Crossroad (The Gunsmith Book 3)

by C. K. Crigger

  Exactly what I’d figured he’d say. “One man at a time? How long do you think this is going to take? How long before they get smart enough not to come out alone? “

  His lip curled. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll go in after whoever is left.”

  “Oh, hey. That sounds intelligent. You’ll simply walk in with your guns blasting, I suppose?”

  “If I have to. That’s why I needed you to repair the Weatherby and the Glock. When either of those knocks a man down, he’ll stay knocked down. When he’s dead, I know he’s dead. Easier to watch my back.”

  “What are you saying? Is dead no longer dead in this time or what?”

  “I’m only saying a stunner-shock can give a semblance of death. Then, when you least expect it, a man supposedly out of the action can rise up and catch you unaware. I don’t like surprises.”

  “You brought me here thinking I’d watch your back, didn’t you? That if you were my only way home, I’d be sure to keep you alive. But look at me, all banged up. How much help can I be? I’ve done as you asked and fixed your guns. Why don’t you take me home now? Get me out of your hair?

  “No.”

  “I could decline to help you. I could turn you over to Adainette Plover and her gang. Bargain your life for mine.”

  He turned to face me, the dimple in his cheek working. “You won’t. Besides, you don’t think Adainette would let you live even if you did betray me to her, do you?”

  Oh, God. Now he was calling any action I might take in the name of self-preservation a betrayal. Trying to persuade me I’d be as low as one of his damned rattlesnakes, I suppose. And succeeding.

  “Ask Captain Hawkinson for help, why don’t you?” I began, but he interrupted.

  “He can’t help. He is Border Police, not licensed and with no jurisdiction in the Great Empty. He can only take the outlaws in charge after I, or another bounty officer, have arrested them.”

  It sounded complicated. And dangerous.

  “Please take me home, Teagun,” I pleaded. “I’m no good to you in this condition. Or let me use the Weatherby and I’ll take myself.” I was positive the power would come to me if I asked.

  He reached over his shoulder, as though to assure himself of the Weatherby’s set in the back-slung holster. “I think not,” he said, his mouth firm.

  “Then come with me,” I said. “Snatch your mother away from them—I know you can if you want—and go to a better time. Why stay here?

  Teagun snorted derisively. “Would you leave your place in time? Your home? Turn tail and run?”

  “Looks to me like I already have.”

  “Not by choice. You want to go back. And you will, Boothenay, I promise, as soon as this is finished.”

  I could see there was no use in trying to argue with him. There was nothing I could say to dissuade him from his riskier ideas or to persuade him to set me free. Most of the day had passed, I finally perceived. Sunset lit the western sky with cosmic fire, Teagun’s dark skin flaming in the crimson reflection. I played my final card.

  “Has your mother signaled you today?” I broke an uncomfortable silence.

  He scowled. “No.”

  “Then this entire exercise may be futile. You know that, don’t you? Given those crooks’ mentality, she may be⏤” I stopped, unable to finish a sentence that sounded so cold

  He did it for me. “Dead. Yes. I know. If she is, I will take my revenge.”

  Between one blink and the next, the sun dropped beyond the curve of the earth. We hid our separate fears from each other behind a concealing cloak of darkness. Night had come. Time to go hunting.

  CHAPTER 11

  The trip back to the Crossroad Hotel turned out to be sheer hell. If I were forced to say one good thing about our trek, it would be that going back didn’t take nearly as long as coming out. Outward bound, Teagun had taken a path crooked as a sidewinder’s track, with the idea of confusing our prisoner in case of an escape attempt. Returning, he cut straight to the chase. At least in the beginning.

  I don’t recommend hobbling across broken ground in the dark as a pleasurable means of exercise, by the way. Especially not for a whole four miles. And not if you’re trying to spare a sprained ankle. In order to take my mind off the steadily growing ache, I decided to try and talk through the pain.

  “Teagun?”

  Grunting, Teagun kicked a loose boulder out of the path.

  I took this for encouragement. “When you were talking with Captain Hawkinson about the dead guy, what was the problem? I think it had to do with me, right?”

