Mina’s eyes sparkled with amusement, probably at my hatless misery. She leaned against the counter like a woman bored with bureaucracy. Her braided hair still dripped a puddle on the undecorated concrete floor. When I didn’t move for a moment, she gave me an impatient look and waved me through.
With my right hand braced against the counter, I vaulted over, landing softly on the other side. My boots were going to be too noisy, so I had left them by my skidder outside. Wet socks would likely plague me the rest of the day, but it was a small price to pay for a better chance of living.
There was a creak. The heavy metal door that separated the business end of the station from the jail slammed shut.
That was my chance.
I padded softly down the hall, glancing right as I passed the hallway to the jail. The door was closed, but I saw Johnson through a small window.
He didn’t see me.
My first stop was my office.
I was halfway through a prayer before I remembered that my newfound faith was mostly an artificial product of some emotion hijacking nannies. Luck would have to be on my side. If Swayle had added any security during his one day in the office, I would be in trouble. If he had even bothered to change the lock I would have needed to start using brute strength to make my way around.
My office wasn’t even locked. That was normal. In my twenty years there, I had only locked my office when I was inside it, as a matter of privacy. I pushed my way into the dark room and waited for my eyes to adjust.
The room was almost as I had left it. The desk display flickered alive, and greenish light played across the walls of the room. I cursed and flipped it back into standby, knocking over a slim metal flask as I did so. Standing it back up, I silently surveyed the rest of the room.
Embarrassment flushed my face as I remembered that the flask had been on the floor when I had left the previous morning. This must be why they knew I was an incompetent drunk on the job—a drunk, anyway. My incompetence probably spoke for itself when I botched the whole investigation with Trish. She was probably just there to watch for me to screw up. The city had probably sent her to undermine my position. Seemed like a crazy conspiracy theory to me.
I shook my head to clear all of that crap out of it.
What did it matter if she’d been sent to undermine me? I still had a grudging respect for her. No, I didn’t like her, but she was good at her job.
The sound of movement in the hall sent me hiding behind the desk.
Long moments passed. My ears strained to hear Johnson’s low timbre, but his voice was just too quiet.
He passed the door to my office and headed deeper into the station. I bit my lip. If this was my only chance to get into the jail, then I needed to move in a hurry, but I wasn’t ready yet.
I moved to the wall safe in the corner. My thumb mashed up against the reader and I whispered the passcode, “Truth and justice for God and Texas.”
The safe clicked open.
There was more in there than I could possibly carry.
Bullets were the first order. I grabbed a box of Red Number Fives and left the rest.
My eyes fell on a meter-long, triple-barrel, pulse-action Browning Blue Lightning.
E-cuffs were important, of course, so I stuffed a handful of those in my pocket.
The Browning Blue Lightning was the top of the line energy weapon back when I was in the army. One shot from one barrel of that weapon would stop a charging longhorn dead in its tracks. All three barrels would make it fairly likely nobody would eat steaks that night.
The first aid kit was probably a good idea, so I grabbed it. Bandages probably weren’t going to do me any good after a gunfight, but you never knew what else could go bad.
There was no good reason to bring the Browning. Most likely, the entire event would be resolved peacefully, except for a short bit of violence in the end when either the new sheriff or I lost a whole lot of dignity and a life.
Time was running out. I pushed the safe closed silently, crept over to the door, and listened. Not a sound came from the hallway, but the whole station was filled with the quiet hiss of falling rain. Now was the time to move. If I hurried I could get over to the jail without being spotted by Johnson, thus simplifying my visit here.
I stood, stepped over to the safe, flung it open, grabbed the Browning, and slung it over my shoulder.
Better safe than sorry, my pa always told me.
Holding my breath, I crossed the hallway and ducked down the hall to the jail. Pausing there, I listened again. Nothing.
The door was closed and locked, but the system still accepted my thumbprint and voice. With an uncomfortably loud buzz, the door opened. I slipped through and pulled it most of the way closed behind me.
The jail was one of the best tools for an aspiring lawmaker. Most of the time, angry folks just need a little time to stop being angry, just like drunks need a little time to stop being drunk. The jail is a place where we store people who are having trouble abiding by the rules of our society. It is not a place of punishment. It is not a place to make people suffer so that they’ll somehow realize that there’s a big bad jail waiting for them so they should be nice. People in this part of the world just didn’t think that way.
Sometimes, they needed a break, though.
The jail cells held some of the same tech that worked in the tiny e-cuffs. A rapidly oscillating signal pulsed through the air here. If my designer cuff hadn’t already been disabling my electronics, then this signal would probably do it. Sure, there were ways to shield from it, but most folks didn’t bother. There were ways to detect shielding, and the ever-escalating arms race just became meaningless at some point. Reinforced concrete and steel bars made up the decor in this place. The walls were painted white and the bars were orange. There were only six cells. At the far end of the hall was a seventh cell with its own tech and precautions. That was the interrogation room.
A dozen angry faces scowled in the cells, a mass of anger and humanity. None reacted when I entered the room, but they writhed and scratched blindly at the bars.
