Bolan stood up. His body felt better now, his strength returning. "Why'd you bust me out?"
"Why?" She looked surprised. "Because, despite your little facial surgery, I recognized you. Your walk, your eyes, your, well, presence. Women sense these things. When I asked Lyle about you he told me your name was Damon Blue, so I figured the authorities didn't know who they had yet. But when they did, they'd throw you in the Atlanta penitentiary so fast you'd have bar burns on your palms. And once you were in there, you'd never come out alive. Lots of Mafia guys in the Big A would just love to get their hands on you."
"Since when do you know anything about breaking people out of jails? That the latest in nurses' training?"
"I'm not a nurse any longer, Mack. Oh, I do some volunteer work at the VA hospital that's where I met Lyle a couple years ago but that's all."
Bolan walked over to the window of the bedroom.
He pawed aside the curtain and looked out over Atlanta, submerged in darkness. Electric lights glittered as in every big city, though Atlanta had a small-town feeling to it. A fuzzy aura of light seeped up over the horizon. It would soon be dawn.
He faced Shawnee. "You made a mistake breaking me out of jail."
"But..."
"I appreciate the motive, Shawnee, but I was in there for a reason, trying to keep someone alive. Now he's alone and exposed."
"Gee, Mack, I'm sorry. I didn't know."
He placed his rough hand on her cheek. "I know."
"Well, you can't just turn yourself in and claim you were kidnapped. They'd toss you in solitary."
"I wouldn't be much use there."
"So what are you going to do now?"
Bolan frowned. "Only thing I can do, I guess. Break him out, too."
"You'll need help."
"No." Bolan shook his head.
"We got you out, didn't we?" She went to the door and shouted, "Everybody. Come here." The other three women entered the room. "About time for introductions, Mack," Shawnee said. "This here is Belinda Hoyt."
Belinda stepped forward with a big smile. Her short blond hair framed her narrow face in a slight tomboy cut. But there was nothing else tomboyish about her. Her sleek body couldn't be hidden even under the gray sweatshirt and bib overalls.
"Howdy, Mr. Bolan."
"Belinda's from New Jersey," Shawnee explained, "so all that "howdy" and "shucks" stuff is just her rap. She wants to be a country singer."
Belinda's smile widened. "When in Rome, right?"
Shawnee continued. "This is Lynn Booker. Our legal adviser."
"Not much of a job since everything we do is illegal," Lynn said, looking straight at Bolan. Her Eurasian features were accented by the shadows in the dimly lit room. She was short, barely five feet, with straight, shiny black hair chopped off at the shoulders. The angled eyes and thin mouth only enhanced her beauty.
"Vietnamese?" Bolan asked.
"Half," Lynn said with no trace of accent. "GI father, Vietnamese mother. They knew each other for one night, if that long. My mother disappeared when I was thirteen. I was adopted by Gerald and Martha Booker of St. Petersburg, Florida. Got my law degree and passed the bar exam last year." Her tone was clipped, businesslike.
"Last and least," Shawnee said, "Rita St. Clair. Big-bucks Boston family. Banking or something."
"Insurance," Rita said.
"Whatever. Anyway, Rita chucks the whole debutantest Vassarst married-to-an-ambassador crap to become get this a cop."
Bolan's jaw flexed.
"Relax," Rita told Bolan, "I'm not a cop now. Not that I ever really was one. After all my Academy training in Boston, I get this job in Coolidge, Georgia. Five-person police department. In Boston I'd dragged bodies out of the river, been shot at, even stabbed by some junkie with a hunk of mirror. Here they make me a meter maid. Fine, I'm willing to pay my dues like anyone else. But every time there's a promotion, they give it to one of the men, guys with less experience, less seniority. I'd gone into police work because I wanted to make a difference, and I sought out a small town so I could at least see the difference. But it never happened. So I quit."
"Well, not completely quit," Shawnee said, a huge grin arcing her lips. "She joined with us."
"Us?" Bolan said. "Who's us?"
"Us," Shawnee said, gesturing with her hand to include the four women. "We're the Savannah Swingsaw. And we, Mack Bolan, are gonna help you bust your friend out of jail."
11
The man with one blue and one brown eye walked among the dusty antiques, some authentic, some merely old junk. He picked up various objectsrusting swords, musty hats, carved ivory chess pieces examined them carefully, then replaced them. Never making a sound.
The shop owner, Giles Tandy, a native Atlantan whose father had started the store and tried to teach its intricacies to his unwilling son, had inherited the business two years before, following his father's third heart attack. By that time, Giles had already been an unsuccessful insurance salesman, unsuccessful swimming pool salesman and unsuccessful truck salesman.
Since his father had always been successful, Giles decided to try his hand at Daddy's antique business. His mother, who helped out part-time, tried to argue with him to maintain the same business integrity as his father, but Giles was indifferent to integrity. He added shoddy garage-sale crap to the quality items his father had carefully purchased, making the store what it was today. A mixture of superb antiques and castaway junk. He thought the dust added an air of authenticity.
"Help you, sir?" he said to the man with one blue eye and one brown eye. Hadn't even noticed the stranger sneaking around back here so damn quiet.
He looked at the man's expensive suit, the quiet manner, figured him for some kind of banker or accountant and turned on the charm. "We got the finest antiques this side of the Mississippi, sir. Indeed, the best on either side." The man continued to browse, ignoring Giles.
On the other side of the store an elderly lady was pawing through the cheap bric-a-brac. At most, she'd spend ten dollars. He decided to stay with the money man. Giles shivered slightly when he looked at the man's face. His eyes were spooky, not just because of the different colors, but just the way they looked at Giles, as if he wasn't there. As if Giles was a bug and he was trying to decide whether or not to squash him. Still, the man obviously had money. The watch and ring were gold.
Giles was having trouble maintaining his smile while the tall thin man ignored him. The old lady had left, leaving just the two of them in the store.
The browser ran his hand along one of the music boxes on the glass showcase that Giles had bought from a bankrupt bakery. He watched the fingers and shuddered. They were long and skinny, like the legs of a spider.
"Now that's a hell of a choice, sir," Giles said enthusiastically. "That there music box comes out of France, made around 1683. A present from the French to, uh, Spain."
The thin tall man turned his head and stared at Giles. It was like being slapped in the face. Giles swallowed nervously.
"You are a liar, sir," the man said. His voice was soft, almost a whisper. His English was precise yet without tone, not American, yet having no identifiable accent. "The music box was not invented until about 1770, probably in Switzerland. Second, in 1683, France and Spain were at war." The man turned away and continued through the store, examining other items. Giles felt sweat trickle behind his ears. Hell, he'd been called a liar before, but never with such a menacing, threatening tone. Okay, so he'd made up a date and some history for the customer. He did it all the time. Was that such a crime?
"Anything in particular you're looking for, sir?"
The man looked up again. He smiled, his teeth small even squares. "Branding irons."
Damn nuisance, Giles thought, wondering what the guy wanted with a branding iron. But then he smiled because he remembered they actually did have a couple of irons his father had bought from a ranch that had been plowed under into an eighteenhole golf course. "Er, yes, we've got branding irons. All kinds. Just take me a minute." Giles went into the back, rummaged through one of the storage lockers and returned to the display area with three rusty branding irons. "Quite a history here," he started to say, but stopped abruptly when the man's eyes met his with an unspoken warning.