Free Mad Cow by J.A. Sutherland Page A

his bike, opened it, and flashed the contents. Bound stacks of green paper, lots of them.
    James’ reservations faded a bit. This would be their largest score yet — enough to keep them comfortable for a year or more, if they weren’t extravagant.
    Twenty bucks’ worth of flour for a quarter million dollars?
    He supposed that was worth a little risk. Besides, this wasn’t their first rodeo, after all. They’d done this before and he could predict exactly what happened next.
    The lead biker walked over to the bag on the ground to check it. He, no one, would turn over that much money without checking the goods, and why should he ask James or Frank to open it when it was right there on the ground halfway to him?
    Sure enough, the one with the money came over too. He needed to be closer to hand over the cash, after all. Besides, he’d want to see what they were getting too.
    The third biker was a potential problem — it was why Frank always insisted on just two. Well, that and the fact that it was just the two of them, James and Frank, and letting yourself be outnumbered looked bad. If the third biker held back, he might not be in the right place for what came next.
    James gave a little sigh of relief as the third one stepped forward too, though. Everyone wanted to see what they were getting, right?
    The lead biker went to one knee next to the duffel and grasped the zipper.
    James felt Frank tense beside him. He glanced over and found his friend’s eyes were narrowed and Frank licked his lips in anticipation. James felt it too. No more onesie-twosie deals for a few grand, maybe ten or twenty — this was the big score they’d been waiting for. It’d give them breathing room and financing to set up something even bigger — maybe a lifetime setup, if they could manage it.
    The biker paused. He looked up, eyes narrow, and his nostrils flared. He smiled again and James shivered, his hand automatically going to the spot on his chest where the pendant Frank had given him rested against his chest.
    Just open the damn bag! James wanted to shout. He clenched the pendant through his shirt.
    “You boys are cool, right?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” Frank said. “Yeah, we’re cool.”
    Without lowering his gaze, the biker opened the bag and reached inside.
    There was a deep, loud whumpf and the world went white.

    * * *
    J ames sneezed and waved a hand in front of his face.
    Everything was white, he couldn’t even see the hand he was waving. Certainly couldn’t see Frank or the bikers. All he could see were shadows in a fog of flour, lit by the brightness of the nearly full moon. That light and a soft, green glow from his chest. The light seeped between his fingers, making an eerie contrast with the white cloud of flour.
    There was another sneeze and then a cough from beside him.
    “Might have miscalculated how far the flour would spread,” Frank said.
    “You think? ”
    Breathing to talk made him inhale more of the flour and James hacked a couple times before recovering.
    “Breath slow,” Frank said. “At least we can be sure we got all three of them. The amulets’ll offset the spell on the flour, so we don’t have to worry. Now we just have to find the money and get out of here. When they wake up, they won’t remember a thing about this or us — not even why they were here.” He laughed, then sneezed again. “Damn it! Anyway, the spell will erase every bit of memory they have regarding us — faces, voices, names, the whole bit. They’ll just know they woke up covered in flour in the middle of the woods … and a lot poorer.”
    James fought the urge to laugh.
    “Yeah,” he said, “if we can find the money in all this.”
    “Just shuffle your feet straight ahead and we should find it — it’ll be right next to our bag — just try not to step on these guys. I don’t want to really hurt them.”
    “Yeah.”
    James started moving, shuffling his feet from the start, even though he was several feet from where