Pine Deep 1 - Ghost Road Blues by Maberry Jonathan

Author:Maberry, Jonathan
Language: eng
Format: epub

Pine Deep 1 - Ghost Road Blues

2

“Christ, you three look like a hockey team in the penalty box.”

It was true enough. Val sat with a dish towel full of ice cubes pressed to her forehead; her father sat next to her with a similar compress on his torn eyebrow, still flushed and slightly goggle-​eyed from the blow to his solar plexus; and Connie was dabbing at her face with an antimacassar from the couch, sopping up the water Ruger had dashed in her face to wake her up.

Across from them, Ruger sipped a tall glass of Early Times.

“You do realize,” he said in his cold whisper, “that all of this was unnecessary. If you would just follow the rules of my little Q and A, we’d all get along. Can’t we all just get along?” he said, and laughed. The joke was lost on them, but he gave a fatalistic shrug and kept his own good humor. “So, I think by now the rules should be clear. I will ask each one of you a question, or perhaps questions, and that person will answer. No committees, no debating societies. Just questions and answers. That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?”

They stared at him, hating him, willing him death.

He said, “Isn’t it?” leaning into the words.

“Yes,” they each said.

“Nice.” He sipped the sour mash and hissed with pleasure at the burn. “Okay. Now, Miss Val, I believe you were about to tell me about your various boyfriends.”

Val swallowed what felt like a cantaloupe in her throat. “I…don’t have any boyfriends.”

“What? None at all? What about the one that lives in town?”

“No. That’s been over for weeks. There’s no one.”

Ruger smiled a slithery smile. “I find that kinda hard to believe, nice-​looking piece like you. What’s the deal? Didn’t you give him enough?”

Val just looked at him.

“C’mon, I’m interested. Why’d you break up?”

She managed what she hoped was a casual and dismissive shrug. “Just didn’t work out.”

“Uh-​huh.” Ruger’s dark eyes glittered like the glass eyes of a stuffed shark. “So nobody new, huh?”

“No.”

Val tensed, almost as afraid of more questions as she was of Connie blurting out the truth and screwing them all. She wasn’t entirely sure why she denied Crow’s existence, but some instinct had triggered her words when she had spoken. No boyfriend, no husband, no attachments that could somehow be used against her, or who could be hurt if she were to be used against them. Keep the man’s thoughts away from that kind of thinking. It was bad enough that Connie had mentioned Mark, Val’s brother, who was due home sometime soon.

“Okay, you get two points for answering all your questions.” He winked at her. “Okay, Pop. Your turn. What kind of car do you have?”

“A Bronco.”

“Oh yeah? What year?”

“Ninety-​six.”

“Any good?”

For some reason, Guthrie felt a brief flash of cockiness. He said, “It gets lousy gas mileage in the city, the clutch sticks, and it has a shimmy when you get it above sixty.”

Ruger blinked, and then he laughed. “Well, well.

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