  “Don’t worry. I am waiving the bounty on him. They won’t need to dig him up.”

  I felt the small dip underfoot where the boulder had been. “I’m not worried. Why should I be? I’m curious is all.”

  He picked the way, finding the most level ground as a matter of course. He walked with his head up, hyper-alert to the sounds around him. All I heard was the fiddling of a cricket, playing loudly until we neared his hiding place, falling silent until we were past, then taking up the chorus again. The normalcy of the sound filled me with satisfaction.

  “Teagun?”

  His hand went to his shoulder in the familiar gesture of checking the Weatherby.

  “If the problem concerns me, you should say so,” I said. “ If you don’t, then you’re not playing fair.”

  I heard him make a whistling sound like a teakettle letting off steam.

  After a few more steps he said, “Projectile guns are illegal. Have been since 2037. Only a few people are allowed to use them, and only in compliance to a strict protocol and if there is a provenance of ownership. Most projectile weapons are very old. They’re usually family treasures. Few people are rich enough to buy an antique when one comes on the market, even if they wanted to jump through the hoops necessary to make the purchase.”

  To say I felt my stomach lurch is not an exaggeration. In 2037 my social security would still be years away. If what he said was true, it looked as if I’d better start preparing for an early retirement. Or take up a new profession and push my life in a new direction. I’ll go into medicine with Caleb, I told myself. Learn how to stick people with needles.

  My mouth had gone dry. “I haven’t seen that the elimination of firearms has done much to abolish violence. So what all do you guys use? Just stun guns and lasers?”

  Silhouetted as he was against the sky, I saw his shoulders roll. “Mostly.”

  “And oscillator knives and garrote light whips. Jesus!” I walked a little farther, my mind whirling furiously, yet at the same time feeling strangely blank. I was too tired to think straight. There’d been too many hours without sleep and enough real food. It seemed as though I’d been in a constant state of turmoil, changing to fear, changing to confusion.

  I mulled over what he’d said. “So I would be in trouble for shooting that man. I suppose because I used the LadySmith which has no provenance in this time.”

  “I could re-shoot him with the Weatherby or the Glock,” Teagun offered. “They’re both certified to my family. Clear the traces of your bullet from his body. I will do that, if necessary.”

  “Any forensic specialist would see through that old ruse in a second.”

  “But it would be confusing to the evidence, no? Believe me, the licensers at headquarters won’t try too hard to find fault.”

  “Is that what the cop told you to do? Shoot the dead man again, I mean?”

  “Not in so many words. He said I’d better leave him buried.”

  “I see. If you don’t need the bounty, there’s no sense in stirring up a stink for yourself.”

  “Exactly.”

  I fell silent while I concentrated on picking my way between the snagging branches of sagebrush and the roll of small stones underfoot.

  Teagun finally spoke. “What will Caleb do?” he asked.

  My heart lurched with pain, so I stumbled and managed to trade this pain for a new one in my ankle. “What do you mean?”

&nbs
p; “Will he come after you?”

  I answered honestly. “I don’t know if he can. He’ll try.”

  A tiny smile of superiority quirked Teagun’s mouth. “As you try?”

  “He’s not fully come into his power as yet,” I said in warning. “He’ll be stronger when he does, stronger than me. Maybe stronger than you.”

  Teagun stared ahead into the night. “We’ll see, eh?”

  WE HAD another mile to go when Teagun began to seriously outdistance me. Not intentionally, I think, but in his need to satisfy himself about the latest developments at the hotel and in his anxiety for his mother, he sort of forgot my presence. Up to now he’d been exceptionally patient with my pace. One, which I had to admit, wasn’t setting any land-speed records.

  The second time he stopped and waited for me to catch up, there was an aura of frustrated energy about him.

  “Why don’t you go on without me?” I could see the inaction was bugging the daylights out of him. “Just point me in the right direction and I’ll get there sooner or later.”

  With obvious relief, he seized on my offer. “You don’t mind? You won’t get lost? I’ll meet you at the same place we were at this morning.”

