by Nico Rosso
It’s only thrill of the hunt, he said to himself.
Chapter Three
* * *
HAWKINS WAS BEHIND her. Was she running from him? Leading him? Anna shook off the thoughts. Neither, she told herself. She was gunning for the bounty and nothing else mattered. But if that was true, she’d be paying more attention to the road ahead than Hawkins on his engine-cycle, cutting through her cloud of dust.
She barely saw the stagecoach with enough time to veer out of the way. The four-horse team lurched to one side, taking the coach half into a ditch on the side of the road. As soon as he wrestled control of his horses, the driver cursed Anna, shaking his fist. His angry face turned red in the side mirror of her engine-cycle. When Hawkins blasted by the driver, the man’s face turned white. He could only sit there, mouth agape. Progress had thundered past him.
The stagecoach driver wasn’t even on top of an Iron Coach. Those tetrol-powered vehicles ate up the dirt at least twice as fast as a normal coach. And they were a hell of a lot easier to track, with their large studded metal wheels. Just two years ago those landlocked ironclads were like something to come out of the devil’s own forge. Now, seeing a coach drawn by horses seemed like ancient history.
Hawkins pulled up beside her and they took up the whole road through the hills. Trees whizzed past in a blur, making him look like the most solid thing in the world. His goggles were on, hat low, and a bandanna covered his nose and mouth. But somehow she could tell he was smiling. Like knowing you were about to step on a rattlesnake in the darkest night.
He gestured behind them. “Nearly ran that relic off the mountain.”
She also had a bandanna protecting her from the road dust, and shouted through the fabric and engine noise. “You might be next.”
His motor revved and he shot ahead of her, calling out, “Do it.”
Damn the man—he was toying with her. He kept his cycle just ahead of her. She surged forward. He laid on just enough power to outpace her. The road twisted, taking them over a small hill and speeding down an incline. They dipped toward a small valley. No one played games with her unless she agreed to the terms. There was one man in Oregon who limped from a bullet still lodged in his leg because he tried to change the wild cards for a poker hand mid-deal.
She sped up, making as much noise as she could with the motor. Hawkins stayed ahead of her. They hit the valley and started the climb out. Time to deal her own hand. Twisting the throttle, she let the engine loose. Tires dug in the dirt and shot her forward. Hawkins had speed, but she had power. He twisted in his seat and saw her coming. But he couldn’t wring out any more juice from his cycle on the climb out of the valley. A flush of victory flashed through her as she passed him.
Another kind of man might throw his hat down in disgust. Or rant until purple in the face. Some might even take a shot at her. She saw it every day, bringing in bounties. Men don’t like to be bested by a woman.
She turned to see Hawkins. He nodded to her and held up his left index finger.
When they crested the hill he caught up to her. “That’s one for you.”
They rode side by side. The warm glow from beating him didn’t diminish. It seemed to be growing, pushing a fever through her limbs. Forgotten nerves tingled awake.
No.
The wind didn’t bite hard enough. There wasn’t enough sting in her lungs from the tetrol fuel. Her body was betraying her. No, she told herself. She couldn’t actually be enjoying this chase, this race.
That thousand dollars was hers, and Hawkins wanted to take it. That’s all. No thrills or flashes of need. Cold cash and hot lead.
She spoke over the din of their machines. “You’re going to run out of fingers and toes to count.”
He held up his right hand for a moment, sunlight glinting off the brass fittings of the mechanical appendage. “I’m used to losing them. Come back stronger.”
There was no question how powerful this man was. Legends told of him routing a whole nest of train robbers with only a shortened cavalry sabre. The western territories were filled with stories like that. But seeing him take care of Rat with one punch, and how fast his mind worked when on the trail of the next payout, she knew firsthand he was formidable.
“Some things no one comes back from.” She patted the butt of her pistol. Her ether-charged Winchester was mounted in a scabbard on the other side of the trike, ready if she needed it.
