“Loud and clear, asshole,” Flynn mumbled and chuckled. Obviously, they had no idea how dangerous he was.
“One... two...”
Flynn reached under the seat and pulled out a pair of Molotov cocktails, which he had prepared for such an occasion. While lighting the wicks, he whispered, “Ten seconds my ass,” then he chucked a bottle at one of the motocarriages, grinning as a sheet of flame raced across the roof of their vehicle. Satisfied, he tossed the second bottle, landing another direct hit. When both motocarriages were consumed by fire, Flynn had to laugh. It was almost too easy.
Prince Feng and his shrieking soldiers scrambled from their burning vehicles and tried, with little success, to extinguish the roaring blaze. Flynn kept his foot on the pedal, turned around, raised his revolver, and fired on Feng. As soon as the shot pierced the sky, he saw the prince collapse. Unfortunately, the morning sky was still too dark, so he could only guess where the bullet hit him.
In the corner of his eye, Flynn thought he saw someone aiming at him, so he snapped between targets and fired again. The man was down before he could fire a shot. A few seconds later, Flynn's enemies were out of range, so he turned around and focused on driving.
“Flynn!” Jun tried to call to him from the window. “What happened? I need to talk to you! Flynn! Stop the vehicle!”
But he didn't stop, not until they were a safe distance from Prince Feng's flaming motocarriages. After several minutes of racing through the desert at top speed, Flynn finally halted the vehicle, climbed down from the driver's seat, and heaved a seemingly endless sigh.
As soon as they stopped, Jun exploded from the carriage's interior and ran to his side. “Was that Prince Feng? Really?” she asked with a gasp.
“It was.”
“And... you shot him?”
“I did.”
“Is he... dead?”
“Maybe. It's impossible to know for sure.” Flynn casually holstered his revolver and grabbed his rifle, keeping it close at hand. During a rare moment of silence, his eyes scanned the horizon, making sure they weren't followed. “Jun, those men keep finding you, even though we're staying out of the cities. It doesn't make sense. There has to be a reason. Do I have permission to search your clothes?”
Jun's forehead puckered at the thought. “What? Why?”
“I'm not sure yet, but I'll know when I see it.” As calmly as possible, Flynn repeated his question. “May I search your clothes?”
“I... suppose.”
As he dragged his hands along Jun's arms, Flynn's cheeks were every bit as red as hers. His fingers skimmed over her elbows, down to the sleeves of her shirt, which he pinched and prodded. As he patted around her waist, his face was as crimson as the sunrise, and when he finally reached the hem of her skirt, he found what he was looking for. “Aha!”
“What is it?”
Maybe he should have asked for permission before ruining her clothes, but he wanted to remove the chip as soon as possible. With a long, jagged knife, he sawed away a portion of the skirt's hem.
“What are you doing?” she squealed at him. “Flynn!”
“I'm getting rid of this.” He freed the chip from the material it was sewn into and held it up to the breaking daylight. “They were using a tracking device to locate you. I had my suspicions when you were attacked this morning. If I was smart, I would have checked back then.”
“So... he won't be able to find me now?”
“Hopefully not. We're not too far from the next town, so I'll swing by and get you some new clothes. We should get rid of anything Prince Feng might have tampered with, just to be safe.” As long as his primary concern was Jun's safety, Flynn's usual timidity was pushed from his mind.
“Flynn, you... you almost died again, didn't you? You almost died protecting me.”
“I wouldn't say almost,” Flynn corrected her with a wink. “I like to think I had the upper hand.”
“Flynn, I can't keep doing this to you!”
“Doing what?” Flynn gently took Jun's hand and led her back to the carriage's interior. They needed to keep moving.
“This!” Jun shrilled. “You don't need to keep doing this. Getting in trouble, getting shot at, getting chased, getting--”
“I'm not doing this because I need to, Jun. Don't you get it?” As he handed her into the motocarriage, Flynn's smile broadened. “I'm helping you because I want to, and because you're special to me.”
“Flynn, what does that--”
He deposited her in the carriage and hurried back to the driver's seat before he was subjected to any embarrassing questions.
