Free Wake of the Bloody Angel by Alex Bledsoe Page B

watery feeling finally left my legs, and I could breathe normally. “Then I guess we’ll have to go find him, right?”
    “You’re the boss, boss,” Jane said.
    We thanked the warden, and I retrieved my sword and boot knife. We untied our horses outside the prison gate and remounted them. The sun and breeze had eliminated the mist, and I could see the white window bars at the top of Rody Hawk’s tower. I wondered if he was watching. Just the possibility made the hairs on my neck rise again.
    As we rode I said, “I want a drink. I don’t care what kind. Just as long as there’s a lot of it.”
    “Wow, I’ve never seen you like this,” Jane said. “Was it really that bad?”
    I desperately wanted to ask her how she’d managed to catch him, let alone take him alive. I suspected, though, that I didn’t really want to hear the answer. The way he’d taken the lock of her hair told me a lot of vague things I didn’t want made into specifics. “Nah,” I said with forced levity. “It was mainly the height.”
    “I’m a little pissed at you giving him a lock of my hair without asking me. I suppose you traded that for information?”
    “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
    “Uh-huh.” She looked off into the distance. “Did he have any message for me?”
    I recalled his single word for her. I imagined how, if such a word was aimed at me, it would ride in the back of my head for the rest of my life, until it either came true or I died. I said, “No.”
    “That smug bastard,” Jane muttered. “After all we went through together. So what now, boss?”
    “I think there’s no avoiding it this time,” I said. “It’s time to raise sail. You go over the mountains to Mosinee and round us up a ship. I’m going to Neceda to give Angelina a progress report. I’ll be back in a week.”
    “You going to stop and see that redhead of yours?”
    “If she’s there. She might be off working.”
    Jane grinned. “And you trust her to do that?”
    “She ain’t Miles,” I said as I turned my horse and rode away. I didn’t look back to see if she was smiling or not, but as I reached the road, I heard her high laugh on the wind.
     

chapter SEVEN
     
    I made good time back to Neceda and got there a week later, in the late afternoon.
    The tavern was crowded. Both Angelina and Callie worked the floor. Occasionally Angie had hired other girls, but none of them lasted very long; she was not, as you can imagine, an easy woman to work for. She demanded almost superhuman stamina and had no patience with mistakes. Callie succeeded, I always thought, because she never took Angie seriously.
    I stood in the door until my eyes adjusted and waited for Angelina to notice me. When she did, she nearly dropped the tray of empty tankards she carried. She quickly regrouped and said, “You’re back already?” as if my appearance were worth no more than a raised eyebrow.
    “It’s an update, not a final report. I need to talk to you alone.”
    She waved at the full tables. “I’m busy right now.” “Then take a break, ” I said through my teeth. Normally, I
    wouldn’t have been so brusque, but I’d had the whole ride back to stew over the fact that she neglected to mention her son, and who knew what else. I was, to put it mildly, peeved.
    She saw it, too. “Okay,” she said, and stepped over to catch Callie as she headed out with a fresh round of drinks. The younger waitress listened to Angie, then glared at me.
    Upstairs, I closed both doors and gestured for Angelina to have a seat. As she did, I opened the windows to let in some fresh air. I said, “Looks like you need to get Callie some more help.”
    “She’s the only girl in this town who comes in to work, not to snag a new boyfriend.”
    “What about Minnow Shavers?”
    “Are you kidding? She’ll be out of town as soon as her father looks away long enough. She can’t stand Neceda.”
    I paused, took a deep breath, and tried to remain calm. Starting off with a