Craig Johnson - A Serpent's Tooth - A Walt Longmire Mystery

He glanced at Lynear for a moment and then reached in, immediately opening the spare well where the drill bit had been. He pulled out of the station wagon and quickly shook his head.

“Lose something?”

“I just don’t like driving without a spare.”

I addressed Lynear, coolly watching from the mountaintop of his mobile throne. It was easy to see who was the brains of the outfit: “Did you ever get your drill rig running?”

His head canted to one side. “Unfortunately, we’re still working on it.”

“I received a call from the county assessor’s office about the logistics of your water well, and they wanted someone to run down with a GPS and get the exact location of the drill site.”

He didn’t smile. “Is that so?”

I went ahead and smiled—I’m friendly that way. “I volunteered for the job.”

“I’m sure you did.”

I gestured toward Vic, still facing the driver. “We’ll be there tomorrow—if you can make arrangements for someone to meet us at the gate around noon.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“If not, I’ll just run through it.”

Lynear nodded, and I got the feeling we’d made progress in clarifying our relationship, but our stare-down was interrupted by Gloss having moved from the station wagon and going for his pistol at the far side of the ditch. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

He stopped at the sound of my voice. “That’s my gun.”

“Yep, it is, and we have another law here in Wyoming concerning unauthorized firearms brought onto school property—it comes with a mandatory sentence—and that weapon, now, is most certainly on school property.”

He glanced at the autoloader, gleaming in the dirt like an unobtainable treasure. “Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“I guess decide if that pistol is worth five to seven years in Rawlins—it’s a nice enough town, but I’m not sure if the accommodations at the maximum security prison are all that great.”

Vic, still standing off the driver, volunteered in a loud voice, “Fish sticks and Tater Tots on Fridays.” I think she even winked at Lockhart.

Lynear’s voice intoned from the truck, “Earl, I think it’s time we were going.”

Gloss circled around, careful to go to the front of the wagon in order to avoid me, then threw open the door of the Plymouth and climbed in. “I want my gun back.”

“Just as soon as I check the serial numbers and you show me a Wyoming or Texas permit for carrying it.”

He slammed the door and probably would’ve headed out in a tire-squealing, fishtailing, thunder-roading display if the tired Satellite’s ignition hadn’t given out with a terminal and diminutive click.

I glanced at Lynear. “You guys have any jumper cables?”

• • •

Back in my office, Vic examined Gloss’s Wilson Combat Supergrade Classic, jacking the slide mechanism over and over and spitting shiny .45 dumdum rounds onto my desk with a determined ferocity. “It would’ve hurt if he’d shot you, you know?”

“Right.”

She held up one of the pursed, open-tip rounds. “These hurt worse than normal, you know that, right?”

“Right.”

She was pissed, but she kept her voice low so that no one else in the outside office could hear her. “You’re a moron; you know that too, right?”

“Right.”

“If that shitbird had shot you then I would’ve had to shoot everybody, which doesn’t really concern me, but after that I would’ve had to lift your two-hundred-and-sixty-pound—”

“I’m down to two-forty-five.”

She shot an index finger at me. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Right.”

“—ass off the roadway and load you into your unit, drive at the speed of light in hopes that you would not leak all your precious bodily fluids out onto the floor mats and die.” She leaned back in my guest chair, her eyes like twin black holes with surrounding solar flares, swallowing everything, and all I could think was how ferociously gorgeous she looked—thoughts that if were voiced would, most likely, put my life in jeopardy again.

I eased back in my chair. “Can I talk now?”

“No, you cannot talk until you show some semblance of being able to behave like a rational, reasonable law-enforcement professional.”

I considered. “I’m not going to be able to talk for the rest of my life?”

“No.”

I glanced out my window and honestly reflected on my actions earlier. “I’m sorry.”

She yanked herself forward and hissed. “Don’t say that, don’t even say that, because all that’s gonna do is piss me off even more. And you wanna know why? Because you don’t mean it. You walk around with this ten-foot-tall and bulletproof attitude, which, I might add, you should’ve gotten over during that last little jaunt in the mountains.”

“That’s how I lost the fifteen pounds.”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” She was really angry now and stood, still holding the confiscated .45. “There are a lot of people around here who kind of depend on you, you know.” She paced and then stopped, taking a deep breath and running her fingers through her hair. “A lot of people, and if you’re not going to think of yourself then maybe you should think about them.” She scratched the end of her nose with the barrel of the semiauto.

Being a fast learner, I said nothing.

With very little warning, she tossed the Wilson onto my desk, where it struck my leather blotter with a resounding thud and slid toward me. “That is a five-thousand-dollar sidearm—what the hell is Farmer Green Jeans doing with a gun like that?”

I raised my hand.

She dismissed me with a flapping of her own. “Talk.”

“I don’t know.”

She turned to look down at me. “You used your opportunity to talk for that?”

I shrugged and studied her and gestured toward the pistol on my desk. “At the risk of you loading the aforementioned weapon and shooting me—are you all right?”

She turned very slowly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

I put my hand on the .45 and slid it out of her reach.

“I just want to be clear about this.” She thumped a forefinger at her chest. “I’m dressing you down and you’re asking what’s wrong with me?”

“You just . . . You just seem a little on edge.”

She walked over and closed my office door the rest of the way and then came back and sat in front of me on my desk, near me and the pistol. “Fuck. You. Again. I am trying to have a serious conversation about your recent juvenile actions and you’re trying to use that hackneyed old chauvinistic tactic of blaming all this on my emotions?”

I raised my hand again.

She raised a tactical boot and planted it firmly between my legs, grabbed the front of my shirt, and pulled me in close, forcing me to grab the arms of my chair for balance. “I am in complete control of my emotions.”

As they go, it was the Mount Vesuvius of kisses—shocking, overpowering, molten, and leaving nothing but paralyzed ash in its wake. I thought for a moment I was going to suffocate when she released the fistful of my shirt like the ripcord on a parachute.

Her face hovered there, and I continued to breathe her breath, feeling the warmth of it on my jaw and neck. “Any more questions about my emotions?”

“Nope.”

She pushed with the foot, and I felt my boot dislodge; it was only then that I realized that my chair was flipping backward. I scrambled to grab the edge of my desk, Vic, or anything, but she’d already stood and stepped away and I crashed backward onto the carpet-covered but still unforgiving hardwood floor.

I lay there, attempting to focus my eyes and get the air back in my lungs as she walked over and stood above me, her hair framing her face like anything but a halo. The back of my head hurt, and I squeezed my eyelids together in an attempt to purge the ache that was starting at the back of my head.