Free Claimed (The Flash Gold Chronicles, #4) by Lindsay Buroker Page B

you want to... er, questioning is out, I guess. Search them?”
    She was right. One of them might hold some clue as to Cudgel’s whereabouts. Questioning one of them would have been even better, but he hadn’t been in a position where he could do anything other than react. React with a great deal of accuracy, it seemed. Once that might have made him proud, but it was just part of the job now.
    “I’ll handle it,” Cedar said. “Why don’t you wait outside.”
    “I can—”
    “They might have disturbed your bicycle.”
    Kali’s eyes widened. “Tarnation, that’s right.” She hustled out of the tunnel so fast it was as if those kerosene-soaked britches had caught fire. She forgot to leave him the flash gold, so he could see. He fished out his flint and relit a lantern.
    The search revealed little, a few coins, cards from one of the faro halls on Tiger Alley, a scrap of paper with a hotel room number on it. He might have found that encouraging, but a woman wearing lip paint had kissed the corner. Somehow he doubted he would locate Cudgel there.
    Cedar climbed out of the cave. He would leave the rest of the investigating for the Mounties. Kali was lying in the mud by the pool, examining the SAB. To him, it appeared as if it had been ignored by the men, but someone had sabotaged it before, so he wouldn’t fault her for being thorough.
    “Find anything?” she asked.
    “Not unless I want to visit an available woman with low standards.”
    She leaned out from beneath the vehicle and gave him a squinty look, but didn’t comment. He wondered if that meant she would be disturbed if he did seek out such a person. He hoped so.
    “Guess this was all a waste,” he said.
    “Maybe not. We found out a few things, didn’t we?”
    “That Cudgel might be the one behind this claim-grabbing scheme, I suppose,” Cedar said, wishing again that he’d had the opportunity to question one of those men.
    “And that your Sergeant Tremblay might be in bed with him.”
    “That’s... not a certainty. Just because he sent us out here doesn’t mean he’s Cudgel’s man. He could have legitimately wanted this scheme investigated.”
    “By you . Like I said before, I find it right suspicious that he was so eager to send me out here with you. I’ll be driving straight back to check on my cave.”
    Cedar grimaced. If her work area had been plundered because she had agreed to go off with him, he would be irritated with himself—and Cudgel. “You aren’t... I mean, is your item stored in there?”
    He doubted there was anyone around to overhear them, but the flash gold was so valuable and so desired by so many that he had grown accustomed to speaking of it in secret. She had long since made the flakes disappear, returning them to whatever pocket or sock the vial had come from.
    “It’s not in the cave,” Kali said. “It’ll remain hidden until I’m ready to plug it into the engine.”
    “Good.”
    She didn’t volunteer to tell him where she had hid it, and he didn’t ask.
    “But there’s a powerful lot of things that could be done to my ship to delay the building.” Kali grabbed a shovel and dumped coal into the banked fire of the steam bicycle’s small furnace. “You ready to go?”
    Cedar gazed through the trees and toward the river. There was nothing else to find out here. Cudgel and the clues leading back to him, they must be in town. He would talk to Tremblay—especially if they found out someone had searched Kali’s cave—and he would check that address just in case the owner of the lip paint knew anything. He wished he could think of more, some trap of his own to lay.
    “Cedar?”
    “Just thinking.” He rubbed his head again. “What if... I don’t know how we could manage it since he recognizes both of us, but we just saw that couple leaving their claim. Reckon that means it’ll be for sale soon.”
    Kali caught on immediately. “You want to disguise ourselves and pose as buyers?”
    “Might be a way