Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy (12 page)

In half an hour they had a draft. Lizzie, grinning with approval, declared it “dark.”

Jo asked, “How do we negotiate this thing, Judith?”

“I think we send it to them— hand-carry it— and wait for a reaction.”

Drew brightened. “Let me be the messenger. They can send Ky and you can send me.” Kyron Scorsi was Newt’s nephew. About Drew’s age. “We can meet somewhere and I’ll hand it to him. Then if they want to answer, we can meet again. Neutral back-and-forth until the real negotiations start.”

The first time Jo and Judith had mentioned a treaty, Drew had been interested. If it ever got to real negotiations, Jo knew he’d enjoy taking part. Maybe he’d be a diplomat someday, when they truly had use for such a person.

But this courier job? It could be dangerous and Drew was a one-armed man. “I like it. Except, Drew, you’re injured. Kyron’s a tough guy. He might decide to slap you around just for fun.”

“I’ll go with him,” Lizzie said, scowling fiercely. Jo was beginning to worry that Lizzie’s act of violence, horrified as she had seemed at the time, had given her a taste for it. She was eager to go after the Scorsis, one way or another. Like Samm. Did Jo now have two warriors to hold back?

“Could we?” Drew obviously was in love with his courier idea.

Jo decided not to argue, since Judith didn’t seem to mind. It was agreed that Drew and Liz could carry the treaty.

Judith flipped to a new page in her notepad. “What’s going on at the intelligence end of things, Jo?”

“Obviously, since we didn’t see either the attack on Blackjack or the border raid coming, we could do better.” They had a half dozen people working at Scorsi’s Luck. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be doing a very good job; none of them had gotten close enough to the family to learn about the plan for the attack on Blackjack. She needed more people, or smarter people. Jo wanted input from the others. They promised they would think about it.

“Finally, then,” Judith said, “the mayor’s race. The election’s in a month. We need to come up with a candidate— a willing one.” They all laughed. Nobody wanted to end up hanging dead and upside down from a tree.

Samm stopped scowling about their incompetent spies and brightened. “I may have someone. One of my soldiers. Her name is Hannah Karlow. You may have seen her at the poker tables. Thin woman, long scar on her cheek.”
Well,
thought Jo.
She’s a busy one
. “She mentioned it to me last night at the table. Only half joking, I think.”

“I know her,” Jo added. “I just talked to her a couple days ago myself. She’s a fixer. I asked her to get the elevator running again. She promised to do it soon. Maybe she even will.”

Samm nodded. “A fixer would make a popular candidate.”

“I know she’s one of your soldiers, but how well do you know her? Do you think we can trust her?” Was she really theirs and would she stay theirs? She didn’t need to trust a fixer or even a soldier, but a mayor? That could matter.

“I don’t know for sure. We can have her watched for a few days, see what we pick up.”

That sounded good. “Okay,” Jo said. “Let’s do that.” A few days might not tell them much, but if it didn’t work out with Hannah one of them would have to go after the office. She wanted to avoid running herself, or trying to convince Judith or Samm to run. They all had too much to do right now and other campaigns to think about. There were a few employees they were sure they could run for other offices, but a fixer-soldier would carry a lot of charisma, and charisma was what won elections. Charisma and fear. And even though no one else was running yet, she was assuming someone would.

A flood of almost sexual pleasure washed through her. Intelligence was frustrating— especially when it didn’t work or only worked sometimes. Like love. But the game of politics? Better than romance. More fun than poker. More interesting than Twenty-One. She’d studied propaganda, negative versus positive campaigning, charisma and core issues, promises— a chicken in every pot— made and delivered or made and reneged on, the outsider as threat. Fear. Drew had once sat talking to her about the last presidential election before the final end of the USA. A man named Cooper, from Utah or Wyoming, she couldn’t remember which, had run for President preaching hate under the guise of protective leadership, deliberately stirring up fear of terrorism or moral destruction by anyone who was the least bit unlike whoever Cooper was talking to at the time.

He’d won, and become President. He was assassinated less than a year later by a man who didn’t seem to belong to any group at all. But Jo never forgot, after that history lesson from her nephew, that Cooper had won. And while she didn’t think she’d ever try to turn one group of Sierrans against another, or Sierra against Redwood, she didn’t have to look far to find someone Sierrans could worry about. She didn’t mind raising an alarm about Rockymountain. Or, rather, having her candidates do it.

