She picked the wrong damn day to visit. From her position in the doorway, Charity took in the blood-spattered room as she leant against the doorjamb of the shop serving as Pebble Creek’s delivery and message centre.
Next to her, leaning against the other side and modelling the latest in crimson-stained field medic bandages was her old mentor turned friend, Boden. ‘As soon as the last Raider was down, I headed back and found this.’ His expression was as grim as his voice.
This encompassed the carnage gathering flies and filling the confines of the room with the stench of hard death. A scent the spring air couldn’t cut even as it found its way in through the doorway and shattered window. Light danced among the carnage as sunlight hit pieces of old glass, igniting tiny bloodstained fireflies. It was a too familiar scene.
Years before her birth, the winds of change swept over the world, laying waste with gleeful abandon, ripping apart the wonders of civilised man and reminding those who survived how overrated being civilised truly was. Man-made super viruses danced through the heavy urban populations and vital crops leaving decimation in its wake. Wasn’t long before logic fell to its knees under the unbreakable grip of fear while cities raged and burned.
Even Mother Nature got into the mix, drowning coastlines and recreating the landscape and borders with the tools at her disposal. Each event cascaded into a brutal lesson for humanity’s children, a lesson they refused to heed until they had no choice. Then, it was too late to do anything but survive. And survival became a brutal, vicious game with very few rules.
Part of her wanted to turn on her heel and walk away. She had enough things to worry about right now, and adding this cluster to her to-do list wasn’t ideal. Instinct whispered and instead of leaving, she stepped inside.
There wasn’t much to the room besides a long counter with a good size opening dead centre. It stretched across the width of the room, splitting it in half. She counted three, maybe four bodies. It was hard to tell if the leg sticking out from behind the counter was still attached to a body. However, identifying the body on her side of the counter was easy. It was Crane, the man she was here to see. Looked like her meeting was cancelled. ‘Had to have happened during the raiding party attack.’
‘Yeah.’ Boden’s one-word answer landed like a two-ton stone.
She shifted a bit and winced as the movement pulled at the shallow bullet graze in her torn shoulder, a remnant from the brief, but furious earlier firefight. ‘I’m not a big believer in coincidence.’
That earned her a grunt from Boden. ‘Funny, neither am I.’ He dug a thick finger under the bloodstained strip of cloth covering his weathered chest and scratched. ‘Especially when they come in pairs. First, Raiders don’t generally come this far up the pass, especially during early spring. Too much hassle, which is why Crane picked this spot.’
This spot being Pebble Creek, a virtual stronghold situated in a narrow natural valley between two ridges in the southern area of what used to be Idaho. A place that should be too far north to tempt the desert dwelling Raiders into crossing the ravaged bones of what once made up Nevada, Utah and Idaho. After the Collapse, what humanity remained, hunkered down in a few key urban areas or huddled in strategic rural communities like Pebble Creek run by men like Crane. ‘Second?’
‘Second, Crane was outnumbered, which tells me they were targeting him, not any of the supplies or shipments.’
Her attention went to the neat stack of boxes lining the back wall. A recent delivery? ‘Which would make the attack at the front gate a smoke screen?’
‘Probably.’
She sighed. An hour ago she rode into Pebble Creek, hoping to claim some of Crane’s time and maybe get a solid lead on the trail of breadcrumbs she was sent to follow. Instead, she was waylaid by Boden, after one of the guards on watch informed him of her arrival. Since Crane was in the middle of something, she passed the time playing catch up with Boden. They were headed to the café to grab some coffee when the Raiders hit, and everything went to hell. Just her luck the damn scavengers decided to descend en masse in some crazed version of a suicide attack. Suspicions nibbled on the ragged edges of her mind, but she still asked, ‘Why Crane?’
‘You want a list?’ Boden drawled.
Right, there were tons of reasons to want Crane dead, which made narrowing it down nigh to impossible. You could accuse Crane of many things—arrogance and being a dick were the first two that came to mind—but he wasn’t stupid. The man who held a territory free and clear while surrounded by the two biggest powers on what was left of this side of the Mississippi was the furthest thing from stupid. Unlucky as shit since he was dead, but not stupid.
