Stone Cold by C. J. Box Read Free Book Online

judge of men and character. That’s how I got where I am. And you, Joe, have the uncanny ability to irritate the right people and cause havoc when you bore in like a pit bull. I want you to do that for me if I ask.”
    Suddenly, it was clear.
    â€œThink of yourself, once again, as my range rider,” Rulon said. “I’m the benevolent and kindly ranch owner, and you’re the hired gun I send out to solve my problems. You did it before, and you can do it again.”
    Joe said, “You exiled me last time, if you’ll remember.”
    â€œHad to!” Rulon said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “It was reelection time and you were stinking up the joint with your hijinks. We had to hide you for a while. But that’s behind us now.”
    Joe was speechless.
    â€œJust be ready,” Rulon said, already distracted with something else on his desk by the way his attention had flagged. “If I call, you need to respond. It could be anything and at any time. LGD will understand—sort of. So cowboy up and be my range rider and make me proud!”
    With that, the governor slammed down his phone.
    Joe had been waiting ever since.
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    T HEY RELEASED THE OLD TRUCK on the side of Joe’s garage and Farkus roared away toward town on Bighorn Road. When he was gone, Joe opened the driver’s door again and dug out the frozen urn of his father’s ashes that he’d left behind the seat years before. He’d never known where to spread them—no place seemed
right
—and he’d stashed them behind the seat until he could figure it out.
    It was his father’s last dirty trick, sticking his son with his ashes and not enough good memories to determine a proper place to leave them. Even so, Joe didn’t want the urn to be discarded or sold by a used-parts dealer somewhere.
    He put the urn on his workbench in the garage to deal with later.
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    A GLEAMING BLACK LATE-MODEL PICKUP with Texas plates was in front of Joe’s house. He’d never seen the truck before, and his guard was up as he pushed through the front gate toward the door. All the lights were on in the house and Marybeth’s van and April’s new acquisition—a fifteen-year-old Jeep Cherokee—were parked on either side of the Texas pickup.
    He never knew who might be waiting for him at his house because it also served as the local game warden station. Hunters, fishermen, and locals often simply dropped by, wanting him to personally explain regulations, mediate disputes, or lobby for some kind of action. It was a burden on Marybeth because she had to serve as a kind of unpaid receptionist and assistant, and something his girls had grown up with: having strangers—sometimes covered with blood—simply show up at their door.
    There was an animated conversation going on in the living room when he entered the mudroom and hung up his parka and unlaced his Sorel winter pac boots. April was chattering away, and a male voice was laughing and urging her on.
    Joe didn’t like that.
    April had recently turned eighteen and was a senior at Saddlestring High. Despite a very troubled past and an antagonistic relationship with both Joe and especially Marybeth, she had turned a corner the year before and become . . . a cowgirl. She worked after school at Welton’s Western Wear, one of the oldest retail stores in operation in Saddlestring, selling hats, boots, belts, yoked cowboy shirts, jeans, and outerwear to locals and tourists alike. She’d gone from troubled Goth to bubbly cowgirl so quickly it’d left both Joe and Marybeth almost breathless. Joe had expected the phase to end, but it hadn’t. In fact, April had embraced the new April to the point that she now socialized almost exclusively with the cowboy clique at school and seemed to have withdrawn from the Goth and