So I huffed and puffed and called to Kirsten’s retreating back, “Well, the least you could do is see if I have any messages. I’m expecting a business associate to . . . to . . .” I trailed off, aware I hadn’t the least idea whether people still physically called like by phone, or if they faxed, or e-mailed or snail-mailed, or what.
“Get in touch?” Petra suggested, helping me out.
“Yes. Check my box,” I said. Hearing myself, I sounded demanding and arrogant. There was no please, about it.
Kirsten glared dangerously, as though she’d like to take a light whip to me, and jerked her thumb. “She will.” She meant Petra.
“If you remember, this woman is seeing to my towel because you wouldn’t. Must I call the manager?”
Bringing Adainette in on anything as petty as three women quarreling over a stained towel would not meet with a gracious reception. Even a woman as ignorant as Kirsten knew as much. So, though she flounced, she went over to a small machine with a glass front and began turning over the stack of documents in a tray beside it. She didn’t ask my name. I guess my fame had preceded me.
Petra whisked the towel under the counter. I heard a soft click, a whirr and faint clank, another click and her hands came back in sight, fussily folding the towel with the stain side up.
“Do you need another right this minute? Kirsten is right. There will be an extra charge.” Her voice betrayed no emotion whatsoever
“I suppose I can live without it,” I said, wondering how she could be so steady.
When I walked away from the desk, my purse was about three pounds lighter, with the Beretta and extra clip secreted inside Petra’s front desk. We were all armed now. The actors all in place. It was time to start the party.
CHAPTER 18
I would have liked to remain in Petra Dill’s reassuring presence. Although, seeing she was the one wearing the manacle, don’t ask me why I felt reassured. But I didn’t want to cause Adainette or Kirsten to ask what our talk was about or why it went on for so long. Therefore, when I left the front desk, I started in clockwise on a tour of the hotel. Always, always, have a secure line of retreat. That’s tried and true military strategy, and is what sent me off on my appointed mission.
In every one of my adventures, when a gun’s history called me into it, there’d been a period of downtime. By that, I mean a space when nothing much was happening, when I could only wait for circumstances to progress in accord with their own urgency.
The happiest of these down periods had been when Caleb Deane and I came to know each other, and liking what we found, embarked on a strange love affair. The history had been in 1811. In my own and Caleb’s time, it happened just before Christmas last year.
One of the worst down periods came earlier this spring, when history demanded both Caleb and I appear in 1918, towards the end of the First World War. We’d been separated, he in one place and me in another, and during most of that space I’d doubted we would, or could, ever find each other. Quite a lot of that time I had been surrounded by a large part of the German army. Not my finest hour.
As I wandered around the Crossroad Hotel’s huge lobby, I realized I was in the midst of yet another such episode, and all I could do is wait for it to end. I may have been called to help shape history; unless history was already shaped, and my job was to ride with it until the end. I suspected I’d soon find out. I knew if I had my druthers, Caleb would be at my side right now. We’d have no trouble figuring out how to work through a couple of spare minutes. Yet the interminable waiting that filled me with such impatience and unease must be easier than Petra’s primary job, which was to signal Teagun when she wanted the fireworks to begin.
Meanwhile, there was that secure retreat route to find in case this operation went wrong.
As patrons entered the hotel through a set of large double doors, they found the front desk at their left. The corridor where my room was located opened off this service area. Opposite the doors was a massive river rock fireplace with a moth-eaten elk head mounted above the mantel. To the right, a wide, gracefully curved staircase with a peeled pole railing led upstairs. In the center atrium, the tall, massive dry waterfall towered all the way to the second story. I discovered the other side had a matching face and that once, water had streamed down both sides from the top.
Dining tables, several of which looked as though they’d been here when the hotel was new, were scattered all around center court, circling the fall. A bar stretched across the back. There were few customers. With minor exceptions, the ones there seemed to be drinking tea, not booze. The bartender kept busy dispensing water from a tap.
