War Lord by David Rollins

standing behind me looking kinda . . . was it angry? Disappointed? How long had she been there? What had she seen? Did I really care? I knew how she felt about Sugar so, yeah, maybe I did care.
    ‘You mind if Mr Cooper and I talk in private for just a minute?’ Alabama asked Sugar, a firm no-nonsense tone in her voice.
    ‘Sure, why not? You look nice, ’Bama.’
    She did. Her hair was up in a ponytail and she wore a floral-pattern cotton sundress, the hemline riding somewhere up around Canada. White sandals were on her tan feet, the straps lined with rhinestones – what else.
    ‘I’ll see you later,’ said Sugar, kissing me on the cheek. She waved to us both and swam off.
    I lifted myself out of the pool, the concrete scorching hot against the palms of my hands.
    ‘Can I get you folks a drink?’ asked a waitress who materialized beside us.
    I could use something. I checked with Alabama. She was wringing her hands and perhaps that look on her face was anxiety and nothing to do with what she might have seen happening in the pool.
    ‘You okay?’ I asked her. ‘Can we get out of the sun?’ she said, and headed for the bar without looking back. ‘Scotch – a double – no ice,’ she told the barkeep when she arrived.
    He lifted an eyebrow at me. ‘Same, with rocks,’ I said.
    ‘They’ve found him.’ Alabama took off her sunglasses, her eyes red and raw – worse than I remembered from the morning.
    I didn’t need to ask who, so I asked where.
    ‘His plane . . . it crashed in Australia, after all. Came down in some swamp. Morrow called me half an hour ago. He got a call from the FAA.’
    I pulled my phone and saw there were two missed calls – from Morrow and Alabama. I had to ask the painful question. ‘Was his body found with the plane?’
    ‘No.’ Alabama upended her glass and drank the scotch in a single gulp. She put the glass on the counter and gestured for another. ‘No body.’
    My cell started ringing. The window told me it was a local Vegas number. I excused myself and answered it.
    ‘Cooper? Bozey,’ said the voice in the speaker.
    ‘Hey.’ I walked a little away from the bar.
    ‘Just letting you know I got a call from the FAA about your friend Sweetwater.’
    I was wondering how the FAA knew who to call when Bozey added, ‘I’d only just gotten off the phone to aviation authorities, following up on the inquiries arising from the meeting with you and Alabama.’
    ‘Just heard the news myself,’ I said. ‘No body, apparently.’
    ‘No. A place called Darwin’s the nearest city. The local PD is out looking. Tricky countryside.’
    ‘A swamp, I heard.’
    ‘A wildlife sanctuary.’
    ‘What sort of wildlife they got there? Koala bears?’
    ‘Didn’t ask. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted if anything else turns up.’
    The line went dead. I turned back to the bar in time to see Alabama throwing her head back, downing a scotch. Assuming it was another double, that would make it half a dozen shots in less than five minutes.
    ‘Vegas PD heard,’ I told her.
    ‘He’s still alive. I know it.’
    I nodded, not as convinced as she was about that. And given her level of anxiety, maybe she wasn’t so sure either.
    ‘He could have crawled away, got lost or something.’ Alabama’s speech was starting to slur, along with her reason.
    I ordered another scotch for myself and a club soda for her. My confidence that I would be able to see this through to some kind of positive conclusion was fading fast. Randy was down in a swamp eight thousand miles away, surrounded by wild koalas, and I had no doubt that he was dead, or about to be, which also meant that the mystery around the severed hand and the ransom was moot. There wasn’t a lot I could do to help, except maybe pay the bar bill. I put some cash on the counter.
    Alabama wrapped a hand around the club soda that had appeared on the bar. ‘I saw you and Sugar, y’know,’ she said, her eyes flat.
    I swallowed. Guilty.
    ‘I knew