The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [65]
Yet while no one had known for sure who had dug Travis’s grave, everyone assumed that whatever was left of him was buried in it. The destruction of the Mine Shaft had been all but complete. A natural gas explosion, the Castle County fire marshal had determined. He had gone through all the old buildings along Elk Street and found a dozen other leaks in antique pipes and boilers. In a way it was a wonder it hadn’t happened sooner. But then why had it happened at the Mine Shaft? Everyone still remembered the fire at the Magician’s Attic a few years back, when Jack Graystone had died and Travis Wilder vanished for the first time. Now the Mine Shaft had burned, and Max Bayfield and several unidentified people had burned with it.
But not, as Mitchell learned two nights ago, Travis Wilder.
Through the window—open a crack for air despite the chill mountain night—drifted the sound of tires against gravel. Mitchell sat up in bed. Had some of the hired hands shown up already?
Outside, a vehicle door shut: solid, heavy, well oiled. Another followed, and a shiver rode across Mitchell’s chest. Neither of those had sounded like the doors of a rusted-out pickup truck, and he was pretty sure none of the hired hands had been in the market for a brand-new car. He sure as horseshit wasn’t paying them enough.
Mitchell stood up from the bed. Cold air slapped his bare backside. Swiftly, he pulled on the pair of jeans slung over a chair. He fumbled on the nightstand, then his hand came back with a pair of glasses rimmed with silver wire. Davis said they made him look handsome and smart. Mitchell knew they made him look old, but damn if he could shoot a target at ten paces without them.
The sound of footsteps crunched closer. Mitchell cocked his head, counting. Just two. Those weren’t bad odds. He moved to the window, parted the checkered curtain a fraction, and peered into the steely predawn. They were just visible around the front corner of the house: the sleek, black curves of two SUVs parked in the dirt driveway. Two men in dark suits paused, gazing at the horizon with eyes concealed by heavy sunglasses, as if even the pale glow of first light was too much for them. Then they turned and continued toward the house.
A rustling in the bed behind him, and a sleepy voice.
“What is it, Mitchell?”
Mitchell turned from the window and spoke through clenched teeth. “Get your gun, Davis.”
Two minutes later they stepped out the door of the ranch house onto the broad front porch. The last winds of night fled, as if fearing the coming of the sun. On the other side of the porch railing stood two men in black. The wind seemed to have no power over their stiff hair and heavy suits. Mitchell shivered, and one of the men—his hair coal-black, his features smooth and indeterminately Asian—smiled. It seemed a dead expression, his eyes hidden behind the thick sunglasses.
“We would have waited,” the man said, “for you gentlemen to attire yourselves.”
On his way to the door, Mitchell had stopped to slap his Stetson on his head, but other than the blue jeans that was it. Davis had pulled on a white tank top and a pair of battered khakis. Both of them were barefoot.
“No, no—they are cowboys,” the other man said with a smile that was equally empty. He was tall and Nordic, his hair so blond it shone bone-white in the dawn. “I have seen this in the movies. They are only naked if they do not have their guns. Is that not right, boys?”
On reflex, Mitchell tightened his grip around his rifle, but Davis gave a laugh and twirled his revolver around his finger like a dime-store gunfighter. He always had been the showman.
“Why don’t you little dogies jus’ git along