Free Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC by Larry Correia Page B

bear ,” the first man replied. “Can you believe that?”
    Earl whistled. “That happen a lot around these parts?”
    “Only never, far as I know,” said the second, who seemed all too eager to share the story. “Everybody in town’s talking about it. My nephew works at the hospital, told me all about it.”
    “Where you from?” asked the first suspiciously. Earl recognized the accent from when he’d worked a case in Finland. “You’re not from around here. You talk funny.”
    “Alabama. Where bears don’t eat people, it don’t usually snow, and it’s customary for the new guy getting told the tale to buy the drinks for the men doing the telling.” Earl knew from experience that you couldn’t ask for a better bunch than the Finns, once they warmed up to you and decided you weren’t in need of a stabbing at least. Tough climates bred tough temperaments. “Name’s Earl.”
    “That’s a fine tradition there, sonny,” nodded the first approvingly, and he held up three fingers for the waiter. “I’m Aino. That’s Henry. Up on Cliff Road, one of the local deputies, Joe Buckley, was in his car, bear came along and pulled him out the window and ate part of him.”
    “He was where the Randalls keep their horses,” supplied Henry. “Other side of the hill from the old Quinn Mine. I used to work down there, ya know, back ’fore the big cave-in.”
    “Dark day for Copper Lake,” Aino muttered.
    Earl didn’t know if the old immigrant was talking about the bear or the mine collapsing. “Did they catch the bear?” he asked, and he had a sneaking suspicion on what the answer would be. Both of the old timers shook their heads in the negative. “I’m a professional hunter by trade. Maybe I could help.”
    “Maybe.” Aino scratched his grizzled chin. “They looked for it, didn’t see nothing. Joe Buckley’s a good boy though, so you see any bears, stranger, you do us a favor and pop it dead.”
    The waiter came back with three beers. “I got a few rifles in my truck,” Earl responded, and few was an understatement. He took a bottle and tilted it toward the gentlemen. “And I’m a fair shot.”
    The waiter snorted derisively and blew the hair away from his eyes. “People like you put guns on our streets.”
    Earl looked at the teenager in disbelief. “And people like you put the fries on my plate.” He waved toward the kitchen dismissively. “So hop to it, boy.”
    The waiter stomped away. Aino gave him a big grin. That was a new record for Earl befriending a Finn. Apparently living in America took the edge off.
    * * *
    Stark couldn’t believe his eyes, but who should be sitting there at the bar other than the head contractor scumbag himself, Earl Harbinger.
    The entire time he’d been eating his chicken-fried steak and talking with Agent Mosher, Stark had kept checking the test vial under the table. Once it turned blue, he’d told Mosher he needed to take a leak, and he’d gotten up with the plan of calling Briarwood to get their butts up here to make them all some cash. Seeing that pain-in-the-ass Harbinger joking and drinking with some old bastards floored him.
    MHI is here. Stark let loose with a long string of profanity under his breath. Those jerks would swoop in, kill the werewolves before Briarwood could, steal the PUFF bounty, and, worst of all, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He couldn’t even pull jurisdiction and toss MHI out, because that required paperwork, and he sure as hell couldn’t justify that if his official story was that the test kit had come back negative.
    He hated Harbinger. Not only was he rich and successful beyond any public servant’s wildest imagination—the guy kept senators in his pocket like most people kept change—he was also a balls-out fighter. Rumor in the MCB was that Harbinger had actually kicked the snot out of several members of Director Myers’s strike team and gotten away with it. Which was another example of why Myers