Hawkins tapped the wooden handle of the weapon strapped to his back. “When I meet my final bullet, I’ll put the devil in shackles and take him to the pearly gates for God’s bounty.”
“Not if I beat you to that prize.”
“Another race.” Hawkins put his boot on the ground to stabilize his cycle as they took a hard turn. She couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not. “Never going to lose you.”
If she wanted to keep her focus, she’d have to lose him soon. Emotions threw off her aim and she couldn’t afford to lose her edge. Ever.
“I ain’t easy to catch.”
“I don’t quit.”
“Even when you’re out of road?” She tugged on the brake handle, bringing her trike to a sliding stop.
Hawkins did the same, fishtailing until he brought the cycle to a rest. They both looked at the sharp bend in the road. The low hills had flattened out and the road widened, heading north. But they were too far inland. At least five or six miles from the coast where the telegraph lines were.
She twisted the lift valve, and her ether tanks hummed. The trike rose above the ground. Sure, the wide cargo roads eventually led from this route to Morro Bay, but flying was so much easier.
She tipped her hat to Hawkins as she lifted higher. “Maybe I’ll see you at the Pearly Gates. With God’s bounty in my hands.”
He stepped off his cycle to look up at her. “Keep your eye on the shadows, Miss Blue. The dark of night, that’s where I’ll be.”
A flick of the gearshift and the engine’s power shifted to her propeller fan. She slipped higher and pushed forward. Below, Hawkins deployed the ether tanks on his cycle quickly. He wasn’t giving up this pursuit easily.
Damn if another flush of need didn’t ache through her at the thought of him on her trail. Those intense eyes staring out of the darkness. Gazing at her. Wanting her. She scoffed and took the trike faster into the high clouds that pushed in from the ocean. He wasn’t chasing her. He was after the money. She was just an obstacle in the way of that goal. Same way he was for her.
Cool and damp, the clouds brushed over her. She pulled her bandanna down to breathe them in, tasting the salt of the sea and the clean of the heavens. Their white glow surrounded her. A glance below only showed hazy images of Earth. Brown hills cut by lines of green trees. Towns were rough squares set in the rolling landscape. No sign of Hawkins.
But the fever remained. Not even the welcome chill of the clouds and high air took it away. Maybe some cold silver dollars in her hand would chase the heat. Otherwise, her edge would melt away. Dulled like that, she could lose everything she’d built for herself. Skills, intimidation—she needed it all to do her job.
Blue infinity crashed into the brown earth where the ocean met the coast. She turned the trike to follow that ragged edge, which seemed like it could split apart any second, tearing the world in half. But the world was already torn. Nations warred on the ground and in the skies. They needed the soya beans for the tetrol fuel. They hungered for telumium to create the Man O’ Wars. Hawkins’s half-mechanical hand was amazing; she could hardly imagine what those metal and flesh warriors were like. Technology wasn’t just helping people, it was transforming them. And driving them to war.
This high above the world, no voices could reach her. At least seven hundred feet in the air, she pushed north. The coastline below opened up. Like the crown of a god’s head emerging from the sea, Morro Rock sat within the bay. Schooners cut through the water around it, heading up and down the coast with their goods. Commerce and daily life went on, while men and women
fought and died in the Mechanical Wars over a thousand miles away.
The sea looked calm. She never knew that tranquility. Neither did Jack Hawkins, from the look of him. Besides the hardness in his eyes, there was also a great caution. A man had to survive a lot to become that capable. She also saw a need in him, something deep. A tremor of fear rippled through her because she recognized it in herself. It was the need of someone who had been hungry for far too long.
Afternoon sunlight cut across the ocean and glowed in eight perfect lines cut into the coastline below. Like the wounds left behind by an Italian’s knife. But these were the telegraph lines that helped connect everyone in the state to each other.
Anna steered her trike above the lines and followed them north. Morro Bay shrank behind her. Somewhere between there and Monterey was the next stop in this race for Franklin Song and one thousand dollars.
