Wildefire by Karsten Knight Read Free Book Online Page B

ignored the twenty pairs of hungry male eyes and carelessly flipped her fake 54

    ID onto the bar in front of the bartender. “Amaretto sour,” she said.
    The bartender pressed his hands down on the countertop. Raggedy Ray’s sea-worn face was spiderwebbed with age, like mud left to crack under the hot sun, but his golden hair was seeing only the first invasion of gray. He didn’t even bother to look down at the driver’s license on the countertop. “Sure thing, princess,” he croaked. “You want one of those frilly umbrellas in it too?”
    “Depends”—she slid a ten-dollar bill across the bar top—“on whether you want to keep the change and lose the sense of humor.”
    A spry grin stretched across the barkeep’s face. “Your quick wit always brightens my day, lovely,” he said.
    “What’ll your friends be having?”
    “We’re standing right here,” Darren said from the back.
    The bartender raised an eyebrow and leaned around Ash. “Oh, it speaks.”
    Darren rolled his eyes and flashed his platinum money clip, the crisp stack of twenty-dollar bills looking fresh from the mint. “Yeah, well, ‘it’ would like a Diet Coke. . . . That is, if you’re out of moonshine.”
    “And a gin and tonic for the thirsty girl in the back,”
    Jackie added with a wave.
    “Three recipes for trouble, coming up.” By the time Ash slipped onto a vinyl bar stool, the bartender had already expertly poured Ashline’s drink and was 55

    measuring an indulgent amount of gin into Jackie’s.
    “And how is that geological research going?” he asked.
    “Stimulating.” The corners of Ashline’s mouth twitched upward in a quick smile. Two months ago, when Ray, the bar owner, had attempted to make small talk during their initial visit, Ash had identified the trio as a team of geology majors from UCLA on a semester abroad mission to study the local strata. She hoped she’d chosen a boring enough backstory that it would prevent any further inquiry from the bartender during future visits.
    Ash’s best guess was that Raggedy Ray had caught on to their shenanigans the moment they’d first entered the Bent Horseshoe but welcomed the fresh younger blood in his bar, since the regulars seemed to recycle the same discussions on retirement, saltwater fishing, and weather patterns.
    “And what’s your topic of study this week?” Ray humored her.
    Ash stirred her straw in the amaretto. “The effects of erosion in the Great Fern Valley, and the continued hunt for fossils.”
    Darren and Jackie both snickered and carried their drinks over to a nearby high-top, where a group of other Blackwood students were playing a drinking game that involved dice, a stack of poker chips, and an empty pint glass.
    “You know . . .” Ray lowered his voice and leaned over the counter. “I don’t know why you bother going all the way into the park to do your studies.”
    56

    “Why’s that?” She took a long pull from her drink.
    “Because,” he said, glancing to the right and to the left before he winked at her, “I’ve got more old fossils in here than I know what to do with.”
    Ash couldn’t help it—she laughed so hard that amaretto spurted out her nose before she had time to cover up.
    Ray nodded to the back corner of the bar, where they kept the pool tables. “Some of your fellow ‘researchers’
    arrived earlier.”
    “That so?”
    Ray rolled his eyes. “Marine biologists, I believe.”
    Ash slipped out of her seat and scooped up her drink.
    “Better go have a bit of shoptalk with them.”
    “Aye, they probably have a bone or two to pick with erosion, I’d imagine,” Ray said with another cough-like laugh. Then he scurried away to tend to a few mugs that needed refilling at the end of the bar.
    With Jackie and Darren both distracted—Jackie was madly bouncing poker chips into the empty glass while Darren and the other kids cheered her on—Ash took the opportunity to glide around the bar to the billiard room.
    She