by Anne Bishop
There was no mercy in the wild country, no safety in the dark. She knew that. But she wondered if the people coming to Bennett fully appreciated what that meant.
And she wondered what else Tolya wanted to talk about but shied away from.
She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Could we drive around these areas you designated? I think I could get a feel for whether or not they would do what you have in mind.”
“Of course. I welcome your input. I will locate someone with a vehicle to drive us.”
“Tobias can drive us. He was going to take a look at the saloon, so we could meet him there.” And she’d like to take a look at the madam running the place.
* * *
* * *
Kelley didn’t want a house, was adamant about not wanting the work of taking care of a house and whatever yard was attached to it. Abigail didn’t want an apartment, was certain being in an apartment complex would expose her to danger and leave her vulnerable in a way that living in a house wouldn’t.
A month ago, Kelley would have given in. But a month ago he’d still believed the story she had spun about her life before meeting him, had still believed she was the sweet woman he’d loved and married. Now they were two people who were living in the same room at the hotel but not even sharing a bed while they wrangled about where to live.
She had a feeling the wrangling wasn’t going to go on much longer. Couldn’t go on much longer. Her new neighbors had to see her as sweetly odd Abigail Burch who had sold soaps and candles when she’d lived in Prairie Gold.
Maybe it would be better to arrange things so that Kelley would leave and she could be the sad, brave wife he’d walked out on. That could work—as long as she chose the right kind of neighbors.
Abigail wandered one of the residential streets, making sure she looked adrift, homeless.
In order to eat free food and have a free place to stay, everyone coming into Bennett was expected to put in forty hours a week in some kind of work—and part of that work included helping to sort and clear out houses and businesses. She had tried to help sort and clear out the clothing, but she couldn’t stand being in the bedrooms, especially the ones that had belonged to the children. So she volunteered to clean the offices, scrubbing windows and floors, dusting furniture, cleaning the bathrooms. Even that work wasn’t without its unpleasant surprises. One person had kept a small bowl of tumbled stones on a desk, and those stones created another dissonance, another tear in the protections she had created around herself with her own collection of stones.
Abigail closed her eyes. She needed . . . She needed . . .
“Hey!”
A hand grabbed her arm. She gasped, pulled away, staggered. The hand grabbed her arm again.
“Easy. Wow. Have you been out in the sun too long? I live across the street. Come over. I’ll give you some water.”
Abigail looked at the young woman—at the gullible mark—with the blue eyes and freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. Perfect. “Thank you.”
“I’m Barb. I’m just moving in over there.” She pointed to a house. “You’re pretty wobbly. I’d say you should see a doctor, but we don’t have one yet. I’m what Mr. Sanguinati calls an almost-vet since I’ve been taking care of all the pets who were left behind when . . . they were left behind.”
She wasn’t really listening. She was staring at the house next to Barb’s. “Who lives there?”
“It’s currently unoccupied.” Barb hesitated. “It hasn’t been cleared out. I’ve heard they aren’t going to do that anymore. If you want a place that hasn’t been cleared and is in one of the approved zones, you have to pack up all the stuff you don’t want—and pack up the things that are on the list of items that have to be turned in. Do you want to see inside? I was given the keys to the houses on either side of mine so that I could show them if anyone was interested. The house on the other side of mine was cleared out, so you’d have to go around to the storage areas and select furniture and all the other things you’ll need. That might be easier if you’re on your own. But some people think just removing what they don’t want is easier than lugging out furniture in order to lug in different furniture that does the same thing.”
Abigail barely glanced at the empty house to the left of Barb’s. The places that still held the footprint of the people who had lived there were hard to endure, but somehow that empty house felt worse.
“I’d like to take a look at that one.” She pointed to the house on the right.
“I’ll fetch the keys—and some water. I’ll just be a minute.” Barb ran into her own house, leaving Abigail alone to study the house next door.
Bennett was haunted by the echoes of the dead. That might never change. But on this residential street, she wouldn’t be exposed to anyone coming into town.
And even if Kelley didn’t come with her, or moved in with her but didn’t stay long, that might work out for the best.
Messis 6
To: Tolya Sanguinati, Urgent
We have selected twenty-four Simple Life males to work on the farms and ranches around Bennett. We also selected five Simple Life females to work on the farms and ranches. Four of those females will do cooking and whatever is needed to take care of the human dens. The fifth female wants to herd things. She knows how to ride a horse and says she can lasso animals. None of the males mentioned this ability. Vlad and I agreed that, if we had to deal with her, we would give her cows to herd to keep her from herding other things—like us. But it’s your decision.
The ranch humans will take a train to Bennett on Windsday, which is the same day we will interview the humans who are doctors and attorneys and other professions that work out of offices.
—Simon
Messis 6
To: Simon Wolfgard
Instead of biting her, I put Barbara Ellen in jail for a while on Firesday. When she yapped about it, I told her she needed “me time,” something I heard a cop in the TV box say to a human male before putting him in a cell.
