by Ric Beard
“Would you let go? We’re all just human, man. We’re all driven by a common survival instinct, so she fights.”
“And if you could, you’d take me to her.”
Sean waited for the salesman’s timbre and the gentleman’s grin, but neither came.
“Yeah.”
Sean’s eyebrows shot up involuntarily. “You admit it?”
Carson shrugged. “It’s the truth. I figured that’s what you want, right? The truth?”
“What the hell do you know about truth?” Sean asked. He lowered the weapon and put a hand on his hip.
“That I’m telling it, Sean. Alexandra is my boss, sure, but she’s also my mentor and she’s my friend. If I could take her a possible cure to her disease, I would do it in a heartbeat. If I had to, I would courier your blood to Triangle City myself and drop it at one of their labs, but you burned that bridge for us. I might not have been loyal to a guy who didn’t even like doing business with me, but I do direct my loyalty at those who consider me worthy of their friendship.”
Sean blinked. His thoughts turned to Jenna again. Jenna, who’d killed hundreds of people in her life because she’d had to, but never acquired the same taste for it that he knew resided in his sister’s soul. To Jenna, murder was still murder and without a righteous cause, she didn’t need a Constitution, or laws to make it so. He could pull the trigger and take revenge right now, but what was he avenging? An inconvenience three years behind him? The fact he was driven into the arms of a family that welcomed him and gave him purpose?
To Jenna’s disdain, the running joke at the compound was ‘WWJD’—What Would Jenna Do? She was their moral compass, their leader, and their savior.
My port in a storm.
He gave Carson a hard stare.
What would Jenna do?
Turning his head in a slow side-to-side pivot, he sighed.
“Get up.”
“What?” Carson said. His eyes widened. “What’re you gonna—”
“Carson, get the fuck up!”
Carson pushed his back against the wall and slowly struggled to his feet. He tapped his right ear and his finger came away with blood on its tip. Sean hadn’t even noticed it. Carson leaned to the right, his left leg bent at the knee, the foot barely touching the floor. He winced.
Good.
“Tell Alexandria it’s over. She’s not going to find me. I’m not going to help her because I’ve known criminals like her my entire life. Tell her that coming after me will only ensure the one thing she’s suffering daily to avoid. You got me?”
Carson’s chin bobbed up and down in quick succession.
“Thanks, Sean.”
“Your gratitude is the one thing that might change my mind. Now get the fuck out of here.”
“Good luck out there,” Carson said. “Wherever there is.”
Sean nodded, the two men shared a final, deep stare, before Carson limped quickly through the door.
The voice he’d been listening to every day for the last few months crept into his mind.
I told you we should have killed him.
A finger twitched on the trigger guard of his pulse weapon as he watched Carson go.
Chapter Twenty-Four
FROM THE SHADOWS
24
From the shadows on the second floor of the warehouse, Porter Moss watched as the man in the reflective outfit lumbered out of the warehouse and turned his eyes to Sean Stone’s silhouette standing in the headlights of the truck.
Moss nodded.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SYMBOLIC
25
The skin surrounding the corpse’s throat was split and seemed to cave inward around the wound.
“I saw that,” the throaty voice next to Ruby said. She’d forgotten his name. A curled finger scratched his scalp. “He was up on the roof when the bastards shot him. We never heard a sound.”
“That’s because he wasn’t shot with a gun.”
“Huh?” The man cocked his head to the side.
“That’s why his skin is caved in like that. Whoever killed him pulled an arrow out the back of his neck. Was the building single- or two-story?”
“Two-story. It’s a flop house where the late traders stay before heading back to their farms at sunrise.”
“Hm.” Ruby leaned toward the slit in the man’s neck from which the arrow had ejected. “You say it was around midnight?”
“Yup.”
Ruby shot him a glare, and he removed his hat.
“Yes, I mean. Sorry, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. Just after midnight.”
“Hell of a shot at the darkest time of night, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “And you say the woman in black drew you away? Did you get a look at her?”
“Put her in the cell over at the jail. Took her hat, her coat, some fancy glasses...got a real good look.”
“What’d she look like?”
“Shortish hair. Jet Black. Dark eyes, brown, almost black.” Ruby doubted that part. “She was short, about up to here.” He held out a flat hand with the palm down at the middle of his chest. “Kind of pretty, actually.”
“She have good tits?” Ruby asked. “What were those like?” She cupped her hands in front of her chest. “Out to here?”
“Um, yeah. They were kind of nice, I guess.”
Ruby slapped the back of his head. “I don’t care if she was pretty, you idiot!” Ruby said. “Jesus wept, fool. I asked what she looked like. What, you think I want to fuck her?”
“No ma’am!” the idiot said. He rubbed at the spot she’d slapped in short, furious movements.
Ruby sighed, calmed her tone, and stepped toward the door. Jabbing the air between her and the older man standing in the corner, eyes pointed at the ground, she said “Wrap him up. Let his people bury him.”
The man whose name she didn’t care to remember stepped out behind into the kind of crisp night air that one could’ve welcomed if not for an upwind outhouse somewhere in the vicinity.
