Slash and Burn by Matt Hilton

third man, folding his arms over his barrel chest like a petulant child. The colour drained from his face as Huffman stared at him.
    ‘What about these others that have showed up?’ Wallace asked. ‘The Bolans didn’t seem to handle them too well.’
    ‘They were hampered by the fools he rounded up,’ said Huffman, aiming the cigar at the third man. ‘That’s what comes of using amateurs. We should have left it to the Bolans.’
    ‘If they’d handled things right in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this position now,’ said the barrel-chested man. ‘They should have killed Devaney quietly; not tortured him to death so half the county could hear his screams.’
    ‘That was necessary to our plans. Or have you forgotten that as well?’
    ‘I remember. But I still think Trent’s a goddamn liability.’
    Huffman placed the cigar between his teeth. Then, moving so fast that he’d stood up before the barrel-chested man was aware of, he caught a handful of the man’s tie. With his other hand he swiped up a cut-throat razor so it was a hair’s breadth from the man’s eyes. Huffman peered over the edge of the blade, chewing on the cigar. ‘The way I see it, there’s only one liability here.’
    Wallace knew better than to stand up. ‘Easy, Huffman. He’s only voicing all our concerns.’
    ‘No. He’s sticking his nose in my business.’ Huffman reversed the razor so the sharp edge touched the bridge of the man’s nose. ‘I’ve a good mind to cut the goddamn thing off.’
    ‘We still need him.’
    ‘Yeah, he’s still a handy tool, I guess.’
    He slowly released his grip on the tie and the man quickly backed away. His face was white and there was a smear of blood on his lip where he’d bitten through it.
    Sitting down, Huffman replaced the razor with his cigar. The ash miraculously still clung to the tip. He seemed amused by that. Behind him, the barrel-chested man exhaled deeply, a finger searching his face for damage. Huffman ignored him. ‘Just like our friend here, Larry Bolan is a handy tool. Without Trent, we don’t have Larry; it’s as simple as that.’
    ‘You still trust Larry to get the job done?’ Wallace asked. ‘After what’s just happened?’
    ‘I do.’ A smile grew. ‘In fact, what happened to him is just the motivation he needs.’ Huffman turned his head to regard the barrel-chested man again. ‘Plus, I’m bringing in some extra help. All I ask is that you keep to our agreement and have your people looking the other way. Otherwise you – and your family – will be surplus to requirements.’
    The man nodded quickly.
    ‘Extra help?’ Wallace’s face turned sour. ‘How much is that going to cost us?’
    ‘Not a fraction of what it’ll cost if we don’t find Ballard.’ Huffman reached lazily for the ashtray on Wallace’s desk. He was inches short of it when the ash finally fell and landed on the prospectus Wallace had been studying prior to his arrival. Huffman smiled at Wallace’s frown. He tapped the folder and the stylised image on its cover. ‘Do you want to give up everything for the sake of a few bucks?’
    Little Fork was a town in a state of re-emergence. Like a chrysalis, it was being transformed from within. It could turn out one of two ways: incredibly beautiful, or incredibly ugly.
    The town had once been the abode of coal miners who worked the local pits. Their method was unusual, digging horizontally into the mountaintops in a way particular to this region. But the pits had died a generation ago, and Little Fork had barely resisted becoming an abandoned ghost town like so many others. Tourism had saved it. It was on the Kentucky Wild Rivers map, so had benefited from the holidaymakers swarming into the state in search of some white water action. At the end of the 1990s the population had barely reached two thousand, but now, a decade later, it was ten times that and growing. Hotels had sprung up, shopping malls, a multi-screen movie theatre,