This is a useful thing to say to females since it makes them too annoyed to continue yapping, but what, exactly, is “me time”?
—Virgil
Messis 7
To: Tolya Sanguinati
We have found some humans to work in the stores. With this new group of humans coming in, you will need to figure out how to pay them so that everyone can buy the goods that will need to be replenished and that you will need to purchase from suppliers, like gasoline, milk, and toilet paper. You may not have experienced this yet, but human females turn predatory when there is a noticeable lack of toilet paper.
Some of the humans who are qualified to work in the stores will start their migration tomorrow, traveling with the Simple Life humans. The humans who said they needed extra time will go with the group leaving on Firesday.
Also, Steve Ferryman told us that news of job openings has traveled past Lakeside, and even though all the humans are supposed to see Simon and me first, several Intuits on Great Island feel that humans we haven’t seen and approved will be arriving and looking for work. You should be wary of any humans who don’t have a letter from us.
—Vlad
CHAPTER 10
Thaisday, Messis 9
Apparently, Captain Douglas Burke wasn’t big on small talk. Or maybe this was part of the test. Some people were comfortable with silence; others had to fill a space with the sound of their own voice. Or maybe he was waiting to see if she’d ask questions that would reveal her ignorance.
Or maybe the big man with the fierce-friendly smile didn’t have any agenda to make her look bad and spoil her chances of getting this job.
“Were there many applicants for the deputy position?” she finally asked. It would be good to know how many other people were being tested. It would be good to know if she had any chance at all.
“Just you,” Burke replied. “Don’t get cocky about no
t having any competition. If you’re not qualified, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re not on that train tomorrow.”
Jana bristled. “If you bothered to look at my transcript, you would know I’m qualified.”
“Haven’t reviewed the transcript yet; I assume you brought a copy of it with you?”
“Yes, I did.”
Burke nodded. “I did look at the résumé you provided to Simon Wolfgard. Read it twice, in fact. You look good on paper, Ms. Paniccia, but a lot of cadets who graduate from the academy look good on paper.” He turned into the parking lot of the Lakeside Shooting Range. He pulled into a space, shut off the car, and looked at her. “Looking good on paper doesn’t mean a damn thing in the wild country. You being a woman isn’t the issue. You being a baby cop about to head out for a job that most experienced men wouldn’t touch? That’s an issue. Today is about finding out what you can do, about finding out if you have enough grit and backbone—and common sense—to survive what you’ll be facing every single day.”
She felt her temper heat and struggled to keep it controlled. “I survived the academy. I can survive whatever is out there.”
Burke studied her for a long time. “Let’s find out.”
* * *
* * *
Not having a service weapon of her own, she had accepted Captain Burke’s when he offered to let her use it. He’d made no comment about that except to say that he didn’t think she would have a problem acquiring a weapon in Bennett and it probably was best not to have one with her on the train.
After the shooting range, Burke drove her to a gym where Officers Karl Kowalski and Michael Debany tested her hand-to-hand and self-defense skills. It wasn’t textbook academy. Some of the moves they threw at her were down and dirty, the kind of moves a person used to survive. They didn’t spare her from getting bruises, but she sensed that they weren’t trying to inflict an injury that would prevent her from taking the job.
“You’ll do,” Kowalski said after one of her moves ended with Debany landing on the mat. “You have any questions?”
“Is there anyplace where I can take a shower or at least wash up a bit?” she asked. The place didn’t say it was a men’s-only gym; it just didn’t make any accommodation for women—not in terms of locker rooms, showers, or toilets.
Kowalski grinned. “Captain took care of that.” He waved a hand toward the locker room. “Ladies first.”
“Well, after me,” Debany said. He walked into the locker room, then came back out in a minute. “Clear.”
When they’d gone in to change into workout clothes, Kowalski had waved her to a different aisle of lockers while he and Debany changed in the next one over. They had stuffed her daypack into a locker with Debany’s things and didn’t explain why. They didn’t have to. She’d seen the look on the men’s faces who had waited to go in—and she’d seen them slide a look at Captain Burke, who seemed to be paying no attention but, most likely, could give someone an accurate description of every man who was there. If her clothes had been by themselves in a guest locker, she might have found them torn—or fouled. But none of the men who had come in after them would touch a cop’s locker, no matter what they thought of her presence. It was equally clear, at least to her, that no one on the right side of sanity messed with Douglas Burke.
She took a quick shower, then dressed in clean underclothes, a tank top, and a shirt that she tucked into her good pair of jeans. She pulled her hair back in a low ponytail and went out to wait with Captain Burke while Kowalski and Debany showered.
As they walked back to the car, with Burke in the lead, Debany said, “My sister lives in Bennett now. She can give you the skinny about the town and everyone she’s met.”
“You have any questions for us?” Kowalski asked again, slowing down and keeping an eye on his captain.
