Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(33)

But Wolf was insistent. “She’s like goody two-shoes hot. Just thinking of her wearing a nun’s habit is enough to give you a Captain Standish.”

Tobiah scoffed. “What are you, five years old? Seriously, a Captain Standish?” Even though he had to whisper, he affected a mock-dork voice. “‘Not tonight, dearest, I can’t seem to find my Aaron’s rod.’ ‘My joy knob got a little bit stuck.’”

Sax couldn’t resist joining in. “‘My giggle stick is melting.’”

“Ah, c’mon!” Wolf Glaser was pissed. “Women appreciate it if you don’t talk in such coarse, direct language. They don’t want to hear about your cock, your cream. They’d rather hear about you crossing the crime scene tape, burying evidence, or getting involved in an 11-99.”

Tobiah fell for it. “What’s an 11-99?”

Wolf had a straight face. “An officer down.”

Tobiah rolled his eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake! Most women—well, I’ll just speak for my current flame, Tracy—love hearing that lowdown and dirty talk. My woman really gets off on talking about how rock-hard my rod is.”

Sax said, “Sounds like a romance novel.”

Wolf spat, “Oh yeah, right. Tracy’s really going to give a shit about your microscopic winkie dinkie. She’s obviously never had a real man.”

That was about the limit, Sax could tell. Any second now and they’d be strangling each other while uttering oaths about ding-dongs or fishing rods. “Tobiah!” he rasped. “It’s got to be bright enough to send up your little plane. Do it now! Keep it over the roof, so they don’t see it, but we can see them. You’ll see the Corvette out in the driveway—I think it’s silver.”

“Here we go.” With shining eyes, Tobiah made the four blades of the quadcopter whirr soundlessly. By tilting his iPad screen, he gave it lift-off. It soared at a top speed of fifteen miles per hour, apparently an amazing feat for a remote copter—Sax wouldn’t really know. Even Wolf Glaser was impressed.

“You can see the live video feed, everything the drone is seeing? Cool.”

“Yeah,” said Tobiah excitedly. “It’s a flight recorder. If we need footage later, it’ll be here. Check out the wide-angle view! I can see all the way to that snow!”

“Listen,” said Sax, “make it look into windows, can you do that?”

“Sure! That’s what it’s made for—for spying on your neighbor taking a shower.”

“Not that anyone would want to do that,” harrumphed Wolf.

Tobiah said, “Let me check out the backyard, look in the windows there. When they come out the front door, I’ll be ready to hover over the roof so they don’t see me. Whoa! We’ve got a visual. There is a dude taking a shower! Gross! Who wants to see that?”

Sax looked over Tobiah’s shoulder. “We might want to see it, unfortunately, if it’s Tony Tormenta.”

“Can’t tell. He’s behind that foggy sort of shower door.”

“Come back to him in five. We’ve got to determine whether Tormenta is even in the house. He could’ve had a goon make that Facebook post from here just to throw us off the track. Hey, what’s that outbuilding, that shed? Go check that out.”

“Ten four,” said Tobiah, while Wolf rolled his eyes.

Wolf had had a different idea the entire time. He voiced it again now. “I still say we just run on up there and hide behind the car. When someone comes out the front door, we just Bam! Pow! You know, give them the business.”

Sax was losing patience with his right-hand man. “No. We discussed that. We can’t just start blasting away on any old guy. Then they blast back at us, and we don’t achieve a single thing.”

Wolf muttered. “Other than getting to blast away at some guys.”

“Whoa, whoa!” said Sax, pointing at Tobiah’s screen. “What the f*ck? Go back. Go back.”

“What’d you see?”

“I swear to f*cking God, there was a strange fluorescent green patch behind that shed. Didn’t really seem to fit in. Right behind the weed whacker and ladder that were leaning against the shed, back—yeah! That’s it.”

Tobiah grinned widely. “That’s right. You’re a gemologist. You can see the different—what the f*ck? That’s a dude!”

Sax leaned so close he practically breathed on the screen. “Damned right that’s a dude. Not just any dude. That’s f*cking Santiago Slayer.”

For it was the erstwhile bounty hunter, clinging to the side of the shed like a chameleon. Slayer clutched the siding of the shed as though he had suction cups on his fingers, dramatic as if someone had a camera on him. His wide eyes darted theatrically from side to side as though he waited for his close-up, and he hadn’t even bothered to change out of his flashy polyester outfit. True, he seemed to be wearing tennis shoes now instead of the pointy white things. He was a true lounge lizard, even in the harsh mountains.

Tobiah chuckled. “Who the f*ck is Santiago Slayer? Sounds like a reject from the X-Men.”

“Pretty much,” Sax agreed.

Wolf said, “I’ve heard of Slayer. Traffic cameras caught him hanging some guy from a bridge in Mexico. That’s how he earned his bones.”