“Howdy, folks.”
There was no response.
I shook my head. “You folks shouldn’t be here,” I said.
There was a switch by the door that controlled the anti-tech, and another one that controlled the individual cell doors. I flipped open the farthest door and walked over to its only resident.
It was Court. She was dirty and her fancy clothes were ruined. Two of her four arms had been clipped off just below the elbows. They stuck out of her ribcage like broken wings.
My face still stung from where she had clawed it. I seriously considered retribution. She would heal quickly, but it still didn’t seem right to cause pain to such a beautiful and helpless creature. Plus, I was certain the scars from that wound would significantly increase the quality of my scowl. Call me vain if you want.
Court started when I touched her shoulder. Her face darted around like she was trying to see but couldn’t. Those fully enhanced eyes and ears were doing her no good in this cell. She likely wouldn’t even be able to walk, so I gently scooped her up in my one good arm and carried her to the interrogation room.
My foot slammed the door shut, and I dumped Court into a stout steel chair. She blinked a few times. Her eyes flashed to life and focused on me.
She smiled. “Oh and your beautiful face is all I could have hoped for.”
I tried to keep the mixture of anger and distaste from showing on my face. “I’ve got a deal for you, miss.”
“Well, I do believe I’m reformed, sheriff. You can just let me go, if you don’t mind.”
“We don’t have much time.”
“I believe I have a great deal of time. At least, that’s what I’m led to believe. How long have we been in here? A day? A week?”
It had been less than half a day.
“A person loses track of time when her eyes and ears are gone,” Court continued to ramble. “My internal clock wa
s even disabled. I don’t believe I liked that very much. It gave me plenty of time to think, though. I decided a great many things.”
“Look, we—”
“First of which is that I don’t very much like you, Mr. Sheriff.” Court lifted an arm in front of her face and wiggled her fingers. Her systems seemed to be restarting one by one. She flicked her fingers and those wicked sharp claws snapped out. Her eyes met mine, and her smile faded.
“Courtney,” I started in the calmest tone I could manage.
She lunged.
Her butt got about half a meter from the seat before her balance shifted, and she fell backward with a solid thump. At her highest point she’d swiped her claws but fell short of my face.
She twisted and strained but couldn’t get anywhere.
“Magnets,” I said.
Her eyes met mine again. She was so full of rage and pain that I flinched and looked away. “It’s not magnets, pendejo.”
I looked at her questioningly.
“You have me sitting on a damn gravity well.”
“Plus magnets, right?”
She struggled again, bracing her hands against the arms of the chair and pushing down as hard as she could.
“I guess I always thought it was magnets.” I felt the pull from across the room.
Losing a struggle against someone who doesn’t really understand technology did not help me placate this woman, who practically worshipped the stuff. Changing topics seemed like it might be a good course of action, though I might have messed that up as well.
“Tell me about how you got caught,” I said.
Court slumped back into the steel chair. “Some fucker blew up a bomb and brought down the law on my friends. That guy got away, but those of us whose skidders were blown up in the explosion had no way to escape.”
I smiled. “The bomb you’re referring to, is that the one you’ve been riding around town?”
“Possibly.”
“This fucker you refer to, what makes you think he got away?”
“Cut the crap, sheriff. You could have just left, but you came back to ruin my gang and me. You wanted revenge and you got it.”
“I did want revenge.” I stepped closer to Court, too close to be safe if she decided to lash out again. “And it was wrong.”
Her eyes narrowed and flashed with a greenish light. “You didn’t really get away with it, did you?”
The conversation was taking way too long. “You want a deal or what?”
“Not really.”
Our eyes met again. This time I held her hateful gaze until she blinked.
“What is the deal?”
“I’m lookin’ to put together a posse.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “You want to deputize me?”
I scowled. “I don’t like the idea, but I need the backup. You get freedom, but you and your gang need to witness something.”
She chuckled at some humor that I didn’t quite get.
“I need you to witness a duel at noon today, that’s all. No shooting, no fighting. Just witness the duel and make sure the results are honored. Make sure people know what went down.”
Her chuckle developed worrisomely into a full-blown laugh. “Honor? You looking to me to honor a duel? Isn’t there a judge in this town?”
“Duel’s between the new sheriff and myself,” I said. “And no, there’s no judge. He quit years ago.”
“No wonder the jail’s so full.” Her expression turned dead serious.
“We got a deal?”
She stared straight ahead and didn’t answer.
I flipped a switch on the wall. “In a few minutes, the magnets will power down.”
“Gravity well,” she corrected me.
“Whatever. When that happens, walk out of here, free your friends, and meet me at the coordinates that I have written right here.” I took out my glow cube with the coordinates of the Brown Ranch and showed it to her. “You can take my cruiser if you need a ride, but don’t hurt anyone on your way out.”
“What makes you think we’ll come?”
