Bounty Hunter

Chapter 17

It took Joe a full hour to wind around the mansion and come up to it from behind. As Val had said, only one guard stood at the back door. She'd also said that Roderick Sloan was an overconfident man, enough so he wouldn't think Val would come after him. In a way, Sloan was right: Val had sent Joe to do her dirty work.

Sheriffs and their ilk often had an attitude that they were the "good guys" and couldn't do something as heinous as murder someone in cold blood, but Val's hands were as dirty as Joe's when it came to Sloan's assassination, even though he was the one pulling the trigger.

The guard leaned against the house, his eyes closed. Guards sleeping on the job was half the reason Joe wanted to go in at night. During the day, all the murcs lounging in the barracks would be awake and moving around.

The night was quiet, and the time was coming up on the witching hour—though he'd often thought that time of night would be better called "the killing hour." The deepest part of the night flipped a switch in humans, turning the strongest of men into a five-year-old afraid to look under his bed. Having a fear of the dark was a survival mechanism baked into human DNA over hundreds of thousands of years. A creak in daylight was simply a rocking chair on old boards. A creak at night was a demon searching for souls.

Whenever an assassination had to be up close and personal, Joe did it at night. It was how he'd been trained, and he knew how to use the dark to his advantage.

Joe tapped the controls on his forearm, raised his left hand, and aimed carefully as he crept closer to the guard. When he was within five feet, he fired the dart. It hit the guard in the neck. His eyes shot open, and he reached for his neck, but then his eyes rolled back, and he slumped over. In that time, Joe had covered the remaining steps and caught the man, letting him down silently onto the ground.

Joe looked around. When he saw no one, he pulled out his blaster, opened the door, and stepped inside to find himself in the dimly lit butler's station—at least, that's what Val had called it. All it looked like to him was a pantry-like room with a variety of fancy dishes and trays lining wall shelves, and a large, high table in the center of the small space. Two swing-style doors led beyond the room, and he moved to the door on the right, placing his ear near it to listen for sounds of any movement.

He heard nothing—as expected for that time of night.

He trusted that Val had given him the correct directions to Sloan's bedroom: Right door out of the butler's station, thirty feet through the dining hall and fifteen feet across the sitting room, take the stairs, and his bedroom is at the end, roughly forty-five steps. She'd finished her instructions with an "I think" that didn't instill the greatest confidence, but Joe had gone off far less intel before and was still alive.

Assassinations weren't so hard as long as you weren't afraid to kill an unarmed person, and you didn't make a ruckus doing it. People thought assassinations were complicated ordeals when they really had just three steps: enter, kill, leave. The devil was always in the details, of course. If Joe was seen or heard, he'd have to improvise, and he preferred not to have to take on Sloan's farm boys. Val had promised to provide a diversion should one be needed, but Joe didn't trust her to take even a paper cut on his behalf, especially considering he'd come to Clearwater to kill her. The way he saw it, he was on his own.

No, the hardest part about assassinations was living with yourself afterward. It was easy when the target was an evil SOB who deserved to be taken down. It was much harder when it was a political rival who may or may not be an evil SOB. Joe assumed and hoped that Roderick Sloan was one of the bad ones, but Joe would kill him even if the administrator wasn't. Joe had a bomb tacked to his back, and he knew enough about PEDs to know that they were sensitive to any kind of tampering. That meant Joe was at Sheriff Val Vane's beck and call until she decided to kill him or deactivate the PED.

He sure hoped she'd do the latter.

With his blaster in his right hand and his left hand ready to fire the last two darts, he pressed the door forward quickly and smoothly, as he'd learned from experience that doors tended to squeak more when opened slowly. Sitting at the massive dining table was a single guard, focused on a plate full of meat.

Joe fired a dart before the guard went for his blaster. The man slumped forward, his face landing on the plate of meat. A fork fell out of his hand and fell onto the table with a clink. Joe swung his blaster up and waited for guards to enter the open dining hall from the opposite end. After seeing no movement for a slow count to ten, Joe resumed his movement through the mansion.

His mouth watered as the smell of smoked meat filled his nostrils. Then he swallowed with a grimace when he remembered where the meat had come from and what it'd likely been fed with.

His helmet chimed, and he froze. When he saw it was from Val, he answered.

"Are you done yet?" she asked.

"Working on it," he whispered.

"You'd better hurry. I unlocked all the slave dorms, and they're all running out. They're going to draw attention sooner rather than later."

"You what?!" he whispered roughly.

"I couldn't just leave them."

"Yes, you could have."

"No, I couldn't. Now, hurry. I'll come get you as soon as you call."

He disconnected the call, forced himself to take a calming breath, and continued silently forward, landing toe first on each step until he reached a door. Again, he listened. Again, no sounds came. He entered a smaller room filled with an opulent desk and several delicate chairs. The sitting room. That made sense.

A sound to his left brought him swinging his blaster toward the desk. "Hands up," he whispered sharply.

He saw a tuft of hair before a small shape slowly rose from behind the desk. He turned the barrel of his blaster away. She was a small girl, smaller than Nick, and she wore what looked like a cleaning uniform. In her hands she held gold credits, and he noticed a desk drawer stood open.

He brought a finger to his lips, then motioned her to leave through the dining room. She eyed him for a long second before rushing away. Her elbow knocked a crystal globe off of the desk, and it hit the floor with an echoing shatter.

He hissed. She froze. The sounds of bootsteps pounding on a hard floor erupted.

"Run!" He motioned to the dining hall.

She ran the other way.

He went after her to stop her, but she shoved through the far door. He flattened against the wall when the door was flung open. As it swung closed, he rushed toward it and kept it from slamming shut, leaving a narrow slit. He could hear a ruckus in the area beyond the sitting room.

He winced. She'd been caught.

He peered through the crack to see three murcs, all in exoshields, standing in the foyer. Joe frowned. Since when did they have those? That Sloan could afford to outfit his guards with exoshields meant that he was far richer than most in the wastelands.

The girl cried out, and Joe clenched his fist as he watched one of the guards hold her by the arm to keep her from running while he peeled the coins from her grip. There were sounds of more steps, and Joe strained to see the stairs, where a man in a white robe and slicked back hair came plodding down, followed by a bodyguard—also in a shield. Joe recognized Sloan's face from the picture Val showed him.

"What is so important to wake me at this ungodly hour?" Roderick Sloan had a raspy voice, like a goose with a bad cold.

"I caught this little rat-flea stealing from you, Mr. Sloan," the murc holding the girl said, and plopped the credits into the administrator's palm.

Sloan eyed the credits and then the girl. "You thought you could steal from me and get away with it?"

She swung out and kicked him in the shin. Sloan howled and jumped back, grabbing his leg. His face reddened, and he pointed to the door. "Throw her to the pigs."

"No!" she shrieked. "I don't wanna be pig food!"

"Oink, oink," the murc holding her taunted.

Fury rose in Joe. He took a step back and kicked the door open.