Shadows Left Behind by Josh Lanyon

Author:Josh Lanyon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical fiction, LGBTQ, mystery novellas, mystery and suspense
Publisher: Josh Lanyon
Published: 2021-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

“Jesus Christ.” Brett looked more mad than scared, which was good, because Rafferty was scared plenty for both of them.

He was angry too, that went without saying, but the idea that he might have been responsible for getting someone killed—getting Brett Sheridan killed—shook him more than he’d have expected.

He inspected the damage to the Buick—scraped paint, two flat tires, and a bent axel—as Brett walked back to the road to watch the black Packard, now well down the mountain as it whipped through the next series of curves.

Brett swore with elegant economy, finishing up with, “Where the hell are we?”

Rafferty glanced up as Brett trudged back to the Buick, his shoes sliding on pine needles. “Right where we were before the car went off the road.”

Brett gave him what the romance novels called a withering glance. “That helps.”

“You know as much as I do. We’re somewhere between Camp Spaulding and Soda Springs.”

“Swell. Do we go forward or back?”

“You want to toss for it?” Rafferty pulled out his lucky coin, a doubloon he’d won in a card game from an old sea dog who swore up and down the gold piece was part of the treasure of the sunken San Augustin in Drakes Bay. “Call it.”

“Heads means we head back.”

Rafferty nodded and tossed the coin. It flashed, spinning in the clear mountain air.

“Wait.” Brett turned and ran back up the berm. Sure enough, a blue Ford pickup with white-walled tires and a bed with three large pigs came chugging around the bend.

Brett flagged the truck down. It pulled to the side, and the driver got out. He inspected Rafferty’s disabled car and agreed to give them a lift into Norden.

Into Norden turned out to be an exaggeration. Norden, once an old mining town, mostly amounted to a handful of falling-down buildings from the 1800s. There was a general store, a gas station, and a café called the Alpine House.

The café had a public phone, and from there Rafferty was able to summon a tow truck from Truckee.

They smoked a couple of cigarettes and watched chickens pecking at gravel outside the little café while they waited for the truck to arrive. At last it rumbled up, and they set off to retrieve Rafferty’s Buick.

By the time the Buick had been chained and towed into the town of Truckee, it was midafternoon, and it was clear they would be spending the night in the mountains. The town’s only mechanic promised it would be unlikely to take longer than that to repair the Buick, which was fortunate since Rafferty thought Brett was about to have a stroke as it was.

“But there must be another way to get to Reno tonight, surely?”

The grizzled mechanic pushed his cap back and studied Brett as though he were some unexpected natural phenomenon. A two-headed calf, maybe. “No can do, sonny. I’m the town’s only mechanic, and I’ve got a line of machines needing fixing. I already spent half the day digging you fellers out.”

“But we could pay you to—”

“Okay.

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