Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(31)
“Bee!” She looked at me wide-eyed, as though she hadn’t seen me standing there. Lytton came inside now, hovering with uncertainty around his wife. She took her hands from her mouth, her mouth in the shape of a wail. “Brenda’s dead!”
It took a while to sink in. I struggled to recall what Sax had told me about her being slashed. “Tony Tormenta?”
“Yes!” She made a bloodcurdling howl. “Tony Fucking Tormenta! He grabbed her when she was in Harte’s driveway, so he knows all about your plan, and I f*cking think if we don’t all go into hiding in Niagara Falls he’s going to f*cking come to get us, too!”
And she ran down the hall.
I looked at Lytton. He rarely looked helpless, but he did now.
Sax stood behind Lytton. He didn’t look helpless. He looked determined, his jaw grim.
And he was the man who gave me reassurance. Not Lytton, or the other two defenseless, powerless guys standing on the deck.
Sax was a wall, an immobile wall, and he was the one I wanted to hitch my wagon to.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SAX
“Did we bring anything to eat other than those Doritos?”
Sax stupidly started to answer Wolf Glaser’s question. “I’ve got some trail—”
But of course Tobiah Weingarten beat him to it. “What would you do if you were in astronaut training school? I’ll bet you wouldn’t want to eat the dehydrated beef stew with carrots they give you up in space.”
Wolf, in the back of the surveillance van with Tobiah, sighed heavily. “Yeah, but we’re not in some f*cking astronaut training school. We’re five thousand feet out of Payson. And I always have pancakes with pecan syrup around about this time.”
Tobiah snorted. “At four AM? You must get up awful early for your important career in the parts shed at The Citadel.”
“Construction guys start early!” yelled Wolf.
“Cool it,” said Sax in a loud warning tone, much as one would use on dogs. He was in the passenger seat of the van, there not being any reason for him to be in back with the surveillance equipment Tobiah had installed. The van was one of Tobiah’s pet projects, as it turned out. Sax thought this was its maiden voyage.
Tobiah had gleaned from metadata in the Facebook photo of Brenda Ridings that Tormenta had posted it from his luxury hideaway home above Payson. The white-powdered peaks of the Mogollon Rim ringed the valley when they had driven up last night, Sax riding point, the van following, getting as far as they dared before the sun set. Sax had parked his scoot in a wash and covered it with branches as best as he could before grudgingly joining the other two in the van.
Predictably, it was just one jab and snipe after the other with those two. Was Ford in on Leo’s vendetta against him, too? Is that why Ford had stuck him with these two buffoons? Sax had already taken one walk over the ridge above them with night vision goggles in the nearly full moon to view the midcentury ranch house, but he didn’t see any activity, and no vehicles. He thought he might take another walk up there now, or he’d have to start knocking heads together.
Tobiah kept on. “When I took that astronaut training program at MIT, I had to eat a can of Russian jellied beef tongue from the seventies. Man, that was some harsh stuff. Real brutal training.”
Wolf said, “But without gravity wouldn’t the aromas just waft away? You wouldn’t be able to smell the food beforehand, which could be a good thing.”
This appeared to confuse Tobiah. His face glowed with irritation in the lights from his GPS screen. “Well, you can’t really taste it, either. In zero gravity, we had constantly stuffy noses because the fluid rises to the top half of your body.”
“Great,” scoffed Wolf. “I feel like I’m in a space capsule with you guys.”
Tobiah grumbled, “Sure wish I had some biocide to spray on you.” He was fiddling with his quadcopter, a remote-controlled drone with four props that would help them spy on Tormenta, if indeed Tormenta was even up there, without putting themselves at grave bodily risk. When Tormenta emerged from the house to enter his car, Sax and Wolf could easily jog up and pop off him and his possible compatriots. Of course, at four AM, there wasn’t much to see on Tobiah’s computer screen, so he was still charging the aerial vehicle.
“I’m talking a walk,” Sax informed his men. Relief washed over him as he exited the van. At this time of the still, crisp morning, the Ponderosa pine scent imbued his nostrils, and he breathed deeply. He remembered most of the pathway up the rise behind the van and the moon was still high, so he didn’t have to put on the night vision goggles until he neared the top. He clambered up a dry creek bed. A hundred years ago, heavy metals had been found near here. Sax wondered how many gold, copper, and silver traces he was gouging under his fingernails as he climbed.
Then he wondered about Beatrix Hellman—otherwise known as Sister Colette. That spanking scene had just about undone him. He didn’t figure her for an experienced submissive, but the way she deftly handled him, leaving him perpetually on the verge of shooting his load inside his jeans, had him wondering.
She’d been superb, the way she had protested, just the perfect combination for a Force-Me Queen. She was no novice, that was for sure, and Sax doubted that this Roscoe assmuncher had done much to train her. By the time he’d pulled her panties down to her knees, she was knowingly parting those lily-white thighs, and his slaps turned to caresses when his fingers had strayed lower, to her tight and surprisingly damp curls.