Though dry, the waterfall was still the focal point of the hotel lobby. It must have been a thing of wonder when the hotel was new, and it wasn’t too shabby over a hundred years later. The only missing element was water to cascade over the top. I sauntered over for a closer look.
The fall had been made of local rock, I discovered. Native basalt, more than likely dug from right here on the property. Fitted together with both artisan and artistic know-how, the long passage of years had caused the mortar holding the stones together to crumble here and there. I saw where another workman, not an artisan, had attempted to reset the displaced rocks.
A flat-topped stone was placed enticingly near the empty pool. In better times, hundreds, if not thousands, of hotel patrons had no doubt sat and enjoyed the music inherent in rushing water. I sat there, too, as though I were hearing the splash of fountains. Easing my purse from my shoulder, I let it rest between rocks. I occupied myself in watching the people and absorbing the atmosphere.
Once upon a time there’d been spas, one on each corner of the waterfall. Empty of water now, of course, Petra or her gardener had made vegetable plots of the spaces. A citrus tree grew in the center of each dirt-filled basin. Tomatoes and lettuces, with a few purely decorative tropical plants and flowers all jumbled up together, surrounded the trees. It was wild, and exotically beautiful and imaginative in this dry land.
Green oranges decorated one of the trees like balls on a Christmas tree. The orange tree grew in the spa closest the grand staircase. With my miserable luck, it also happened to be the spa closest to the lobby doors, which meant closest to Diego. And he hadn’t taken his eyes off me, though the vegetation made a partial screen.
I suspected he was attracted to the colorful jumpsuit; kind of like waving a red cape at an enraged bull. My bad luck had kicked in again. That’s why, with me being so involved in avoiding eye contact with Diego, Duncan was able to creep up, blindsiding me, before I knew he was there. I nearly jumped out of my skin when he spoke.
“You bought me a black mark,” he said sourly. “Got the boss down on me.
My purse slipped over the edge of what had been the pool part of the waterfall as I spun to face him. A pencil and a tube of lip balm spilled out, rolling down the sloping side of the empty pool. I pretended not to see them fall.
“Me? What did I do? Why is Ms. Plover down on you?”
His thick neck corded. “Alarm went off when we came in, remember? She said because I forgot to key my weapon. I say because of you. Who is right, eh?”
I swore beneath my breath, where he couldn’t hear. These were not encouraging words. “Are you blaming me? “ I stood up, spreading my arms, showing I had nothing concealed. “I have no weapons.”
His gaze flicked over my body like the lash of a whip. “I believe I will search you, as I should have searched you before.”
I fought hard to suppress a shudder and jerked my head at a couple of drivers passing through the hotel doors. As we watched, Diego stopped them and asked a question. Whatever they answered, he let them pass into the lobby without further fuss.
“No one else is being searched. I must protest.”
“So protest. You don’t hear an alarm from them, do you?”
“You set off the alarm, not me.” That was close enough to the truth.
He stared at me. “I don’t think so. Let m
e see under that bolero, woman. What are you covering up?”
I glared at him, more angry than afraid. Is that what he wanted? To get a better look at my boobs? True, the jumpsuit was skin-tight, but it exposed no bare flesh. He’d be disappointed if he expected more.
The bolero closed with ornate soutache braid frogs. I jerked the loop off both the matching knots and held the sides wide. “Look if you must. Are you afraid I might have a weapon? As you can see, I have nothing to hide.”
His eyes tore the fabric from my breasts, or so it seemed as his glance flicked over me. In an involuntary reaction, my nipples beaded in self-defense. Worse followed. Where his eyes led, his hands wandered. Rough hands, calloused, they snagged in the jumpsuit’s fine fabric. I felt their harshness through to my skin, as much as though it were bare.
But he didn’t stop there. A smile broke over his face as those brutal hands swept down, roughly thumbing my breasts, squeezing over my rib cage and waist, going under the flowing transparent skirt and lingering suggestively as they passed my hips and slid around my bottom. Cruel fingers nipped a fold of my flesh. Pain followed and fear.
