The Big Finish by James W. Hall Read Free Book Online Page A

charm. This is my favorite.” She plucked a red and blue feathered lure from its slot. “What do you call it?”
    He hesitated a moment, then sighed and said, “Bone Crusher.”
    She eyed him carefully.
    “Interesting choice.”
    “Get to the point,” Thorn said.
    “You’re all about violence, aren’t you? Trying to project yourself as this laid-back guy, but there’s all this molten energy seething just below the skin. And every once in a while you show a glimpse of it.”
    “Bonefish flies all have names like that,” Sugar said. “It’s part of fishing culture. You’re reading Thorn wrong.”
    “Yeah,” she said. “You two defend each other. Have each other’s back. You’re a team.”
    “What do the flies have to do with anything?” Thorn said.
    “I’ve been studying you to understand what makes you tick. Lately it’s been my full-time focus. I wanted to be sure you could be trusted for the role you’ll play. Agent Sheffield thought you’d be willing. Willing is fine, but I needed to be sure you’d be effective.”
    “What role would that be?”
    She held the box of flies up so both Sugar and Thorn could see.
    “This role,” she said. “To dangle you in front of some very bad men, see if we can get them to bite.”
    And that was all she would give them for the next hundred miles.

FIVE
    “IS THAT YOUR NAME OR your license number?”
    The girl behind the motel counter was looking at the registration card he’d just signed.
    “It’s not my license.”
    “You’re joking. Your name is X-88?”
    He looked out at the falling twilight beyond the office windows. A Comfort Inn an hour shy of Jacksonville. A mile west of Twelve Mile Swamp, which looked to him like an excellent spot to dump a body.
    Even that far away, he could smell the swamp, its notes of sulfur blended with rotting mushrooms and yeast and a sour undertone that reminded him of the used-up air of a big-city bus station.
    “If that’s your name, then damn, your parents did a number on you.”
    Standing beside him, Pixie said, “She’s trying to be funny. ‘A number on you,’ X-88, it’s like a pun.”
    “You got a problem with my name?”
    “No, no. It’s cool as shit.” The motel clerk was a year or two older than X. No makeup, with clean straight chestnut hair with bangs that covered her eyebrows. The kind of girl you’d pass on the street, not give a second look unless you noticed that scorching body hiding under her baggy white dress.
    The motel clerk looked at Pixie and said, “You got a number too?”
    “I’m Pixie, like it’s any of your business.”
    “Pixie’s another good one,” the clerk said. “Suits you.”
    Pixie edged closer to X, touching his arm.
    She was a bony girl, flat-chested and narrow hipped, like a sexless twelve-year-old, which X found to be a turn-on. She was pale with naturally white-blond hair she streaked with rainbow colors, and her lips were always lit up with bright pinks and purples. Shaved eyebrows, wide-spaced gray eyes, a pointy nose. A little freaky, yeah, but she’d kept X satisfied these last few months, so shit, he overlooked her physical quirks.
    As for X, he was as thick as Pixie was thin. Shaved head, olive skin tone from the Turkish blood on his old man’s side, that motherfucker. X had heavy lips and dark brown eyes. His arms and chest were smooth and beefy, which now and then some idiot mistook for blubber. And he had a wide back, strong enough to hoist a fifty-gallon drum full of body parts, lift it over his head and toss it in a ditch. An accomplishment he’d recently added to his résumé.
    “So are we checked in or what?” X-88 said.
    “Just need a credit card,” she said.
    “I don’t do plastic. I’m cash only.”
    An older gentleman with a rolling suitcase entered the lobby. White hair, hunched shoulders, closing in on seventy. Rumpled seersucker suit.
    “We’ll be just a second more, sir,” the clerk told the old man. “So, X? Can I call you