J.B. tapped the end of one of the shotgun shells into place and sealed it. “Might not have to leave. Best thing might be to mebbe just have a necktie party at a local gallows with Kirkland as the guest of honor. The ville’s set up in a good place. Folks can make a living trading off travelers coming through the Shens.”
“Mebbe you’re right.”
“Something to think about,” the Armorer said.
Anna poured more flechettes into the casings. “But you’re not going to stay?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“My friends and I,” J.B. said, “we’re looking for something.”
“What?”
J.B. shook his head. “Won’t rightly know until we find it.”
“Could be you’ll spend an awful lot of time just looking,” Anna said.
“Could be,” J.B. agreed. “Can’t help but get about the doing of it, though.” And he turned his attention back to the shotgun shells.
Anna went away, her face a mask of blank emotions.
After a few minutes Phillips joined J.B. The old man rubbed his hump and waited until the Armorer glanced over at him. “You do good work,” Phillips said. “The things I heard about you, I guess they were all true.”
“Mebbe not all,” J.B. replied, “but enough. When it comes to gunsmithing, I know my way around. A man learns to be careful around something he’s working with that can blow his fool head off if he thinks he knows his business before he does.”
“One of the two most dangerous fields in the world,” Phillips agreed.
J.B. took off his glasses and cleaned them, waiting. Phillips had something to say, so he let the man choose how and when to say it.
“Well, fuck me,” the old man growled. “You’re a hardcase, J. B. Dix.”
“Been said a time or two already.”
“Can’t believe I’m seeing it, but I think Anna likes you. There’s ways you got that remind me, and probably her, of Eddie. Set your mind to it, you probably couldn’t do much better.”
“Kind of quick to even be thinking such things, isn’t it?” J.B. asked.
“Most folks get a short shake at life in the Deathlands,” Phillips said. “Hell, I know. I may be racking up some years myself, but I’ve buried a wife and three children. Things like this, you know what you want. Anna, she knows what she wants.”
“Couple hours ago,” J.B. said, “she was all set to ventilate me.”
“Mebbe she would have, too. Something to think over, J.B.”
“Can’t.” The Armorer tapped another shotgun shell together. “I’ve already got somebody.”
“She hold a candle to Anna?”
J.B. looked at the old man. “Best tread lightly when you go there.”
The old man’s gaze met J.B.’s squarely. “No harm meant, for fuck’s sake. Just asking. Conversation, that’s all.”
J.B. let the silence between them hang for a moment. “Yeah. The woman I know holds a candle to Anna.”
“Well, I guess that’s that.”
The Armorer nodded. He turned his attention back to his work. From the way things were going, he figured they’d be done by three or four o’clock. He felt tired, but he forced himself to go on.
And he thought about Mildred, wishing there was some way to get a message to her.
Chapter Thirteen
Mildred Wyeth came awake with a hand over her mouth in the darkness of the hotel room. She reached under her pillow for the Czech ZKR 551 but barely had her fingers curled around its butt before a fist rammed into her stomach.
Pain bounced around crazily inside her head, warring with the fatigue that had put her to bed in spite of her anger and worry over J.B.’s absence. She’d expected the Armorer to be gone for a while. Outfitting the group was a primary concern, and J.B.’s fascination with firearms was prodigious.
Stubbornly she tried to cling to the target pistol. The fist crashed into her stomach again, making her retch.
“Look here, bitch,” a man’s rough voice whispered in her ear. “You want to live to see morning come, you mebbe want to just do what we want.”
The hand over Mildred’s mouth crept higher, cutting off her breath through her nostrils, as well. Panic shrieked loose inside her. She flailed, curving her fingertips into talons. A set of fingernails found flesh, carved deeply.