City of the Lost (Rockton 1)

"You're gonna have to be more specific than that."

"I'm coming in, and I'm bringing company." Dalton hands me his backpack. "Pass this through to me." Before I can reply, he's on his stomach and crawling through the space. Then his hands appear. I give him the bag. After another thirty seconds, grey eyes peer out.

"You need an invitation, detective? Sure as hell hope you don't need instructions, because you should have been watching."

I get down on my stomach. The gap turns out to be wider than I think. I slide through easily ... and nearly fall onto my head.

Dalton catches me and helps me get upright, and I see we're in an open area that's more like I expect from a cave. Dalton walks, hunched over, to a slope heading down into darkness.

"You gonna turn on the porch light?" Dalton yells.

The hiss of a lantern. Then a wavering light that does little to illuminate what I'm presumably about to climb into.

Dalton grabs a rope on the side and lowers himself down the slope. This time, I pay careful attention. Then I follow. At the bottom, the light is disappearing as a man carries it along a passage. Even I need to crouch to get through this one. Then the man pushes at what looks like a door. It swings open. Flickering light and the smell of woodsmoke pours out and I see a fire, the smoke rising into a hole in the top of what I'm guessing is called a cavern. It looks like one of those bomb shelters from the Fifties, though. There's a bed, a table and chairs, and shelves--lots of shelves, with goods from books to canned food. Dried meat hangs from the ceiling along with dried roots and other flora that I presume is edible.

There's a man, too. And he also fits the scene perfectly, looking like a guy who retreated to his bomb shelter fifty years ago and just popped his head out now. He's about seventy, with grey hair in a ponytail, pale, wrinkled skin, and eyes that peer against the light. Right now, they're peering at me.

"Now that's a deputy," he says. "Much prettier than your last one."

"Ms. Butler is a detective."

"Really?" Brent's wire-brush brows shoot up. "Women do that nowadays?"

"Women do everything nowadays," I say.

He grins. "Except piss standing up."

"Oh, we can do that, too. It's just messy."

He laughs like this is the funniest thing he's heard in years. Then he ushers me to a chair--sorry, the chair--and pours me a glass of water from a collapsible pouch.

"Are you a police detective?" he asks. "Or a private eye?"

"Police," I say.

"I was in law enforcement, too."

"Brent was a bail bondsman," Dalton says.

"Bounty hunter, please. It sounds sexier." Brent turns to me. "Shitty job. Paid well, but do you know the problem with people who jump bail?"

"They don't want to be caught?"

He cackles a laugh. "Right you are. And they are highly motivated. Got shot three times and stabbed five, and I have the scars to prove it. Here, let me show you."

"Another time," Dalton says.

"Hey, I bet I've got the best damned body she's ever seen on a man my age. Living up here? Climbing in and out of this place? Take a look at--" He starts pulling up his shirt.

Dalton stops him with, "Save it for a special occasion." He looks at me. "Brent chased a guy up here. Fellow ambushed him with sulphuric acid. He will not show you the scars to prove that, but it made him decide to give up chasing bad guys and just stay."

"In Rockton?" I ask.

"Fuck no," Brent says. "Pardon my French. Do you know what that place really is?"

"Brent is a conspiracy theorist," Dalton says. "He's got a dozen of them for Rockton. Next time we come out, ask him to tell you the one where it's a test facility for biological warfare. That's his best."

"You think so?" Brent says. "I like the alien ones better."