“Tell me about the pair that got away.”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Drunk guy, name of Jeffers. ‘Always telling stories about his time in Horace’s army. Weakling probably didn’t even haul his own pack.” Ruby rolled an impatient finger. “Ya see, Jeffers recognized the pair of ‘em. Said they’s the ones killed all them boys down east with that rocket.”
Ruby had heard the story from boasting clients when she’d whored. Something called a missile supposedly lit up the whole forest down there, according to the few survivors who escaped the area, crossed the mountains, and rolled into the MidEast with their heads hung…not that men like that often had the humility to stay down for long.
Especially when they had strories to tell.
She couldn’t fathom such a violent thing as a weapon that blew up an entire forest, but it also sounded about like the stories of the flying machines in the West.
Anything’s possible.
“So, in true Horace fashion, you tied them to poles.” It wasn’t a question.
“lawkeeper said to ‘cause Jeffers thought it was…um…you know, like a tribute to the boys died down there? What’s the word, I got it right here…”
“Symbolic?”
The man snapped his fingers and nodded with enthusiasm. Ruby was shocked he could do both things while walking. “Yup! Said it would be symbolic.”
She thrust a thumb over her shoulder at the building containing the corpse.
“How’d that symbolism work out for him?”
Ruby gifted him a long, lingering stare until his gaze diverted from hers and focused on the rocky path ahead.
Her next words carried a percussive rhythm. “As much as Sampson rails against everything Horace stood for, I can’t imagine why his own man would do something like that. Put on such a display.”
The man’s eye’s shifted…
“You got something else to say?” She flipped her fingers toward herself. “Come on. Out with it, then.”
His reply was a
ccompanied by a half-shrug. “You know what they say about old habits, Miss Ruby.”
A harsh sigh escaped her chest. “I suppose.” She shook her head as they strolled west. “A man and a woman?”
“Yes. Woman had orange hair with red, like it had streaks in it. Curly, down to her shoulders. Real white skin. Her friend was a pretty boy, neat brown sissy beard, head taller than you, maybe. Kind who would have a problem keeping from standing out, and he only had the woman by a coupla inches. They was wearing nice clothes, no holes, couldn’t tell they’d been worn before.”
Ruby nodded, glancing up at the clear sky—a rare thing these days—and the stars beyond. A whisper of cloud colored a streak across the last-quarter moon. Ruby stepped in front of a pair of platforms at the end of the dirt road, remnants of a day when brutality was the rule of law.
The days we’re trying to finally put behind us.
When she tilted her head just right, she could see tiny crystal reflections off the rusty surface via moon. They’d been standing here when their coconspirator took out the lawkeeper. Ruby turned and pointed east.
“This is the flop house, then?” at the end of the road
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where’d you find the body?”
He gestured. “All the way down at the end over there.” He swung his hand toward the roof. “Had to have been all the way down.”
“These spotlights were on?”
The man nodded.
“Turn them on, I want to see.”
She waited as he paced up the road and reached behind two lights pointed in this direction. She raised a hand to block the resulting glare.
“The lighting was like this?” She gestured along the dirt paths to where tall structures connected to small solar panels.
“Yes, ma’am. Just like this.”
Ruby looked up and down what passed for a street in this rat hole and set her hand on her hips.
“If he was standing all the way down there, whoever killed him would’ve been right in those lights, had they come from that way.” She turned her eyes toward the scaffold. A row of metal barrels filled with rust holes rested just this side of the structure.
“Right there!” she said. Crossing to the line of barrels, she walked around to their other sides.
“Damn. Hard to believe he could hit him from here. That borders on witchery.”
Ruby shook her head. Superstitious old fool.
She peered back down the street and pondered the far side of the building.
“There’s nowhere else he…she…it could’ve been. lawkeeper would’ve seen him coming for miles.” She shook her head and thrust a finger toward the ground. “It’s just my luck. I get the best bowman on the continent killing my lawkeepers. This is just the sort of thing that gets legends started, the kind of shit you can’t squash. It shows you why those same legends take hold.” She raised the finger and pointed at the rooftop. “That’s a hell of a shot!”
Who the hell are we dealing with?
She pinched and rubbed her chin, as her words next came under her breath. “So, these two are working with the Ghosts. They wear nice clothes and ‘fancy glasses,’ which makes me think of our friends in Ripley. Hmm.”
“Our friends?”
“I was talking to myself.”
Red hair, pale skin on the redhead. But the woman in black was darker.
“Were they carrying?”
“We pulled a strange black pistol off the woman. Didn’t look real. Green stripe on it.”
Like that Jenna woman’s!
“You look strange.”
“I’ve seen one of those weapons. Seems our two escapees work with someone I know.”
“Oh. I’d give you the weapon, but they took it when they sprung the girl Ghost. When I woke up, it was gone.”
“Mm hmm. Okay, I think I’ve got what I need.” She stopped at the intersection that ran along the edge of the town. The noose still hung from the scaffold across from her. “I’m deputizing you until I can get someone else down here.”
The idiot straightened his back. “Yes ma’am.”
