James Axler – Way of the Wolf

He found Krysty upstairs putting ammo for her blaster in small heaps beneath the windows of three rooms facing the street.

“Guess we stepped into it this time, lover,” she said.

“Been there before,” Ryan replied. “We’ll see our way clear of this one, too.” But at the moment he wasn’t quite sure how. “I’m going up on the roof. Get a clearer vantage point from there.”

“Do you want company?”

Ryan shook his head. “The rooftop’s probably going to be the first position we have to fall back on.” He gave her a brief kiss, then headed out of the room.

Chapter Sixteen

“You got a back way out of this place?” J.B. asked. He stood near one of the barred windows overlooking the main street. The hotel was only a few blocks down, ringed by gunmen who had overturned buckboards and brought out crates from the general store to build a barricade.

“Your friends are dead,” Phillips replied. “They got no way out of that hotel. Whether Kirkland’s men get them this hour or the next, it’s going to happen.”

J.B. turned a harsh glare on the gunsmith, making the other man drop his gaze. “Mebbe so. But I’m not going to sit down here all high and dry and pretend it doesn’t matter to me. My place is with them, and that’s bastard sure where I’m going to be.”

Phillips stared hard at him. “Mebbe you think me and mine should throw our hand in with yours.”

The Armorer spoke quietly. “Appears that’s what you were asking Ryan to do earlier.”

“It’s different. That man is facing a certain chilling in the position he’s in now.”

“I don’t see it much removed from what you were asking,” J.B. argued. “Except that you aren’t standing in there with him like you talked like you would.”

“You trying to shame me?” The old man’s voice grew harsh and cold.

J.B. shook his head. “You asked me a question, I answered it. You don’t like the answers I give, don’t be asking questions.”

“If the plague isn’t real,” Phillips said, “then mebbe we got a chance of getting shut of this place. Start over somewhere new. Always a place in a ville for a man knows blasters.”

“Can’t argue with that,” J.B. said. “And I wouldn’t want to. But I got to get to my own work.”

“You’re throwing your life away, J. B. Dix,” Anna told him.

“They aren’t dead yet, and neither am I. We’ve come out of tough spots before. Probably going to see a few more before any of us catch the last train to the coast.” He flicked his gaze back to Phillips. “Come on. You’ve got to have a white rabbit’s bolt-hole around this place somewhere.”

Reluctantly the old man nodded. “We got a tunnel that will get you out of here.”

“Where does it come up?”

“At the blacksmith’s shop next door. Got a corral there, and sells green-broke horses. Times got hard, we always figured a man a-foot wasn’t going to make it. Needed him a horse if he was going anywhere.”

“Show me,” J.B. said. He readied his weapons as he walked.

“You’re a fool, J.B.” Anna grated.

“I guess we’ll see about that after the smoke clears,” the Armorer told her in a cool voice.

THE TRAPDOOR at the other end of the tunnel was heavy with packed earth. It took real work to get it up, and the whole time J.B. had to wonder if one of Kirkland’s sec men was going to be standing at the other side of the room waiting for him.

Nobody was there, though.

He climbed out of the tunnel and brought up the duffel containing the ammo he’d gotten from Phillips and put together himself, but stopped when Anna grabbed his pants leg. She surged up out of the ground to join him, fisting his shirt.

“You don’t have any idea what you’re walking away from,” Anna told him, pulling her body close.

J.B. felt the heavy pressure of her firm breasts against his chest. “I got an idea.”

“And you’re still going to walk? Even walk into your own death?”

“Made a promise,” J.B. said, “that I’d be there. I’m not the kind of man to walk out on people.”