“I dunno what Baron Silas is going to make of this,” Myall said softly as he sat back in the small room he used as an office, staring out of the window and not at Ryan, who stood uneasily opposite. The one-eyed man was too straight a person to be able to lie easily in such a situation, and he felt as though Myall would see through him at any moment.
“He can make what he wants,” Ryan answered in an offhand manner, avoiding the sec chiefs gaze any time it strayed from out of the window and back into the room.
“So easy for you to say, Ryan. You know the meeting of the barons is tomorrow, and they arrive in Salvation during the day, right?” When the one-eyed man nodded, Myall continued. “Thing is, if they’d arrived the other day when you’d chilled some of the fuckers, and we’d found Crow, that’d look good. Now, with another attack that’s been successful, it don’t look so good. And that’s our asses on the line.”
Why not state the fireblasted obvious? Ryan thought, but instead he said, “We’re all doing our best here. Baron Silas knows that. The other barons will know that. And we have made progress.”
Myall looked at Ryan as though he were stupe. “You think that’ll cut any ice with these coldhearts?”
Ryan resisted the temptation to grin, and answered, “No. But what the hell else can we do?” Adding to himself that they could nail Baron Silas Hunter to the wellhead and offer him up for the lying bastard he truly was.
Ryan left an unhappy Myall and returned to his people.
“So how’s our happy sec chief today?” Mildred asked with more than a hint of sarcasm as Ryan entered.
“About as far from happy as he can possibly get, I’d say,” Ryan returned. “Not that it’s our problem, but the poor bastard has been given the shit end of the stick.”
“There’s always someone to get that,” J.B. mused. “Main thing is to see that it’s not you.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Ryan agreed. “Now, if we’re going to get this matter nailed tonight and save our own asses, then we’ve really got to get to work before sundown.”
BARON SILAS WAS a far from happy man. If the demeanor of his sec chief had betrayed strained nerves and apprehension about the forthcoming events to Ryan, then one look at the baron would only confirm to the one-eyed man everything that he and his people had suspected about the baron.
The man prowled the length of his dining room, the heels of his snakeskin boots clicking irritatedly against the polished flooring. He ignored the procession of maids that came in and out of the room in order to decorate it for the banquet with which he would greet his fellow barons that evening, before leaving them—hopefully drunk into insensibility—to complete his necessary tasks. If the drink didn’t work, then he had some jolt to keep them amused and blasted. If not that, then there were always the women. One way or the other, he had to keep them occupied all the evening to enable his plan to take place. Already he had set up Crow as the ringleader of the saboteurs. Now he just needed to cause enough damage to the well to put it out of action permanently and set up Ryan and his people as fall guys. Oh, yeah—and, if possible, make sure that at least one of the other barons would find another of the barons to blame and so cause enough internal warring to deflect any attention from himself.
Shouldn’t be too difficult.
“Shit!” he cursed loudly as a sudden explosion of sound in the otherwise quiet room caused some of the maids to start in their task around the table.
“Is there a problem, master?” one of them asked in honeyed tones.
Baron Silas Hunter had stopped pacing the room and was looking out of the iron-clad window at the people of Salvation going about their business. All of this, built with his own hands and with good faith, now in danger. Yeah, there was a problem.
But instead, he merely answered, “No, go about your business,” in a curt and dismissive tone.