Gloria knew something was wrong. Adam was a creature of habit, an efficient one, so when there wasn't a hired gun dragging a pretty girl into the Silver Rush she began to feel the pangs of irritation. Adam was irritation to deal with, but he was a miracle worker in the field. Every time Adam let her know how hard his dick was for her, she dismissed it. It stopped eventually, all at once. She never inquired; he'd stopped talking shit and kept on being efficient. Her thoughts wandered and she finally put one out in her voice.
"He's not coming back," Gloria sighed. "But I want that girl."
"What?" Jean-Baptiste whipped his head around. He hadn't been paying attention. "What do you want to do?"
Gloria didn't respond right away.
"We need someone good," She began to pace back and forth. "Not one of the regulars, someone who can handle this, with a group if need be. I don't want the girl hurt. I also don't care about what happens to Adam. None of our inventory, either. I don't want this getting back to us. Be discreet."
"Anything else?"
She shook her head. "No."
Angelita hadn't said a word. Things appeared to be exploding around Adam's cunning plan but he managed to elude the kings. They weren't trained sentries or trained anything for that matter. The search they conducted was poor at best. They looked in all of the obvious places and for some reason it took a handful of them to explain to t he king what was going on. Those that hung out away from the center of Freeside were clueless to who Angelita was and the story she told inside of the school of impersonation. Their ignorance allowed Adam to slip away as casually as they had first entered Freeside, although they used a different gate this time around.
Adam no longer afforded Angelita the liberty of simply being under his protection. She was going to have to pull her weight now. For starters, there were now two rifles in her caretaker's arsenal. The heavier of the two, the anti-materiel, was being carried by Adam while he made Angelita carry the smaller standard sniper rifle. She groaned when he began to make her hold it, but she offered no other resistance. He wrote this off as her accepting what was happening. It wasn't her reverting back to her slave demeanor, he was sure of this. A slave that groaned in dislike would have been beaten. She still had some resistance in her, however minor.
Adam had nowhere idea where to go.
The Van Graffs reach wasn't as extensive as it was further west, but he was one man with a slave that didn't want anything to do with him. She'd be a problem if a group of energy weapon toting thugs caught up with them and started making demands—if not just shooting them both dead. Adam used to be a loud mouth jackass, which made his appearance at any familiar location noteworthy. He couldn't strut on down to Primm without someone realizing who he was. He'd already visited Goodsprings and it was obvious that he wasn't welcome there.
"Novac." Adam thought aloud.
"He used to be quite the character," Gloria was in the backroom addressing one of the thousand gruff mercenary types that the Mojave gave birth to. "He developed a reputation for going after any piece of ass that was tied down."
"And that which was?" The man asked.
"Not his style."
That man appeared to be writing on a piece of paper. He looked up.
"His words," Gloria shifted. "How does this—"
"What kind of weapons does he have? Are you aware of his any training?" He looked back down.
"Rifles." Gloria replied flatly.
"Automatic?" The man's hand paused.
"Sniper."
The man fought off a smile. "First Recon?"
"No." Gloria was getting bored. There was business that needed her attention."
"You sound sure again."
"We have contacts in the NCR. No one remembers serving with him and there aren't any records of him being there to begin with."
"Could be clandestine," He was scribbling on the paper again. "But I'll take your word for it."
Gloria waited for another question.
"Again: training? What about age?" The man had barely looked up from his little piece of paper during the entire meaning. "Is he fit?"
"Don't know where he learned to shoot, maybe hunting geckos with his daddy. Couldn't be more than 30." Age was difficult , the Mojave aged everyone a little faster than they realized. "He's not fat."
The man smiled. "Good for him." He placed his eyes are Gloria. "Not interested in men?"
"Excuse me?"
"So he's ugly then?"
"Excuse me?" Gloria repeated.
"You've worked with the man on no less than ten occasions and you can't give me an accurate description. "He went back to his paper. "Either you're not interested in men or you're holding back."
Gloria was going to make sure her discomfort was showed later. "He's mixed; black and white, fairly light skinned. Keeps his hair low, almost bald but not balding—facial hair is just about the same length. Decent height; six feet even probably, maybe a little less."
"And the girl?"
