Read Online Atonement by Michael Kerr - Free Book Online Page B

people, and had just done that with the smug deputy who was wearing shades on an overcast day.
    A low growl came from the pickup next to where Logan was standing.  He glanced through the passenger window of the cab to be met by the intimidating gaze of a critter that he supposed was a dog but looked more like a small mutant-faced grizzly.
    “That’s my pal, Bama,”  Larry said.  “I don’t think he likes you.”
    “Well, Bama,”  Logan said through glass that the dog’s breath was beginning to mist up. “I don’t think I like you either, or Shades here.”
    “You’ve got a real bad attitude, Logan,”  Larry said.  “I don’t hold with what you did to Carl and the others.”
    Logan gave the other man a cold smile.  “Carl’s mistake was coming at me a little short-handed, Horton.  He underestimated who he was going up against and paid for it.”
    “Tough guy, eh?”  Larry said.
    Logan mulled that over for a couple of seconds before saying, “Yeah.”  He then shouldered Larry aside and carried on walking.
    “You’ll regret that,”  Larry called after him.  And he meant it.  As far as he was concerned the ex-cop was a potential threat to him.  And he knew just the right person to contact to make Logan go away, permanently.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    Sunday morning was bitterly cold.  But the sky was clear with just a few smudged white lines of jet contrails tracking across it, which Logan thought were mainly from flights into and out of DIA; Denver International Airport.  Flying was his least favorite mode of travel.  Packed into a steel tube with wings at thirty plus thousand feet was not his idea of a fun way to move around the country.
    He had bought a heavy insulated parka, a thick pair of snow pants, walking boots, some new socks, underwear and a couple of plaid shirts from the general store before running into Larry Horton the day before.  And now he was sitting outside his room again, suitably attired and drinking coffee.  He planned on a walk into the Creek and a big breakfast at the Steamboat Diner.  After that he would make his way west out of town and loop through a part of the Pike National Forest, to see more of it than he had so far during his stay in this beautiful part of the state.
    Clearing his mind of the Foster case, Logan enjoyed the invigorating stroll, and was famished and ready for what Amy called her Sunday morning special. After eating it, he set off without a care in the world.  He had learned in the Corps to live in the here and now, and to put all problems on hold when you needed to.  That had got him through tough times, serving him well throughout his police career, and all the tension that burned a lot of cops out, or even ended up with them eating their guns.  You had to be able to keep things separate, disassociate when necessary and not let that bitch called life grind you down too much as you passed through it.
    Kate Donner came to mind as he walked along a wide woodchip-carpeted trail through the forest.  He liked her a lot.  She exuded a certain degree of melancholy, which he reckoned was due to something major that she had experienced and not been able to dispel, but was coping with in her own way.  She didn’t seem to fit in Carson Creek, so was probably an outsider like him.  She seemed more of a big city girl, who’d uprooted and started afresh.  But why?
    Entering a large clearing that was a designated picnic area with rustic tables, Logan sat down on a bench for a spell and absorbed the great outdoors.  Being in such a tranquil spot caused him to think of all the large cities that spread like morbid growths all over the planet.  The majority of the masses were trapped in an environment that he had been fortunate enough to walk away from.  Way back, he had visited Shanghai in China, to be totally overawed by the teeming multitude that was now approaching eighteen million in number.  Up till then he had thought that New York was big.