She grumbled aloud, “It’s only a hundred miles of territory.” Dipping below the clouds gave her a clearer view of the land below. The telegraph lines were easy to follow, but finding any clues there seemed more than impossible.
And the fact that she could see below meant anyone could spot her. Hawkins was out there. Was he close? There was no sign of him, flying like a deadly arrow on his black engine-cycle. But she felt him.
A thousand dollars was a hell of a lure. She knew that hunger. It’s only the money, she told herself. That’s why her nerves jittered in her skin. And she flushed with a new heat when she thought about his eyes on her, tracking her.
“You can look all you want, Hawkins,” she called out into the rushing wind. “Watch me make this bounty before you.”
No answer came. But she imagined his cocky smile, confident he’d beat her to it. Almost made her want to smile back.
The coastline turned jagged, like broken saw teeth. Overcoming nature, the telegraph lines remained straight and reliable between their poles. Nothing out of the ordinary. The wires were all intact. She even caught a glimpse of the glass fittings on the poles, glinting green or blue.
She brought the trike lower, one hundred feet above the telegraph lines. There had been times when she waited for her quarry, gazing at one spot until they showed themselves. She’d caught Molly Gibbs that way. Anna had hid in the tall scrub, convinced the bank robber had been hiding out in a mansion outside of Reno, but didn’t have the proof to go busting in. One night, Molly apparently couldn’t help but gaze out the window during a giant thunderstorm. The rain soaked Anna through, but it was worth it to bring her in.
Anna took a deep breath of the cool, salty air and refocused on the telegraph lines below. Patience, determination. She was better than all the rest. Even Hawkins.
There was still daylight left. She could make it to Monterey Bay before dark, but that didn’t mean she’d find whatever she was looking for below. Hawkins could’ve been toying with her, pretending that he was going after the mystery of the telegraph line. Hell, he could be more than halfway to San Francisco and Franklin Song’s laboratory while she was squinting at miles and miles of telegraph lines. But there were too many questions about this bounty, and she had to track down all the leads before going after a potentially innocent man.
A black bird flapped broad wings as it landed or took off from one of the telegraph poles. Crows were almost as common as ants in California. She reminded herself to ask the next Chumash she met what their legends said about the birds.
As she moved on to the next run of telegraph lines, the crow caught her eye again. Instead of flying, it jerked from side to side, wings outstretched. Was it trapped on the top of the pole, or dying? She couldn’t afford to pass up any crumb of a clue and circled lower.
The breeze from the ocean grew stronger. The bird danced at odd angles. From fifty feet above it, she saw the black shape wasn’t a bird at all. It had feathers, but the wings were too rigid. There was no head.
Gliding lower, Anna saw that the crow was more of a kite. Thin wooden slats formed the skeleton, covered over with feathers. It was tied to the top of a telegraph pole with knots of wire. The same kind used to send and receive messages.
She swept past the telegraph pole, angling the trike and leaning hard so she could snag the fake bird from the top. The wood broke easily from the wires. But the shape was heavier than she expected.
As soon as she brought the trike to the ground, she killed the engine. Stretching her legs, she walked with the bird to a patch of filtered sunlight within the tall pines. Heavy fog collected at the coast, muting the sound of the surf only a few hundred feet away at the bottom of the bluffs. The mist softened the landscape.
“What’s your story, crow?” Turning the bird over, something glinted within its wooden ribs. She drove her hand into its chest. Instead of a heart, there was a small metal plate. Tearing it out caused the bird to collapse, disintegrating into wood and feathers all around her feet.
She was left with only a two-inch-square plate of dull silver metal in her hands. A coil of copper shaped into a one-inch-tall funnel, bolted directly to the center of the plate. Thin wires crisscrossed the center of the funnel, reminding Anna of a cat’s sensitive whiskers.
There were no marks on the metal. No signature, no inscription or instructions. It didn’t even have mounting holes or any indication that it was a piece of a larger machine. Some of the inventions of this modern age made sense to her. She could maintain and repair her trike better than any mechanic. But some things were way beyond her, like campfire folk tales come alive.
