Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,163

would have beat his.” Yuri tapped a finger on the last hand. “So this must be the reason Freddie got spooked.”

Scythe frowned at the black cards—two eights and two aces. “Why?”

“I don’t know. But I wonder how Mr. Blackstone would have reacted if he’d seen those cards.”

* * *

* * *

Parlan stopped in the shops and talked to the people who worked there, giving his same spiel over and over—he was thinking of resettling in Bennett, had heard it was a place that held adventure as well as opportunities, even for an old gambler like himself who had loved frontier stories when he was a boy. The shopkeepers looked frazzled and a little panicked, but all of them had big smiles. Adventure? Yes. Opportunities? Definitely. A lot of work? More than could be packed into the hours in a day, every day.

He went to the diner and ordered coffee and a meal so that he would have a reason to sit for a while without anyone thinking anything about it.

Bennett was like a boomtown from the frontier days, when a lot of people converged on a place and businesses sprouted like weeds. Most of the people hadn’t been in town—or even in this region of Thaisia—a month ago, and new people arrived every day, looking for work, looking for a place to settle, looking for a buffer between them and the terra indigene. Those looking for a buffer usually took the next train out after meeting the mayor and seeing the sheriff. The rest were busy getting businesses back up and running, taking over places that existed. No need to pay the previous owners. They were dead and gone, replaced by sheep who would do what the dominant predators wanted them to do.

He spent the day looking around. He spent the evening in his hotel room thinking.

The respectable con wasn’t going to be enough. This place was going to be a magnet for opportunists and outlaws who, like himself, needed someplace to shelter for a while. They would arrive, all swagger and attitude like they would have done a year ago. But too much had changed, and what they might have gotten away with before would cause terrible trouble now. They wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t accept it, and as sure as all the dark gods smiled on shady endeavors, they would never back down for a sheriff that got furry and howled at the moon. Instead of growing and prospering, the town would break apart—unless the people controlling the town were known to the opportunists and outlaws, unless those people already had reputations and were feared.

It was just like in the frontier stories, when the outlaws were squeezed out, were corralled by lawmen and rules until the only places they could live were places not fit for humans.

He had a feeling there was only one way the clan would prosper in Bennett.

He called his brother Lawry.

“We need to take the town,” he said quietly.

“Are you drunk or crazy?” Lawry also spoke quietly, but that didn’t dilute his astonishment. “The HFL tried eliminating the Others, and look what happened.”

“They tried to destroy the Wolves and pulled all the terra indigene into the fight. We’re going to play by their rules—and win.”

“How?”

“A fight for dominance.” He’d thought for hours about Tolya Sanguinati’s comment about how leadership could change. “We challenge the existing leaders to see who will control the town. When we win, we become the rulers. We don’t mess with the smaller shifters. They can stay. And we don’t mess with what lives in the wild country. By my reckoning, there are a handful of Sanguinati and a couple of Wolves controlling the town. If we defeat them, we win.” He’d even considered how to present his argument so that Tolya Sanguinati would help make that happen.

“Until we find Sweeney Cooke and Charlie Webb, we can’t take on that many opponents, even with Judd’s skills.”

“Cooke and Webb are out of the picture. Dead. I know that for a fact. But I have a feeling that plenty of other associates will be here soon, and we’ll invite a few of them to stand with us to form a new government.”

“What do you want me to do? The boy and I are shacked up in a piss hole almost on the border that divides the north and south Midwest Regions.”

Parlan frowned. “Why are you that far south? We’re supposed to be meeting here.”

“No choice. The closest place south of Bennett is a village