“I’m not threatening, Cawdor,” Naylor said. “Just laying the ace on the line so we all know what we’re looking at.”
Ryan kept his gaze on Elmore and the two other suspect men. “How do you know the man you’re looking for was here?”
“Trailed him,” Naylor replied. “Got a man here with me who knows him by sight.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“How do you know you can trust him?” Ryan asked.
“I choose to,” Naylor replied. “And me trusting him, that’s pretty much my own lookout now, isn’t it?”
“He’s right about that,” J.B. said quietly. The Armorer gave the appearance of being relaxed, but Ryan knew his friend was as tight as a bowstring, able to move faster than an eye blink.
“You don’t owe them people in there anything,” Naylor pointed out.
“No,” Ryan replied, “you’re right about that. But I gave them my word if they threw in with us, I’d see their way clear of this bastard situation.”
“You’re drawing to a hard hand if you think you can live up to that,” Naylor said. “Fuck, I don’t think you’re going to get past those coldhearts. And I saw the woman you carried in myself. Been a stranger, you wouldn’t have done that. Means you got one of your own wounded. Hate to see you hard up against it like that after all the chilling you did against these coldhearts.”
“I usually do what I say I’ll do,” Ryan said.
“Mebbe we can cut a deal,” Naylor said, “because I don’t set too well with losing any more of my people, either.”
Ryan kept watching the three men. “I’m listening.”
DEAN LAY QUIET and still on the ground. He heard his father’s voice and the exchange with the sec chief outside, but he also thought he heard something moving around inside the ground below the building.
At first, he’d thought it was just a vibration, maybe something settling outside after all the rain. Then, when it had kept up, he thought it could be something else.
He kept the Browning Hi-Power in his fist, and took out his turquoise-handled throwing knife. Holding it butt down, he slammed the heel of his hand against the ground. The knife’s hilt plunged into the packed earth again and again, making him doubt what he’d heard.
Then the next blow he struck brought the hollow sound he’d been expecting to hear.
Rising to his knees, his heart thumping faster, Dean plunged the knife blade into the ground, searching.
“My dear boy,” Doc said, his attention diverted for a moment from the three men he was watching, “whatever are you doing?”
“Hollow space under the ground, Doc,” Dean said. “It’s not natural.” The knife blade slid deep without warning, running along the ground in a straight line for an instant. The knife’s passing left a thin groove cut into the earth. As Dean watched, small bits of dirt fell into the groove and disappeared.
The vibration he’d been feeling grew stronger as he hooked the fingers of his free hand into the groove.
“GIVE ME THE MAN I’m looking for, and I’ll provide you safe passage out of this ville.”
Ryan gazed across the intervening space, aware that the sec chiefs men were still moving. “Calls for an awful lot of trust on my part.”
“Don’t see any other way you’re getting out of here alive.”
“Who are you looking for?” Ryan asked.
“A man calls himself Ethridge.”
“You want him alive or dead?”
“Living would suit the baron better. Don’t want to have to explain how that man got himself chilled.”
Ryan swept the three suspect men with his gaze, waiting to see which of them broke eye contact first. “Anybody want to step up and claim this one?” he asked.
None of them answered.
“Can you give me something more to go on?” Ryan asked. “None of the guys I’ve got in here appear to willing to fess up.”
“Man’s got a tattoo,” Naylor called back. “On the inside of his forearm you’ll find a big blue dot with lighter blue rings around it. Then there’s two twisted lines of orange running through it.”
The one-eyed man lifted the SIG-Sauer to point in the general direction of Elmore and the two other men. “One of you is lying, and I intend to have the man who is. Bastard quick.”