Free Stand Down by J. A. Jance Page B

house. When developers came through and bought up the whole block where his house was, Amos had taken his wad of money and paid cash for a five-­acre place up in Golder Canyon, on the far back side of Catalina. The house was a tin-­roofed affair that had started out long ago as a stage stop. In town, John and Amos had been roommates. The “cabin,” as Amos liked to call it, was strictly a one-­man show, so John had chosen to stay on in town—­closer to the action—­and had rented a place in the old neighborhood.
    When Amos went to El Barrio that night, he had done so deliberately, knowing it was most likely still John’s favorite hangout. And knowing, too, that he was coming there to have it out with John because Amos had made up his mind. Either Ava went or John did. He’d been sitting at the bar, tucked in among the other twenty or so Happy Hour regulars and sipping his way through that evening’s boilermaker, when John had stormed in through the front door.
    â€œYou bastard!” the younger man muttered under his breath as he slid uninvited onto an empty stool next to Amos.
    Amos knew that John was hot-­tempered, and he was clearly spoiling for a fight—­something Amos preferred to avoid. He had come here hoping to talk things out rather than duking them out.
    He took a careful sip of his drink. “Good afternoon to you, too,” he responded calmly. “Care for a beer?”
    â€œI don’t want a beer from you. Or anything else, either. You keep telling me that Ava’s bad news, telling me she’s not good enough for me, but the first time my back is turned, you try getting her into the sack!”
    â€œThat what Ava told you?” Amos asked.
    â€œIt’s not just what she told me,” John declared, his voice rising. “It’s what happened.”
    â€œWhat if I told you Ava was a liar?”
    â€œIn that case, how about we step outside so I can beat the crap out of you?”
    Looking in the mirror behind the bar, Amos saw the reflection of John as he was now—­a beefy man four inches taller than Amos, thirty pounds heavier, and three decades younger with a well-­deserved reputation as a brawler and an equally well deserved moniker, Big Bad John. Amos’s problem was that, at the same time he saw that image, he was remembering another one as well—­one of a much younger kid, freckle-­faced and missing his two front teeth. That was how John—­Johnny back then—­had looked when Amos had first laid eyes on him.
    Amos knew that in a fair fight between them, outside the bar, he wouldn’t stand a chance; he’d be dog meat. The younger man might not have been tougher, but he was younger and taller. By the time a fight was over, most likely the cops would be called. One or the other of them, or maybe both, would be hauled off to jail and charged with assault. Amos had already done time, and he didn’t want anything like that to happen to John. That in a nutshell took the fair-­fight option off the table. What Amos needed was a one-­, two-­punch effort that put a stop to the whole affair before it had a chance to get started.
    As the quarrel escalated, tension crept like a thick fog throughout the room, and the rest of the bar went dead quiet.
    â€œI don’t want to fight you, kid,” Amos said in a conciliatory tone while calmly pushing his stool away from the bar. No one noticed how he carefully slipped his right hand into the hip pocket of his worn jeans, and no one saw the same hand ease back out into the open again with something clenched in his fist. “Come on, son” he added. “Take a load off, sit down, and have a beer.”
    â€œI am not your son!” John growled as he started to get to his feet. “I never was, and I’m not having a beer with you, either, you son of a bitch. We’re done, Amos. It’s over. Get some other poor