The plate’s metal was unique. Strong, but somehow silky, with a sense of life within. Someone put the device in that bird and left it for her to find. But why?
Any possible answers burned away as she instinctually grasped the heel of her pistol and drew. The barrel lined up with the sound of a footstep in the soft pine needles.
Hawkins. Only twenty feet away. Much closer than anyone else could’ve snuck up on her. Damn, that man was quiet for being so big.
He pulled the bandanna down from his nose and mouth, then kept his hands up. “No need for shooting. I let you hear me coming.”
“Sure you did.” She let the green dot of her sight linger on him for a moment, drawing over the broad expanse of his chest.
“Truth be told,” he said with a crooked smile, “you drew on me a few steps before I was planning on it.”
“Lucky I didn’t shoot.”
“It’s looking like you still might.” He waved a hand in the direction of her gun.
She slowly holstered the pistol. He lowered his hands and took a few more steps toward her.
The confident smile remained on his face. His eyes, though, were dark, unreadable. “What’re we going to do with this?”
She thought about palming the metal plate, hiding it behind her back, but knew Hawkins was too sharp not to have already seen it. So she held it up. “This ain’t your problem. I got to it first and it’s going to get me what I want.” Though she had no idea how it would do that.
He slowly shook his head. His mechanical finger drew a circle in the air, as if defining a corral that contained them. “We’re stepping on the same trail. What are we going to do with this?”
The damp mist rolled in thicker from the sea. In that crowded theater, it had felt as if she and Hawkins were the only two people in the room. Now they truly were alone. The fog closed them in, a small island of trees, a stretch of land, and a low sky. And Hawkins.
His dark clothes made him stand out, stark against the light fog. He seemed relaxed, but she knew his body was full of energy, potential. She’d seen him in action, but how would he be with her? Maybe being isolated with Hawkins didn’t have to be a bad thing. She could find out just what his body was capable of, and hers. Never was a man her match, either in bounty hunting or otherwise. But Hawkins … Damn if he didn’t have a way of making her burn from fifteen feet away.
His question strung between them, tight like a rope. She was tempted to let herself fall into him. To test his strength and
desire against hers. But where did it end? The rope might turn out to be a noose.
Keeping her eyes on Hawkins, she pointed to her trike, just a few paces away. “You’re going to keep your distance. I can put a bullet through a man at four hundred yards with my Winchester.”
He stroked his chin, eyes flicking up and down her body. “That’s a hell of a distance.”
“If you’re four hundred yards and one foot away, you might be safe.”
His face grew serious as he considered her words. He glanced at the butt of the Winchester in its scabbard on her trike. Then he took a deliberate step toward her.
With a voice low and private, just for her, he spoke, “You know I can’t stay away.”
Was he talking about the money? Not with his dark eyes blazing that way. Her body responded with more heat. It seemed inevitable. They’d been circling around each other for years. The best bounty hunters in the West. A man and a woman with no equal but each other.
One step toward him. That’s all it would take to tell Hawkins, and herself, she was willing. She wanted him. One step seemed so far. Would it somehow move her backward, weaken her? Or show how strong she was?
And if she didn’t take that step, what would she be? A bounty hunter who was no longer a woman. Just a machine like her guns, her trike.
Hawkins stood his ground. His body was capable enough to keep up with hers. And the need and hunger she’d seen in him was the same as she knew. She didn’t back down. Ever. Though this challenge shook her deep. That’s why she needed to face it. To take Hawkins on. To see how far they could go.
A flurry of images ran through her mind. The two of them tangled in the sheets of a hotel bed. His mouth on hers. His touch across her body. Her hands on his chest, his stomach, and lower.
She shifted her weight to take the step toward him. Then, suddenly, the metal plate in her hand started vibrating. It was warm, as if coming alive. Was this some damn device that could measure her desire?
