Winter's Edge: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Outzone Drifter Series Book 1) (33 page)

Marlee drew her breath. “Frank, I’m not sure where he is. Ritter’s not someone I know real well. Honestly, I’ve only ever talked to him a couple of times.”

“Well enough to sidle up to him and set me up, a little chitchat about dead men carrying neon signs while you’re at it, is that it?” Brogan grabbed her by the arm and shook it hard. “Girl, you brought me all the way here to tell me that? You better give me something good, or you’re won’t be walking out of here in one piece, that’s a promise.”

Struggling to free herself, Marlee looked plaintively across at Roja, who stood by the wall. Brogan tightened his grip and she squealed. “Hey, let go. You’re hurting me!”

“Not until you give me something.”

Marlee hesitated a moment. “I can only tell you what people are saying around here, that’s all. Please, let me go and I’ll tell you.”

Brogan loosened his grip on her arm. The young hooker shook it free. It was red and blotchy from where he’d held it.

Marlee looked at him, rubbing the top of her arm. There was a sullen look on her face. “Ritter’s not here. He’s gone north, to Grayfall.”

“Grayfall?” Brogan had never heard of the place. He glanced over at Roja questioningly still leaning against the wall, her hands behind her back. “You know of it?”

Roja nodded. “Slavers town,” she said quietly. “Way up north.”

“A slavers town? Nice.”

Brogan thought it over, wondering whether it was the same place Cole had alluded to in his earlier messages when he’d told Brogan the perps were heading north into the Devil’s Quadrangle. If so, what Marlee said certainly made sense.

Something else occurred to him. Something Ritter had joked about the other night. “By the way, you got a sister?”

Marlee stared at him in surprise. “No, why?”

“Ever had one?”

“What are you saying?” she said, a confused look on her face.

“Never mind, just curious. So that’s it? That all you got? How about around here? Ritter got a cabin in the woods he could be hiding out in?”

Marlee shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that.”

Brogan stared hard at her.

“I swear to you, that’s all I know. Look, if he ever finds out I’ve talked to you, he’ll kill me.”

“Think of it like this,” Brogan said, a grim look on his face, “this conversation just kept you alive one more day. That’s one more day to hustle.”

He figured this was as much as he was going to get out of the woman. Whether she was telling the truth or not was hard to tell, but Grayfall fitted in with Ritter’s MO, and sounded like the sort of place he might lie low in. When he got back to Winter’s Edge, he’d find out more from Cole.

“I guess that’ll have to do,” he said, taking a step back from her. “Goodbye, Marlee. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

He nodded to Roja, who had been listening carefully to every word of their conversation. “Come on, let’s go.”

Springing her foot from off the wall, Roja stepped forward. Too late, Brogan spotted the eight-inch blade held low in her hand. She took another step, swiveled, and lunged toward Marlee.

“Roja…no!” Brogan yelled.

Roja swung the knife fast. With a short, hooking motion, she plunged it deep into Marlee’s side, driving the blade all the way up to the hilt before the girl even had a chance to move.

Marlee gasped, a look of complete shock on her face. As Roja withdrew the knife, she staggered back against the wall, her mouth open wide. She looked down at her side to see a quickly-growing red stain on her blouse, blood spurting out onto the floor by her feet. In a panic, she clasped a hand over the wound, but the blood continued to gush out between her fingers and down the side of her leg.

“Oh shit,” she whispered. Then she slid down the wall and sat down on the floor, her eyes fluttering, staring over to the far side of the room.

“Are you crazy?” Brogan shouted at Roja. “What the hell did you do that for?”

Roja stuck the blood-stained knife inside her jacket. “Well, you weren’t going to do it. Don’t tell me the bitch didn’t have it coming.”

There was no time to argue. Brogan just prayed no one chose that moment to bring a girl back to the hotel. It was getting toward that time of the evening.

He crouched down beside Marlee and examined the wound. It looked bad. The wound path had penetrated deep into the left side of her abdomen, and from the amount of blood she was losing and the glassy unfocused look in her eyes, it looked like the abdominal aorta had been perforated. Brogan had seen these types of wounds before. Without immediate medical care, they were almost always fatal.