  I wasn’t likely to forget the location. “No problem. I’ll find it. Due north, right? Your only objective is to keep watch, isn’t it? You don’t plan on going in shooting or anything equally banzai, I trust.”

  “I don’t know. What is banzai?”

  “Crazy,” I told him.

  He didn’t quite smile, though his tight features relaxed fractionally and his dimple dipped. “No banzai.”

  He loped on ahead, his long legs covering the ground rapidly as I continued limping in his wake. In his dark clothing, he melded very well with the night and soon I saw him, visible only because he made a more solid patch of black, crest a slight rise and disappear beneath the ridge line. Scuffing slowly through sage and dry clumps of bunchgrass, I savored the only solitude I’d enjoyed in two full days.

  Free to think about my dream at last, Caleb filled my mind. Eight days. He and Scott had said something about eight days. Did they mean I had been gone more than a week in my real time? If so, time ran differently when one came forward. I had suspected as much, and no matter how hard Caleb looked, he wouldn’t find me in the past. Would he be casting for me? Trying to reach me? Would he think to look forward? Was he strong enough in his power to try?

  Talk about being bedeviled by questions! My head ached as if an axe blade were trying to cleave it into tiny parts. I shuddered over the analogy.

  Worry, and the pain in my head, is the only excuse I can give for not hearing the altercation sooner. If I’d realized . . . If I’d known to hurry . . . Well, I didn’t. As it was, I almost walked right into the middle of the mess. The only thing that stopped me was the sound of a girl crying—no, make that sobbing her heart out.

  Oh, cripes. They’ve brought Petra Dill out here and they’re cutting her to pieces. The grisly thought flashed through my mind.

  But that didn’t make sense. Among other things, the voice sounded too young to belong to a woman Petra Dill’s age, unless she was one of those women whose voice never matures. This was the last commonsensical deliberation of which I was capable for a period, for a series of piercing screams began and I couldn’t spare the time to think things through. I could only react.

  Like the idiot I am, I ignored my ankle and ran toward the screams. I didn’t see Teagun anywhere, although he’d come over this same hill not five minutes before. He couldn’t be making the girl/woman cry and scream, could he? Please, God, don’t let it be Teagun causing these horrible, mind-freezing wails.

  Shrieks like the cries of doomed angels, like all the legions of hell, urged the very finest of the hairs on my arms to rise up in protest. Only one person? I heard only one voice. How could one woman make so much noise? Yet if she could, then surely the worst thing possible would be if she were silenced. Sheer will-power and a tight wrapping kept my ankle from giving way. When it seemed I was about to run out of hill to climb, I slowed. All the movies I’d ever seen showed heroes racing to victorious rescue. Every bit of experience I had, plus a dash of common sense, said such conduct was more likely to be disastrous.

  The screaming stopped.

  I stopped, too. Like I was a boat and the captain had thrown the anchor over the side.

  My heart thudded inside my chest, pumping blood with such force the veins and arteries seemed likely to explode. I held my breath, listening over the top of my rackety heart. I heard nothing when I should have been hearing lots.

  Without quite knowing how it came to be there, when I looked down I saw the LadySmith in my hand, safety off, a shell ready in the chamber. Its presence only made sense. Pulling the burnooses hood over my hair, I stooped, making myself into as low and drab a target as possible before inching forward the last few feet to the crest of the hill. The same hill behind which Teagun had so recently disappeared.

  The night was hot and I’d been hurrying; never mind the adrenaline rush of fear heating up my metabolism. Sweat ran down my face and into my eyes. My vision swam. Blinking rapidly several times to clear away the salty haze, I immediately wished for the comfort of the previous obscuration.

  “Oh, God help us!” The words froze in my mouth. Lights from a couple of stopped vehicles provided all too much illumination to the macabre scene that met my eyes.

  I saw . . . a dead woman, eviscerated, with a man holding a darkly dripping, lighted oscillator knife standing above her.

