Page 20 of Waiting in Wyoming
“Just Mr. Wade King. A rather quiet, unassuming businessman from Rexburg, Idaho. I am pretty certain he said he had never been here before, but, well, I have seen him somewhere. I just can’t remember where.” Possibly around Masterson. Between the inn and the diner, she had probably just about met everybody, after all. Marin looked agitated. Dylan studied her a little closer. “Okay, tell me. What’s going on? You look a bit wickedly un-Marinlike right now.”
Her cousin usually had this weird Zen-like floaty aura thing going on. But definitely not tonight.
“Just…ghosts walking along my spine. Things feel unsettled.” Marin was her most feely-based cousin, no denying that. Sometimes Marin claimed she just felt stuff. And when she did, she was usually right. Dylan was learning not to doubt the Marin-feelings, no matter what some of the more pragmatic practical Talleys had to say on the matter.
Marin’s feelings were often scarily right.
That always gave Dylan the shivers, too.
Well, she’d always followed her gut when it mattered. And it had gotten her this far safely.
Mostly. There was that whole being shot thing recently.
That was rather a doozy, no denying that. “I’m going to head upstairs to my room. But…call me if something happens. I am little, but I am seriously fast. I can shimmy down the elevator shaft or the drainpipe faster than you can blink to rescue you, if you need me to.”
“I have it handled, but…lock your door tonight. I just…feel like…evil has gotten way too close to us once again.”
Talk about freaky.
Her cousin was so weird.
Then again, everyTalleyDylan had met so far fit that description to a T.
She hurried upstairs to her little suite in the attic.
She locked her door. She contemplated moving the old trunk she used as an end table in front of the door, but stopped herself at the last moment.
Dylan wasn’t a chicken or anything, but when Marin looked like that, sounded like that, this was one fake-Talley that was going to listen. Daisy and Meyra were going to meet her in a few minutes—complete with chocolate cake. But until they got up there…
Dylan’s doors were staying locked.
Evil could just stay outside tonight.
15
He hada few more things to clean up, and then Wayne Pryor was going to retire. He liked that slogan: “Pryor, go retire!”
He’d spend the rest of his days coaxing Linda into enjoying life and pestering their four girls to give him loads of grandchildren. After they met men he approved of, of course. He was going to take those grandchildren fishing. And maybe even try camping. In an RV, not a tent. He would want some luxuries for his beautiful wife.
He’d had a moment or two of panic after what had happened in this inn before, but after Morris Preston’s arrest and the death of that bastard’s bastard son, things had cooled off. Enough that Wayne had felt confident enough telling the contacts he still had in Masterson that he was happy to clean up a few loose ends in Wyoming for them if needed.
If the price was right.
For now, the men who had hired him just wanted him to watch. Get the feel of what was happening before giving the orders to take out men who could cause problems later.
Morris Preston didn’t just have the one son who was evil to his soul, after all. For now, Wayne was content to be an errand boy.
That he was operating right under the noses of some of the people who held the power to put him away for life did give him some concern, but he had operated indifficultsituations before and had always triumphed. He suspected this would go just as smoothly.
His first test had been to check in to the inn under a different name and identity than he had used at the Talley Inn before. He had been born Waylon Prost, of Sublette County, Wyoming, sixty-four years ago. He had grown up on the outskirts of town, on a ranch too poor to have made it this long. Now, it was mostly under the interstate, his family’s roots long forgotten.
He liked it that way.
He wasn’t too fond of who Waylon Prost had been back then. Wayne Pryor was a deacon in his church, a beloved father, and a good friend, and he sang in the choir.
But for this assignment, he was Wade King, traveling businessman from Idaho. Well, he was from Idaho now. He and his wife had moved there almost eleven years ago—to get away from the trouble that was Morris Preston.
He should have known Preston, his second cousin on his father’s side, would have reared his ugly head again. Time to clean that up, then “Pryor, to retire!” was going to be his plan.