Time to try and figure out what the hell happened and screwed her plans to hell. From her position just inside the doorway she and Boden shared, she studied the gruesome scene. Her stomach began a slow, sickening pitch. Besides the leg protruding from behind the counter, at her feet, there was a body half in and half out of the doorway. She didn’t need to toe the dead guy over to know he bled out from a gaping gut wound. The cool pool of crimson creeping towards her boots and Crane’s knife lying in the smear of blood trailing the Raider’s progress from Crane to the door was more than enough to get the picture.
Back inside, slumped under the counter against a water-stained wall, and surrounded by blood-soaked papers and packages, probably part of today’s delivery, was Crane. Just beyond his curled fingers was a handset from an old rotary phone. Very few landlines survived the Collapse, and most were attached to key spots, like Pebble Creek. The phone’s cord dangled across the counter probably plugged into a jack on the other side. On the floor the heavy base lay on its side, marked by smears of reddish-brown. Not surprising, the old things were heavy enough to double as a bludgeoning tool. Still, the positioning of the phone’s receiver made her wonder. ‘He get a call out?’
Without moving from the doorway, Boden stared at Crane, a frown settling on his blocky face. ‘Don’t know, maybe.’
‘That the only line available?’
He nodded.
Huh, who would a dying man call? Setting the question aside for later, she inched inside the room, careful not to step into the blood at her feet. She had managed a whole step before a big palm landed on her uninjured shoulder, holding her in place. She turned her head and gave Boden an arched eyebrow.
‘Don’t go getting your panties in a twist, little girl,’ he muttered. ‘You sure you want to get up close and personal here?’
Trust her old mentor to remember how much she abhorred all things gore. The thing was, she spent years working on her aversion, until she could now stare at the most gruesome scenes without betraying a flinch, despite her violently protesting stomach. Not that the discomfort would stop her. Sometimes the only way to make a point was to drive it deep enough to hurt.
Thinking of which, she wrapped her fingers around Boden’s wide wrist, zeroing in on key pressure points. He grinned even as she tightened her hold until his fingers finally spasmed and released. ‘It’s a good thing I adore you, old man, or you’d be curled on the floor trying to stuff your guts back where they belong.’
He shook out his hand. ‘That threat would carry more weight if I wasn’t the one who gave you that knife you love so much.’
She’d give him that. The grizzled warrior who spent hours training her was one of an elite few who held her loyalty. ‘Maybe I just don’t want to nick one of my blades on your thick skull.’
He snorted. Unwilling to stall any longer, she turned and carefully picked her way across the floor. Which turned out to be harder than it sounded, thanks to the sprawled limbs and scattered brass bullet casings. She stepped over Crane’s legs, ignoring the unseeing gaze and frozen grimace of a second Raider who sported more holes than Swiss cheese and barely looked old enough to shave.
She scanned the back half of the room behind the counter. A tattered couch with a couple of duct tape mended cushions crouched against the back wall next to two salvaged metal filing cabinets sharing space with boxes. To the right, on top of the battered metal desk, lay a broken and bent lamp, the rest of the items scattered to kingdom come. To the left, next to the window wearing a spider web of cracks, a cluttered bookcase made of cement blocks and sheets of wood stood.
Leaning over the counter, she confirmed the protruding leg was still attached to a third Raider. The beefy body was sprawled face down behind the counter and under the shattered window. Death was courtesy of the concave skull, or—was that a letter opener?—still pinned at the base of the skull. Maybe it was a combination of both.
Needing a moment before, as Boden said, ‘getting up close and personal’ with Crane, she turned back and focused on the far wall covered with a large map of the area from before the Collapse, sucking in a silent, steadying breath. From this angle, she could pick out the spots of rust decorating the map’s hand written adjustments marking the last seventy or so years of geographical change. When she was sure she wouldn’t embarrass herself by gagging, she crouched next to Crane, bracing her hand on a clean spot on the wall behind him for balance.
