Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Salvation is a remote town, the sort of place a man can go to lose himself. The name is ironic, the work of a settler who was wanted when he broke ground on this very building. He thought being mayor of his own town would be his salvation. He was hung out front of the saloon three years later, and his grave has the honor of being the oldest in the churchyard.
I’ve come back here to lick my wounds and contemplate starting over. Thanks to a cluster bomb in the field, what was left of my military career is gone. The life I had is over. I’m starting to think this world never had anything planned for me at all, that I was born surplus to requirements, obsolete. Drink makes the pain of the wound in my shoulder bearable, but it does nothing for my mood. Hopelessness has her arms around me, fingers clammy at my neck, starting to grip tighter and tighter…
“Keith Starlight?” I hear my name coming out of an unfamiliar mouth.
I turn around to see a guy who is definitely not local. He’s wearing black pants and a black sweater. He has a black leather bag in hand too. Looks a little like a vintage doctor’s bag, but it seems to be brand new. He has very particular features, dark hair set in a widow’s peak and two intense, dark eyes. Brown, but so dark they may as well be black. He is not broad, but he seems strong. A dancer, perhaps, or a swimmer. There is a length of limb that leads me to believe he could be powerful if he wanted to be.
I have spent the last seven years forced to discern whether or not any given man is going to try to kill me or not. I am not certain with this man, though he is approaching me in public, and if he plans to kill me, it’s going to be in front of a pack of old timers, all of whom are likely to be armed.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he says in a tone of quiet excitement. He takes the stool next to me, sitting just that little bit too close for comfort. I lean back and look at him with eyes of death.
“You have? Why?”
“You’ve got potential.”
I laugh bitterly.
I might have had potential once. I’ve burned through it all and I’m left with the dregs.
“I heard you have a talent for finding things. People.”
I have a talent for finding trouble, and that’s about it. I shrug. That’s all the encouragement he seems to need.
“I want you to find this woman,” he says, producing a polaroid of a smiling woman around my age, a stunning creature with elegant bone structure, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a megawatt smile. She looks like a movie star, though I don’t recognize her.
I flick my eyes up over the picture and back up at him.
“You some kind of stalker?”
“No,” he laughs. “I’m a recruiter.”
“You trying to recruit me, or her?”
“Well,” he says. “That’s a deeper question than you might think.”
This guy gives me the creeps. Makes the hair on the back of my neck tingle. I shake my head and take a long swig of beer to calm the nerves I suddenly have dancing about.
“Not interested, buddy. Find someone else to stalk your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he says, leaning in too close. My hands clench into fists, one around the handle of my beer mug, the other prepared to drive straight into his face. “She’s an angel.”
“Christ,” I curse under my breath. Salvation used to be the sort of place weirdos didn’t come and certainly didn’t last. This guy is about to find himself run out of town.
“You’ll be paid handsomely,” he says, moving the bag around between us. He opens the clasp at the top and the leather gapes open to reveal that the whole bag is absolutely stuffed with stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Every single one of those stacks is ten grand. There are tens of them in there. This madman is carrying around a fortune.
My nerves are jangling now like a one-man-band playing the accordion, spoons, and harmonica at the same time. This is bad news.
“Where did you get my name?”
“You have a reputation as a man who will do whatever it takes to achieve his aim, no matter what the consequences. The people I work for can use men like you. There will always be a place for you in my organization.”
“You sound like a military recruiter, and they were full of shit,” I say.
I can’t stop looking at the money. I wonder if it is real. He’s carrying it around like play money.
He snaps the bag shut and gives me a thin smile. “I understand this is a strange method of approach,” he says. “And of course, if you are not currently interested in employment, then I will leave you to your beer. If you change your mind, be in touch.”