He looked up at Roja, “Quick,” he said, motioning to the door of the passageway that lead back to the hotel. “Open that door.”

Roja strode quickly over to the far wall, and Brogan reached around behind Marlee, grabbing her under the arms. He dragged her body across the room, leaving a bloody trail in her wake.

“Go clean that up,” he ordered Roja as he pulled Marlee into the passageway. Roja looked around the room, then spotted Marlee’s coat lying on the floor. She rushed over to it and began mopping up the blood-stained mess.

Inside the walkway, Brogan kicked the door closed with his boot, then propped Marlee up against the wall. When he let go, her head slumped to her chest.

“I’m dying, aren’t I?” she moaned weakly, her eyes half closed. “Please…tell me.”

In the dim light of the one bare low-watt bulb above him, Brogan saw a dark patch forming on the earthen floor beside the girl, seeping into the ground.

“I’m not sure,” he said, the tone of his voice low and strained. “Maybe.”

At that moment, Roja opened the door and came inside, closing the door firmly behind her.

Brogan stood up. “Stay here,” he told her.

“Why, where you going?” Roja said in alarm.

“Shut up and wait,” he said fiercely. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Brogan remembered that farther along the passageway was a door leading out to the back of the hotel. He reached it in less than a minute. Tugging on the handle, he found it was locked. He braced his shoulder and shoved against it hard. After a couple of attempts, it burst open with a sharp crack as the wood around the lock gave way.

Taking a quick peek outside, he ran quickly back to Roja. She stood above Marlee, who had keeled over to one side and lay motionless on the floor.

“Come on,” he said.

They each took an arm and dragged Marlee along the passageway. When they reached the door, Brogan went first and pulled her limp body through it.

Outside in the clear night sky, moonlight streaked over the rooftops, down into a small unpaved yard. To the right was the high cement wall where their two motorbikes sat parked in the shelter on the far side. Close to the wall was a wooden shed, where stacked to one side were several black garbage bags.

“Over there,” he whispered.

The two dragged the body around to the back of the shed and laid it lengthways along the back wall, both panting from the exertion. Below them, Marlee lay completely still, her eyes closed. Brogan kneeled down beside her and put his head down to her chest.

“She dead?” Roja whispered above him.

“Yeah.” Brogan stood up. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

Brogan had no idea what the response would be inside the Quiver Bar once it was discovered that one of their top attractions had been murdered. While there might not be any sheriff in town, it would be wise not to stick around waiting for a lynch party to form.

Back inside the passageway, Brogan jammed a piece of splintered wood into the door frame to keep it from opening, and Roja headed back the way they had come.

“Hey!” Brogan whispered loudly, pointing in the other direction. “This way.”

The bald-headed clerk on the night shift sat alone at the desk when Brogan and Roja emerged through the door at the back of lobby. Brogan slipped his arm around Roja’s waist as they approached the desk, turning to wink at the clerk as they walked past him. After the first turn on the stairs he let go of her and the two walked back to their room.

Once inside, Brogan slid across the bolt, then turned and faced Roja.

“What the hell made you do that?” he hissed at her, barely able to control his fury.

“I’m sorry,” Roja said in a subdued voice. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“You planned that all along, didn’t you? Ever since we left the room this evening.”

Roja shook her head. “No. Only when we were in the bar. That bitch didn’t care how she nearly got you killed, laughing at you like it was all a game.” Roja looked at him defiantly. “Bitch ain’t laughing now.”

“I didn’t come all the way here to kill a woman like that, no matter what she did to me,” Brogan said, seething with anger. “Hurry up and get packed. We need to leave this minute.”

Roja lowered her eyes and turned away. She pulled her backpack out of the closet and began to pack.

A short time later, the clerk raised his head in surprise when the two came back down the stairs hauling their gear. He looked up at the clock on the wall. “You guys checking out? It’s kinda late.”

“Yep. Last minute change of plan,” Brogan said, dropping the room key onto the counter. “Can you get someone to open the gate for us? We got our bikes out back.”

A few minutes later, the two followed the same young man from that afternoon out through the back of the lobby, passing the turn for the walkway to the saloon and straight on toward the parking enclosure.