Dozens. But there was one she’d like answered before she got on that train. Jana pulled out a slip of paper from the back pocket of her jeans. Then she hesitated.
“I’m not like the rest of the people who applied for jobs in Bennett, am I?” she asked.
Kowalski shook his head. “Everyone else was Simple Life or Intuit.”
“Intuit?” She’d heard stories about people who could “sense” things, but she’d had the impression from things she’d overheard at the academy that most cops thought that people who claimed to have feelings about things were just grifters who cheated gullible people out of money or goods.
“Intuit communities are usually tucked away in the wild country and aren’t human controlled,” Debany said. “But a few of those communities have been hiding in plain sight for years. Like Ferryman’s Landing on Great Island.”
“What about towns in the Finger Lakes?” she asked.
“Ever heard anyone at the academy refer to a town as a woo-woo community?” Kowalski asked in turn.
“Yes.”
“Odds are good the place is an Intuit town.”
Was she being foolish to trust these men? She’d trusted a few fellow cadets when she’d first arrived at the academy, thinking their overture of friendship had been real. That had been a harsh lesson, the first of many. But now, what did she have to lose? “I got a phone call telling me to come to Lakeside if I wanted a job in law enforcement. The caller said he’d been given a cryptic message and my phone number. This is his phone number.”
Kowalski took the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “You tried calling back?”
“No answer.” She hesitated. “I’d like to know if I’m being set up.”
“I’ll see what I can find out on the QT and get the information to you before you go.”
“Assuming I get the job.”
Kowalski smiled. “Assuming.”
* * *
* * *
Jana sat in A Little Bite with Lieutenant Crispin James Montgomery while Captain Burke and Simon Wolfgard decided her fate, at least as far as this job was concerned.
She’d told Montgomery about her love of frontier stories and how she’d imagined herself as the sheriff squaring off against the villains. She didn’t know why she’d told him that. Maybe it was because, sitting with him, she thought he was a man who could have worked with her, would have worked with her, if society’s ideas about certain kinds of jobs had been a little more flexible.
Then Simon Wolfgard and Captain Burke were standing next to the table and Simon was handing her the travel letter and pass for the train fare, along with a letter addressed to Tolya Sanguinati, the leader in Bennett. Simon Wolfgard also said that Officer Debany’s sister, Barbara Ellen, would be her housemate.
Despite her best efforts to maintain her feelings, emotions welled up inside her and leaked out a little.
No comments about women being too emotional to be on the job—except from Wolfgard, but that was a concern about whether watery eyes and a runny nose indicated illness.
Within minutes of being offered congratulations and best wishes, she acquired a Crowgard pen pal and was told by the coffee shop’s manager that a ride was waiting for her in the access way.
Jana hurried toward the back door of the coffee shop, then retraced her steps, wanting to thank Burke and Montgomery one last time for their part in her having a chance to be a deputy. And she wanted to ask where she could find Merri Lee. When she’d come to the Courtyard a few days ago to ask about law enforcement work, Merri Lee had told her about the job fair and which day to return to fill out an application. Jana had promised that if she got a job in Bennett, she would write and let Merri Lee know how she was getting on.
“The job fair is over.” The manager of the coffee shop sounded . . . different. Almost threatening.
Staying in the back hallway, Jana looked into the main room and stared at the woman’s hair as it changed to red-streaked green and began coiling.
Oh, that couldn’t be good. She’d figured the w
oman was terra indigene, but the hair changing color and coiling like that made her feel . . . uneasy. No. It made her feel a little sick—and very afraid.
She withdrew enough not to see or be seen, but, darn it, she was a cop—or about to become one officially. Burke and Montgomery were in the coffee shop and might need backup. Not that there was much she could do since she didn’t have a weapon.
“Didn’t come for a job. Came to see family. Was told there was a place we could stay.” A pause. “Hey, CJ.”
Burke said something in response to the other man, but Burke’s voice was so low Jana couldn’t make out the words. Then she heard Montgomery’s answer. “My brother. Cyrus James Montgomery.”
A car horn honked. Remembering there was someone waiting to take her to the hotel, Jana hurried to the back door and out, waving a hand to let the minivan’s driver know she was coming.
A family drama. None of her business. But . . .
Cyrus James Montgomery. If she had access to a police database and looked him up, she wondered what she would find.
Messis 8
To: Tolya Sanguinati and Virgil Wolfgard
We are sending doctors, lawyers, a toother, and a vet who is trained to work with large animals like horses and cows. And we found a human female deputy to work with Virgil. She knows how to shoot a gun and fight with her hands. She wants to ride a horse, and she has agreed to live with Barbara Ellen Debany.
These humans will be leaving Lakeside on Firesday. John Wolfgard will also be on the train. He worked with us at Howling Good Reads, so he can run the bookstore and has experience with humans, both as customers and employees.
—Simon and Vlad
Messis 9
To: Tolya Sanguinati, Urgent