Patience running thin Gloria said everything there was to say about her in one go.
"Average height, long black hair… pretty face—really pretty face. She's a runaway slave. A legion shave, she's not used to life in the desert without direction. Since Adam works alone he's probably not used to giving direction. She's probably… no, she is slowing him down."
"Okay." He stepped over and handed Gloria the paper. It had no writing on it besides the name Weir in cursive at the bottom. The rest of the paper was covered in a crude drawing: a man stabbing a woman with a buzz-cut in the face. "You've got a pretty nose."
Angelita complained the entire way to Novac. Not with words, but grunts and groans, even dragging her feet across the ground like a petulant child who got tired after a few feet. A handful of times she stopped completely and a stare down ensued. Adam was undefeated. Novac was far from welcoming, but then again, what place really was? They approached from the east, under the watchful eye of Manny Vargas. Manny saw Adam first. Adam ignored him. If he was going to shoot he would have shot already. Angelita was trailing behind, so she didn't see what Adam stepped in.
"Go around." Adam pushed his left arm out and made a wide semi-circle. "Around."
Angelita nodded, submissive, and walked took a wide arc around Adam. He stopped halfway and looked to him for further direction. All of the fight seemed to have been sucked out of her eyes. She took her chance and failed.
"In there." Adam didn't know the town, but it was the main building on the motel grounds. The Dino Dee-Lite front desk building. "Wait for me in there."
Angelita nodded again, eyes downcast while he moved into the building. Adam settled down onto one knees and dragged his fingertips against the rocky ground. The blood wasn't fresh by any stretch of the imagination, but the Mojave had a way of distorting time. There was a tooth, a cracked pair of glasses and other random matter that likely came from someone's head in his estimation. Nothing of use was there so Adam made his way into the building behind Angelita.
She was alone.
Something was off. Adam looked around the room. Coffee mugs were neatly lined up, souvenir dinosaurs were begging to be bought and there were keys. Everything was in perfect order and the door was left unlocked. Anyone with a little bit of greed in them would have been able to walk in and take anything they wanted.
"Get some sarsaparilla." Adam motioned towards the vending machine while he made his way around the front desk.
He saw the safe and knelt down to get a better look. Instincts told him to grab his tools, but he went against them and tried the safe manually. It opened. Disappointingly enough it was empty save dirty water and a bottle of Nuka-Cola. He didn't bother with the cola, he was sarsaparilla man.
"How many bottles were in there?"
Angelita shook her head.
The wave of disappointment came down over Adam like a ton of bricks. His mouth had been watering over the prospect of getting some Sunset Sarsaparilla. Having an itching for something, thinking you had it and then realizing you weren't going to be getting it after all was a terrible feeling. With a heavy sigh he closed the safe and turned to the keys that were still there. Under normal circumstances he would have tried to find someone to pay for the room. Too many complications came from cutting corners. But this time he picked up two of the keys and motioned for Angelita to follow.
Through the gates he looked at the engraving on the key and tried to match it with a door. When he found one that worked he stepped in first and looked around. The room was furnished; they were likely all furnished this modestly. Leftovers from before the war still lined most buildings and this motel was no different. The posters were a dead giveaway. The problem this presented was that it wasn't all that easy to tell whether or not someone was currently using the room. Adam had a rucksack with supplies that would be left in the room for most of their stay. Something like that meant that someone was in the room, but some people traveled light.
He took the chance. "Get comfortable."
Angelita dropped everything she'd been assigned to carry on the bed and sat down, her back to Adam. He was going through his usual song and dance when faced with downtime. The rucksack and his outer layers were pulled off and he began to undress. Not all of the way, just enough to get the loose rocks and debris out of his waistline, his boots and whatever crevice they had decided to crawl into.
"Stay here." Adam was putting his clothing back in order. "I'm gonna see what the town has for supplies."
Weir was conducting himself like a detective, poking around Freeside to get an idea of what had transpired. The kings were worthless; a flock of sheep attached to a restrained leader. They'd be crushed eventually. Mick and Ralph didn't show him secret wares or offer to lend a hand with a special talent, but he figured they served a something better than the rudimentary crap that lined their shop. The dealer was equally worthless; drugs weren't hard to come by unless you were an idiot. All of Freeside bothered him when it came down to it. Had he not been assigned the task of chasing some rifle-toting shepherd and his adorable sheep, he would have blown the place to kingdom come. They had ugly noses—most of them.
