The desert stretched endlessly under the moonlight.
Slade drove the Jeep through the darkness, its headlights cutting a narrow path through the sand and scrub. The old mining town was a ghost on the horizon—a cluster of crumbling buildings, their windows empty, their roofs caved in. A relic of a time when men had chased silver and gold through these barren hills.
He parked a quarter mile from the town and approached on foot. His boots sank into the soft sand, the only sound the whisper of the wind and the distant cry of a coyote. His hand rested on his weapon, his senses alert.
The town was silent. Dead. The kind of silence that pressed against your ears and made you listen for things that weren't there.
A figure stood in the shadow of a collapsed saloon. Tall. Lean. Dressed in black.
