Gundown by Ray Rhamey Read Free Book Online

that—piercing. Soldado nodded and then said, “I hear you’ve got a few things going on out there.”
    Noah had to grin at that. “You might say we have a quiet revolution in progress.”
    Soldado raised his eyebrows. “Some say your operation is a cult religion.”
    Noah frowned. “There are . . . opponents who claim things like that. But the Alliance is totally open and free, quite the opposite of a cult, and about as secular as you can get. You’ll see, if you come.”
    Soldado’s gaze kept boring in. “I can’t make that promise of yours.”
    Noah shrugged. “Not required.”
    “The way you talk about helping people, I’m not sure what I do is something the Alliance can use.”
    “What do you do? Something other than saving pontificators from perforation?”
    Soldado smiled. “Yeah. Sometimes duty calls in harsh ways.”
    “Nobody does only one thing well,” Noah said. “Come out and see what happens.”
    “All right, I will.”
    The fear lurking in Noah’s mind took a step back. But it would return, he was sure of that. He gripped Hank’s shoulder again. “I’m very pleased. I hope we can get together. Be well.” He left feeling lighter and brighter than he had all morning.
    • • •
    Hank reached for the phone, gritting his teeth against the pain. He had it under control by the time the operator connected him with Mitch Parsons’s room at the Chelsea.
    He said, “I need to see you.”
    “What about your wound?”
    “It’s my ticket in. Stone and I are practically blood brothers now.”
    “I’ll be right over.”
    While he waited, the doc came by and told him about his injuries. The bullet had struck the holster under his jacket and stopped, leaving a cracked rib. The arm was a through-and-through flesh wound.
    Hank tried to doze, but pain jabbed him awake every time his eyes closed, and he didn’t want to dull his mind with painkillers. Giving up, he turned on the TV and caught a news report of the shooting. In slow motion, it showed a wisp of smoke curling from the shooter’s gun barrel just before a woman slammed into him. He grinned. Not a bad body block there. Some tough women in Chicago.
    The video cut to a photo of an angry-looking man, a face Hank had seen on the other side of a gun. A voice-over said, “Accused assassin Jason Schaeffer was released today into the custody of noted criminal attorney Randolph Gutierrez.”
    The scene cut to Schaeffer, led by a lawyer uniformed in a dark suit and a briefcase, making his way toward a limo through a crowd of reporters and cameramen on the Cook County courthouse steps. The voice-over continued.
    “At his arraignment, Schaeffer pleaded not guilty. According to Gutierrez, the tape merely shows a man who took out a weapon for self-defense because a stranger in the crowd attacked him.”
    Gutierrez said, “It was his right to shoot his attacker. You ask me, this Soldado guy is the one ought to be under arrest.”
    Hank’s door opened and Mitch Parsons entered. “Hey, Hank.”
    The news report cut to a woman who looked like a well-preserved forty-year-old Victoria’s Secret model. The reporter’s voice-over continued. “The alleged gunman is a member of the Mackinac Militia led by Colonel Martha Hanson.” Her name appeared on the screen as she nodded to the camera.
    Hank raised his eyebrows when he heard the colonel’s name. She was eye candy, but on the inside, well, once a cop stopped her for speeding and she’d shot him in the leg and driven away because she was late for a meeting. That had cost her three years in the penitentiary. It had also doubled her already significant street cred with quick-draw militia and sovereign-citizen types.
    The reporter said, “Colonel, was this man following your orders to shoot Noah Stone?”
    The colonel smiled. Well, it looked like a smile, but it didn’t feel like one. “Now why would I want him to do that?”
    “Your feelings about Stone’s opposition to lethal guns are well