Long Road to Mercy (Atlee Pine, #1)(20)

Maybe I don’t want to know.





Chapter

10



PINE PASSED THE SITE of the eponymous Shattered Rock on her way home.

It was only a mile outside of town; in fact it was really the only reason there was a town.

Local legend, later backed up by some actual facts provided by NASA and other federal scientists over the years, claimed that a meteor about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle had struck this spot about a zillion years ago. There once had been a small, rocky outcrop here, but the plummeting meteor had pulverized it, leaving a crater and large chunks of rock lying everywhere over the otherwise pretty flat landscape.

And voilà, the name Shattered Rock had come into the local lexicon. The town had only been incorporated about a hundred years ago under that name, when an enterprising young man by the name of Elmer Lancaster had left his small town in Pennsylvania to make his fortune out west. He had apparently stumbled upon the rocky debris, coughed up a local fable, and decided to put down roots. He had begun selling meteorites from a stand on the side of the only road running through the place and had even hired some Native Americans to help him. Dressed in full tribal wear they had danced across the road holding the “rocks from the heavens” as they termed them, and the tidy sum of five dollars would allow you to own one.

It had actually been a profitable business, since there were literally millions of chunks of rock, and even if they ran out, they could always make more.

Lancaster used some of his money to start laying out streets and subdivisions and constructing buildings and necessary infrastructure. He also put out the call that his now-named town of Shattered Rock was the most important geological location on planet Earth and open to families and businesses to move to. People from other places, who perhaps had more gullibility than good sense, bought into this, and Shattered Rock was properly born. It had not, however, experienced enormous growth over the century, but still had a population of roughly a thousand souls, who did a variety of things to make a living, as folks did in every other small town. That included exactly one person with a gun who carried an FBI shield.

Meteorites were still sold from a large plywood building to tourists passing through, though inflation had kicked in and the price was now fifty dollars per chunk. But the Native Americans had wised up and were no longer working for others. An enterprising Hopi and his Navajo partner had bought the meteorite franchise and were, by all accounts, doing fine. They also served coffee, cold beer, and wickedly delicious scones. And Pine had bought one of the rocks, but only to support the local economy.

She pulled into the parking lot of her apartment building. It was stucco sided with a red tile roof, very southwestern in style. The railings were wrought iron, and the stucco was painted a muted yellow. The flora and fauna planted around it were indigenous to the area, which meant they could survive without much water. The Southwest had many good things, but reliable rainfall was not one of them.

When Pine’s boots hit the asphalt, she could feel the heat from the tar wicking through her soles and into her socks and from there into her feet. The sun was intense at this elevation, which was about the same as Denver’s. And it was now beating down on Pine.

She had run into some traffic because of an accident and gotten back too late to return to the office. But Blum had emailed her on the way with some more information. She was going to go over it while sipping a beer in her apartment. That was her idea of a night out without actually going out.

On the way to the stairwell leading to her digs, Pine approached two men in their twenties in the parking lot. They were lounging against a cherry red Ford F150 with a jacked-up frame and double-wide rear tires. It looked ready for a duel at a Monster Truck smashup. They were smoking weed and drinking beer. One was indigenous, with his long, dark hair clipped at the back with a leather thong. He had on dirty jeans, a colorful short-sleeved shirt, and a stained, wide-brimmed hat. A knife in a leather sheaf rode on his belt. The other guy was white, with skin that was peeling from sunburn, a fact readily apparent since he was wearing a tank top.

He also had a Sig Sauer in a hip holster.

Arizona was open carry, concealed carry, any carry you wanted, no permit, training, or brain required.

Pine glanced at the rifle rack in the cab of the Ford. Suspended there were a sleek Browning over/under twelve-gauge shotgun, and an AR-15 that could kill a whole lot of people in a very short amount of time.

Pine recognized one of the men but not the other. She nodded to them as she was passing by.

“I hear you’re a fed?”

This came from Sunburn.

“Who wants to know?”

Sunburn threw his empty beer can into the truck bed. “I was a fed once. Army. They screwed me over,” he said quietly, his menacing gaze boring into her.

Pine couldn’t tell if he was stoned or just creepy. Or both.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“So are you a fed or not?” he said, drawing closer.

“Yeah, I’m a federal agent.”

“They’ll screw you over, too.”

“Not so far.”

He took a puff on his joint.

She watched him and said, “And maybe you need to knock that off and clear your head. Especially if you’re driving. You don’t want any more trouble with the authorities, right?”

“This is a free country, right? I fought for that shit.”