Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy by Shelley Singer

anything away.
    A few more customers had wandered back in, a scattering at the tables, a dozen or so at the slots. Maybe some of them hadn’t even heard about the invasion; maybe the ones who had heard about it had managed to convince themselves the place was safe now.
    Waldo came out of the restaurant. He walked aimlessly through the casino, stopping at the roulette table, staring at the spinning wheel. Scratching his stomach, wandering to the bar. He took a stool and raised his hand at the bartender, who nodded and poured him a beer. How did the lovely Waldo fit into all this? I couldn’t imagine that grabby asshole being loyal to anyone.
    I pushed out through the back door, heading for my car. I tried to tuck Judith’s interrogation into a dark corner of my mind where it could cook a bit, and worked at focusing on my meeting with Newt.
    I didn’t know what Newt was planning to tell me, but I knew what I wanted to ask him. Were the mercs his? If so, what was the purpose of the attack? Was there a connection with the mayor’s murder? How many people at Blackjack were actually working for Scorsi? Who were they? Would they be any use to me if I needed them?
    But once I got to the subject of self-preservation, my mind couldn’t help but kick Judith out of that dark corner and set her right out there in full daylight again.
    What kind of game was she playing with me?

Chapter Eight
    Traitors. They’ll sell us all.
    The meeting place was two miles outside town. I was supposed to look for a boulder, close to the road, carved with the initials K.S.+R.L. inside a heart. I found it and parked my Electra on a dusty patch of dirt behind a stand of fir.
    The heart was lopsided. The carving was weathered and barely readable, left there by some teenager who was now either old or dead. Depressing. I hate reminders of mortality— anyone’s.
    A shiny new silver floater was tucked just beyond the boulder. A narrow trail led into the trees.
    I found Newt Scorsi in a clearing, waiting under a rocky outcrop. He was slumped on a log gnawing at an enormous sandwich that seemed to be made of an entire sourdough loaf. He sat up straighter and mumbled something that might have been a greeting, might have been “You’re late.” Hard to tell through the mouthful of bread.
    He was no more than five feet six, gut-heavy with spindly arms and legs, his dust-brown and black hair cropped to half-inch bristle on his big head, the head balanced on a scrawny neck. He squinted at me and frowned, trying, I thought, to look shrewd and tough, succeeding only in looking hostile. Maybe he was socially inept, or maybe he didn’t trust mercs.
    Gran once told me, “Never trust a suspicious man.” What about a suspicious woman? I’d asked. “Women,” she said, “have more reasons for it.”
    I nodded back to him, returning the frown, meeting him eye to eye. Okay, Newt, I was saying with a look, you don’t scare me. So back off. He shifted his gaze. That was almost too easy.
    “Are you sure no Colemans followed you?” he asked the trees behind me. “Blow your cover in the first week or however long you’ve been there— how long have you been there?” He took another large bite of his sandwich, jumped to his big feet and paced around the clearing. A string of pink meat dangled from his lip as he chewed.
    “Two days now. Why are you so worried? If I blow my cover I’m the one in trouble— you don’t have any cover to blow.”
    He swallowed. “Don’t want them getting away with it. Maybe you can catch them and we can stop them.”
    “Them— that would be the Colemans. But tell me, what’s the particular ‘it’ you don’t want them to get away with? Sounds like they’re doing a whole lot of things.”
    He nodded, took another bite, chewed, swallowed, sat down again, tapping his foot. Finally looked me in the eye. “They’re doing whatever they can do. What they want is Sierra, all of it. And Redwood, too. I know that much. I’m not