Fire And Steel (The Merryweather Chronicles Book 2) by Lesley Woodral Read Free Book Online

too hard, and the humor sounded false to all of them. They sank into an uneasy silence as they finished the meal, each man lost inside his own dark thoughts.
     
          A cold wind snapped out of the mountains surrounding Highgarden, whipping through the trees of the Briar Woods like a banshee's wail, and kicking up the loose pine needles at the feet of Jock Aaron as he walked through the deepening gloom. The sun was long down and the last of the evening light had leached from the world, leaving a cloudy night sky that was devoid of moon and stars. Jock stopped walking as the icy wind breathed across the back of his neck, causing goose bumps to crawl up the backs of his arms and legs, and pulled out his cell phone. Opening it, he held it out to throw some light on the path. He didn't bother checking to see if he had bars. The Briar Woods was a dead zone, more so than the rest of Matheson. Besides, who was he going to call? His old lady? Not goddamn likely. She was out, hustling ass for a smack dealer that Jock owed money to.
          Jock owed money to a lot of people. He found that easy access to willing ass kept hard feelings to a minimum if he missed a payment or two. Of course, after tonight, he wouldn't owe shit to anybody. Not if Bryan was able to get everything set up like he figured. Jock didn't give Bryan credit for much, most of the time the guy was barely better than a functioning moron, but he definitely knew his chemistry.
          Walking through the dark, Jock caught himself wishing, once again, that he had let that prick Bryan talk him into coming up here together, instead of separately. He squashed the thought quickly though, with an inner sneer of disgust at himself. Sure, it was dark and cold, but he'd walked this narrow trail many times. And on darker nights.
          Jock was still tweaking from the bump he snorted before leaving the duplex he and his old lady shared with her sister. It was the last of a pop bottle cook from a week or so back that he helped Bryan with. It was the best out of three attempts. The first two cooks didn't turn out so well. Jock still felt bad about that day care burning down. But at least it was after hours and no little kids got killed.
          That would've been a bummer.
          "Shit." Jock stumbled over an upturned rock and nearly dropped his phone. He stopped walking and peered around himself, squinting into the dark forest surrounding him. The shadows were thick, though pale light filtering through the tangled limbs overhead kept the woods from being pitch black. Again, he squashed that wriggling worm of fear that kept suggesting he should've come up with Bryan earlier that afternoon. He pulled the pistol from the sagging waistband of his jeans and held it against his leg. It was a Glock, traded to him for dope, and he'd fired it enough times to now that it worked just fine, despite its second hand appearance.
          Having the gun in hand eased his nervousness somewhat. Jock silently dared anything to fuck with him while he had his gun in his hand and kept walking. His mama always told him to be careful what he wished for or it might come true, a saying that never made much sense to him as a kid. But she also told him to say no to drugs and he didn't listen then either. Gun in one hand, phone in the other, Jock moved deeper into the woods and ignored the crawling sensation that told him somebody was watching him. The dope was making him paranoid.
          Thinking of dope made him think of Bryan and he shook his head. For a dumbass, the guy could have a good idea every once and awhile. Sure, he got the idea from a fucking TV show, but that didn't stop it from being a goddamn great idea. He even had a camper trailer handy. A piece of shit camper shell that his dad gave him when he finally got tired of putting up with all of Bryan's thieving and strung out temper tantrums and kicked him out of the house.
          It took some doing to get