The final hit
I pulled up to the front. Silence. A trail of hoofprints in the dust, nothing else. No sign of a scuffle, even.
“Anyone here?”
Somewhere a door creaked and banged closed, something from a bad Western.
“Hello?” I kept my hand on my pistol, just in case. Louder: “Hello?”
She came out, a human smudge of dust and mascara and tears.
“Darlin’, another hit, so soon?”
“Oh, Marli,” she sniffed. “One on a horse.”
“Young. I knew he was in on it.”
“Then one trailing bees – oh, Marli, I thought the end of the world was comin’. But the third was scariest. I’d never seen him before. He moved so fast. Messy, but eloquent. He just kept on and on… til they were all gone.”
“Three? We were only looking for two.”
“Sometimes what you’re looking for obscures what’s there to find.”
“True, true. Did they leave any leads?”
She shook her head.
“Openings?”
Another, wordless no. Then she pointed to the back door, which suddenly looked unopenable. I felt everything going hazy.
“No… not the endings…”
But she didn’t answer.