Hunter's Moon by Chuck Logan (english novels to read .TXT) 📕

a plastic swizzle stick between her teeth, bit it, drew it slowly out. When she was confident all eyes were on her, she delivered her cameo lines in the Stanley soap opera: “Jay has this problem. He can’t let go of anything. He’s insanely possessive.” She smiled sweetly. “Right now he’s got this real dilemma for a possessive man. He’s out at his trailer shacked up with Jesse Deucette and she’s the local nymphomaniac.”

Cox’s glower flamed into rage. Harry began to shake in anticipa-tion, and Cox took encouragement. He wagged the cue in Harry’s face. A tic-tac-toe streak of blue chalk crossed his scabs. Harry pushed the stick away and stood up. His muscles felt loose, ropes shaking out. Cox was too big, too powerful. The sense of déjà vu almost made him smile. He focused on the stick. Sure worked last time.

Landed him in jail instead of the morgue.

Cox grinned. “We got us a sissy boy treehugger here. Lookit the fucker shake.”

The cue stick lashed out and stung Harry’s chest. Yeah. Now I remember. The muscles across his back flared out tight.

“Hey, you guys,” yelled the bartender, “take it outside.”

“Don’t think he’ll make it,” said Cox. “I do believe he’s going to piss all over the floor right here.”

The cue rapped forward and stung Harry’s chest again. Pain oriented him and the tightness scalded from his back and out his arms.

Harry grinned, stepped back, and planted his right hip against the pool table.

The third time the cue flashed at his face, instinct took over HUNTER’S MOON / 205

and his breath ignited. He twisted, set, blocked the stick and slid up it with his left forearm and clamped his hand behind Cox’s. With a sharp twist he broke Cox’s grip, reversed the cue, and, holding it like a clubbed rifle, pounded the fat end at Cox’s throat.

Cox drew in his chin and the handle hit muscle. He backed up, stunned, and started to tuck into a fighting crouch. Not quick enough. Harry twirled the cue and did his barroom trick. Stuck the tip in the end pocket of the pool table and snapped it off. Harry uncoiled, holding the shortened stick two-handed and laid the jagged, splintered tip against Cox’s carotid artery.

Cox poised on the balls of his feet with the cue lodged secure at his throat just a shiver away from serious damage as rage did a somersault in his peppery eyes. With a mad grunt he pressed forward, thrusting his throat against the jagged wood. Blood streaked his neck.

Cox’s mad eyes baited. “You ain’t got the guts,” he sneered and he looked like he’d push the sharp end through his own throat to get at Harry. Harry hesitated. Cox knocked the cue clattering against the table. His knobby fist cocked at his shoulder.

That’s when Harry moved ahead of the punch, dropping slightly on flexed knees. His right hand snaked between Cox’s legs, grabbed a handful of denim, zipper, and nuts and mashed and wrenched up and Cox was in dance class, levitating with a strangled howl. All he needed was a tutu and toe shoes. Harry released his grip. Cox staggered back against the pool table, gasping. Harry glanced down the bar. Everybody slunked over, looking down their noses into their glasses. Broke-dick silence.

“Okay, break it up. Fun’s over,” drawled an amused voice next to Harry’s ear. Emery. Doing his silent approach. Harry turned. Emery smiled. He was alone, Jerry was nowhere in sight. He wore hunting duds and snow clung to the cuffs of his trousers. Just in from the woods.

Emery moved Harry aside and stepped up to Cox. “Wanna push somebody around? Come push me. One teeny little push.

206 / CHUCK LOGAN

I wouldn’t mind, Jay. Fact is, coming from you, I’d kinda appreciate it right now.”

Cox was still game. Harry saw the bartender look around nervously. These two tuskers could wreck the place.

“Was between me and him, Larry,” Cox said in a labored voice.

“Bullshit. Leave it alone. Tell Jessica I said for her to do the same.”

Cox gnawed his lip and glared at Harry. “Got no quarrel with you, Larry.”

“That’s big of you, Jay, seeing’s I’m the fucking sheriff!”

Cox appraised Harry. “Next time,” he promised.

“Ain’t gonna be no next time. Now get outta here,” said Emery, who put his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes at the crowd.

When Cox had left through the front door he spoke softly. Nobody had trouble hearing. “Now listen up. No more fun and games on Maston’s land, you hear?”

Then he slouched, hands deep in the Mackinaw pockets. He pulled out a rolled-up paper and closed his right fist around it. With deceptive speed, he dropped his shoulder, rotated, and slammed the fist into Harry’s stomach—knocking the breath out of him and nearly lifting him onto the pool table.

“Police report for your car insurance. Been meaning to give it to you.” Emery grinned. “Now pay for that cue stick and get the hell out of here.”

Harry gasped for breath, peeled two twenties off the roll in his jeans, and threw them on the pool table. Ginny stepped up and handed Harry his coat. “C’mon, hon, let’s blow this pop stand,” she said briskly as she helped him toward the door. She rolled her eyes back at the silent crowd. “Now that’s what I call foreplay,” she chuckled, running her tongue over her teeth.

Emery tipped his hunting cap to Ginny and his face resumed its mournful repose. “Y’all have a good night, now.”

Outside, Harry sucked in huge draughts of air. “What the hell happened to Cox in there? You see the way he threw himself at that stick?”

HUNTER’S MOON / 207

“Poor Jay,” said Ginny with a sad shrug. “Off his meds since Jesse’s been messing with his mind. Too bad. He’s really this sweet guy.”

“Huh?” Harry grumbled, one hand to his belly.

“Don’t feel bad,” said Ginny helpfully. “No shame in a run-in with Larry Emery.”

34

Once Harry got past the blood bruise on his stomach, it was fun. Racing