Free The Highway by C. J. Box

say no. He simply glared at her.
    “I’d like to talk with you, if you don’t mind,” she said softly. “About what happened.”
    He blew out a sharp puff of smoke from his nostrils but he didn’t reply.
    “Cody,” she said, trying to hold his eyes and not look away, which was difficult, “I didn’t mean to set you up. That was never my intention. I feel terrible about what happened. Sheriff Tubman…”
    A terrifying grin cracked Cody’s face at the mention of the sheriff’s name and it froze her for a moment. She’d forgotten how mean he could look.
    “’Can I get you?” she heard just over her shoulder.
    Relieved, she turned. The pony-tailed bartender stood a few feet behind her. He was short and wiry and wore a long, sheathed bowie knife the length of his thigh.
    “What?” she asked.
    “I said, ‘What can I get you?’” he said.
    She hesitated. “Maybe a glass of wine?” she said.
    The bartender smiled coldly. “Red or kind of red?”
    She didn’t ask. She said, “Red.”
    He nodded, and turned his attention to Cody. “You gonna drink it this time?”
    At first she didn’t understand. Then she had a vision of Cody ordering alcohol, staring at it, and sending it back untouched. She wondered how many times it had happened before she arrived. The thought stabbed her in the heart.
    Cody nodded slightly. But the bartender didn’t move. Finally, the man said, “Do you two plan to be here very long?”
    Cassie squinted at him, not understanding.
    The bartender chinned to where the pool players had been before they left so quickly. “Look,” he said, lowering his voice so only they could hear. “We’ve got regular customers coming in until we close. They like to be able to relax, you know? Kick back? It ain’t usual for a couple of county cops to be sitting in here, you know?”
    “We’re off duty,” she said.
    “Still, you stink of it,” the bartender said. “No offense.”
    She could feel her face flushing again. Cody cleared his throat and readjusted himself on his stool so his jacket opened and his .40 Sig Sauer could be clearly seen in its holster. He said to the bartender, “Get us our drinks, you mouth-breathing little ferret. And keep them coming if we want them. Because only one of us is off duty. The other is just an angry man with a gun who could blow chunks of your heart out your back before you cleared that knife. And believe me, I’m in the fucking mood to pop somebody. Do we have an understanding?”
    The bartender’s eyes got huge and his mouth just hung there. After a few beats, he nodded and turned meekly toward the bar.
    “I could never do that,” Cassie said, climbing on a stool and leaning across the tabletop toward Cody. She said sadly, “Please tell me you’re not drinking?”
    “Not yet. Maybe I’m building up to it, though. This is club soda,” he said, pinging a fingernail on the rim of the glass. “It tastes like … the end of the world as I know it.”
    Then he growled, “This is where it helps you to be a chick. Because if you weren’t, I would have kicked your ass the second you walked in that door.”
    *   *   *
    She’d heard stories about the infamous Cody Hoyt even before she graduated from the academy. He was a polarizing presence within law enforcement and throughout the state. Some LEOs (law enforcement officers) hated his guts, others winked when his name was mentioned. No one, it seemed, was neutral.
    Cody had grown up in East Helena, from a long line of Hoyts, who were known as white-trash outlaws. The Hoyts were poachers, cattle rustlers, small-time crooks, and grifters. Somehow, Cody had chosen law enforcement and had worked himself up through police and sheriff’s departments in Montana, Wyoming, and eventually became the lead homicide investigator for the Denver Metropolitan Police Department. His record of convictions was remarkable, but as his reputation grew so did the whispers. He not only cut corners, department gossips