The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head by Cassandra Duffy Page B

on her feet expectantly. Fiona had to bite her
lip to keep from laughing.
     
    “Zeke isn’t happy,” Rawlins said.
     
    “Nobody is,” Fiona corrected him.
     
    “The methanol drinker you shot in the back
died.” Rawlins leaned his bulk back in the chair, trying to affect
a casual posture; it looked a little forced to Fiona. “They’ve got
him dressed up like a saint; they’re taking turns parading him
around town like a goddamned beauty queen on tour. People are
starting to say maybe you went too far.”
     
    “Makes me wonder what they’ll say when I
clear the streets with my car’s cattle catcher,” Fiona growled.
     
    The comment, for all its pointed intent
toward the cultists, actually seemed to make Rawlins uncomfortable
as though it was leveled against him. A drip of sweat ran down his
ruddy face.
     
    “You don’t think we should take this
seriously?”
     
    “What makes you think I’m joking?” Fiona
narrowed her eyes at him to let him know she saw him acting
suspicious. She really wished she was a more conniving thinker in
moments like this. She was a hammer, a gun, a battering ram, which
had been problematic in a world that hadn’t cared for those traits
in lingerie models, but had served her well after that world
crumbled under the Slark invasion; on rare occasion, Tombstone
abandoned its violent, straightforward tendencies to sit down and
make a game of chess out of things. Fiona was at a distinct
disadvantage when this happened.
     
    Gieo tapped Fiona on the leg, and sat up far
enough to whisper into the gunfighter’s ear, “He’s angling to have
you give me up to the cultists for the sake of peace.” The
assessment didn’t make sense; Zeke hated appeasement and never
would suggest breaking hunter law, the laws he’d created, to coddle
the cult he hated. Gieo divined the thoughtful look on Fiona’s face
and shook her head slowly, mouthing the words, “Not Zeke.”
     
    If Gieo’s hadn’t nuzzled under Fiona’s gun
hand in a submissive, kittenish act, Fiona knew she would have
jerked her pistol and blown Rawlins out the back of his chair. Her
vision flashed over in red. The worthless cuss was here without
orders, trying to guilt her into giving up Gieo, for his own,
self-serving ends. Fiona wondered if Rawlins knew that Gieo was the
only reason he hadn’t been shot dead in a blind rage.
     
    “Mistress,” Gieo whispered in a demure voice,
almost entirely uncharacteristic of her, “I can tell the secretary
what I know of the Hawkins compound while you get a drink. He has
no other business here.”
     
    From a lifetime of being thrown out of bars
and managed out of volatile situations by her agent, Fiona
recognized when she was being cut off. Whether it was at a bar or a
paparazzi-surrounded red carpet, she knew she had a redline and she
wasn’t good for anything but violence when she passed over it.
Somehow, the act of being pulled out of a situation she no longer
could control herself in was a lot easier to take when it was done
by Gieo in a loving voice; she’d never liked or appreciated it when
bartenders or her agent did it. Fiona unhooked the leash, and
slipped from the table without another word, storming to the bar
intent on getting a proper buzz going.
     
    Gieo pulled herself up from the floor and sat
in Fiona’s vacated chair. Rawlins went from jangled nerves to angry
disdain in the span of a blink. His eyes shot daggers across the
table at the collared pilot taking the seat vacated by the woman he
longed for; Gieo knew the level of jealousy and rage storming its
way through Rawlins—she smiled sweetly and fingered the collar.
     
    “I’m wondering what your boss might think if
he knew you were here bartering with authority you don’t have to an
end he wouldn’t want,” Gieo said. “I also wonder if you know
exactly how close you came to dying just now.”
     
    “Fiona wouldn’t shoot me,” Rawlins said
through clenched teeth.
     
    Gieo couldn’t tell if