Out in the yard, Brogan glanced to his left, toward the wall where Marlee’s body lay on the other side. With a little luck, she wouldn’t be discovered until morning, depending perhaps on how good Roja had cleaned the blood up. They would be long gone by then.

He took a coin out of his pocket and handed it to the kid. “We’ll be ready in a minute,” he told him.

The porter went back over to the entrance and removed the chains from around the gates. Brogan and Roja packed their gear onto their machines in silence. When they were both ready, they started their engines and pulled across the yard to the open gates.

Brogan raised two fingers to the side of his head in salute as he drove by the young porter. “See ya, kid. We’ll catch you next time.”

Brogan drove down the Vegas Drag, both Glocks in easy reach on his tactical belt, his automatic rifle slung across his shoulder. After a few blocks, he took a left turn down one of the dark unlit side streets leading down to the lake shore. When he hit the bottom, he turned right onto the wharfside road. Moments later, Roja caught up and rode alongside him. He glanced across at her briefly, then fixed his eyes firmly ahead on the road. He had some thinking to do.

A few blocks farther, they passed the Paradise Lounge on the corner. The lights were off, the doors and windows all boarded up, and Brogan took another moment to reflect once more on how lucky he was to be alive. After another few hundred yards, the wharves to their left disappeared and the two rode alongside open water, where a bright moon reflected off its glassy surface.

The fresh air cooled Brogan’s head, and by the time they reached Johnson’s sawmill at the junction of the east shore road, he’d calmed down. He thought ruefully of Bear’s warning of only the previous night. Roja’s temper had bitten him in the ass sooner than he had expected. From whatever angle he looked at it, it appeared that was just the way the girl was wired. It wasn’t something that was going to change anytime soon.

Five minutes later, they came to the fork where the Black Eagles pack had pulled up that first evening he’d arrived in Two Jacks and the chief had given him the directions into city. It seemed a fitting place to stop again. He slowed down, then pulled over.

Roja drew up beside him. “Why we stopping?” she asked, a puzzled look on her face. “We better keep going.”

Brogan took off his helmet and hung it carefully over one end of the handlebar. He took a deep breath.

“That’s north, the direction I’m heading,” he said, indicating toward the road that wound up into the Iron Hills, a dark, looming shadow in the distance. Then he pointed to the west shore road. “That’s the way back to the camp. Where you’re going.”

In the moonlight, Brogan saw Roja’s face crumple. “No…don’t do this,” she said, her voice trembling.

“I got no choice. I didn’t leave everything I had in the Strata State to come here to be part of a woman’s murder. I don’t care what she did.”

There was an imploring look on Roja’s face. “I’ll never do something like that again. I swear to you.”

Brogan shook his head. “I can’t ride with you, worrying about the next time you lose your temper. I’ve got a job to do, I need to do this alone.”

Roja stared at him. “You really mean that?”

“Yes, I mean it.”

It hurt like hell for Brogan to say the words, but what choice did he have? The Latina’s hot temper could have gotten them both killed that night before he even had a chance to track Ritter down. He couldn’t risk that happening again.

Roja’s look turned to a glare. She shook her head contemptuously, her long black hair waving in the wind underneath her helmet. “You’re wrong,” she said. “We would have made a good team.”

Brogan reached across and picked up his helmet. Putting it back on, he clicked the strap closed under his chin, then revved the throttle of his motorbike.

“So long, Roja,” he said. She stared at him without replying, a numb look on her face.

Brogan pulled away from the verge and slowly drove off. Inside him, the hurt bit into him hard, deeper than he expected. As he made his way into the hills, he tried to shake the picture of Roja’s wounded expression from his mind and focus his thoughts on his plans.

His journey would take him first over the Iron Hills, then down into the plains below, all the way back to Winter’s Edge. Far north of the city lay the slaver’s town of Grayfall, where he would be heading. He would know soon after checking in with John Cole.

Soon the gradient of the hill steepened sharply. He reached a hairpin turn where the road cut back in almost a 180 degree angle as it rose up into the mountains. After negotiating the bend, he pulled up to the edge of the road and came to a stop.