Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) Blake Banner (read out loud books txt) 📖

I parked near the gate, where I couldn’t be blocked in, and where it would be easy to get out in a hurry if we needed to. Dehan gave my hair a last ruffle and we climbed out into the icy night air.

We pushed through the old wooden door into a surprisingly large, crowded room. There was no hush as we stepped in. They didn’t all go quiet and turn to look at us with suspicious eyes. They ignored us completely.

On the far right, there was a large, stone, open fire built up with big logs. It was burning well, casting an agreeable, flickering glow, and the room was warm. There were maybe fifteen tables scattered around the floor, and most of them were occupied. On the left, opposite the fire, there was a long bar with two men behind it, serving drinks to half a dozen guys leaning on the counter. At a couple of tables in the corner, by the fire, I counted six men in biker’s leathers. They were all either bald or had very long hair. A couple of them had forked beards. On their jackets they bore the emblem of the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels.

Just about everybody else looked like your stereotypical off-grid hippie, in used jeans, nondescript shirts, and long hair. About the only thing to distinguish the men from the women was that most of the women didn’t have beards, and most of the men didn’t have breasts. Most.

The only people who stood out from the crowd were two guys who were sitting with the Angels in the corner. If they’d been in a club in the Bronx I wouldn’t even have noticed them. Here they stood out like nuns at a clip joint. One of them looked like Ray Charles, black glasses and all. He laughed a lot and held a cigarette in his left hand in a way that told you he was never without it.

Next to him was a Latino in his mid or late thirties. He had pale blue eyes you could see clean across the room, and a scar down his left cheek that twisted his mouth and made it look as though everything he looked at he found nauseating.

I saw all this in the time it takes to close a door. Then Dehan was clinging to my arm and leaning on me and saying, “Stop staring, laugh and buy me a drink.”

She laughed to illustrate her point and pulled me toward the bar. We found a vacant spot and one of the barmen approached us, smiling.

“Hey! New faces. Good to see, man. I’m Saul.” He held out his hand and we shook. He didn’t sound like a cowboy. He was east coast.

I took his hand. “I’m John.”

“Carmen. I love this place!”

He laughed. “Cute, huh? What can I get you?”

“Couple of beers.” He went away to get them from the fridge and I looked at Dehan. “Not what I expected.”

She nodded. “We need to talk to the guys in the corner.”

Saul came back with our drinks. “You need glasses?”

I shook my head and grinned at him. “You’re from back east, right?”

He laughed. “Same as you, pal. New York.” He grabbed a cloth and gave the bar a wipe. He looked ready to chat for a bit.

“How’d you wind up here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He made a face like acquired wisdom and laughed. “Senior year at NYU, law. And one morning I woke up, literally. You know what I’m saying? And I made a long movie in my head, about where the law was taking me. The firm, the two cars, the mortgage, the wife, the affairs—the whole damned script had been written for me by The System before I was even born.” He shook his head. Then he laughed and shrugged. “Only I didn’t want to be a part of that movie. So I upset my mom and my dad, borrowed some money from the bank against my inheritance and bought this place. And that’s my story.”

Dehan looked at him with wonder in her eyes. For a moment I asked myself if it was an act or genuine. “Wow, that is so cool.”

“Anyone can do it, sister. Happiness is a choice, right? How about you guys, what are you doing up here?”

Before I could answer Dehan grabbed my arm with both of hers and leaned her head on my shoulder. “We are kind of doing something similar, right, honey? We’re making a long movie. We want to get out of the race, and we’re looking at cool places. We don’t want to go totally off grid, but we want to be somewhere where you can see the stars at night, and maybe grow some weed without The Man watching you. Know what I mean?” She managed to say it all and sound authentic. He nodded. “So we were thinking of Arizona. But we met this chick and she said, ‘Go to Colorado.’ And she told us about the Shack.”

His face lit up. “No kidding? What’s her name?”

She rested her chin on my shoulder a couple of inches from my face and gazed adoringly into my eyes. “What was her name, John?”

I sighed, like I was thinking, “Uh, Pat.”

He frowned. “Oh, Irish kid?”

I made a face. “Yeah, she could be Irish.”

He nodded. “I remember her. She used to hang out here with a big cowboy type. Haven’t seen either of them for a while.” He nodded over at Ray Charles. “Sly and Coy knew her. She was part of their crowd.”

Dehan laughed. “Sly and Coy?”

He chuckled. “Sylvester is the blind black guy. Coy says he’s Mexican and back home they called him El Coyote on account of how badass he was. But