Crane’s head was turned towards her, his brown eyes filmy, bloody streaks deepening the lines on his pallid face and staining the mix of grey and white scruff lining his chin and jaw. The gruesome details added decades to his face. Mottling spanned one side of his face, and his lips bore multiple cuts as if he’d been hit by something or someone repeatedly. ‘Looks like he took a few punches.’
‘They’d need a two-by-four to damage his thick skull.’ Boden stayed where he was, letting her do her thing.
Gingerly she lifted Crane’s left arm, turning it so she could see the back of his hand. Sure enough his knuckles were raw which meant he managed to get in a few hits of his own. But that wasn’t what had her sucking in a sharp breath. ‘Someone took a souvenir.’
‘What the hell?’ Boden growled, then something scraped across the floor, and the light shifted as he came to Crane’s other side to join her.
Raising Crane’s wrist, she showed him the man’s mutilated hand. ‘He’s missing his ring finger.’
A forbidding fury darkened Boden’s face. ‘Proof of a completed job?’
She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing unique about a finger.’
‘There is about Crane’s.’
That caught her attention. When he didn’t elaborate, she pushed, ‘What?’
Boden rubbed his chin. ‘He had a tattoo, like a ring. Except his was some Irish bird design.’ He grimaced. ‘Never paid much attention to it.’
‘Someone else did.’ Those niggling instincts grew teeth. She set Crane’s arm down and took in the various wounds scattered across his torso unwilling to touch the body more than necessary. ‘Without stripping him, it looks like they nailed him a couple times with lucky shots.’
Unlike her, Boden didn’t hesitate, but reached out and lifted the left side of Crane’s faded hunting jacket. ‘He took one to the shoulder, the second a bit lower. At that angle, it’s a good bet the bullet bounced off a rib.’ He let the jacket fall closed.
She repeated the motion with the right side and found another hole. ‘Third shot down near the kidney. Just these three made him a dead man walking.’ Because Pebble Creek didn’t sport the medical facilities found in the few remaining cities, instead they relied on the patch and pray philosophy.
Boden directed her attention to the deep cuts scoring Crane’s lower stomach. ‘These wouldn’t have helped either.’
Good god, the old codger took a hell of a beating. There was one more thing she wanted to check. ‘Lean him forward, would you?’
Boden shifted around and managed to brace Crane, giving her space to work. First, she ran her fingers over the back of his skull. Sure enough, she found a telltale lump just behind his ear. The wall behind Crane was saturated with blood, which meant he bled out under the counter. ‘Go ahead and put him back,’ she murmured, thinking it through. ‘I’m betting the Raider behind the counter followed him in, nailed him from behind, thinking that’s all it would take.’ She straightened, and Boden did the same. She went behind the counter to stand next to the body with the dented skull. She eyed the very long phone cord plugged under the counter. ‘Crane brained him with the phone, then set the knife in his skull to be sure he didn’t get up. Unfortunately, with his back to the door, he missed the nasty duo coming in behind.’
‘Makes sense,’ Boden said. ‘It also means they were watching for a chance to catch him alone. The firefight out front kept everyone else occupied.’ He straightened. ‘And the finger?’
The cut was too neat. ‘I think he was already dead when they took it.’
‘So definitely proof of death, then.’
She didn’t bother answering the obvious.
He went on, ‘Which means the first three Raiders were sent ahead to take him down.’ He frowned. ‘And someone came in after to ensure it was done and get the finger.’
Sloppy behaviour to have come back to get that. ‘Which doesn’t make sense.’
Boden grunted but didn’t disagree. ‘Hits are not standard Raider behaviour.’
‘True, so why the change?’ He remained silent, but she wasn’t expecting an answer. Tucking the question away for later, she turned and headed for the door. There was nothing more left to learn here.
‘Little hard to question the dead,’ Boden called after her.
She didn’t bother with a response, just kept going until she was back outside. In an effort to drive out the sourness left behind from the miasma of spilt blood and guts, she sucked in crisp air.
