The man who’d opened the door wouldn’t have drawn much attention no matter what room he was in. Mason only recognized him because he made it his business to watch and remember as many faces as possible whenever he was playing cards in a place for more than two nights in a row. Even though Mason had seen the short fellow with the short hair parted down the middle, that didn’t mean he knew who he was. He did, however, have enough information to make an educated guess.
“What are you doing?” the man asked. His features, while normally bland and passive, took on an aggressive edge once he spotted Mason.
“I’m here to get the money Virgil needed,” Mason said in a rush. “You must be Virgil’s regular partner.”
The man still looked suspicious but was now equally confused. “Yes,” he replied. “I’m Bob. Who the hell are you?”
“Phillip Everly,” Mason said, using one of his standard aliases. “Virgil has someone on the hook and needs some funds to cover a whale of a bet. He must’ve sent you to help me get this money to him.”
“I never heard of you.”
“But you’re his partner, right?”
Bob seemed just as confused this time as the first time Mason had asked that question. The fact of the matter was that most cheaters who had to rely on machines and loaded dice also had to rely on partners to make their job easier. Plus, figuring out the identity of the man who had the key to Virgil’s room wasn’t much of a stretch.
Mason stood up straight and made no attempt to hide the money in his hands. It was too late to do that anyway, so he went so far as to keep stuffing what he had into his pockets. “Are you here to help me?” he asked.
“Put that money down,” Bob said.
“Why? We’ll just have to pick it up again.”
“I said put it down!”
“Sure,” Mason said while lowering his arms. He dropped most of the cash onto the floor. An instant before letting go of the few bundles left in his possession, Mason snapped his hands up to send those bills fluttering into Bob’s face. When Bob stepped back and tried to brush the money away, Mason ran straight at him.
Leading with his shoulder, Mason lowered his head and rammed Bob squarely in the chest. The other man grunted as his shoulders hit the door behind him and the handle jabbed into his lower back. Bob swung his hands wildly in front of him, partly to clear the paper from his eyes and partly to get ahold of Mason before he could get past him. He was successful on both counts.
Mason had the end of the hall in his sights when he was pulled backward a couple of steps. If he’d built up any momentum, he might have been knocked off his feet when he was brought to a halt so quickly. Even though he kept his balance, it took him a moment to figure out he was being spun back around. By the time he got his bearings again, Bob was taking a swing at him.
Even though Mason started to turn away from the incoming blow, he wasn’t fast enough to avoid it completely. Bob’s fist clipped his jaw and sent him stumbling to one side.
“You’re not one of Virgil’s partners!” Bob said.
Like most second fiddles in a team of idiots, Bob wasn’t very bright. What he lacked in brains, however, he made up for in aggression.
Mason reached for the gun at his hip, if only to put a scare into the man in front of him. Bob reacted quickly by bringing one knee up and snapping that boot straight out to pound into Mason’s stomach. Thanks to the beating he’d taken that night, Mason was already filled with a dull ache from head to toe. One more kick or punch here and there wasn’t about to make a difference. That kick did knock him back, however, which allowed Bob to reach for his own pistol.
Now that he stood at the end of the hall, Mason had an option open to him that gave him much better odds than testing his speed on the draw. He stepped back and jumped to the side, clearing the hallway altogether as Bob took his shot. The pistol’s roar filled the hallway and hot lead burned into the wall. Mason drew his Remington and kept hurrying down the corridor and away from the hall. Another shot was fired that took a chunk out of the wall behind him. After that, Bob emerged from the hallway to get a better look at what he was shooting.
Mason fired from the hip. The Remington bucked against his palm, illuminating the corridor directly in front of him. His back was to a door to the outside deck and Mason reached with his free hand to open it. The shot he’d fired wasn’t meant to draw blood and knocked a hole into the wall several inches away from anything with a pulse. Bob was either too brave or too stupid to care about the gun in Mason’s hand, because he kept coming regardless.
“Damn,” Mason growled as he stepped into the chilly air. There was still plenty of noise coming from many different sections of the boat, but not nearly enough to mask a pair of gunshots. The men who would be coming to see what was going on wouldn’t be happy to see Mason’s face again so soon.
He lowered his pistol so as not to alarm anyone else he might encounter while walking along the deck. Keeping himself against the rail, he watched the door he’d just stepped through, waiting to see who would come out next.
“What’s wrong down there?” someone called from the deck above. “Was someone shot?”
“Keep your head down!” Mason shouted. He shook his head, hardly believing that his fellow passengers could take an interest in him now when he’d had to fend for himself in so many fights before. Rather than dwell on the strange situation, he opted to try to get out of this one with his skin intact.
“Come back with that money!” Bob shouted.
Keeping his Remington pointed toward the door that Bob was about to burst through, Mason tried to think of his best options. Killing Bob was the first one to spring to mind but wasn’t very appealing at the moment. Even in self-defense, shooting a man on the Delta Jack would only irritate Greeley further. Odds were that he’d reconsider any arrangement he’d made with Mason and just be done with him in the quickest way possible.
“Where’d you go, you bastard?” Bob shouted.
Mason inched along the railing as his mind spun with possibilities. If he gave back the money he’d taken, Bob would most likely lose interest and find somewhere else to go. After that, it would just be a matter of lying low so neither Bob nor Virgil caught sight of him again.
The door was shoved open and Bob came out. He had the wide, round eyes of a dumb animal that had been spooked. One wrong move and it would attack whatever it could reach.
Mason’s gun hand came up so he could sight along the top of his barrel. It was easy enough to line up his sights with Bob as his target. Squeezing the trigger was another story entirely.
This wasn’t a matter of defending himself with less than a heartbeat to choose between life and death.
This wasn’t a chance to keep someone else from getting killed for no good reason.
This was putting a bullet into a man who wouldn’t see it coming. There were plenty of men on God’s green earth who wouldn’t have had much of a problem with something like that. Abner Mason wasn’t one of them.
Bob wheeled around, unaware of the thoughts that had flickered through Mason’s ever-churning mind like so many moths darting past a candle’s flame. Unlike Mason, he didn’t need any time to think before acting. Once he had his target in sight, Bob came straight at him.
“I’ll give you back the money,” Mason said in a rush.
Bob would cover the short distance between them in another second or two.
“What else do you want from—” Mason ducked below Bob’s wild swing and snapped a quick punch to Bob’s ribs. His intention wasn’t to put his man down, but merely back him up a few steps. As soon as that happened, Mason felt his back touch the railing and planted his feet on the deck. “Let’s work this out,” he said. “See? I’ll even holster my gun. This has gone far enough already.”
Mason could tell by looking into Bob’s eyes that the man wasn’t about to gun him down where he stood. Unfortunately he didn’t see anything in there to let him know Bob was about to rush him from such a close distance. If he had seen that coming, he might have been able to get out of the way before being knocked against the railing behind him.
Not only did Bob catch him full on, but his momentum took both him and Mason straight over the side.