Fifteen
“Well, my new favorite girl, which direction are we headin' in?” As he asked the question, Nicky draped an arm around Gwen's small shoulders. “Where's our next desert adventure going to take us? Hmm?”
Gwen tried to shrug off his arm, but when he didn't budge, she tossed it off. “Can you please not touch me, Nicky? You kind of reek.”
“Whaaaat? Are you saying I smell bad?”
“Uh huh.”
“Girl, that's not true!” Nicky defended himself. “What you're smelling are the manly fumes of a man, darling.”
“If all men smelled like you, I wouldn't like men anymore.”
“That's kind of harsh.”
“Well... it's true.”
“I don't usually smell this bad, you know.” Nicky lifted an arm and tried to catch a whiff of himself. “After two days in the desert, let's see how great you smell!”
“I won't be stuck in the desert for two days, Nicky! We're going to get out of here! We're going to find our way back!” Gwen was trying to stay optimistic, but in the most honest part of her mind, pessimism reigned.
“Besides...” Nicky ignored her and continued his rant, “before I was stuck in the desert, I was stuck with the Hershalls, and they never let me bathe. I don't think they understand the concept of bathing, quite frankly. If you think I smell bad, imagine how bad Ed Hershall smells when he's stripped down to his skivvies and he's sitting right beside you... because I had to endure that, you know! On more than one occasion!”
Gwen reacted to his speech with a groan. “You know, I really didn't need to hear about how bad Ed Hershall smells.”
“Logan Hershall's just as bad. Well... almost as bad. Trust me, you don't want to be downwind of either of those boys.”
“Boys?” Gwen's nose wrinkled. “Why are you calling them boys? The Hershalls are old!”
When Nicky scratched his wild dark hair, he swore he saw something fly out of it. “Girl, when you get to be my age, you'll start to have a different perspective on what's old and what's not.”
Gwen glared at Nicky's boyish profile. It was difficult to see him clearly under all the dirt on his face, but he was undoubtedly very young. “How old are you, exactly?”
“Twenty-two.”
“That's what I thought. You're just a few years older than me. Do you really think I'll have a different perspective in four years?”
“Probably. I did a lot of growing up during those four years.”
“Uh huh.” Gwen turned in Nicky's direction, letting him get a good look at her emerald eyes as she rolled them. “I can't believe I'm stuck in the desert with you... you, of all people! You're the most ridiculous person I know! Well... besides Carol, I guess.”
“Heeeey!” Nicky whined. “I thought I was supposed to be your special person now. I'm the one person who cares about you and you're the one person who cares about me. Right?”
“I know. But it's... difficult.”
“Nah. I'm easy to love.” Nicky felt a beetle crawling up his arm, so he captured it and shoved it in his mouth. Fortunately, Gwen didn't catch him eating the crawly, six-legged snack. He knew she'd be disgusted, but he couldn't resist, not when his stomach was thunderous with hunger. That morning, he had prickly pears for breakfast, but it was hardly the most satiating meal in the world.
“I'm sooo thirsty,” Gwen complained. “And it's ge
tting harder and harder to pick up my feet. I'm wobbly, and these shoes are giving me blisters.”
“Aww.” Nicky hunkered down and pointed at his back. “If you'd like, I can give you a piggyback ride. Just ignore the fact that my shoulders are so sunburnt, they're getting crispy. Hell, I barely feel the pain anymore, anyway.”
“Oh, I am not riding on your back!” Gwen protested. “Nuh uh. No way. I'd have to have thirty blisters, a cracked heel, and corns before I'd consider something like that!”
“Are you sure? I think I could carry you pretty easily. You look tiny.” Without warning, Nicky coiled an arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet. “Yeah, you're tiny alright. Well, most of you is tiny. Your breasts are a different story altoget—aaaaah!”
Gwen whacked his head and shoved him away. “Let go of me! I never invited you to put your paws on me!”
“You're so mean!” said Nicky with an exasperated huff.
“Maybe I am... but I have a good excuse! My father just died, remember?” Gwen staggered away from her companion and sat in the shade of a towering saguaro cactus.
“Yeah, I know. And I'm real sorry about that. I really am.”
