Natural Evil (Elder Races #4.5)(13)

Also looked like they might be working themselves up to do something about that.

Junior was dark-haired and handsome. According to the locals, he was the spitting image of Bradshaw Senior. He stood around six-two, and he had the muscled body of a college football player, with years of self-indulgence starting to thicken him around the middle.

She paused just after stepping inside, and she stared at the foursome until one of them looked up and saw her. Just so happened, it was Junior. She liked that. She gave him a long, level look, which he returned.

Hook baited and line cast.

Then she headed for the bar. This time she ordered a real beer. The bar was much like its counterpart, casually decorated and comfortably worn. This one had black-and-white photographs of the silver mine hung on the walls. Randy Travis sang “She’s My Woman” loudly over the sound system. An indefinable something separated the locals from the travelers who had stopped for the night. She wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was how people talked to each other.

She leaned her folded arms on the bar and nursed her beer.

They kept her waiting all of ten minutes.

“Heard you found my dog,” someone said behind her. “He got loose the other day, and I’ve been looking for him ever since. I was just fixing to go get him.”

The talker was Junior, she saw as she glanced over her shoulder. He was smiling. He looked relaxed and confident, a man who was sure of his world and his place in it. He was dressed in jeans and a lined flannel shirt like the other local men, but his haircut would not have looked out of place in a country club.

One of his friends stood at his shoulder, while the other two came up on either side of her at the bar. She looked at the bartender, who had somehow become busy at the other end of the room. That was just fine with her. She wanted the bartender to stay out of the way.

She turned around to face Junior and said, “You heard wrong. He’s my dog now.”

Junior came closer, his big body moving with a smooth athleticism he had not yet lost. His smile deepened, his eyes full of sociopathic charm. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Tell me what the vet bill was, and I’ll double it. In cash. Then you can hit the road again, and put this whole thing behind you.”

She took a pull on her beer and set the bottle down as the guys on either side crowded closer, their expressionless faces oddly menacing. They were all taller than she was and built like football players.

She met Junior’s eyes and said, “Fuck off.”

Astonishment wiped the charm off Junior’s face. He lunged forward until his body pressed hers back against the bar. His hands gripped the bar on either side of her, and he came nose to nose with her.

“You must be one incredibly stupid bitch,” he said.

Hook swallowed.

“I know you did it,” she said. Her voice was soft and even as she looked full bore and unblinking into his eyes. “You shot him, and then you beat him. Then you tied a rope around his neck and you dragged him, God knows how far. And you didn’t do it alone, because there were two different-caliber rifle bullets in him, and I’ve got both of them. So your friends can f**k off too.”

“Did you hear me offer the stupid bitch money,” Junior said to the man on her left.

“Why yes, I did, Scott,” said his friend. “I heard that loud and clear.”

“It could have been so easy for you to walk away,” Junior told her.

Tease the line out. Let the fish run.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” she told him. “You can’t do anything in here. It’s too public. Unless you’re going to f**k that up too. Really, I don’t think you understand the definition of stupid and who it applies to.”

She watched with interest as fury swallowed his handsomeness and turned him ugly. There you are, she said silently. Now you’re showing your real self.

“Outside,” Junior said to the others. He stepped back, and the men on either side of her suddenly moved closer, each one grabbing her by the wrist and bicep while they hid the maneuver from the rest of the bar with their bodies.

“Scream and I’ll break your arm,” one of them whispered.

She didn’t scream.

Junior and his third friend moved in from behind. By the time they hit the door, they were almost running and had her completely lifted off the ground. She jerked, trying to get her arms free, but the pressure to her arm sockets was brutally painful.

Junior said, “Take her out back.”

She looked up as they rushed her around the corner of the bar. The storm had died down, but the night sky was still sullen and overcast. A couple of cars were parked out back near a spiky tangle of desert shrubbery and a line of yucca trees.

The spot was a little too close to public activity for her taste, but it was still private. None of the other buildings or houses was nearby, and with the loud bar music, no one inside would hear any screams. The one weakness would be if someone arrived in the parking lot around front and heard something, but there were a lot of ways to muffle noise.

“What I want to know is why you did it,” she said.

“Who the f**k cares what you want to know?” Junior said contemptuously.

“There’s a story to this,” she said. “And it wasn’t personal. Rodriguez wouldn’t have gotten involved if it had been, not unless you pulled something royally asinine, like getting caught with your dick out in public. Not that you’re beyond that, at least from everything I’ve heard.”