rumbled out of his throat in a threatening dark purr, which she blithely ignored.
“I'm just trembling in my boots at the idea of possible unpleasantness,” she chortled, tossing the empty packaging onto the floor. “I'm hungry,” she then declared.
“You just finished eating.”
“Well I'm still hungry,” she insisted, attempting to cross her arms over her chest, but failing on account of the fact that one shackled wrist was unavailable for full body pouting.
“We can stop at McDonald's.”
“I want proper food.”
“Do you really think you're in a position to be making demands?”
That question might have cowed a less experienced captive and made them think about their situation, but not Zora. “Sure, why not? You want me for something. I doubt it's to observe the effects of saturated fats on middle aged women.”
Tex shook his head at the road in an expression of frustration. She was probably being a lot more difficult than he wanted her to be. Good. She decided to add insult to injury by taunting him gently. “Oh I know,” she said brightly. “I could tell you that Savage is certain to come rescue me now that you've abducted me from my glamorous home. Would that help?”
He shot her a dark look. “Is it true?”
“Probably not,” she said. “I haven't heard from him in a long time. Not exactly his type anymore.” She poked a finger at the spare tire around her waist and had to keep from giggling at the confused expression on Tex's face. Whatever he'd thought she was, she wasn't turning out to be that at all. With any luck he'd come to the conclusion that she was a waste of time and drop her off somewhere along the road, hopefully alive.
“You wanted to help him though. When I told you he was in trouble, you were interested,” Tex kept probing.
“Sure,” she agreed. “What woman wouldn't help a dodgy man find her cheating ex?”
His brow furrowed all the more and Zora knew her plan was working.
“He cheated on you?”
“Oh yeah, ages ago with some girl he worked with.” Zora was starting to get into the swing of the story. It wasn't hard to conjure up feelings of abandonment and betrayal. “They're probably married with three kids by now.” She added a bitter laugh for good measure.
“Is that so?”
“Yep. It is so. Can we go to Red Lobster?”
He went with the change of subject. “A fan of seafood?”
“It's alright.”
Tex tried a charming smile. It worked for the most part. “How about somewhere a little more intimate?”
“No thanks,” Zora shook her head emphatically. “Not a fan of intimacy.”
“Now that I don't believe.” In spite of her carefully casual, one might even have said semi-detached facade, his suave chuckle still made her heart skip a beat.
* * *
Melissa wiped the bar down with a tatty rag, which, like the rest of Iron Horse, had seen better days. The patrons of the Iron Horse, the bar being named after the township, weren't exactly discerning types with minds for high hygiene. As long as they got a good draught in a glass that was more or less clear they didn't complain.
It had been a good day at the bar, all sorts of excitement had been taking place in the little town and she couldn't wait for the evening influx of patrons so she could share her observations and theories. It had just gone five o'clock according to the Mickey Mouse clock that sat on the wall above the dishwasher's station, so she wouldn't have long to wait by her estimation.
She was just done wiping when the bar door opened. Melissa first looked up eagerly, then her face fell slightly when she realized it wasn't one of her gossip pals, but her lips turned up at the corners once more when she saw that it was yet another handsome stranger. This one was quite different from the one she'd chatted up in the morning. He was very tall and broad with the sort of chiseled face she was only used to seeing in movies. Instead of wearing slick city clothes he was wearing a faded pair of jeans that accentuated his powerful hips and a casual checkered shirt that hung slightly open at the collar, though not quite enough to let Melissa get a good view of his chest, which seemed to be very well formed.
“Well hello,” Melissa smiled her broadest, most welcoming smile.
“Hello,” the man smiled back at her, then turned his gaze to the menu boards at the sides of the bar. “It's a little early, but I think I'll try the Iron Horse special brew,” he said with a flicker of a conspiratorial wink.
“Oh you won't regret it,” Melissa said, hustling for a bottle. “Mick brews it himself every year. His grandaddy was one of the finest bootleggers the region ever saw, so Mick knows his stuff.” She cracked the bottle and slid it across the bar to him, making sure his fingers brushed hers when he took it. Did he feel the same frisson of excitement at their touch? She hoped so.
The man seemed suitably impressed by the lineage of his brew, at least that was what Melissa took the slight cough and nod as he took a sip to mean. “We're getting a whole host of handsome visitors today,” she said, coyly letting him know that he was very handsome in her estimation.
“Oh yes?” The man smiled. “Do tell.”
Melissa was only too pleased to tell him all about her day. “Well there's yourself of course, and a fellow stopped by earlier this morning. Journalist from Texas.”
“Turned your head, did he?”
Melissa blushed. She didn't even know this man's name, but the way he was looking at her with a twinkle in his eye made her feel like they'd been the best of friends for a very long time. “Well I wouldn't say he turned my head, he was a pleasant man. Interested in our local celebrity.”
“Celebrities and journalists? Looks like I stumbled back into the city,” he quipped with a grin.
She waved her rag in a dismissive motion, sending bits of unmentionable things flying through the dusty air. “She's not really a celebrity, not any more anyway. Her name's Laura. Keeps to herself, likes a drink.”
The man nodded, seeming very interested in her story. “Reckon he was doing a piece on her?”
“Well she sure took off when she saw him.” Melissa's look was conspiratorial. “Come to think of it. I don't know if she really is a celebrity, or if he really is a journalist. He looked like a law man to me.”
“You can spot them, can't you?” The man was looking approving, appreciating her keen eye for detail. His approbation made her glow. A lot of the people in the town called her a gossip, but she was much more than a gossip, she was practically an amateur detective.
“Oh
yeah,” Melissa nodded. “He was dressed pretty fancy, and he seemed like he had something going on. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye the whole time she was drinking, though he didn't say a word to her and when she went across the road to the general store I think he took a picture of her.”
“That's a mystery that is,” the man nodded over his beer.
“That's not the best part,” Melissa leaned forward over the bar eagerly. “He tried to talk to her when she was getting in her car and she just took off! She was screaming something, I didn't hear what, but she wasn't pleased to see him, that's for sure. He followed her pretty quick too. You can still see the marks on the road where they took off.” Her face crumpled from excitement into staid disapproval. “It's not safe driving like that. They're lucky the highway patrol weren't about. They come by every now again. We don't have our own police station here, but if we need an officer we can get one...”
At that point he interrupted her interesting diatribe on life in Iron Horse by sliding a fifty dollar tip over to her and saying that he'd enjoyed talking, but he'd best be on his way. Momentarily dazzled by the size of the gratuity, it wasn't until the man left that Melissa, who prided herself on knowing everyone else's business better than her own, came to the galling realization that she had no idea who the man was or what he was doing in Iron Horse.
“And they call me nosy,” she said, tutting to herself as she rubbed the bar down twice more with the same greasy rag for good measure.
* * *
“How did you end up in Iron Horse?”
In a pretty seaside restaurant, Zora and Tex were playing a delicate verbal game of cat and mouse. He was trying to glean all the information he could, and she was trying to concoct something plausible without giving too much away. It was a difficult task made all the more difficult by the delicious Lobster Bisque she was devouring. After her insistence on a proper meal, he'd driven them to a little seaside town, to a restaurant he said was very good. It turned out that he was right, it was very good indeed, the sort of place that made one feel better just for being there. The lighting was low enough to encourage intimacy, but not so low that one couldn't see one's own food. The decor was tasteful and the whole place was filled with the tang of the sea and the sense of possibilities that scent always brings.