Page 72 of Skin Trade

“Can I get out now?” she asked Mick. She just wanted to get through the gate, find the mayor’s place and go and see her dad.

“Well you better,” Zane said. “If you want to go and find your friend. We’ve got to head back to work. Them creatures don’t clean theyselves up. Be outta money if they did.” He opened the door for Payton, held his hand out to help her down. “This is Riggs. He’ll take you into the office.”

Riggs who she could only assume was the guard who’d stood by. He nodded at them, walked back to his position.

“Well, thanks for the ride,” Payton said to Zane and Mick. If she had any money, she might have offered them financial compensation for their troubles.

The buildings weren’t much of a show from where she stood outside the town’s walls. Much like where Seth’s building was, just a mass of metal monsters reaching into the sky for their own purposes. High walls, high fences, they didn’t leave much for anyone to look at.

Zane reached around his back to his back pocket and pulled out a bent and rather battered looking card. It had the name of his and Mick’s company on the top, or at least, she assumed it had once. Some of the wording was rubbed off now. God knows how long the card had sat in his back pocket. “This is our number,” he said. “If you need anything give us a call, okay? Even if you just want a ride home. I don’t think I’d get to sleep if you tried to walk home from ‘ere and ended up lunch on the side of the road.”

She took the card from him. It was warm, well worn. She glanced at the number, and then put it in her own back pocket. “Thanks.”

Zane smiled. “Hey, Riggs? We good to go? Got some bone sacks to go clean up.”

Riggs nodded, waved them off. “Go, go. You’re making the place look messy already.” The guard waited for Zane and Mick to get out of sight before he spoke to Payton. His tone dropped. Not that it had been so light before, but at least with Zane and Mick he had shown familiarity.

“You have business here, Payton …”

“Mathews and yes.”

He arched his brow when she said her surname. “I am here to see Joseph Mathews.” A pause. “He’s my father.”

She waited for Riggs to say something, either to tell her to get lost or come in. She was expecting the first reaction, but instead he said, “I see. Follow me.”

He led her through the main gate, into what looked like a secure yard, with only two ways out. The way she had come in and the way into the town. He unlocked the town door, let her through and then locked it behind them both. Chairs lined the edges, a table and some chairs in the middle. A water machine took up the far corner of the room.

May I?” she asked nodding to it.

“Sure.”

He had with him a handheld electronic device, and he rested it on the table in the centre of the room as she got a drink. Riggs was an older guy. She placed him at about forty, and the muscles on his arms bulged at the seams of his shirt. He could have done with a size bigger.

The water was nice and cool against her throat. She didn’t care that it tasted tinny. Of the metal the pipes were lined with. The walls were lined with pictures. It should have had the sign above them to say, these are the people who have houses. Most of the pictures were just faces in the dark, people she didn’t know. Members of the governors who ran this town. The only one she cared to focus on was that of her father under the title of mayor.

It was the same picture she’d seen of him when she’d searched him on the computer. His face was older, this time in colour, but he was still pale, sickly looking.

“What business do you have with Joseph Mathews?” Riggs asked as she gulped down the last of her water and went to refill it.

“I told you, he’s my father. What business do I need with him other than I want to see him?”

The guard shook his head, sighed as if this was all too much trouble for him. He took in a breath, scribbled something on his device and then looked up at her. He had blue eyes, eyes that reminded her in a way of Seth. Though she suspected that was only the comparing and if it wasn’t the eyes, she’d have found something else. “Joseph Mathews has one daughter, and she died a long time ago. So, I’ll ask you again, what business do you have with Mr Mathews?”

“And I told you, he’s my father. I don’t know who told you I’m dead, but I …”

Riggs flipped his device around to show her the image of two plaques. One was her mother’s which she’d have recognised anywhere because she’d stared at it enough times, and the one next to it bore her name.

“I don’t know what this is, but I am Payton Mathews. That is not me.”

“I have no idea what you want, but I will tell you, any threat to this--”

“I’m not a threat. I am Payton Mathews. Go and get my father, he’ll tell you. He’ll recognise me. I know it’s been a long time, but he will.”

“Then where have you been?”

“I was kidnapped.” Even as she said it, she realised how pathetic that sounded. So, the kidnappers faked her death. Creven and his men, faked her death. That explained a lot.

“Kidnapped. Right? And in my last life I was Elvis. You have about ten seconds to start getting honest with me, or two things will happen. I’ll ask you to leave, and you’ll walk out that door and be on your merry way, or I’ll ask you to leave and you’ll kick up a fuss, forcing me to detain you.”

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