Gloria had been lucky in so far as she was the one who hired Weir, he wouldn't do anything to the person who was going to be paying him. That didn't make any sense. But the poor residents of Freeside were likely to have one of their own missing within the next hour. The wasteland—any wasteland was a horrible place to go missing. Unless you were one of a select few people no one would notice and those that did would write it off as just another life lost to the sand.
Weir found what he thought to be a woman long past her prime. Her hair was caked in dirt,—something not unusual—her clothes were ragged and torn—also not unusual—and no one seemed to care that a stranger, the second in so many days, was walking with her. He took her past the Mormon Fort and in between the building where Genaro sold his food. His arm around her waist, he tugged her left and they eventually stopped in front of the dumpsters. She probably thought that this was a man taking interest in her, wanting to go somewhere private. Walls were rarely good enough anymore. Weir certainly smiled like he adored her.
The truth was he was twisting on the inside. The dirt embedded in her pores and making her hair resemble a dry mop weren't the issue. Her body wasn't the best he'd ever seen, but her curves would do for most men. Weir pushed his fingers through her hair, fighting against the tangles to form a solid grip and slammed her head against the rusty metal. There was no rhyme or reason to the smashing, just enough to knock her unconscious, probably concuss her.
"You shouldn't be allowed outside." Weir pulled a scalpel out of his pocket. "You're too ugly. You make people feel worse than they already are."
Weir went to work on her nose; handling the blade with such precision that it was easy to believe that he was a surgeon. He worked fast. Not because he was in danger of being discovered but because he wanted to vomit at the sight of the woman. There were no bystanders to maintain an act for behind that building, he was disgusted by her.
While the average resident of the Mojave had become used to modest furnishings, Angelita had actually become accustomed to better. Her time spent as a possession meant she frequented some of the more lavish quarters in the legion, although her personal quarters were far less extravagant. The motel room was somewhere in the middle. The floors were dirty but the sheets were clean. The windows were cracked and the curtains torn, but everything was in order. She fought off the urge to like the room. They'd be leaving before she could get comfortable.
"Water?" Adam skipped pleasantries. "Clean water."
"I two nice strangers in a week would be a bit too much." Dr. Ada Straus looked Adam over. "Forty caps a bottle."
"Are you shitting me?" Adam stared. Maybe he should've been nice. "Twenty caps."
The two mercenaries accompanying the doctor began to move. One to Adam's left the other to his right. A shoddy service rifle and a 10mm pistol. Make didn't matter all that much and he didn't have anything beyond a knife—a bullet to the head was a bullet to the head.
Adam sighed. All of his fight had been used up on Angelita. "Thirty caps?"
"Fine, fine." She was kinder than she let on.
They made the exchange for three bottles, but Adam stuck around afterward. Had it been this time last year he would have remarked about the blood on her tank top and probably something about her breasts. Neither comment came.
"Where's the motel owner?"
Straus shot him a puzzled look. "What?"
"There wasn't anyone at the front desk."
"That's odd." She scratched an arm. "She's never late."
"Did she wear glasses?" Adam was checking the water while he asked.
"Yes. How would you know that?"
"Guessing." Adam began to walk back towards the motel. "I'll yell if I see her."
"You'll yell?"
When Adam got back to the motel there were two new visitors. Nothing set them apart from the rest of the residents: their clothes were old and dirty, their faces were sweaty and dirt-filled road maps and they drank what appeared to be old, dirty water. There were no visible weapons on either of them as far as Adam could tell. He was prepared to dismiss them as locals until the pair began to inspect the bungalows across from the motel rooms. Their demeanor changed entirely and it was obvious they knew exactly what they were doing. One man pushed into the front door while the other began to examine the ground for what Adam could only assume was footprints.
How the hell would they know the bottom of someone's boots?
The man checking for prints looked across the open space and instantly recognized Adam. The change in his eyes, the way his features shifted—it was undeniable. He spouted something in Latin and Adam bolted for the room and Angelita.