Boneyard Ridge
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Paula Graves
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18
Prologue
Smoky Joe’s Saloon had never pretended to be anything more than a hillbilly honky-tonk, a hole in the wall on Old Purgatory Road that served cold beer, peanuts roasted in the shell and a prodigious selection of Merle Haggard hits on the ancient jukebox in the corner.
At the moment, “The Fightin’ Side of Me” blasted through the jukebox’s tinny speakers, an apt sound track for the bar brawl brewing around the pool table in the corner.
Two men circled the table like a pair of wary Pit Bulls, eyes locked in silent combat. The older of the two was also the drunker, a heavyset man with bloodshot eyes and a misshapen nose, mottled by red spider veins. He seemed to be the aggressor, from Alexander Quinn’s vantage point at a table in the corner of the small bar, but the younger, leaner man had shown no signs of trying to de-escalate the tension.
On the contrary, an almost frantic light gleamed in his green eyes, a feral hunger for conflict that Quinn had noticed the first time he’d ever laid eyes on the man.
His name was Hunter Bragg, and he’d finally found the trouble he’d been looking for all night.
“Come on, Toby, you know he’s going to beat the hell out of you the second you take a swing. Then I’m going to have to call the police and you’ve already got a couple of D and Ds on your record this year, don’t you?” The reasonable question, uttered in a tone that wavered somewhere between sympathy and annoyance, came from the bartender, a burly man in his early sixties with shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair and a gray-streaked beard. He was dressed like most of the patrons, in jeans and a camouflage jacket over a T-shirt that had been through the wash a few times, dulling its original navy color to a smoky slate blue.
He was the “Joe” of Smoky Joe’s Saloon, Joe Breslin, an Army vet who’d opened the bar with his savings after deciding not to re-up decades earlier when the trouble in Panama was starting to heat up. He’d packed on a few pounds and lost a few steps since his military days, but Quinn had seen him in action a few nights earlier when another loudmouthed drunk had taken the angry young man’s bait and lived to regret it.
“He’s askin’ for an ass-kickin’, Joe!” the man named Toby complained, shooting a baleful look at Hunter Bragg. “I don’t care if he is a damn war hero.”
“I’m no hero,” Bragg growled, the feral grin never faltering.
“Bragg, I don’t want to kick you out of my bar, I really don’t,” Joe said. “But if you don’t shut your damn trap and stop picking fights, I’m gonna. You think your sister needs any more trouble?”
Bragg’s gaze snapped toward the bartender at the mention of his sister. “Shut up.”
Breslin held up his hands. “Just sayin’. She’s already got enough on her plate, don’t she?”
“Shut up!” Bragg howled, the sound of a wounded animal. Chill bumps scattered down Alexander Quinn’s spine and, on instinct, his hand went to the pistol hidden under his jacket.
Toby took a couple of staggering steps backward until he bumped into the wall, dislodging some darts from the board that hung near the pool table. “You’re crazy, man.”
Bragg’s head snapped back toward Toby, barely leashed violence throbbing in his tight muscles. Quinn wasn’t sure if the man had come to the bar armed or not; Joe Breslin wasn’t the sort of proprietor who made people check their weapons at the door. And so far, Bragg had never used anything but his fists in a fight.
But things could turn disastrous in a heartbeat, Quinn knew. He’d seen it happen too many times.
He crossed the room with quiet speed, inserting himself into the arena of conflict. As he’d hoped, his mere presence put a big dent in the tension, as both men turned their wary gazes toward him.
“Gentlemen,” he said with a polite nod. “Are you still using this table?”
Toby stared at him as if he were crazy, but Bragg’s eyes narrowed, his head tilting a notch to one side.
“I know you,” he said.
Quinn nodded. “We’ve met.”
“In Afghanistan?”
Quinn shook his head. “At Landstuhl.”
Bragg’s face blanched visibly at the mention of the military hospital in Germany where combat-injured American troops were treated until they were stable enough to return to the States for further treatment.
Bragg had spent over a week there after an improvised explosive device, or IED, had obliterated his troop transport vehicle, killing everyone else in the Humvee and leaving Bragg with a mangled leg and a head injury. Surgeons had saved the leg, though when Quinn had seen the man in the hospital in Germany, there had been some question as to whether he’d have much use of the limb again.
Now, it seemed, it was the head injury that should have caused the doctors more concern. Bragg’s limp was barely noticeable these days. But he was no longer the good-natured practical joker his fellow soldiers had nicknamed the Tennessee Tornado.
“You brass?” Bragg asked warily.
“Civilian,” Quinn answered.
The green eyes narrowed further, little more than slits in his stormy face. “Spook?”
Quinn just smiled.
Bragg’s eyebrows rose slightly, opening his eyes enough that Quinn could read the sudden recognition in the younger man’s gaze. “You’re the guy who runs that new PI joint over in Purgatory.”
Quinn removed his hand from his jacket pocket, producing a simple, cream-colored business card. “The Gates,” he said, holding out the card.
Hesitantly, Bragg took the card from Quinn’s outstretched hand. “I’m not in the market for a private eye.”
“I’m in the market for employees.”
Bragg handed the card back. “I’ve got a job.”
“You sweep floors at the Piggly Wiggly.”
“It’s honest work.”
“So’s this.” Quinn held up the card.
“I’m not looking for excitement.”
Quinn merely lifted one eyebrow, shooting a look toward Toby, who stood next to the dartboard, watching Quinn and Bragg with a confused expression on his whiskey-slackened face.
Putting the card on the green felt surface of the pool table, Quinn looked back at Bragg. “If you change your mind.”
He left the bar without looking back to see if Bragg picked up the card. He couldn’t make the decision for the man. He could only offer an option that might channel his anger in a more productive direction.
He wasn’t in the business of saving people from themselves, no matter what the good folks of Purgatory seemed to think.