Jo pulled herself out of her cheerful thoughts of political gamesmanship and noticed Drew was looking pale. “If there’s nothing else, I think Drew needs to rest.”

“Good idea,” Judith said. “Drew, when are you planning on going back to work?”

“Waldo wants me to go in tomorrow.”

“That seems too soon.”

“Maybe, Mom.” He grinned. “But you do want me to keep an eye on Rica, after all.”

Jo laughed. That was obviously going to be a hardship for him.

Who knows what kind of dirt he’s got inside him?

Ky Scorsi was nowhere in sight. Just like that germ to be late. Drew and Lizzie were a few minutes early. It was always better to get there first, stake out your territory, get a fix on the field. Ky was stupid. Arrogant. This was exactly the kind of shit that was going to beat the Scorsis in the end.

Drew liked working with Liz. She didn’t always agree with him, but once she got past her first questions and decided he was mostly right, she’d usually let him take the lead.

A quick survey of the beach, a quicker discussion, and they put themselves into play. Drew led his sister close to the water’s edge, but not too close. They’d both learned in childhood never to turn their backs on a Scorsi, never to let a Scorsi back them into any kind of corner. They sat on a log, worn so smooth it must have floated in, that was far enough from the woods beyond the sand so no one could sneak up on them and far enough from the water to leave room for maneuver.

Position was one thing, attitude was another. Lizzie sat straddling the log, half-facing the woods, alert but pretending not to be. Drew was facing the lake, casually skimming rocks across its bright surface. Lizzie jabbed her elbow into his ribs and he turned to see Ky emerging from the woods, followed by two of his younger cousins.

It figured. Ky wouldn’t have the guts to meet them alone.

He was grinning smugly, ambling toward them in that way he had: long, loose, gangly, all bones and no brain. “Hey, Coleman! What happened to your arm?”

Billy Scorsi, who was Lizzie’s age, snorted like a horse, and Newt junior guffawed. Newt was only 15 but he looked and acted a lot like his father. He had a big head, and it bobbed on his skinny neck when he laughed. Like a marionette, Drew thought. He was laughing and bobbing now. Billy had always been thick, but he seemed to be going to fat lately, and his frizzy orange hair needed cutting.

“I got bit by a mosquito, Ky. Guess we’ll have to send some big fish to clean out the larvae.”

Billy looked confused for a moment, wrinkling his freckled nose; then he seemed to figure out what Drew meant by fish and larvae and spat into the sand, scowling. He and Newt both looked at Ky, waiting for him to come up with an answer.

Drew kept a scornful look on his face, but he was worried. Three of them. Even with room to move, they could surround and herd him and Liz like dogs with deer. Back when they were nine or so, Ky and a couple of his friends had trapped Drew at the lake’s edge one morning and backed him into deep cold water. He could swim, but all three of them had jumped him and held him under. He’d fought hard, managed to get his face into the air and screamed for help. Luckily, a group of tourists from Redwood had seen what was going on and three big men had pulled the boys off him and brought him back to shore, exhausted, nearly drowned, and humiliated enough to hate Ky forever.

Not the kind of trick anyone was going to play on him twice. He skirted the log and moved a few paces closer to the woods. The Colemans and the Scorsis were now equally placed along the beach and he was still near enough to his sister to work as a team.

Ky took a step closer to Drew. “Yeah, well… that’s big talk, Coleman. But I hear your little sister had to save you from one of the big bad mosquitoes. Is that why you brought her along today?”

Lizzie moved closer to Drew.

Drew laughed. Ky had walked right into that one. “To save me from a mosquito?” Was that Billy growling? What a weird kid. “Looks like you brought the whole pond, tough guy.”

Ky glared. The discussion was taxing his brain. Drew thought it was fun, but he could feel Lizzie getting edgy beside him.

Okay, the mosquito metaphor was turning a little tiresome and he wasn’t sure how far he could stretch it. Time to move on.

“Why don’t we just get down to business?”

Ky agreed immediately, obviously relieved. “Yeah. Why don’t we. My uncle says you want to give us some kind of piece of paper.” Newt Junior nodded. Billy spat in the sand again.