“If I don't die out here... if we ever get back to Gravestone... I don't know what I'm going to do.” Gwen looked down at her lap, where her thumbs twiddled nervously. “I'll be alone in our house. I'll have to tell my aunts he's dead. I'll... I'll have to get a job to support myself.”
“Or you could always get a husband,” Nicky suggested.
“A job,” Gwen insisted. “I'm way too young to be thinking about marriage. A man isn't the only one with wild oats to sow. I need to—owwwww!”
“What is it? What happened?” As soon as Nicky saw the black and red ringed snake slithering under Gwen's legs, he didn't need an answer. Gwen was bitten. Nicky took out his whittled stick and chased the snake, slaying it with a blow to the head. When it stopped moving, he turned to Gwen and asked, “Damn... are you alright?”
“No! I'm not alright! That bastard bit me!” Gwen rolled up her skirt and pointed at the bite mark above her knee. “Oh god, it hurts a lot!”
“I'm sorry to say... I think that snake was poisonous.”
“It was?”
“I think so.” Nicky picked up his kill by the tail and dangled it in front of Gwen. “Yeah... look at these rings on its body. This is definitely poisonous. No question.”
“Good.” Gwen's arms crossed as she pouted at her snake bite. “Maybe I can join my father in the afterlife.”
“Don't say that! Why are you in such a hurry to die?” Nicky tossed the snake's corpse and knelt by Gwen's wounded leg. “I've heard stories about people sucking the poison out before it spreads.”
Gwen's face, blanched by panic, turned even paler at the thought. She didn't want to imagine Nicky's dry lips clamping down on her skin. “You want to suck the poison out of my leg?”
“Do you see anyone else around here who can suck out the poison?” Nicky leaned over her leg and lightly licked his lips, as one might do while leaning over a tantalizing meal. “Unless you can train that bobcat to suck your leg, it's gonna have to be me.”
“What bobcat?” Gwen gasped.
“That guy over there.” Nicky pointed at a fuzzy brown bobcat, lounging on a cactus. “I think he's sleeping. On a cactus. How the hell can he sleep on a damn cactus?”
“Don't know, don't care!” Gwen gestured toward the wound on her leg. “Alright, Nicky... just do it!”
When she felt Nicky's mouth descend on her leg, a deluge of words poured from Gwen's lips. She needed to distract herself from the awkwardness of the situation. “Maybe I should move to Santa Rosa. I had a lot of suitors there, you know. It was too soon to tell if any of them actually liked me, but a few of them were promising. I really liked Aloysius McDardles-Ham, even though Carol made fun of his name all the time. He might not've been the best-looking guy in the world, but I'm not shallow... personality matters more. Maybe no one will ever compare to Josiah. Maybe that's my problem. He was everything I ever wanted. He was strong, smart, brave, blonde, handsome, charming... and oh, that swagger! He really knew how to melt a girl's heart. It's such a shame about his arm. I don't think he'll ever be the same.”
Nicky removed his mouth from Gwen's leg and raised an eyebrow. “What happened to Josiah's arm?”
“Oh, you didn't know about that, did you? I forgot you weren't around.” Gwen assumed he was finished with her leg, so she pushed her skirt back down. “Josiah lost his arm in a fight. He tried to rescue Jun, but he ended up needing a rescue himself. Carol saved his life.”
“Damn... so Josiah's got one arm? That's hard to imagine.” With his forefinger, Nicky gently poked Gwen's knee. “Oh and, uh... by the way, I don't think that snake was venomous after all.”
“What?”
“Yeah. When I had my mouth on your leg, I suddenly remembered an old rhyme I heard. Red and yellow can kill a fellow.” Nicky pointed at the snake's lifeless corpse. “I don't see any yellow parts on that snake, so I think he might be harmless.”
“Ugh!” Gwen hopped to her feet and stomped away from him. “And you just now remembered that? That seems awfully convenient! Well... I'm not stupid! You just wanted a reason to put your lips on my leg!”
“Believe what you want, girl. I don't care. I could argue with you, but it probably wouldn't change your mind, so I won't waste my breath.” Nicky picked up the small snake's corpse and stuffed it in the pocket of his breeches.
When she saw the ringed tail protruding from Nicky's pocket, Gwen groaned. “What are you doing? Why are you keeping that?”
