Chapter 8: An Alliance
I headed back toward town, the harsh glare of the sun doing little to dispel the chill that had settled deep within me. Vance's story about his brother and mineral deposits was starting to feel like a convenient lie, a smokescreen for something far more brutal. The man in the mine wasn't a geologist. He was a ghost of a different kind, one with a bullet hole where his future should have been. And now I knew exactly who to thank for his untimely demise. I needed to find Maddie, and I needed to find Sheriff Brody. My instincts screamed that Vance's story was a fabrication, and the Mongols were more than just a biker gang – they were the architects of this whole damn charade.
The sheriff’s office smelled of stale coffee, sweat, and cheap pine-scented cleaner that wasn’t fooling anyone. The man behind the desk, whose nameplate read ‘Sheriff Brody,’ looked like he’d been poured into his uniform and had set in all the wrong places. He was looking at me with the kind of lazy disinterest cops reserve for stray dogs and inconvenient corpses.
"Sheriff, we need to talk," I said as I approached his desk and took a seat as if I owned the place. I proceeded to tell him how I came upon the body that I showed him on my phone.
“So let me get this straight, Mr. Draven,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “You, an out-of-towner, just happen to take a little stroll into a closed-off section of the Maggie Mine and stumble right over a dead body? A body that nobody else has seen?”
“That about covers it,” I said, my voice flat. My hands were cuffed in front of me. Not arrested, he’d assured me. Just 'assisting with his inquiries.' I knew the dance. I was the outsider, the variable, the easiest person to pin this on.
The door opened, letting in a slice of blinding desert sun. And in the doorway stood Maddie Hicks. She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were fixed on Brody, and her smile was a weapon sheathed in politeness.
“Sheriff,” she said, her voice smooth as silk. “I was just on the phone with the Calico Business Association. They were so pleased to hear you were giving one of our town’s new visitors such a… personal welcome. But they’re worried all this official procedure might give him the wrong impression of our little town’s hospitality.”
Brody’s face went through a series of subtle shifts—annoyance, recognition, and finally, a weary resignation. He looked from her to me, then sighed, the sound of a man who knew he’d just lost a hand. He fumbled for a key and unlocked my cuffs.
“Just don’t leave town, Draven,” he grumbled, not meeting my eyes.
I walked out into the oppressive heat, Maddie a step behind me. I waited until we were a dozen yards from the station before I turned on her, grabbing her arm. “What the hell was that?”
She didn’t flinch. She just looked down at my hand on her arm, then back up at my face. “That was me keeping my new favorite project out of a cage. Let’s take a walk.”
She led me away from the main street, toward the dusty quiet of the residential roads. “You found a body,” she said, not a question. “I know. The people who put him there are called the Mongols. They’re not ghosts, Jack. They’re an international syndicate that has decided to set up shop in my town. The disappearances, the body—that’s their mess. Brody won’t do anything because he’s either too scared or too stupid. I’m not.”
We stopped under the shade of a wilting palo verde tree. The heat was still a physical presence. “Why tell me?” I asked, my voice low.
“Because you’re not scared or stupid, either,” she said, her eyes boring into me. “You’re a hunter. I’ve been trying to get a handle on the Mongols for months, but I’m a reporter. I can only get so close. You… you can kick the door down.” Only a reporter, she says, I think my initial hunch was right, she's far more than just a reporter. I need to take some time and dig into her. I doubt I will find anything under Maddie Hicks, but I might find something under Dark Rose.
“And what do you get out of it?”
“A story,” she said, the lie so smooth it was almost believable. “And my town back.” She held out her hand. “I have the information, the contacts, the lay of the land. You have the skills to use it. We help each other. An alliance.”