FIFTY-ONE

Since perching on the hill of computer monitors, Mason Lee had adjusted his approach.

Thanks to the information he’d enjoyed forcing out of the young thugs, Mason now knew that Billy and Theo usually worked at the far end of the Meltdown, at the lowest status place possible. Given that, he no longer thought of himself as a soaring hawk needing to startle them into movement. Now he was a stalking mountain panther. Mason was very familiar with the animals of Appalachia and had a memory of a mountain cat that never failed to stir him. The cat had sprung out of deep grass, pouncing on a deer from behind, raking its front claws across the hind end as the deer tried to flee, pulling the deer down and snapping its neck with powerful jaws.

To stalk properly meant to blend in to the background. Mason realized his white face was a liability. So, walking away from the four shirtless men he’d left nearly dead at the pile of monitors, Mason had reached into a mound of cooled dark ashes and used his fingers to smear black lines like swirls of blurred tattoos across his cheeks and forehead. He’d also taken a kerchief from one of the fallen men and tied it across the bottom of his face.

Weaving among the piles of the Meltdown to his destination, he drew far fewer glances from the hordes of scavengers and guessed the attention he did get came because of the eye patch.

He didn’t mind.

Like deer unaware of an upwind mountain panther, Billy and Theo, first of all, had no way of knowing that the great Mason Lee had departed from Appalachia and was on their trail. If they did spot him, he was wearing the kerchief like any other scavenger, and it would be next to impossible to link his smudged face to that of the famous bounty hunter who had nearly eviscerated Billy and Caitlyn in a barn. The eye patch was something they had not seen on him before either. No, when he’d been hunting them, Mason had had use of both eyes.

The thought quickened his pulse with a stab of renewed anger. If they hadn’t helped Caitlyn, she never would have escaped, nor left him to die—in hated darkness—where a rat could puncture his eyeball. Billy and Theo were just as responsible as she was for blinding him. No doubt they’d share in her punishment. No doubt at all. Mason had a knife in his pocket, the one he was saving to slice the eyes of the whore. Maybe he’d use it on their eyes too. Taser them at moderate strength, just enough to paralyze. Then describe what he was doing as he ran the blade. Be good if their eyes were closed as he did it. He’d be able to cut through their eyelids at the same time, maybe even peel the eyelids off like the skin of a pearl onion. But it was important to let them live. Blind. That was worse than death.

These were his thoughts as he reached a mound of glass bottles as high as a three-story building. When he rounded the base of it, the sight of the scavengers feeding the glass smelter broke him out of his pleasant reverie of revenge.

This was a bootleg operation on a large scale. Dozens of boys and men were working. Some to tear wooden skids apart as fuel for the smelter. Some to smash bottles. Others to shovel the shattered glass in.

Mason stood sideways and pretended to be examining some of the bottles nearby. He made sure he stood so that his good eye was nearest the operation and scanned back and forth between the bottles and the scavengers.

He saw Billy first. Large. So large he was unmistakable. He had stripped down too, his massive upper body shining with sweat. Billy didn’t have the type of build that showed muscle definition, but Mason had learned that his hand was strong enough to knock down a horse with a single punch. Mason would have to be careful. Billy wouldn’t stand against the Taser, but there were too many others around for Mason to make a bold, open move.

He saw Theo next, rummaging through a bottle pile, sorting clear glass from green bottles. Beneath his kerchief, Mason smiled coldly. Theo was small enough; maybe Mason could pull an arm off him like a wing off a fly.

This is good, Mason thought. These two would give him Caitlyn.

All he had to do was keep stalking.

In his memory, Mason saw the mountain cat, nearly hidden in tall grass. He knew he could do the same.

Mason moved forward and found a makeshift shovel.

He stepped among the men, picked up a length of dirty cardboard, and began scooping up broken glass to feed the smelter with them.