High noon at Cato Pass, dust billowing from horse hooves and stalled stagecoach wheels. No wind to blow it down the valley, out of the lungs of the passengers or the outlaws.
Ty herded the travelers against the sheer red walls of the canyon. The driver, his guard, and an elderly woman and her
“Ethel! It’s me! I’m at the Capri-Whitestone.”
No one stayed at the Capri-Whitestone for pleasure. The motel was the city’s most notorious site for drugs, prostitution, and public intoxication. With Hilary Cotton it could be any of the three. Or maybe all of them at once.
“What now?” Ethel asked.
“I can’t say
Ethel Grieves did not do dresses, yet here she was, in a dress. A ballgown, no less. It was midnight blue which paired beautifully with her elbow-length black gloves. She refused to wear pointed high heels like the other ladies, instead sticking with her regular black boots. The left one, a special gift
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Ethel Grieves knows people don’t really see her. Not past the limp, the freckled nose, the coke-bottle glasses. In the boardroom of Carmichael Holdings, she is just a secretary. The mousey little thing who files reports and pours coffee for men who sit in chairs too expensive to belong to them.
She watches their hands.
“Are you kidding?” barked Reynolds, the editor of the Gazette as he looked up from the tablet. “I send you to get photos of the Flag Day ceremony, and you give me a conspiracy theory?”
Gavin shook his head. “Not theory. Fact. You see her?” He zoomed in on a short lady with
The door falls shut behind me, an ominous sound sealing the fate of businessman Edward J. Wyles.
“Farewell, Miss Grieves,” his secretary chirps, unaware of what transpired in the office behind her.
Barely acknowledging her words, I stride from the room, my right hip dipping every step thanks to this cursed limp.
Colors flickered along the ad wall beside me as a female voice extolled the benefits of a visit to the Olympus Mons spa. You can’t be talking to me.
“Kytt Windthorn!” The AI must have sensed my disinterest, swapping its sultry tone for a knife-edge. “Don’t you want to go to Mars?”
“Doctors, we have a murderer among us.” Standing at the lectern boulder at the center of base camp, Dr. Angela Mansfield glared in turn at each of her three surviving colleagues. Each were seated on logs around the council circle, every shocked face bathed in an amber glow from the setting sun behind her.
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Slap. Slap. Slap.
Waves hit against the side of the Friendship. Slap. Slap. Slap. We are an invader in their domain. My stomach roils, and I clamp a sweaty palm over my mouth. I wouldn’t lose much in the way of food if I retched, but it’s the principle of the whole thing.
If it weren’t for the street dog lazing near the curb, Daeng might have caught the songtaew heading north. The red truck teetered to a crawl as passengers leapt from the open back. Daeng lurched forward and stumbled, knocking his tall, cylindrical cargo pack off balance. The songtaew accelerated
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“Final meal choice, Dunbar. What do you want?”
Vic Dunbar lifted his head. He’d thought long and hard, trying to decide between steak and spaghetti. “Got anyone who can cook a good steak?” Nothing beat Lady Love’s cooking, but beggars couldn’t be too picky.
Kate, his prison guard, narrowed her eyes at him.
Nine o’clock sharp. Come alone, at the church.
Don’t forget the forgery.
-Antonio
The bumpy road grated beneath my tires as I pulled off the interstate. The cold of the AC raised goosebumps along my bare arms and penetrated my leather gloves. My car, a modified Model-S Tesla with hidden compartments
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