Drew pulled the folded treaty proposal out of his shirt pocket and held it toward Ky. Ky waited. Drew didn’t move. Ky glanced at Lizzie, smoothed his greasy dark hair and leered. Drew felt heat creeping over his neck and face—
Don’t even think about my sister, you running sore!
Then Ky stepped forward just far enough to grab the two sheets of paper from Drew and backed a few paces toward the log, putting it behind him. His brow furrowed as he read, scratching his scalp. After what felt like five minutes of reading and scratching, he crumpled the sheets and jammed them into his hip pocket. If he’d had his way, Drew guessed, he’d have tossed the treaty at them. But he must have been under strict orders to bring it back.

He swaggered forward again, the two cousins moving with him.

“This is a pile of shit. Everything in there is a lie.”

Lizzie spoke up, still calm. “We don’t lie. Samm and Jo and our mother…”

“Samm?” Ky snickered, looking Lizzie up and down. Bastard. Drew wanted to kill him. “He was born in a hostel. Who knows what kind of dirt he’s got inside him?”

Drew could feel Lizzie trembling at his side. She spoke again before he had a chance to. “He wasn’t born there. He went there with his mother. She died. They let him out.”

Billy growled again. ”You mean he escaped.”

“Yeah,” Ky said, “Escaped. Everybody knows that.” He moved closer to Lizzie and the others followed, the three Scorsis a triangle with Ky at the point. “He’s dirt. And Jo’s a slut. And you’re a whore. And you go back and tell your fat old mother—”

Drew’s breath caught in his throat. He barely had time to take in the last insult before Lizzie’s fist connected with Ky’s nose. Blood poured down his lip and smeared his chin, dripping onto his denim shirt. He stumbled back, falling against the log, blood gushing from his nostrils, tears streaming from his eyes, and pulled a small handgun from his jacket, waving it wildly, blindly, in the general direction of the Colemans. Lizzie got ahead of Billy and Newt, who were aiming themselves at Drew, and kicked Billy in the groin. He fell to his knees screaming. Newt junior pulled a buck knife from his pocket and started doing a cautious dance around Lizzie, that ugly head bobbing. Drew lunged past the howling Billy, pulled the pistol from Ky’s distracted grip and smashed him over the ear with it.

Good. That felt good. Drew could breathe again. Ky grunted and dropped to the ground, his mouth open. But Drew’s roar, ripping from his throat like nothing he’d ever felt before, drowned out whatever other sound Ky might have made. Maybe Ky would stop breathing altogether. Had he? No time to worry about that. Newt came at him with the knife and Drew had to threaten to shoot him before he’d stop. Billy saw the gun in Drew’s hand, stumbled to his feet and ran for the woods, but Newt junior, red-faced with rage, wasn’t retreating. He was screaming obscenities and jabbing the knife at the air in front of him. Too stupid to run, Drew thought. But Drew wasn’t.

Drew stuck the gun in his waistband, under his shirt. He grabbed Lizzie’s arm, yelled, “Enough of this shit!” Lizzie didn’t hold back, she let him yank her away, and the two of them got the hell out of there. They stopped running about halfway back to Blackjack and stopped, leaning against a redwood fence to catch their breath.

Drew had ignored his two-day-old arm injury during the quick struggle with Ky and he was still so flushed with adrenaline that the abused wound didn’t hurt— yet. But he thought he’d felt something tear and there was a small spot of blood on his sling.

Lizzie was gasping for breath and laughing. “That was sooo dark! Drew, wasn’t that the darkest?”

What the hell did she think was so funny? His arm was beginning to throb, then burn, and he wanted her to just shut the hell up.

“Liz! What kind of asshole trick was that? Why’d you start a fight?”

“Hey, Ky’s the one who started it!” Lizzie was grinning. She was going to start laughing again, he knew it.

“But I think I killed him.” Hitting Ky had felt good at the time, but now he was getting scared.

“No, you didn’t. I saw him move right before we ran.”

That was a relief.

“Well, but really, all he did was say something stupid. And all we had to do was look injured and innocent and go away shaking our heads. But no, you have to punch the nickel-ante valleyboy and make him pull a gun.” Lizzie had always been a bit impulsive, and Drew had covered for her more than once. But nothing like this. This was over the line.

“I didn’t make him—”

“And then that asshole Newt. And Billy! Did you hear that spotty freak growling? You don’t want to mess with those guys, Liz. They don’t get over it.”

Lizzie shrugged. “I’m not afraid of them.”