Boden stepped up next to her. ‘What the hell is going on, Charity?’ He shifted until he blocked her way, his gaze dark and hard. ‘What kind of trouble did you bring me?’
If anyone else was asking, she could resort to the tried and true batting of eyelashes and clueless demeanour, but on him, it was a wasted effort. She rubbed the back of her neck. Since the moment she arrived, nothing had gone as planned. For someone in her position, that wasn’t good.
Yeah, there were multiple reasons behind her impromptu visit, some she couldn’t share with Boden, not unless he stepped into Crane’s still warm boots. And they weren’t easy boots to fill. Crane’s stabilising presence was all that kept the two biggest west coast power players in line. Without Crane? It didn’t bear thinking about it. She just couldn’t wrap her head around her old mentor playing that tricky role. ‘Whatever trouble killed Crane, wasn’t mine.’ So far as she knew. If she was wrong, well, that would make things … interesting.
Voices from those who survived the Raiders’ attack called back and forth, the sound drifting in the air as background noise. Meanwhile, her one-time trainer studied her, his face an implacable mask as her tension rose. ‘You’re sure?’
‘As much as I can be.’ She wanted to say more, but couldn’t. Not yet.
He finally shifted to the side with a muttered curse.
‘Based on what happened in there—’ she indicated the building behind them with her head, ‘—the Raiders weren’t jacking around. That list you mentioned earlier, want to share a name?’
He grimaced. ‘It could be any damn one, so long as they could pay the asking price.’
Together they moved towards the building normally used for social gatherings, but currently doing duty as a makeshift medical ward. Once upon a time, it served some other, less serious purpose. Maybe to watch those movie things old timers sometimes mentioned. Who knew? She fell in step behind him.
He slanted her a glance. ‘Or it could be someone new crawling out of the pits.’
Considering how fast the tides of influence shifted, his answer wasn’t a surprise. She wanted to dig for more, get the gist of what Crane was messing around with, but first things first. As they drew closer to the main social hall, the clamour of those trying to help the wounded was interspersed with broken moans and sobs from the injured and dying.
Stepping inside, she blinked, trying to adjust to the dimness. Even the sunlight pouring through the windows and the thrown open exterior doors couldn’t lighten the sombre atmosphere. Her gaze was riveted on the rows of the wounded, neatly laid in the centre of the room. ‘How many?’
Boden heard her soft question and answered as quietly, ‘At last count, we lost four to their fifteen. Three more could go either way. The rest should make it.’
Hidden deep where no eyes would ever witness, she flinched. Humanity’s numbers were nothing like before, and in a mid-size rural community like this, that seemingly low number carried high implications. ‘You have enough antibiotics on hand?’
‘Lucky for us we just got a recent resupply.’ His spine straightened, and he worked his way across the floor, aiming for a reed-thin woman currently directing the chaos. ‘Mandy.’
At the sound of her name, the woman turned, light glinting off her glasses. The brown hair pulled back into a severe bun only emphasised the exhaustion carving her face into sharp angles. ‘Boden.’ Her gaze flicked to the entryway before coming back to the big man in front of her. ‘Crane?’
‘Will wait until later,’ Boden answered.
‘Dammit.’ Her mouth pulled down as her fist came up to rub at her chest and genuine grief shadowed her eyes.
‘Updates?’
‘The bastards took out one of the supply sheds with a Molotov cocktail. We lost a couple of shipments awaiting transport to the border, a couple of mechanicals in the midst of repairs, and overflow foodstuffs,’ she listed the damage in a hard voice, then shook her head and frowned. ‘Their timing was shit for them, but good for us. Since it wasn’t a market day, most of our people were tucked away on their homesteads or deeper inside the town, away from the gates.’
Charity added another strange thing to her list of shit that didn’t make sense. Raiders attacked when maximum damage could be inflicted, which made market days the perfect lure. Most settlements upped their guardsmen during those times. ‘Maybe they thought today was market day?’