  I saw . . . a skinny, light-haired girl being tied up and menaced though surely she posed no threat to the two men so occupied. Her cries had been muffled, if not silenced by the layer of tape slapped over her mouth. And I saw . . . Teagun being loaded onto one of the two hovering utility rigs; rigs that looked remarkably similar to one of the four- wheelers of my time. He must have been unconscious for a lone man draped him, unresisting, across the carrying platform on the back of the vehicle and tied him down with bungee cords. The Weatherby was still strapped to his back.

  The reek of fresh hot blood combined with the rising stench from the contents of the dead woman’s opened bowels. My own stomach gripped in horror.

  The realization that I was totally inadequate, mentally panicked, and frightened out of my wits did nothing for my confidence. What was I to do now? There were four men. I had only three shots left in the LadySmith. The Guardian .32 carried six. My hands shook uncontrollably. I doubted I could hit a target the size of an elephant, let alone a man—or four men. Above all that, the Guardian was almost ineffectual at this distance; the LS .357 not a whole lot better.

  Thus reminded, I took the Guardian from my ankle holster. There was comfort, feeling the slick heft of the pistols. A gun in each hand didn’t seem like too much. Didn’t feel like enough.

  I heard the phutt-phutt whistling of the four-wheeler’s idling fans, the girl weeping, snuffling and wheezing through the tape, and the outlaws yakking it up. The man with Teagun yelled, gesturing imperatively, until the man with the knife turned the light-works off and went to join him. They both climbed aboard the hovercraft, and without further ado, took off heading in direction of the hotel.

  Do something, I told myself. But what?

  Look what happened to Teagun when he went rushing in where prudence was a more desired course of action. He had been too late to save the woman. Had sacrificed himself for nothing. I couldn’t help anyone if I did the same. And yet, I dare not hesitate too long, lose impetus, for if I did, Teagun was sure to be lost.

  And I would never get home, a selfish voice whispered inside of me. Because Teagun had the Weatherby.

  What choice did I have?

  THE MEN DIDN’T SEE me as I came over the hill. Granted, in my shadow-colored cloak, I became almost invisible and I walked as silently as I knew how. But they were preoccupied with the girl as well.

  How close should I be before I opened fire, I wondered? At what distance did a las
er cease being lethal? How far did a stun gun’s shock carry? I wished I’d remembered to ask Teagun when I had the opportunity.

  I know I looked foolish. I felt that way, too, like a frightened, blundering fool. But remembering our late prisoner’s reaction to pale skin and dark hair, I threw the hood from my head as I ran down the path toward the outlaws.

  The girl saw me before the men did, and unfortunately, I had the same effect on her as I wanted to have on the men. She panicked. Her eyes bugged out. Straining against the cords binding her hands, she tried to escape me, an apparition the like of which she’d never seen before. How could she discern my humanity when my white skin was paled by the moonlight, my guns silvered and shining? It would have been funny, if the situation hadn’t been tragic. My appearance put her right over the edge.

  I was almost on top of them before the men noticed they weren’t the ones who prompted the girl’s horror—or not all of it anyway. When the first one spun round to see what she was goggling at, I shot him. Yes, I know I’d have been smarter to shoot him—both of them actually—in the back while I had the chance, but like Teagun had said, I lack the killer instinct. He hadn’t meant it as a compliment either.

  Well, shoot, I did. But not a mortal shot. High up in the man’s shoulder, at least the wound put him out of commission for as long as I’d find necessary, especially as blood flooded, back and front, in a fearsome black spread. Shot from this close, the .357 bullet’s punch knocked him off his feet. He fell to the ground, gripping his shoulder and caterwauling fit to raise the dead, though the only dead person around, the poor mutilated lady did not, could not, stir.

  Quietly, the girl fainted, pitching down next to the man.

  The sight of me, and of my sudden appearance shocked the other man, halting him briefly when he also turned to face me. He’d pulled his laser in a smooth motion, fast enough that if I hadn’t been ready for just such a move, he’d have touched me with the blue fire the gun spouted. The edge his slight hesitation gave allowed me to slam the LadySmith’s short barrel down on his forearm. Bone crunched. Light hissed and sizzled into the ground. The gun dropped from his paralyzed, nerveless hand.