Bounty Hunter by Michelle E Lowe

Author:Michelle E Lowe [Lowe, Michelle E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781791326265
Published: 2018-12-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Rain. Oh, Glory Be! Rain!

“Si, un hombre vino achi, y compro un capacitadora,” said the shopkeeper.

She was a short Mexican woman with a bowl-like haircut and thick spectacles.

Pierce hardly paid any attention. He was too distracted by his surroundings. The doohickey shop was small, but it was chock-full of so many wondrous things. There were a couple of motorized wheelchairs, home décor that lit up by battery-operated bulbs, clocks with multiple faces telling the time in different countries around the world, and a multi-purpose gauntlet-equipped with a compass, watch, and secret storage compartments. Pierce really wanted that one. There were even playing cards depicting painted pictures of flying contraptions, an Astrology Skull, submarines built of iron, and industrial cities that belonged nowhere on earth. These devices weren’t like the prototypes he’d seen in the Inventions of the Future tree house at the Great Cosmas Circus. These were actual functioning machines the proprietor was selling to the public.

Gadgets amazed Pierce. The mechanical achievements, the rumored Age of the Machine Era that had been foreseen and which seemed to be coming about . . . Pierce couldn’t help but be curious.

“She says there was someone who came for a capacitor,” Jaxton reported to Pierce, who was busy studying goggles and masks encased in a glass display counter. When he gave no answer, Jaxton shouted, “Oi! Deadhead, wake up!”

Pierce snapped his attention around to him. “Eh?”

Emma laughed. Itza-chu only grunted.

“I said: It sounds like our man, Javier, has been here,” Jaxton repeated, disgruntled.

Pierce approached the counter. “Did he now? Does he fit our description? Tall. Spooky. Spanish?”

Jaxton returned his attention to the shopkeeper and asked while raising his hand up over his head, indicating the height.

She nodded. “Sí, ese es él. Él ha estado aquí muchas veces antes.”

“Yes. And he’s been here more than once.”

Pierce couldn’t help but grin. Was it possible they might actually catch two on the same day?

“Does she happen to know where he went, or if he’ll be back here soon?”

Jaxton relayed the questions. Again, she nodded and spoke.

“She says she might know the whereabouts of where he lives.”

His spirits soared high. Did he dare hope? Could they be through with this whole mess within days? They just might bloody well sort everything out, pay off the debt, and then Pierce and his family could sail off toward their new home, knowing that the Apache people were safe. It made his scalp prickle with glee.

“Where?” he asked anxiously.

While Jaxton asked, Pierce spied a wind-up snow globe on the counter. He wound it up, triggering another of his shredded memories—if he could call them that.

A miniature tree made of tin, painted bright green and dotted with colors, slowly spun around on a dark wooden bar countertop, surrounded by peanut shells and cigarette ashes.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he heard himself say. “Lookee who it is, eh?”

A man whose eyes were on the little rotating tree raised his chin to him. His delicate facial features were something Pierce recognized instantly.

“Pierce Landcross,” he said. “Small world.

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