Rough Country: A gripping crime thriller by T.J. BREARTON

Author:T.J. BREARTON [BREARTON, T.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkubator Books
Published: 2020-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Roy Hollander closed the door behind him, and Lois yelled from the kitchen, “What did he want?”

“I told you what he wanted when he called up,” Roy yelled back. He checked his boots for clods of dirt and decided it’d been too dusty out there to worry about tracking in the house. They needed rain.

He moved into the kitchen, slow because of his knees. Lois was at the table with a coffee mug in both hands. She drank the stuff until afternoon. If he had one sip past ten o’clock in the morning, he’d be up all night.

“Well, I know you told me,” she said, her voice lower now that he was in the room. “But what did he say?”

Roy got a glass down from the cupboard and went to the tap. “You want to know what the man wanted, that’s what you said. You didn’t ask what he said.”

“Now… you’re telling me they ain’t the same thing?”

He flipped on the faucet and filled the glass, then drank it all in one go, feeling the muscles in his neck and throat. Dry as a stick out there. He put down the empty glass and took a breath, keeping his side turned to his wife as he looked out the window to the driveway, the road, the grass getting high in the lot on the other side despite the lack of rain. “He asked me questions about people up in Elliston. If I knew anybody.”

“And?”

“I said no.”

“He say anything about Zach?”

Hollander turned to face her. She was wearing her Walt Disney World T-shirt, the one with Mickey Mouse. Her thin gray hair curled around her ears, just neck length. The mole at the outside corner of her left eye seemed darker, thicker. He told her, “I didn’t say nothing about that.”

“I asked if he asked,” she said.

“No.”

“Not about Freedom Mission? Nothing.”

“He did not.”

She looked back at him, and the darkness collected in her eyes, enough that he had to turn away from it. But when she spoke a few seconds later, her voice was smooth as milk. “Well, all right then. No need to get all up in your britches. They ain’t going to find anything. They never do.”

“Right,” he said.

But he’d looked at the young fella – he’d looked into his eyes. That one might not quit.

Lois suddenly laughed. She had a smoker’s cackle even though she’d never smoked. Just prone to bronchial problems was what she told people, ever since she was a girl and had pneumonia that almost killed her. Left her with her trademark scratchy voice, like grit blown against hard wood.

“What?” he asked her.

Her laughter tapered to a chuckle and she mumbled to herself.

Roy waved a hand – it didn’t matter. He rinsed the glass and put it in the strainer beside the sink, lest he catch hell for it. Then: “He did ask about religion, though. In general.”

Lois grew quiet, thinking. “And?”

“I told him I’m a man who works this land and takes care of his lot in life.

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