The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head by Cassandra Duffy

poison just yet, but there was no real reason to waste
it—something as valuable as a gallon of raccoon poison could have
any number of uses, even if it didn’t fit into her immediate plans.
As she watched the feed, she made notes in her Hello Kitty notepad,
sketched a vague map, and listed possible uses for the poison.
     
    Ramen clattered around the roof between their
many projects in various states of completion, whistling a jaunty
tune. He was making remarkable progress in cataloguing the incoming
tech from various jobs, the payments Gieo hadn’t quite figured out
what to do with yet, and assessing the prices things might fetch
once repaired.
     
    “We should have done this years ago, ma’am,”
Ramen said.
     
    “Opportunities arise when they are meant to,”
Gieo replied.
     
    “So you’re Buddhist again now?” Ramen
asked.
     
    She’d leaned forward, almost involuntarily,
to peer at the fuzzy picture on the LCD screen. Children, none
older than four or five, were being given doses of methanol from a
colossal tank in the middle of the compound. From what she could
tell, the largest tank likely also carried the highest
concentration. The smaller tank, the one garden-variety cultists
weren’t supposed to know about, appeared to be the gas tank on a
scuttled Dodge pickup. The mucky-mucks of the cult, easily
identifiable by their orange parking-cone hats, snuck over and took
a drink from a hose running out of the gas cap when they thought no
one was looking.
     
    “Right now, I’m planning on being the angel
of mischief and mercy,” Gieo murmured.
     
    The thundering sound of Fiona’s engine
encroached on the peace of the town like rolling thunder. Gieo had
begun to look forward to hearing the engine as it meant the
redheaded gunfighter was almost home; unfortunately, she wasn’t all
that happy to hear it after that morning.
     
    She leaned on the two-foot tall lip running
around the edge of the roof, watching the silver car pull up in
front of the saloon. Four fresh Slark heads lined the front of the
grill. She’d had a good day. When Fiona stepped from the car, Gieo
placed two fingers in her mouth and let out a loud, sharp whistle.
Fiona snapped her head up.
     
    “I want to talk to you,” Gieo shouted.
     
    “So talk,” Fiona shouted back.
     
    “I said talk, not shout.”
     
    Fiona stomped up into the saloon with her
head down. Gieo could hear her petulantly clomping all the way up
the stairs and finally bursting onto the roof. Gieo hated to admit
it, but Fiona was unreasonably attractive when fuming mad. When
Fiona folded her arms over her chest, cocked her hips to one side,
and jutted out her lower lip until a little glisten was showing she
created a sexiness that Gieo couldn’t quite put her finger on.
After studying Fiona’s pout for awhile, she decided it was
remarkably similar to one of the poses she often used in the
catalogue; other models usually looked spaced out and dead behind
the eyes, but Fiona always seemed lively and perturbed.
     
    “Did you have fun at church?” Fiona
asked.
     
    “I had productive at church,” Gieo said. “But
that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. I want to apologize
for earlier.”
     
    Fiona’s entire demeanor softened at the mere
mention of apology. Gieo noted the smoldering, angry sexiness
softened as well; she resolved, no matter how difficult it might
be, to not make Fiona angry just for sexual purposes…at least, not
very often.
     
    “Could you take the goggles off?” Fiona
walked over to where Gieo, standing just outside the ring of shade
provided by the beach umbrella.
     
    “Oh, sure,” Gieo said. She’d forgotten she
was even wearing them. She pulled the green tinted goggles off and
reached out to set them on the lip of the roof next to her chair.
Fiona’s eyes followed them instinctively, but immediately refocused
on something below at street level. “I’m really sorry for…um…what
are you doing?”
     
    Fiona yanked