Free The Gunslinger's Gift by April Zyon

asked, with a grin.
Chuckling when she shrugged at him, he pulled a lid off a plate and handed it
over to her. “Hopefully, this will do for tonight. Like I said, not a lot of
options around this place.” He passed her a napkin and utensils.
    “Okay,
so we’ll get me a place close after we’ve gone grocery shopping.”
    “We
should make sure there’s a bed in there,” he muttered. He’d uncovered the other
plate, with a large steak and a smothered baked potato on it, for himself.
Shifting forward in his seat, he draped his napkin over her feet with a grin.
“Eat up, honey.”
    “We
won’t sleep the nights there, though. With the fumes and all, that would be
bad.”
    “Yes,
fumes are bad,” he agreed. “We can do whatever you want with the space, Sophia.
It’ll be yours to do with as you wish. We’ll have to look into using the
standing venting for the stove in there to pull out some of the fumes to keep
you safe.”
    “That
would be good. With no windows. There are portable venting systems that we
could install. It’s pricy, but I should be able to swing it.” She picked at the
salad before her. “That way, there’ll be something that’s always there and
going, cleaning and recycling the air.”
    “You
tell me what you need, or want, and I’ll get it for you. I can afford it. You
find it online, and I’ll put it on my credit card.” He paused. “What’s with the
weird look, Soph?”
    “I
just—. I’m surprised,” she admitted to him. “That you have a credit card and
credit history in this day and time. With all of the paper trails and so on
that are in today’s society, how do you keep yourself hidden?”
    “Oh,
it’s not under my name. It’s my account, but it’s under the corporation that
Mercury set up. The corporation runs the trust that owns the land The Mountain
sits on. Each of us has a card with the corporate name on it. The numbers are
all different, which means they can link to any account we want.
    “We’re
all very carefully hidden behind a wall of corporate names, trusts, and a bunch
of other things. It can never be traced directly to me. Not now, not ever. I
don’t exist in this time. Even my ID is all a careful cover for who I really
am. We’ve been doing this a long time, Soph. Hell, we were all around for the
dawn of the technological age. We saw it coming, and we protected ourselves. As
we protect our own.” He squeezed her ankle gently.
    “That’s
seriously impressive.” She hesitated and then frowned. “Wait, what about me? I
have a small name for myself in the art world. Does this mean I have to stop
painting?”
    “No,
ma’am, not for a long time,” he said. “Eventually, you’ll have to for a while.
But then, you can come back as someone new. Using your previous self as your
inspiration. There are plenty of options, honey. We have plenty of time to talk
about it and decide how you want it all handled.”
    “Yeah.
Besides, most of my paintings have been locked away in my studio. They’re
personal to me. The landscapes, however, have always sold like crazy. People
love the sceneries from your past.”
    “Really?
Weird.” James shook his head. He cut into his steak and took a bite. “Then
again, given how much they’ve torn up the territories we once rode freely
through, I guess I can understand it. It was so pure and untouched back then.
Towns were barely a blip in the big picture of this country. ’Course, most of
those towns turned into the modern cities you know so well in the here and
now.”
    “Exactly,
that’s why they sell so well. They’re amazing places that you’ve been to in
your lifetime. You’ve met some interesting characters too. A couple of
portraits sold, but I don’t like doing them, because they aren’t you, and the
paintings I did of you, I kept. No one was allowed to see those.”
    He shot
her a look. “You’ve mentioned that before. Are you going to let me look at
them, or am I going to wonder forever what dirty