Unearthed by Robert J. Crane Read Free Book Online

suggest, twice a week for the last six weeks. “That is not a bad idea at all,” Reeve said, letting his contempt drip all over that one. “Why don’t you put something on the calendar with Donna while you’re there, and we’ll talk later this week?”
    “Oh, I’m not planning on coming back this way for a while,” Pike said.
    “I can come to you,” Reeve said. It wasn’t like Calhoun County was a huge place, and the County Administrator’s office was—by a bizarre quirk of county history— in Culver, about thirty minutes from the sheriff’s office. “I haven’t checked over the substation out that way in some time—”
    “Why don’t you come on back right now?” Pike said, and there was no mistaking the steel edge in the way he said it. Not a polite request but a firm command. Inflexible and rigid, like the six foot steel pipe the fucker carried up his ass everywhere he went. “We can have our meeting today.”
    “Well,” Reeve said, letting the contempt drip because why the fuck not? “I suppose I could be back in an hour or so.” You’re not the boss of me, sonny, you goddamned Yankee cocksucker .
    “Go ahead and do that,” Pike said. “I’ll just sit here and wait with your missus, look over the station, do all the administrator-ing things I’m supposed to be doing while supervising you.” He made it sound like it was no great imposition, like he was being gracious by making this allowance. Smug. Fuck. “I’ll see you in a little bit, Sheriff.”
    The line went dead, Reeve still steaming with the phone next to his ear, and then the other line—the one attached to his fishing pole—went real live, real fast. It jerked in his hands, prompting him to drop his phone. It clattered in the bottom of the boat as he grabbed hold of the rod, gently tugging on the reel to test the strength of what he had on the hook, see if it was set yet.
    It damned sure was, he realized as the tip of the rod bent almost into a C-curve by the strength of what he’d gotten. “Better not be a fucking spare tire,” he said out loud. If that was what he caught before having to meet with Pike, he’d send the damned thing to the lab in Chattanooga and have them track down where it had been bought and who bought it, then ticket the shit out of their ass for improper disposal.
    The whizzing of the line as he cranked in slowly filled his ear, along with the pounding of his own heart. His arms burned with the effort of holding the rod upright. He wasn’t used to this lately. He was out of shape; it was uncomfortable. “Strong bastard,” he muttered as he continued to reel. The tip of the rod zipped left, then right as the fish tried to escape the inevitable.
    It broke the surface about ten feet from the boat’s edge, and looked like a bass for the moment it appeared before submerging again. Not a tire, thank God. That would have been the perfect capper to this shitty day. At least it had been peaceful up until the phone call, just him and his thoughts.
    He kept reeling.
    The fish broke the surface again, now for the final time. It was flopping as he dragged it out of the water, a big damned bass, bigger than he’d caught before. He used the fishing pole like a crane, just dropping the big bastard in the floor of the boat, not worrying about a net. It heaved, trying to get back to water that was nowhere in sight, gills opening and closing even as it started to settle down.
    Reeve held onto the rod and sat back heavily on his chair. This was a keeper, that was for sure. Looked good enough he could put it on the wall in his den. He leaned on the old, smooth fabric of the chair. It felt like leather, but he knew it wasn’t. The padding was worn, but still felt good, and he stared at the bass as it gasped for air.
    What would it feel like to live in the same place your whole life, be used to it being one way, and then get jerked out of your comfortable existence to find that just a few feet away from where you’d