Boden shook his head, even as his jawbone pressed white against his weathered skin. Despite the bandage wrapped around his chest, he folded his arms and kept focused on Mandy. ‘Nothing critical?’
The other woman rolled her shoulders. ‘Not to us. But I’m not sure how understanding those waiting on the border shipments will be.’
Charity’s mind spun with possible scenarios, some more paranoid than others, but that was the curse of experience. Her mental acrobats were about to leap into the ramifications of Crane’s sudden demise when Boden asked the older woman, ‘Anyone missing?’
Mandy took off her glasses, rubbed her red eyes, and then carefully resettled her frames, her careful movements tweaking Charity’s curiosity. ‘Simon took off after two Raiders who bolted when it became obvious their friends weren’t getting out alive.’
‘Simon?’ Charity tried to put a name to a face and came up blank.
‘Did the hot-headed fool take any backup?’ A cloud of worry settled over Boden’s face as his question chased the heels of hers.
Picking up on his uneasiness, Mandy’s tired gaze sharpened. ‘Not that I know of, why?’
Boden spun on his heel and headed towards the main door without answering her. Charity kept pace. ‘Boden, who’s Simon?’
He spared her a brief, undecipherable look. ‘Besides me? The only man stupid enough to be convinced to take Crane’s place.’
The pit in her stomach roiled. ‘You think the runaway Raiders are leading him into a trap?’
‘Don’t think it, little girl, know it.’
His response left her mentally spewing every nasty word she knew. They rushed outside only to be met by the distinctive rumble of motorcycles. Stepping to Boden’s side, she watched two unmistakable bikes roar into the open space. It took a moment for her to place why they seemed familiar, and when she did, she wanted to kick something.
Trouble, with a capital T, pulled to a stop in a cloud of dust, the low thunder of their engines drifting away as the two men dismounted. One was tall and whipcord lean, while the other could give Boden a run for his money on the brawler front. The taller one took point, pulling down his dust-covered bandana to reveal a short dark beard. He stalked forward with a loose-hipped swagger, which might be interesting under different circumstances, before doing a manly arm grasp with Boden.
‘Ruin,’ Boden greeted as he pulled the lighter man in and bumped shoulders.
‘Bo-man.’ When Ruin stepped back, his friend came in and repeated the moves.
‘Havoc.’ Boden added a solid slap on the second man’s back and got a silent nod in return.
Hearing the names cinched it for Charity. Ruin and Havoc, one-half of Fate’s Vultures, a nomadic band of vigilantes with an ever expanding notorious reputation for brutal justice. Fan-freaking-tastic. She definitely picked the wrong damn day to visit Pebble Creek. Feeling the weight of a stare, she took her sweet ass time acknowledging it.
Ruin was staring, maybe. Hard to tell since his eyes were still hidden behind dark lenses. ‘I know you.’
That deep voice sank under her skin, igniting a series of quakes. Temptation raised its troublesome head and licked its lips in anticipation. Determined to maintain control, she cocked her head to the side and used a finger to motion for him to remove the glasses. His lips twitched, then he pushed them up over the barely restrained, wild tangle of hair streaked with burnished copper to reveal the startling colour of amber. Every nerve ending came alive, and that bitch temptation began to laugh. Oh yeah, she was in trouble. Years and years of practice allowed her to speak without revealing a damn thing as she slowly shook her head. ‘Nope. Never met.’
Her answer got a long slow blink, and a speculative gleam, but no response. A little disappointed, she shoved a gag in temptation’s mouth and tossed her ass into a locked room.
Ruin turned back to Boden. ‘What happened here?’
‘Raider hit.’ Boden didn’t bother elaborating, didn’t need to. A couple of the walking wounded were dragging the last of the dead Raiders off.
‘Where’s Simon?’
Not the question she expected, but Boden didn’t even bat an eyelash. ‘Chasing a couple of escapees. We were just getting ready to track his ass down.’
Ruin frowned. His attention drifted to her, lingered, darkened, and then went back to the bigger man. ‘Mind if I tag along?’
