Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry Page B

toward the shattered rocks.
    â€œI … don’t know for sure. My guess is that it was another trap set for me by my enemy, but it could just as easily have been something set by Doctor Saint. He’s generally a humanitarian—after a fashion—but he does not like having his research tampered with. So, yes, it could have been his booby-trap.”
    â€œNice. He could have blown you all the way back to London.”
    â€œWell, he wouldn’t have expected me to come out here, would he? He does know about the theft of his journal. And it’s not like this cache was something anyone could stumble upon.”
    Grey’s reply was a sour grunt. He found that he didn’t much like this Doctor Saint. And he was pretty sure calling the scientist a “ humanitarian ” was a bit of a stretch.
    â€œWhy was the posse after you? You get some other girl pregnant?”
    â€œHilarious, but no. Doctor Saint has rivals and some of them are quite vicious. Not at all above hiring a group of gunmen to end the life of one renegade Sioux. Especially one who has been hunting the men who committed the murders at the laboratory. I daresay I was making a nuisance of myself, buzzing around the edges of this and someone decided to swat me.” He slapped his palm flat on his thigh.
    Grey listened with great interest, but he watched the Sioux’s face for any telltale signs of deceit or evasiveness. Nothing showed, however. That didn’t mean that the man was telling the truth, the whole truth, part of the truth, or a pack of lies. Grey had played poker and faro at too many tables not to know that some fellows could keep darn near everything off their face. Even so, he had a sense that what he was hearing was at least partly true.
    Partly.
    He wondered what this strange English Indian was leaving out. The Sioux returned to his narrative.
    â€œI believe I’ve been getting close to proving who is responsible,” said Looks Away as he sipped the dregs of his second cup. “This was no ordinary theft, I’m sure of it. This was well organized and well financed. Someone important wanted that science and now they have it. I was following a lead and came here to Nevada. Someone swore they saw a blue explosion out here in the desert. Naturally I thought that my enemy’s people had raided this cache.”
    â€œWhat exactly was out here?”
    Looks Away spread his hands. “This was something Doctor Saint made before I came to work with him. It’s not much, just a small bunker built into a natural declivity in the sandstone. He enlarged it and built a small testing laboratory. A one-man station. It was all he needed to test the Lazarus weapons without prying eyes. Doctor Saint hid it very well, and even though I had no key, I know his methods. He always creates a hidden lever that is invisible to the naked eye. The man is as devious as he is brilliant…”
    â€œYou found it, though?”
    â€œI used some of my grandfather’s tricks for finding the hinges. It was a clever trap set to trap a clever man.”
    Grey remembered Looks Away spitting on the ground and nodded. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Saint didn’t set this trap himself. Is your bad guy smart enough to set this kind of trap? He’d have to know a lot about how this ghost rock stuff works.”
    â€œOh yes,” said Looks Away. “And the more I think about it the more I think it was a trap set specifically for me. Particularly if my enemy was, in fact, able to effectively interrogate the guards before he killed them. He had to know that I would keep hunting, so he lured me here with false clues.”
    â€œLured you specifically?”
    â€œNot to blow my own horn, but yes, I daresay he did. It was a trap that brought me to an isolated spot and one that required geological knowledge and Sioux tracking skills to find. The posse was a nice diversion. Oh yes,”