The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set Ernest Dempsey (top 10 books of all time txt) 📖

check on his other remaining table, then he paused, and shifted closer, hovering over the edge of Dak's nearly empty plate. "You asked me who the sheriff answers to."

Dak neither confirmed nor denied. He merely answered with a blank stare.

"Before… he didn't answer to anyone. Then Tyler Mumford showed up. Thick as thieves, those two. If I didn't know better—and you didn't hear this from me—I'd say the sheriff is in Mr. Mumford's back pocket."

Dak inclined his head and gave an understanding nod. "Thanks, Merrick. Go check on those other people. I have a feeling they don't want to hang around much longer."

The young server hurried away while Dak kept a close watch on the booth at the other end of the room and the three hoodlums who occupied it.

Six

Cuchara

Dak sat at the table for the next three hours, only getting up now and then to go to the restroom. Merrick continued to do as requested, dropping off a beer every twenty minutes or so to keep up appearances.

The troublemakers at the booth hung around for a little over two hours before paying their bill—albeit with demands that they be given the meal and drinks on the house.

When they were gone, Dak gave it another thirty minutes before he decided to get up and leave as well.

When Merrick came around, Dak thanked him and slid a second hundred across the table. "I appreciate you letting me hang here," he said.

"Not a problem at all, man," Merrick stuttered. "But I thought you were going to stay till closing."

Dak looked around the room and twitched his left shoulder in a shrug. "Looks like things are dying down now. Think I'll head on back to the cabin and get some rest."

"All right. Well, thanks again. You get home safe."

"Will do."

Dak ambled slowly toward the door, eyes sweeping the room for the hundredth time to make sure he wasn't missing anything, or anyone. Once outside, he padded down the steps, wary that ice could have formed during the time he'd been inside. At the bottom, he zipped up his coat and exhaled into the chilly night air.

His gaze drifted up toward the sky. Stars speckled the black canvas above like diamonds in a tar field. The only light pollution keeping it from being a pristine view came from the lights in the parking lot and the one over the porch at the entrance. The other shops across the street were closed and their lights dimmed for the evening.

Dak longed for a few minutes in the cabin hot tub even more, but noticed something out of the corner of his left eye that told him he'd get no such luxury tonight—at least not soon.

A black Ford Explorer sat across the parking lot under a collection of four pine trees. Dak only allowed his vision to pan across the vehicle so the occupants wouldn't think he'd noticed. But he did.

The silhouettes of the three men inside the SUV stood out against the clear moonlight in the valley behind them. Their faces remained shrouded in shadows, but Dak could feel their vapid gaze fixed on the entrance to the bar, perhaps only momentarily flashing at him as the lone point of change in their view.

Dak knew they were there before he saw their outlines. It was why he'd decided to hang around for the last three plus hours. He'd seen it before. Pretty young woman gets hit on by the village idiots, then they wait to harass her when she gets off work because she denied their advances.

Harassment would be the mildest version of how it could go down. He hoped that's all it would be.

Dak continued shuffling toward his car, swerving a little in one direction and the other to make it appear he might be a little too buzzed to drive home. If Tripp and his two friends were paying attention, they'd deem Dak a harmless drunk and continue watching the bar's front door.

He fumbled with his keys when he arrived at the driver's side door and then made a show of inserting it in the keyhole, then dropping the keys to the ground. As he bent down to pick them up, he peered through the windows of the Isuzu and noted the men's forms shaking a little. In the utter silence of the Rocky Mountains, Dak thought he could even hear a little laughter.

Perfect, he thought. They were paying attention to him and now making fun of his perceived drunken state.

Dak managed to unlock the SUV on the second try and climbed in, then slumped back in the seat and used the button on the side to decline it toward the rear.

He imagined Tripp's crew believed him to be getting ready to sleep off a tough night of drinking in the parking lot. That was the goal, though it was possible they weren't that gullible.

Dak allowed enough space for his eyes to see over the edge of the window toward the bar's porch so he would know when the next person left.

Thirty minutes went by and no one from the Explorer came over to pester him. They clearly had one goal in mind for the night. And Tanya was the target.

Dak wondered where her husband could be, why he wouldn't be sitting here in the parking lot to wait for her shift to end. He'd overheard that the man was a deputy in the local police force. Had Tanya not called her husband? Maybe she wasn't concerned about the earlier altercation.

That had to be it.

Civilians—most anyway—didn't think about things like that. They weren't always on alert like Dak, perpetually considering every ripple along the water's surface from the slightest disturbance.

He didn't want to call it naivety, but he knew that was the right word. It was why he was sitting there in his Isuzu, waiting for the building to clear out. A side door opened and Merrick stepped out of the building with the bartender. They each went to their respective cars, a white Subaru Outback