I opened the heavy metal door and stepped out of the interrogation room, pulling the door most of the way shut after me. She was right. There wasn’t a good reason for them to follow my orders. By all reasoning, they were the enemy. They were outlaws. There was a greater threat now, though. I wanted them to know about it, even if I wasn’t around to help them fight it. Maybe they would get it, maybe they wouldn’t.
All I said was, “Honor, Courtney. You’ll be there for honor.”
Her laughter echoed through the humming, sterile jail. It faded as I crossed over to the door, but by then I wasn’t listening to it.
Something was wrong.
I scanned the hall. The prisoners were all still in their places. Only Court’s cell was open and she had been alone. The others sat or sprawled out in their cells, rocking and moaning in their misery. The light above flickered a little, but the anti-tech seemed to be in good order. Then I spotted the problem.
The entrance to the jail closed.
Through the window, I saw a shadow of movement and my heart raced.
Johnson was just outside the jail.
I was going to have to make the call that I had been trying to avoid since I’d decided to sneak into the station. If Johnson saw me, it would be seconds before he had me down and locked up in a cell. The question was, could I trust him to let me go?
Of course, I knew I could trust him. He had been my right-hand man for years. I could trust him to enforce the law. I could trust him to fight for the freedom that people deserved, the freedom they’d earned. I could even trust him to do what was right in the face of terrible odds.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t trust him to give a damn about me. He cared about his job and he was loyal to the sheriff.
I wasn’t the sheriff anymore.
I padded silently up to the door, ducking low to keep out of view as much as possible. Johnson wasn’t looking in, though.
My nostrils flared and I set my jaw, ready for action.
With my right hand, I slowly reached for the door handle. I closed my fingers around it and braced myself.
I turned the handle and pulled. In one quick motion, I threw the door open and kicked the back of Johnson’s knee. Hard.
He dropped like a sack and gave a somewhat comical shout of surprise. With my only functioning hand, I grabbed his shirt and dragged him back into the jail.
Johnson shuddered. The anti-tech was affecting him, so he would lose most of his enhanced strength.
I stood.
My foot came down hard on Johnson’s chiseled face. I kicked again and again, but without my boots the savage kicks did little real harm.
Twice he tried to say something between kicks. Once he tried to stand before being throttled back to the ground.
Then he caught my foot and twisted it.
It was my turn to hit the floor. My face whacked against the concrete, sending lights flashing in front of my eyes. My wounds opened and blood smeared across the cold concrete. Johnson kept hold of my foot, standing and twisting my knee into an awkward angle. With his formidable strength, Johnson held my lower half in the air.
I tried to talk but my words came out as a mumble, since my face was smashed into the concrete.
“What?” Johnson said.
I mumbled again. He applied more pressure. My knee was strained and pain ripped through my leg.
“What did you say? Just come quietly, sir. I don’t want to hurt you.” He shifted a little and eased up on the knee.
It was all I needed. My face was no longer planted on the cold slick concrete, and I had just enough freedom of movement to angle my body correctly.
“Johnson,” I said, my voice coming out slowly and quietly. “I’m sorry about this.”
Without unholstering my Smith and Wesson, I pulled the trigger. The deafening boom of the weapon shattered the humming peace of the jail, shocking all of the prisoners into ch
aos. Johnson’s head snapped back.
Johnson dropped my lower half and fell stiffly backward onto the floor. Dead or unconscious, he wasn’t moving any time soon. I stayed down and pulled myself over to a wall. Prisoners shouted and grabbed through the bars at anything they could reach. One pulled at my coat, but I yanked it free. A line of blood started to soak through my pants, and I realized that the bullet had grazed my leg before hitting Johnson.
It stung but I figured it was the least of my problems.
The body on the floor shifted. He was still alive. By the awkward hang of his jaw I figured I had finally managed to mess up his beautiful face, probably broke his jaw. This made me feel worse than I had about anything I had done already. Johnson didn’t deserve this sort of treatment.
I forced myself to stand. The wound in my leg was deep, but not as bad as it could have been. Johnson was heavy. I grabbed him with my one good arm and dragged him into the interrogation chamber. Court was there, still trying to stand. I mashed the controls on the wall and turned the magnets all the way off.
She stood slowly and stared at me with what looked like a mixture of hatred and superiority. Distaste, maybe.
I ignored her and placed Johnson on the chair. With the magnets back on, he wouldn’t be able to stop me. Once the door was closed, though, the anti-tech wouldn’t affect him. His nannies would be able to start healing that ruined face. I reached down and did my best to set his broken and dislocated jaw, wincing at the sickening pop it made as I forced it back in place. I ran my fingers through his hair, feeling the warmth radiating from his body. Would he ever forgive me for what I’d done to him? The question bothered me, but in all fairness he had shot at me first.
The cigarettes in his front pocket were practically calling out to me, so I borrowed the pack and lit one. I brushed past Court in a cloud of smoke and gunpowder. She might have finally come to respect me. She might have been fixing to kill me. I didn’t give a damn. I walked out of the jail and found Mina in the lobby.
She shook nervously. “What happened?”
“Things got a little rough, but he’ll live.”
Justice in an Age of Metal and Men Page 15