‘The more, the merrier.’ Boden turned to her. ‘Charity, catch them up on shit, I need to grab a couple of things before we head out.’ He didn’t wait for her answer, but moved away, shouting at one of the men on the far end of the yard.
Her gaze collided with Ruin’s and the merciless speculation she saw brought her earlier unease back with a vengeance. Unable to stop herself, she arched a brow in silent question.
His lips curved, but there was nothing friendly in it. ‘That shit include why no-one’s answering Crane’s phone?’
Ruin’s drawled question sent her uneasiness straight into the dread category. ‘Crane called you?’ Needing an outlet for the nerve-shredding energy coursing through her, she turned from him and his silent behemoth partner and headed to where her bike was stashed. She wasn’t walking into a possible trap without a bit more backup.
‘Not directly, he called Holden.’ It didn’t surprise her when Ruin kept pace with her, leaving Havoc behind with their bikes. ‘We were there mediating—’ the word carried a sneer, ‘—when it came in.’
Holden ran a meeting place just north of what used to be Salt Lake City. It was considered neutral ground, the perfect place for mediations. If Crane called the Vultures in, it was because he knew he was in trouble. ‘Crane’s dead.’ She wouldn’t go into details, not her place. If Boden wanted to share, that was on him.
‘Dead?’
Hard to read his voice, there wasn’t much in it. ‘Yep.’
They reached her bike, and she crouched down to unlock the custom storage compartment holding an old-style Glock 19. Ammunition was a bitch to get, but she made a point to have connections. Normally, her blades were more than enough, but considering the amount of brass littering the ground and the still stinging graze on her shoulder, the need for something more than a knife was obvious. Problem was she didn’t know if the Raiders the missing Simon was chasing were carrying or not. She belted the leather holster around her waist, propping her foot on her bike’s back tire as she tightened the thigh strap that would hold it in place. Tucking the Glock home, she made sure to grab the extra magazine as well. She felt Ruin watching her, his gaze taking on a tactile weight. Unsettling, but not unexpected.
She turned and found him very much inside her personal space. Used to the posturing alpha male routine, she folded her arms over her chest and cocked her head to the side, not giving an inch. Despite what her body wanted, she wasn’t here to play. ‘What did Crane say that sent you rushing up here?’
‘Didn’t talk to him.’ The predatory light in his eyes made a lie of his lazy demeanour. ‘Holden answered, got an earful of screams before the line went out. That generally means trouble.’
‘So you just raced hell-bent for leather to dive right into that trouble?’ Despite the temptation he presented, his arrogance crawled under her skin and nibbled, irritating enough that she couldn’t stop picking at him.
‘Wanted to be sure that trouble didn’t include Simon.’
Simon? Not Crane? Interesting. ‘Why? Is he one of you?’
‘One of me?’
She waved a hand. ‘Fate’s Vultures.’
‘So we have met.’
Shaking her head, she pressed her palm against his chest and gave him a light shove, a silent indication to back off. Despite his t-shirt, heat met her palm and her fingers flexed, enough, so her nails bit into his chest. ‘Your reputation precedes you.’
He held firm long enough to ensure she knew when he stepped back it was his choice. ‘Nope, Simon’s not part of us, but he is Crane’s.’
His heat still seared her palm after he stepped away. Half-hidden by her side, her fingers curled into a fist. ‘And just like the Vultures, he answers to Crane.’ She shook her head. ‘Correction, answered to Crane.’
His expression didn’t change, but she didn’t miss the rise of temper flaring in his eyes. ‘We don’t answer to anyone.’
Behind him, Boden approached catching her attention, a short handled axe strapped to his back, the blade’s head rising behind his shoulder. Ruin turned and moved to stand beside her. When he leant down, his breath tickled her ear, and she fought her body’s instinctive shiver. ‘Simon might not be part of the Vultures, but he is a well-valued friend.’
She didn’t bother to look away from Boden’s approach, not ready to meet those sharp eyes. ‘Must be a hell of a friend.’
His answer was unexpected. ‘Closer than a brother.’
Well hell, the situation just graduated from complicated to completely fucked.