Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online

woman back home in Nebraska, don’t you, Matt?”
    Matt shifted, angled around to look back over his shoulder. “Annie’s back in Nebraska.”
    “High-school sweethearts,” Trigger filled in. “Then she went off to college, but they got back together when she came home. Two minds, one heart. So Matt doesn’t dance, if you get my drift.”
    “Got it. It’s nice,” Gull continued, “having somebody.”
    “No point in the whole screwed-up world if you don’t.” Matt shrugged. “No point doing what we do if nobody’s waiting for us once we’ve done it.”
    “Sweetens the pot,” Trigger agreed. “But some of us have to settle for a dance now and again.” He rubbed his hands together as the van pulled up in a lot packed with trucks and cars. “And my toes are already tapping.”
    Gull scanned the long, low log building as he stepped out of the van, contemplated a moment on the flickering neon sign.
    “‘Get a Rope,’ ” he read. “Seriously?”
    “Cowboy up, partner.” Trigger slapped him on the shoulder, then strutted inside on his snakeskin boots.
    An experience, Gull reminded himself. You could never have too many of them.
    He stepped into the overamplified screech and twang of truly, deeply bad country music performed by a quartet of grungy-looking guys behind the dubious protection of a chicken-wire fence. At the moment the only things being hurled at them were shouted insults, but the night was young.
    Still, people crowded the dance floor, kicking up boot heels, wiggling butts. Others ranged along the long bar or squeezed onto rickety chairs at tiny tables where they could scarf up dripping nachos or gnaw on buffalo wings coated with a suspicious substance that turned them cheesepuff orange. Most opted to wash that combo down with beer served in filmy plastic pitchers.
    The lights were mercifully dim, and despite the smoking ban dingy blue clouds fogged the air that smelled like a sweat-soaked, deep-fried, overflowing ashtray.
    The only reasonable thing to do, as Gull saw it, was to start drinking.
    He moved to the bar, elbowed in and ordered a Bitter Root beer—in a bottle. Dobie squeezed beside him, punched him in the arm. “Why do you wanna drink that foreign shit?”
    “Brewed in Montana.” He passed the bottle to Dobie, ordered another.
    “Pretty good beer,” Dobie decided after a pull. “But it ain’t no Budweiser.”
    “You’re not wrong.” Amused, Gull tapped his bottle to Dobie’s, drank. “Beer. The answer to so many questions.”
    “I’m going to get this one in me, then cut one of these women out of the herd, drive ’em on the dance floor.”
    Gull sipped again, studied the fat-fingered lead guitar player. “How do you dance to crap like this?”
    Dobie’s eyes slitted, and his finger drilled into Gull’s chest. “You got a problem with country music?”
    “You must’ve busted an eardrum on your last jump if you call this music. I like bluegrass,” he added, “when it’s done right.”
    “Don’t bullshit me, city boy. You don’t know bluegrass from bindweed.”
    Gull took another swig of beer. “I am a man of constant sorrow,” he sang in a strong, smooth tenor. “I’ve seen trouble all my days.”
    Now Dobie punched him in the chest, but affectionately. “You’re a continual surprise to me, Gulliver. Got a voice in there, too. You oughta get up there and show those shit-kickers how it’s done.”
    “I think I’ll just drink my beer.”
    “Well.” Dobie tipped up the bottle, drained his. Let out a casual belch. “I’m going for a female.”
    “Good luck with that.”
    “Ain’t about luck. It’s about style.”
    Gull watched Dobie bop over to a table of four women, and decided the man had a style all of his own.
    Enjoying the moment, Gull leaned an elbow back on the bar, crossed his ankles. Trigger, true to his word, already had a partner on the dance floor, and Matt—true to his Annie—sat with Little Bear, a rookie named Stovic and one of