Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(9)

“Yes, sir.” Good God in an evil world. Now someone else was farming me out to the sticks for grunt work.

“I have a very lucrative gold and silver mine just outside of Avalanche. Beautiful, rich veins, about twenty-four ounces per ton. Lava rock too, such as you’re familiar with, but I’ve heard rumblings there might be iron, platinum, and tungsten. It’s a twenty-acre parcel with three full-time employees filling the trucks. I’ve had to send the manager elsewhere. Now, those ten men are unruly union men. Men of the Church of Good Fortune, but unruly nevertheless.” Chiles chuckled condescendingly. “Sort of like yourself, now that I think on it. Anyway, Fortunati. Seeing as how you’re going to be around twiddling your thumbs for a while. Feel like getting paid to oversee these roustabouts?”

I jumped right in headfirst, as was my habit. “Sounds intriguing. What about my associate, Breakiron?”

Understandably, Chiles was skeptical. “Does he have quarry experience, anything to do with geology?”

“No. He drives a truck for me in Bullhead, but he also hauls for other companies.”

“I really have no need of truck drivers. I’m stuck with these union *s. I can pay you a competitive wage. Beats what you’re doing meanwhile. Think you can do it, Fortunati?”

“I’m in.”

I really was. My earlier excitement at seeing potential mining operations came to the fore now. In a desolate wasteland, as alone as a man could possibly be, I was stuck with a twatwaffle like Tim Breakiron. I needed others around me. I was a family man deep down, contrary to what Ewey had said about me breaking hearts. I sort of envied Mahalia with her built-in family. That’s what I had had with my club. A patched member was never alone. Now I was. Running the mining op would give me something to do while I waited for the Russian ladies to arrive.





CHAPTER FOUR




GIDEON


My bottle was empty, so I chucked it in the dumpster with a loud, dull thud and headed for my room to get my room key. I’d seen a bar named the High Dive up on Crosstown Street. I could easily walk to it. I thought I’d knock back a few more, maybe meet some locals. I’d seen a few hippies walking around, and some rough types like me. Bikers, hunters, ranchers. Avalanche seemed to have been a thriving community twenty years ago when Allred Lee Chiles moved in with his congregation, building temples, schools, and weird houses to fit lots of women. Somehow he’d either sucked all the life out of the town, or scared everyone off.

But I rummaged around a few seconds too long, and Breakiron was all over me.

“Going to check out that bar? Yeah, sounds good. I’m bored out of my skull. Read every last boob magazine at that liquor store. Hey, I saw some Morbots inside the gate giving me the eye.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked tiredly. I was starting work tomorrow, but I didn’t want to tell Breakiron. Who needed the extra drama? “I’ll bet they’ve never seen the likes of you. Move. I need to lock the door.”

“Do you know what that whackjob’s sermon is going to be next Sunday? I saw it on a flier. ‘I Know Who Has TV!’ You f*cking heard right, man. He’s going to point fingers and list some scorecard he keeps on who the f*ck’s got a satellite dish.”

“Truly and utterly whacked,” I agreed. I did agree. Who wouldn’t? A man’s right to watch football and boob movies was one of his unalienable rights.

“It’s like having the Taliban right down the street. You were in Afghanistan, weren’t you?”

“Yup.”

“You must hate the Taliban.”

“Sure do. They killed some friends of mine.”

I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t see the Church of Good Fortune quite on the same level as the Taliban, yet. I nodded at the disheveled, dusty kid who cowered behind an old phone booth. He was rooting through a plastic bag of some garbage or other, and his dark chestnut eyes dilated when he realized he’d been caught. He wore one of those nylon windbreakers in brightly colored blocks that were popular about twenty years ago—like this town.

“Hey, who was that lady following you down the street? Inside the gates, I mean.”

Abruptly I stopped thinking about the starving kid. “Lady?”

“Yeah. She was dressed different from the rest, if you can call a thousand gunnysack dresses different. Hers was red.”

Mahalia! I stopped walking. “What the f*ck, Breakiron? You mean when we got there and were fighting?”

“No, later. I rode away, but parked behind some cray-cray bookmaking business—”

I frowned. “They gamble?”

“No, I mean serious bookmaking, like, churning out books to read. Only, they were all religious.”

“Go on.” I continued walking, as though I could care less, but my heart had seized up. Mahalia had followed me back downstairs after my meeting the day before. Why?

“Well, you were on the phone, probably talking to Chelsea, am I right?”

I neither confirmed nor denied. “What did the lady do?”

“She came out of the main double doors and seemed sort of frantic, like she was looking for someone. She saw you and went over, but I guess you didn’t see her.”

“And?” I knew what “and.” And she turned around and left. Because I never saw her. She never talked to me. Although she could have.