The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (30 page)

DESPERATE TIMES

Alex slowly eased the door closed
behind him, no creaking hinges or click of the latch as he slipped quietly back
into the Saloon using the door under the bathroom overhang.
Get in; get out.
Get the tickets, get Oversight, and get the hell out of here.

He had never actually seen the tickets; no one had. No one except Jack,
and there was no telling what he’d done with them: shoved them in his pocket,
stashed them in his room, hid them under a floorboard? Only Jack knew for
certain.

He would start there.

Staring into the darkness, Alex
waited for his eyes to adjust. He could make out the pale outline of the sink,
the gleam off the maze of plumbing, the great valve wheel, the small
DO NOT TURN
sign legible even in the dark.
Wedged into the Gordian knot was a broom, a mop and bucket, and behind them
both, a thick bar of blackened steel nearly invisible in the darkness.

It was not a part of the patchwork
plumbing, he realized, but a tool left behind like the mop and broom. But he
remembered the mop and broom from before, permanent fixtures to the solidified
madness of the Sanity’s Edge Saloon. Not so the three-foot pry bar. That was
new. And anything new suggested something; something important.

Alex slowly picked up the heavy piece
of steel, both ends flattened to a wedge and notched for pulling nails. One side
had a slight curve to it for driving under an edge and prying something apart.

Prying something apart…

Alex hefted the bar, feeling its
weight. Heavy; fifteen pounds, maybe twenty. With the proper swing, a pry bar
like this could cleave a person’s skull in two; even a thickheaded prick like
Leland Call-Me-Sir-Or-Mister Quince. He nodded, storing the information away
for future reference like a business card you have no intention of using, but
refuse to discard because you never know; in a world of possibilities, Alex was
quickly discovering that this was invariably the case: you never know. Never.

Never is a very long time.

He would only get one chance. Once Leland found out that he’d turned,
that he’d burned the man’s deal with Kreiger, there was no telling what he’d
do. It was imperative he get the tickets first.

And then he saw it, something too ridiculous to believe yet too obvious
to deny. Near the waiting room doorway was a tall, worn box like an old
telephone booth, its front a cashier’s window with a protective wire mesh and a
narrow half-circle cut out near the counter. The sign at the top of the booth
read simply
TICKETS
.

Could it be that simple?

Pry bar in hand, Alex walked to the booth. He had been here two days, but
never really noticed the ticket booth before. He had
seen
it, sure, but
he had never really
taken note
of it. The Saloon was a train station,
the ticket booth just a leftover artifact of that function.

Only now…

TICKETS
, the sign promised.

TICKETS!

He reached under the narrow slot in the
bottom of the wire mesh, but could go no further than his elbow, the hole only
as large as a mail drop-slot. He withdrew and paced around to the side, taking
note of the box by the moonlight: a door, simple brass-handle with no lock, a
padlock further up the door clamped it shut, practical and unsophisticated.
There was probably a deadbolt inside. The cashier would throw the deadbolt
while working; when done, step out, padlock the door and go.

He could break the padlock, but not
without waking up the entire Saloon. There was no way to lever the lock apart,
which meant he would have to hammer at it. If he hadn’t already done so, Jack
would certainly hide the tickets. Then either he would die with Jack, or
Oversight would die with Kreiger. Or Quince would find the tickets first, and
Alex would lose Oversight all the same, her doom an eternity as the property of
Leland Call-Me-Sir-Or-Mister Quince, his chattel, his love slave,
his whore
.

No! There has to be a way to get the
tickets. Think, dammit!

Staring at the door, he noticed the
hinged latch the padlock secured. The lock was solid steel, but the latch was
held in place with only three nails. Nails, not bolts or screws, but nails, one
already loose, head no longer flush with the tired, tarnished metal.

Don’t break the lock; break the
latch!

Alex pressed the angled end of the
pry bar above the latch, blade flush to the surface and lined up with the
deliberate care of a sharpshooter. He twice slid the tip of the pry bar towards
the latch, making sure his aim was dead on before gripping the bar with both
hands and backing it up a few inches, eyes tracing the invisible track.

And with a sudden, violent thrust, he slammed the pry bar under the metal
latch, gouging through the old wood and halting only for the nails. A couple
twists with the pry bar and it fell away. The door to the ticket booth was
open!

Under the counter was a single
drawer, the wood worn and crusted with furniture wax. Inside, Alex found a
standard cash drawer, empty but for a buffalo nickel, a safety pin, two pearl
buttons, thirty dimes in an old snap-purse, and an envelope with the word
TICKETS
in blocky print.

For a moment, all Alex could think to
do was stare in disbelief.
Could I be this lucky? Could it be this easy?
But before he thought too long on either question, he remembered Oversight. He
could save her now; he could save all of them now.

A grin spread across his face as he
opened the envelope.

Then the tickets exploded.

It was like holding a firecracker,
the suddenness of the explosion reducing the shriek in his throat to a startled
gasp as he fell backwards and slipped to the floor. He brought his hands up
near his face, terrified of what he might see.
Excuse me, but did you happen
to see any of my fingers go flying by?

Miraculously, all ten digits were
still there, their movements nerveless and slow, stiff, stinging numbness.
Something dark covered his fingers, made the skin sticky.

Adrenaline abandoned him, leaving him
faint, his muscles rubbery. Around him, blasted bits of once-tickets were
pasted everywhere like confetti smeared with a bright blue gunk; the same gunk
staining his hands, his shirt, his face and hair.

“Dye-pack,” he mumbled, grabbing the
word from some distant pigeonhole in his memory. In case of a bank robbery, the
teller would hand over a special pack of twenty-dollar bills with the money.
The pack would explode with permanent ink, staining the bills and the
would-be-thief and making both easy to identify. Dye-pack.