She pointed a finger at his chest. “Don’t get any ideas. You guys screwed this one up pretty good. You had a Black Ghost in your jail and you could’ve been a hero. Instead, she took you all down, broke out, and left you on the floor. How’d she take you down, anyway?”
“I’m sorry?”
“How’d it happen? How’d she manage to get out?”
“Oh, um…” his foot traced a line in the first underfoot.
Ruby’s chin dropped open. “Oh, tell me it isn’t true! Did she flash you the tits?”
The idiot’s eyes flickered.
“Oh! Well, don’t that just do it every time? Count yourself lucky I’m not taking you to talk to Sampson…or Augustus. I expect it to be quiet around here until your replacement shows up.” She raised the finger again and poked the center of his chest. “No more tying people to poles.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve got to rise early and stop in Blacksburg before I head back north. Where can I bunk?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
ABOVE YOUR STATION
26
Friday
January 22nd, 2139
The neon blue liquid filling the tube slid into the vein atop her hand. The one in the crook of her arm between her atrophied bicep and forearm had finally collapsed after years of leaving a dark, purple bruise with spider veins spreading out from its center. Alexandra had seen this concoction do its work for decades and the needles no longer fazed her, but there was no adjusting to the cold sensation as it iced her veins.
Carson stood quietly in the doorway, not daring to come inside without an invitation, in light of his colossal screw-up outside the walls last night.
At least he has that much sense.
The report he’d sent while she was sleeping showed good sense in two ways. First, he dared not to wake her ailing body with bad news. Second, it’d been very forthcoming, illustrating the way her subordinate had royally screwed the pooch.
Alexandra’s underling hadn’t even bothered to change his clothes, and she eyed the splotches where there otherwise-reflective material was dull and dusty. Judging by the bulge in his pockets where his hands were shoved, he had them balled into fists as he stared at the floor. Had he foregone his sobriety in anticipation of his delivery of this report? Is that why he hadn’t bothered changing clothes? Or was Carson, the manipulator, constructing an image to draw sympathy?
He would have none, today.
She’d sent Malone away for some coffee, so they could have this little visit in private. Though she literally trusted the man with her life, loose lips were a way of life in OK City when competitors, too ignorant to understand they all served the same masters, often paid good credits to the unfaithful. Though prices had leveled out since the unification of the sister cities’ currencies had taken effect, men like Malone had to stash away something for retirement. After all, it wasn’t like that thug could look forward to a career in plasma development.
Alexandra pulled the warm, down comforter tight around her shoulders as a chill from the cold liquid caused her to shutter. The feel of the soft surface justified the extravagance. She wondered fleetingly if the geese fed people or were just used for their feathers.
“Can I get you anything?” Carson asked.
“The coffee will do. Malone is handling it.” Alexandra peered up at the short, brown man in the gray, half-collared getup and clenched her back teeth. Carson was a faithful partner in all things and, as much as she hated to make him suffer the uncomfortable silence, well, loyalty was often inspired by fear and the man’s tendency toward overconfidence could stand to tick down a notch.
“So, you tried to negotiate a higher price,” Alexandra said.
Carson’s eyes trailed from hers to the floor.
Alexandra snapped her fingers twice. “Look at me!”
When Carson’s head je
rked upward, the bulges in his cheeks indicated she wasn’t the only one grinding her teeth today.
“I’m sorry, Alexandra. I was hoping to get you extra. They’ve been paying the lower rates for a long time and sooner or later, supply and demand—”
She slapped the arm of her chair with her unencumbered hand. “Oh, so now you’re an economist?”
Carson looked down again.
“Well?”
“No.”
“I cannot hear you, Carson. I’m afraid your piddly, sulking voice and proximity to me render my aged, diseased ears useless!”
“Should I—” He waved a crooked finger toward the floor in front of him.
“Yes! Come inside, Carson!”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stepped toward a plush love seat across the room and Alexandra flipped a finger toward the less-comfortable, bare, wooden chair Malone had positioned a few feet away, at her request. As Carson lowered himself into it, the early morning sun washed his back in golden light and partially shaded his face from her view.
“You might not realize this, Carson, but there are people whom even I answer to in this city. When those people set prices, we follow them. People who decide to set their own prices end up swinging a hammer or sweating in a forge, if they’re lucky. If I told these people you went rogue, I assure you, they wouldn’t hesitate to burn you, regardless of your relationship to me.”
“I didn’t know.” Carson picked at a finger in his lap.
“That’s because it’s above your station to know, just like setting prices!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The mere thought of it. This mid-level smuggler she’d brought in and whose station she’d raised to handle lucrative activities thinking he could influence anything! The nerve!
“Who took our yellow packs, Carson?”
“Stone.”
“What?”
“It was Stone. Sean Stone.”
“And you left that out of your report?”
Alexandra’s heart thumped in her chest, and she jumped up from her chair, jerking the metal rig sustaining her medicinal punch above her arm toward her and nearly causing it to topple over, oblivious to the needles jerking in her hand. Carson jerked up to steady the rig so quickly the chair rattled to the floor behind him. Alexandra ignored it.