“Why do you think I'm keeping it?” Nicky's eyes rolled as he breezed past Gwen and charged ahead. “It's tonight's dinner. Snake du jour. Sounds tasty, right?”
Sixteen
Josiah played poker with two unnamed cowboys in his favorite Yooma saloon, and he held his cards in his mechanical hand, simply because he could. Last night, Carol finished attaching the thumb, and to his surprise, it functioned much better. After an additional tweak to the arm's mechanics, pencils and glass bottles were no longer shattered by an inappropriately tight grip. The hand's sensors allowed him to grasp, hold, and lift objects as a normal hand might. Of course, nothing could replace what he lost, but he appreciated Carol's efforts. Josiah didn't quite know how to thank her for all her hard work.
He liked having her close to him. Carol was a balm for his depression. He didn't know how to tell her that either. Unfortunately, she spent an irksome amount of time with Patrick Amberley, whose amorous intentions were increasingly obvious. Every now and then, Josiah would glance up from his cards and check on his friends. When Pat slipped an arm around Carol's back, Josiah's jaw twitched. Even worse: she didn't seem to mind. Josiah didn't know why their closeness bothered him, but it did. If two of his friends were to become romantically involved, a good man would give his blessing. Apparently, Josiah wasn't a good man.
“Princess Isabella's stayin' at this inn, you know,” one of Josiah's nameless companions suddenly spoke up. It took Josiah a moment to realize the man was talking to him. “Pete says she's in West Columbigo to deal with the Huoxian emperor, but I think she's here to do some sightseeing. Emperor Nico wouldn't send his sister on such an important mission, would he?”
Pete. The pock-marked, black-haired, ruddy-cheeked man sitting across from Josiah finally had a name.
“The timing's too obvious,” Pete bantered with his friend. “Emperor What-sit from Huoxia just took over Santo Feo. But you really think she's on a sightseeing tour?”
“I do!” insisted the unidentified speaker. “A little over a week ago, the princess was robbed at gunpoint, and that was before Santo Feo was taken. So what do you think she was doing in West Columbigo before that? Sightseeing, that's what!”
Josiah nearly choked on his whiskey when they mentioned the robbery. He was the one who held her at gunpoint, but he hadn't been identified as the thief. Yet.
“This i
s a useless argument!” Pete grumbled. “I don't care why she came. Now that she's here, I hope she kicks those Huoxian bastards back to where they came from!”
“Her... or her army?”
“Her army, you idiot! The princess is just a little slip of a thing. Did you really think I'd expect her to personally eject them from the country? As far as I know, she's not some kind of super soldier!”
“Quiet!” The nameless man lowered his voice and encouraged his companion to do the same. “Here she comes.”
When Josiah peered over his cards and saw Princess Isabella heading through the inn's double doors, he covered his face and looked down at the table. Once again, Isabella was accompanied by her tall, masked fiance, who looked much more vigilant than she did as they swept through the room. The princess was too busy conversing with her beau to pay any attention to random patrons of a bar.
“That man... the princess' fiance...” Pete thrust a finger at Tom Harriot. “I've heard a lot of interesting rumors about him.”
“Like what?” asked the nameless gambler.
“Well, for one, he was part of the group that overthrew the imperial family. I guess she forgave him.” Pete chortled into the palm of his hand. “Also, I heard he really is some kind of super soldier.”
“He's not that super,” Josiah remarked, tapping his cigarette's ashes into a filthy metal tray.
Both of his companions looked surprised to hear him speak. “Why do you say that, Mr. Cole?” Pete asked.
Before he replied, Josiah won a round of cards, and he raked his winnings toward him. After keeping them in suspense for several seconds, he decided to tease them with a bit of vague information. “I took him down once.”
“Did you?” the nameless man looked shocked.
“I did. I shot him with a tranq dart... right in the neck, I think,” Josiah bragged. “But... who knows. He may very well be a super soldier anyway. Sometimes, a good fighter can get caught off guard.” The memory of his loss to Prince Feng rushed into his mind. It would forever be the most shameful loss of his life.
A Broken Outlaw (Belles & Bullets Book 7) Page 11