"***** please, Mr. It's down in my workshop, the kid's mine now, you can't have him, I have to protect him from creepy bastards like you."
Ruffles put up his palms, grinning. "Hey, you can't talk like that when you're the one being touched in delightful new ways by a fifteen year old."
===================================================================
"She is of no concern."
Cold. But then Eddie had worked for bastards before, and it didn't phase him. He stayed silent for a while, taking the measure of the others around him. Most were utterly silent, clearly just hoping to soak up any useful information before they left, although one seemed a tad full of hot air and seemed to take the 'best hunters on the planet' schtick too seriously. Eddie was surprised the man's head fit through the door.
"Alrighty then," he said to Basilio. "I see no reason to wrinkle your nose with my presence any longer than necessary, so I guess I'll see you when the job's done." Tipping the brim of his hat to the man, he turned on a boot heel and left. After a brief pause, Duke shrugged, then gave a theatrical mock bow to the Noble and followed Eddie from the room.
As the two men strode down the corridor, Duke asked, "any idea how we'll get a lead?"
"Well, they just flew that pretty little ship of theirs 'longside a train and lifted some bitches, right? So we need someone with an ear to the ground on shit going on outside the domes. We'll find Beard."
Duke snorted. "Beard? Pretty sure he's dead, man." But Eddie laughed. "He ain't dead. Hell'll freeze over and the atmosphere will clear before that bastard croaks. Just gotta know how to look for him."
=====================================================
Payton Wilkes-Vines was an intimidating man. But it was a charismatic, intelligent sort of intimidation. You had to have those two qualities to head one of the most influential syndicate families on The Rock. That intimidation seemed to be having a profound effect on the man stood before him, who was twisting his hat nervously in his hands. An unusual demeanor for a Sheriff. Wilkes-Vines cut a bold figure, his clothes, somewhere between those of a rancher and a business man, were as starkly white as his hair, as was his stetson. His eyes were pale blue and icy.
Payton gestured idly to the other man standing beside the Sheriff. A drug runner recently incarcerated, and then shortly recovered via bribery and blackmail. Though Payton would not normally go to such lengths to recover someone of such little importance who was not a member of his "Family". But this man presented a lead. Indeed, Payton had been sure the man would be captured sooner or later. But one of many strands of bait. When he spoke, it was in his usual drawl.
"So, this man was captured and brought in."
"Y-yes, sir. By a bounty hunter."
"Any idea which one?"
"I believe it were that metal handed fella," the Sheriff replied, glad to be on firm ground. Then the drug runner piped up. "Yeah, that's the one! Grabbed me by the throat with that hand, so he did!"
Payton did not answer at first, but instead drummed his fingers idly on the barrel of the gun he had placed on the Sheriff's desk. It was a revolver, polished until it shone like silver, and ornately engraved. It was also very long. Though he gave no outward sign, inwardly he was very excited. He had long suspected that his former General, Eddie Canton, and the enigmatic bounty hunter Metal were one and the same, though Canton was by all accounts deceased. Soon, he would find out.
"So where is Metal now?"
The Sheriff grinned, eager to please. The fucking lickspittle. "One of my deputies tailed him. He was staying in a room at a bar, when this real flash looking guy came looking for him." His smile faltered, three of his five deputies hadn't returned from their various assignments shortly before Payton came calling. Two were those who'd been present when Metal had claimed his bounty money. But he carried on. "My man listened in. Them two headed to Feroxi. Got work from a Lord Basilio, supposedly."
Basilio. That made things simpler. He and Payton were on fairly cordial terms, and the man had no love of mercenaries. "Very good work. Very good, sirs." The two men grinned widely, but their smiles flickered when he said, "but there's a problem..." He pontificated with the revolver in his hand, and each man winced when the barrel passed over him. "You," he said, pointing to the drug runner. "You got yourself caught and lost me a rather irritating amount of carbon. While it's less than a drop in the bucket at the end of the day, it's annoying on principle. And you," he now pointed to the Sheriff, "were under orders to apprehend our mutual friend should he come calling. An endeavor in which I notice you failed terribly."
The Sheriff was crushing the hat in his hands so severely, Payton was surprised it retained its shape. "Please sir, absolutely my fault, but don't be angry..." his eyes never left the gun.
Dropping it back into its white leather holster, Payton sighed and levered himself out of the chair. "Sonny, I don't get angry." Turning, he headed to the door, and glanced back. "I have people to do that for me."
The door barely closed behind him when four men in suits and sunglasses filed through where he had been into the Sheriff's office. Payton whistled a tune to himself as he headed towards the sleek black five seater transport parked in the road. Muffled gunshots could be barely heard from the Sheriff's station. Sitting in the back of the transport, he took a long stemmed pipe from inside his jacket, began filling it, and lit it with an engraved lighter, dragging contentedly. Things were happening, and he was a man greatly pleased my progress.
