The Nest smelled of cactus bud, hot circuitry and spilled rye.
Dewdrop sat at a corner table with two women, three drinks and somebody else’s song in his possession.
The young rapper standing beside him waited nervously while Dewdrop listened to the music chip. A thin beam flashed from Dewdrop’s good eye.
A few seconds later he popped the chip free.
“Not feeling it.”
The rapper stared at him. “You didn’t even hear the second verse.”
“Didn’t need to.”
What Dewdrop did not mention was that he had already scanned the rhyme pattern into his own memory bank.
“Keep working,” he said. “Next.”
That was when Deputy Hoppity reached over his shoulder and took the next music chip.
“Well, look what crawled out.”
Dewdrop’s smile disappeared.
Hoppity held the chip toward the light. “No smoke detector.”
“What?”
“Hood County Code Forty-Seven. Unprotected combustible rhyme.”
“You made that up.”
“Tell it to the judge.”
He wrote a citation and stabbed it onto Dewdrop’s antenna.
The laughter around them was small at first.
Dewdrop heard every bit of it.
He had spent years convincing Hood County that he was bigger than the room he stood in. Hoppity had just reduced him to a joke.
Words became shoves. Shoves became punches. A chair sailed across the saloon. Somebody swung from a chandelier. Filmy Dome, the bartender, came over the bar with a bullwhip.
Dewdrop kicked a table.
“This is my house!”
The taser clamps hit him before he saw Hoppity raise the weapon.
Electricity tore through his circuits.
He hit the floor.
Hoppity fired again.
And again.
By the time Marshal Orb arrived, Dewdrop was face down in the alley with Hoppity’s boot pressing his head into the mud.
Orb grabbed his deputy and pulled him back.
“Untie him.”
Hoppity turned slowly. “Or what?”
For one ugly second, neither moved.
Then Hoppity cut the ropes.
As Orb walked away, he could feel the tremor in his gun hand.
Hoppity had seen it too.
That worried Orb more than he wanted to admit.