Shocked, it took me much too long to react. Wrenching myself aside, I stumbled, my ankle giving way. I landed with a humiliating lurch onto the rocks where I’d been sitting.
“Keep away from me.” I could barely speak. “Keep your filthy hands to yourself.”
He laughed. “How you going to stop me, little woman?” Though not tall, he towered above me, with his legs in an aggressive spread. He was too close to give me room to move.
I wished for a gun in my hand, wanting in the worst way to shoot him dead. Logic was my only weapon, yet with this man, logic made a poor substitute for a gun.
“You know I have no gu...weapon. Leave me alone. You have no right to lay your hands on me.” I must not speak of guns, I remembered.
“I have the rights I take,” he said, and to prove it, reached down to pluck me from my rock. “I can take you.”
But I am never one to go down without a fight. I lashed out at him with both feet, kicking wildly, strongly. Unable to kick high enough for his crotch, I caught him in the knee with one good, solid whack. He yelled, staggering back to give me breathing space.
“Bitch. Puta.” His hand snaked out, missing my face, but cuffing me in the junction between my neck and shoulder. Pain radiated from the side of my neck to the top of my head. My left arm numbed. Noise, possibly from my brains shaking loose, rattled inside my skull. Only luck, if that’s what you want to call it, had me drawing away, moving ahead of the worst of his strike. Otherwise he’d have cold-cocked me for sure.
I’m not entirely positive, but I think I was screeching, too. Between the two of us, we made enough racket to wake the dead. Or, better yet, preclude a certain someone from becoming one of the dead.
A group of dismayed bystanders had already crowded closely around us. Truck drivers and tourists were murmuring in consternation. Diego left his post. My sight blurred, but I saw well enough to know Petra Dill was staring at us with an appalled expression on her face. And then, from behind me, I heard Adainette Plover’s flat voice. Believe it or not, her appearance came as a relief.
“Duncan, stop. Lay off.” She stood above us on the stair, carrying a stun gun in one hand. A green light glowed on its side between the barrel and the grip. I wondered which of us she meant to stun.
“Bitch kicked me. You saw her.” He snarled like a beast at bay.
“You attacked me, you damn pervert.” Blood trickled from my nose. One of the women hovercraft drivers, a Good Samaritan, edged near enough to drop a tissue into my hand, although she avoided touching my skin. “Thanks.”
In the background, more of the hotel clientele remained clustered around Duncan and me, muttering low among themselves. I wanted to believe a loyal following was gathering at my back, though none was bold enough to step forward in my defense. I expect they were nearly as frightened of me as they were of Duncan.
Adainette made her way slowly, head high as a queen, down the staircase. All action was suspended. Everyone one of us, me included, waited on her next move. In retrospect, this annoyed me no end.
Of a certainty, sympathy for my plight isn’t what made her stop Duncan’s fun. Left to herself, I felt sure she’d just as soon have stood back and enjoyed the show while Duncan beat me to a pulp or whatever he had in mind.
She grinned at Duncan. “She hurt you, big man? A little bitty woman like her?”
Duncan growled with ineffectual anger. “I’ll kill her for that.”
The grin dropped from her face. “Not inside this ’stablishment, you won’t. Remember my words.” She was giving him a public warning, but not, I felt sure, with intent to saving my butt. Oh, no. To my ears, her words sounded more like a promise for the future.
They sounded like a promise to Duncan as well, I think, for only then did he cease staring at me, finally backed off a step. I breathed more freely with him out of my face. The trouble is, Adainette took over in his stead.
“What you got on your leg,” she demanded, about the same time I started to think the worst was over.
“My leg?” I echoed, stricken dumb as a post.
She grimaced. “You deaf? Let me see.”
I didn’t know quite what to do. “See my leg?” I asked, stalling.
The problem was, I knew very well the foot that landed the telling blow to Duncan’s knee was the foot augmented by the Guardian in its holster. When the grip glanced off his knee, I had felt the jar as well. No wonder he’d hollered.
