Kit nodded, clearly impatient with the delay, but acknowledged their need to slap the dust off and slake their thirst and care for their horses. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Travers. This is Skeeter Jackson, Neo Edo House Detective. And Mr. Sid Kaederman, private detective with the Wardmann-Wolfe Agency."
"Gentlemen," Orson Travers said gravely. "My drovers'll see to your ponies and settle your pack mules. We'll go up to the saloon and talk things out. I got a funny feeling our trouble's related to whatever you're doing here with two detectives."
So did Skeeter. And from the look on his face, so did Kit. What Sid Kaederman thought, Skeeter didn't care. John Caddrick's pet snoop could jump over the nearest cliff, if he wanted to do something really useful.
"Saloon is up that way," Travers pointed.
Shortly, Skeeter found himself in a mended wooden chair sipping cool water from a chipped enamel cup. Tourists crowded into the ramshackle saloon to listen. Skeeter didn't see a single face in that crowd that could possibly have belonged to Noah Armstrong or Jenna Caddrick, let alone his missing friends. He was seriously worried that he knew exactly who was dead and who was missing.
"All right," Kit said quietly when the last of the tour group had crowded in. "You say you've lost six people. I'm betting your bad news will tie in with ours. We're here on a search and rescue mission. One that will either keep Shangri-La operational or see the station closed down, depending on how well we do our jobs." He studied the whole group closely. "I don't see Joey Tyrolin anywhere. Or Cassie Coventina."
Orson Travers ran a hand across his sweat-soaked face and hair. "No, you won't. That's the trouble I mentioned." Travers grimaced. "There was an ambush, out on the endurance course. Two tourists dead, shot to death by God only knows who. One of their horses, too. And another tourist lit out during the confusion, just skied up with everything he owned. Took his porter with him, the porter and his kids, who weren't even supposed to be out here. Bull Morgan and Granville Baxter will have my job," he added glumly, "losing six members of my tour group in one day."
Skeeter hardly dared breathe. Who was dead and who was on the run? The porter with the children could be nobody but Marcus, with Gelasia and Artemisia. Only who was with them? Ianira? Might his friends be safe, after all, running for their lives out in the mountains? But two people were dead—and there'd been six hostages. Quite abruptly, Skeeter needed to know just who had died, up here. He found himself on his feet, voice grating harshly through the dust and weariness. "Show me the bodies."
Travers hesitated. "There's more to this than you realize, Mr. Jackson—"
"Show me the goddamned bodies!"
Kit was on his feet, as well. "Easy, Skeeter," he said, voice low. Then, to Travers, "You'd better show us. I take it you didn't send the bodies back with the courier?"
"I thought I'd better wait until the search party got back. I was hoping to find our deserters and send them back together, but the trackers haven't shown up yet, so I sent a rider on ahead to Denver. I wanted him to get there before the gate cycled, but if you didn't run across him, he obviously didn't make it." Travers nodded toward a doorway at the rear of the room. "We embalmed 'em from the medical kits and put 'em in body bags, back in the saloon's storage pantry. It's the most secure place in town. Didn't want the local wildlife getting to them, after all. Our surgeon went with the search team, just in case."
"Paula Booker?" Kit asked sharply.
Travers nodded. "After what happened on the trail, there was no stopping her. Said she could've saved one of 'em, if she'd gotten to him in time. I've never seen a woman so upset in all my born days."
Kit sighed, weariness etched into his grizzled features. "Open it up, please. Let's get this over with."
Skeeter and Kit followed Travers into the next room, leaving Kaederman to bring up the rear. None of the tourists volunteered to go with them. A sickening, sweet stench met them when the heavy door groaned open. A moment later, zippers went down on the body bags and Skeeter found himself staring at two dead men. One was a stranger, thank God. The other...
Even expecting the worst, Skeeter lurched, the shock took him so hard. The dusty room, the sun-baked mountains beyond the broken windows, swooped and dove for a long, dizzy instant. Skeeter clutched at the open doorframe. He heard his voice, distant and strange, saying, "I'm gonna break the neck of the bastard who did this..."
Julius had been gut-shot. He'd clearly survived the fatal wound long enough to reach camp and Paula Booker, because someone had taken stitches before he'd died. Kit's hand settled on Skeeter's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Skeeter." The scout's voice had filled with a compassion that would've touched him, had the pain not been so sharp and terrible.
"Dammit, Kit! That boy wasn't even seventeen yet!" Skeeter jerked around, half-blind and not wanting Kit to notice. He was set to stride out of the monstrous little room, to get outside, to breathe down some fresh air, when he noticed Sid Kaederman. The detective had come up quietly behind them to peer past their shoulders. Even through Skeeter's blinding grief, Sid Kaederman's sudden deathly stillness brought Skeeter's instincts to full, quivering alert. He'd seen that kind of lethal tension before, in one or two of Yesukai's most deadly warriors, men who would've cheerfully slit a friend's throat for looking crosswise in their direction. The look in Kaederman's eyes set the tiny hairs along Skeeter's nape starkly erect.
Kaederman was staring down at the bodies. And for one unguarded moment, Skeeter glimpsed a look of naked shock in his cold eyes. Skeeter followed Kaederman's gaze and realized he wasn't staring at the murdered down-time teenager, but at the other corpse, a man who'd been shot several times through the back, by the look of the wounds. Kaederman's sudden stillness, the stunned disbelief in his eyes, set inner alarms ringing.
Without warning, Kit had Skeeter by the arm. "Easy, Skeeter, you're awfully white around the mouth. Let's get you outside, get some fresh air into your lungs. I know what a terrible shock this is..." The former scout was literally dragging him across the saloon's warped floor, past the gawking tourists, outside into the hot sunlight where the air was fresh and a slight breeze carried away the stink of death. An instant after that, the scout thrust a metal flask into his hand and said a shade too loudly, "Swallow this, Skeeter, it'll help."
Whatever Kit was up to, Skeeter decided to play along, since it had taken them out of Kaederman's immediate presence for the moment. Whatever was in the flask, it scalded the back of his throat. Skeeter swallowed another mouthful as Kit steered him down toward the livery stable, one hand solicitously guiding him by the arm, as though taking a distraught and grieving friends away from curious eyes. When they were far enough from the saloon, Kit muttered, "What the hell did you see in Sid Kaederman's face, Skeeter, that caused you to come out of shock so fast? One second, you were falling apart, ready to bawl, and the next you looked like you were ready to kill Kaederman where he stood."
Skeeter glanced into Kit's hard blue eyes. "That why you hustled me out of there so fast?"
Kit snorted. "Damn straight, I did. Didn't want Kaederman to notice the look on your face. Left him staring at the bodies."
"Huh. Well, that's exactly what stopped me in my tracks. The way he was looking at those bodies. Got any idea why the senator's pet bloodhound would go into shock, looking at a dead drover? Because for just a split second, Sid Kaederman was the most stunned man in this entire camp. Like he knew the guy, or something, and didn't expect to find him dead on a pantry floor."
Kit let out a long, low whistle. "I find that mighty interesting, don't you?"
"Interesting? That's not the half of it. There's something screwy about Caddrick's story, all that guff he fed us about Noah Armstrong. Either Caddrick's lying, or somebody fed him a line, because I'm starting to think Noah Armstrong didn't kidnap anybody. And maybe he's not a terrorist, at all."