‘You haven’t found her yet?’
‘No. But I’m on it.’
‘You know better than anyone what will happen if she makes this public.’
‘Don’t concern yourself, Wallace,’ Robert Huffman said. ‘Just keep signing the papers and rubber-stamping them in the correct place and leave the rest to me.’
The man referred to as Wallace sat back in his chair and looked across his desk at Huffman; he knew not to argue. He scowled at the man’s cigar hanging idly from the hand drooping over the arm of the chair, waiting for the overload of ash to drop to his hardwood floor. The image summed up Huffman’s attitude to everything. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Leave it to me.
‘We could lose everything, Huffman.’
Huffman waved down his accomplice with a gesture of the cigar. The ash still clung tenaciously to the tip. ‘Stop whining. I’ve got the Bolans on it.’
A third man in the room snorted. ‘The Bolans couldn’t find their asses if you didn’t give them directions.’
‘They’re doing more to find Ballard than your people,’ Huffman pointed out.
‘My hands are tied.’
‘So leave the woman to me and keep your criticism to yourself.’ Huffman aimed the cigar at the man. ‘You do remember that I don’t take criticism lightly? Or do I have to remind you?’
‘I’m only saying, is all,’ said the 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, restaurants, and, to serve the growing population, huge tracts of land had been acquired in order to build new homes. In line with the magnitude of growth massive amounts of money could be made by those in a position to reap the bounty. And therein lay the ugly underbelly of Little Fork’s transformation. Because where there was big money to be made, there was always the potential for violence. And murder. And a man like Huffman wan’t averse to doling it out if anything got in his way.
Robert Huffman wasn’t a native of Little Fork, Kentucky. He had been born and raised elsewhere. He had arrived here three years ago, an investor in the growing town. He had thrown millions of dollars into Little Fork’s rejuvenation, but its return had already topped billions. He was sitting on a treasure trove and he certainly wasn’t going to lose it all because of one interfering bitch. Or his accomplices’ reluctance to spend a few bucks.
‘My people will be here tomorrow,’ he said, standing up and signifying that the meeting was over. To the barrel-chested man, he added, ‘They’ll be eager to get started, so make sure you keep out of their way. They don’t like your type.’