I’d believed the classy little red shoe with the boot top that matched my outfit kept the pistol securely out of sight. As a matter of fact, I was sure of it still. But it wouldn’t remain hidden under a thorough search. “I don’t understand. What for?”
I couldn’t let her find the Guardian on me, but I was surrounded. How could I possibly block her from doing whatever she wanted?
For answer, she yanked at a corner of my skirt, flipping it open at the slit.
“This.” She pointed the stunner downward toward my foot. “What is this, Ms. Boothenay Irons, that you hide beneath your skirt?
She was pointing at my sprained ankle, wrapped in a large elastic bandage with the swollen flesh bulging over the top of my boot. A wave of sheer relief fluttered through me. Fluttered only, because even if this was better than the alternative, I hadn’t wanted to reveal any weakness in front of her.
I shrugged, making light of the injury. “I hurt my ankle. No big deal. The wrapping keeps it steady is all.”
“Let me see.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She leveled the stunner at me, enunciating each of her words with precision. “I wish to see this injured ankle. Now, Ms. Irons. Right now.”
An appeal to our audience crossed my mind, but if Petra and Teagun Dill had elicited no help from their old clientele in a time of crisis, I was sure I, a stranger and maybe a mutant, most certainly would not. I couldn’t take the risk. And this was not the moment to begin a pitched gunfight. We weren’t ready. Not yet.
With no choice except to acquiesce, I bent and slowly began unwinding the bandage. Oh, well, I consoled myself. Best to loosen the darn thing before I get gangrene or a new kind of infection equally gross. To begin with, I’d put a metal strip, one on each side of my ankle, and anchored it down with the wrapping until flexibility was curtailed. All well and good for a short period, I suppose. But I’d taxed the ankle strenuously with only a short respite when I took my shower.
Swollen once more and returned to its earlier grotesque proportions, blood had pooled into my foot, turning the whole thing black. The metal strips had made impressive indentations in the flesh. Every turn of the bandage had left deep marks. It was just what the doctor ordered.
Adainette reached over and took one of the thin metal rods from me, examining it curiously before rolling it between her thin fingers.
“I see,” she said at last, tapping the rod
on her chin. She reached out suddenly with it, pressing the rod deep into the swelling above my anklebone, smiling with pleasure as I let out an involuntary gasp and snatched my foot out of her reach.
“Look, Duncan.” She turned to smile thinly at him. “Metal rods. This answers the question why the alarm did go off. Do you agree?”
Grudgingly, he tilted his head once. “Maybe.”
“Maybe not your fault. That’s ugly,” she added, flicking her fingers at my discolored foot. “Cover it up, then you will answer to me.”
“Will I?” I started rewrapping, be damned to her curiosity. Ugly, huh? Blame one of her own damned cronies, if it offended her. Careful, I warned myself. Don’t let her get to you.
“You may ask,” I said, striving to speak more lightly. “I might answer. Or I might not.” I have no objection to lying when forced to deal with people of this sort. I don’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt. I considered this a good time to spin a tale. Adainette gave me an evil look that said as plainly as words she knew how to make me talk.
“Where you from?” she demanded.
Now, this was a dangerous question—only one other could be worse—and incredibly, it was the one Teagun still hadn’t coached me on. We hadn’t considered it necessary because I am from here. Where else? Somewhat naively, we’d both been hoping I’d be able to avoid speaking with Adainette entirely, or that I’d have more time with Petra who could help me prepare. We should have known better.
“East.” I avoided specifics.
“Where east?”
Shoot. Where were they from? I’d read the statistics of their criminal records on Teagun’s comp program. What had it said? That the majority came from Denver; a few from Indianapolis; Duncan was from Pierre, South Dakota. I didn’t remember what, if any, information had been posted in Adainette’s record.
“Nashville,” I said. Pick a place, any place, so long as it was inland and east. I heard one of the bystanders mutter a comment in the ear of the man standing next to her.
Crossroad (The Gunsmith Book 3) Page 21