So now he was a thief, stained and peppered with the remnants of his
objective—
decoys, most likely
—permanently marked for his crude effort at
thievery and betrayal. Forget reasons or explanations; they were meaningless. And
once the others arrived
—how could they not hear the explosion of the
dye-pack or him collapsing on the floor like a fool—
they would know, too
.
Quince was a traitor and Alex his lackey, the slack-jawed fall guy too dim to
comprehend that he was being used and had been from the start.

A hand covered in bright blue dye
took up the pry bar, gripping it so tightly that the corners of the steel cut
into his skin. There was only one way left to settle this. Only one. Secrecy
was lost to him now. Honor too. There was no going back, not now or ever.

Alex climbed to his feet, feeling
returning to his fingers in the form of meaningless pain. A red misty haze
descended over his eyes, clarifying his senses and turning anguish into rage.
There was a reckoning to be had, oh yes; a reckoning with everyone who thought
him a fool and a chump. Quince would pay. Jack too. Jack pretended at
friendship, but he never trusted any of them. Not at all. Why else hide fake
tickets trapped with a dye-pack? Jack didn’t trust them, so why should he or
any of the rest of them trust Jack? If he was right about nothing else, Leland
Quince was right about that. Jack and Jack alone came to this place by choice.
The rest of them should not be trapped here with him. The red knew exactly what
to do.

Alex started up the steps, pry bar
gripped tightly in his fist, intent on making Jack give up the tickets and let
them leave.

And as for Leland
Call-Me-Sir-Or-Mister Quince, well, he might just find out if he could
deal
with a bar of steel driven through his skull.

*     *     *

The businessman stood in the doorway,
the landing lit with the sickly yellow light from the single lamp behind him.
He wore a pair of silk pajama pants, the product of an exclusive clothier that
cost more than Alex could make in a day of painting houses; where he found them
was anyone’s guess. Behind him, Oversight sat with her back to the wall, legs
drawn up, arms crossed over her knees, a sheet stolen from Leland’s bed wrapped
tightly around herself. She stared ahead angrily, her expression frustrated.

Seeing her from the landing, Alex’s
grip on the pry bar tightened, his fingers screaming though he could not hear.
The red mist that descended across his eyes filled his ears as well, dampening
the sound until only hate came through; hate and a wishful sound like crunching
bones.

“What the hell happened?” Quince
whispered harshly. He was about to step out when he saw the steel bar in Alex’s
hand. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t
pry
the tickets out of
him. And what happened to your face?”

Alex could only imagine how he must
look, emerging from the darkness with a pry bar pointing directly at Leland
Quince, hair swept up into a demon’s mane, face stained in random swirls of
blue like a berserker charging the killing ground. His eyes narrowed and the
red haze became a seam of blood, Leland caught within the hellish sea,
drowning. “I’m going to get the tickets,” he said, his words a hiss in the
darkness. “And I’m going to trade them for Oversight.”

Quince breathed a low sigh. “That’s
the plan—”

“No,” Alex interrupted. “I’m dealing
with Kreiger directly, now.”

Leland Quince pressed his hands
against the jamb, blocking the doorway with his body, muscles tensing as though
he intended to force the walls apart. His head cocked to one side, eyes
narrowing. “Are you trying to cut me out of
my
deal?

“It’s not
your
deal,” Alex
answered quietly, pry bar in both hands like a sword. “She doesn’t belong to
you. She never did and she never will.”

“I’m about done screwing around—”

“This isn’t a game!” he screamed.

“Alex?” Lindsay stared from the doorway,
watching as he prepared to cleave the businessman’s skull in two with a pry
bar.

“It’s okay, Lindsay. Go back to
sleep.” His voice sounded harsh, a deep, rasping croak as he choked upon anger
and indecision. What would she think if she came a step closer and saw
Oversight, the same woman she played catch with earlier today, sitting
half-naked in Mr. Quince’s room? What did she think of him—like a big brother
to her—as he prepared to murder Mr. Quince? Would she understand that he was
doing this for all of them? Was that even true? Or was he just a silly boy,
love-struck and misguided, mistaking sex for love and ready to destroy
everything in pursuit of his error?

The red haze faded, and he saw
himself from the outside, seeing what she was seeing, what they were all
seeing: a lunatic with a desperate weapon gibbering about secret deals with a
madman, Neanderthals grunting and posturing across the waterhole.
Not me
,
he thought desperately.
This cannot be me.

“Alex?”

He turned to her, the little girl
still there, still watching, still waiting for the Alex she knew to come to his
senses, to remember who he really was.

The point of the pry bar sagged, and
for the first time since picking it up, Alex felt the weight of the weapon, and
the anguish in his fingers, a throbbing, pulsing agony.

But some courses cannot be undone.

“You little bastard,” Quince growled.
“I put this whole thing together. Not you. You couldn’t have done a thing
without me. I practically held your hand the entire way. Whatever Kreiger might
have led you to believe, you can forget it. I made my deal first. You want
Oversight, you get me the tickets.”

“I am not your possession,” Oversight
said quietly.

Quince turned on her, her meager
protest melting beneath his stare. “This is what you want isn’t it, Alex? Don’t
bother lying. I know. I’ve spent my life finding the chinks in a man’s armor,
and yours is big enough to drive a post through. I picked up on it the very
first day we met: your
noble sensibilities
. And the raw nerve at the
center of that open wound is that sweet piece of ass right there. But she
doesn’t love you. Don’t you get that? Why would she? She’s mine! She may not
even realize it herself, but it’s true. Whatever the two of you did, she did it
because it served my ends. Or did you honestly believe you could impress her
with your ridiculous drivel, your tales of the bayou?”