Read Online Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) by Charlaine Harris - Free Book Online Page B

novel in the moments between customers. Jack Reacher was his hero. Bobo sadly wished Jack Reacher were there with him now.
    Bobo was aware that he had relaxed into complacency, under the mistaken assumption that Aubrey’s disappearance was his crisis for the year. He had been foolish to believe there was a term limit on bad-shit-happening-to-Bobo-Winthrop.
    The import of the shorter man’s words sank into him. If there was anything in the world Bobo disliked more than being interrupted on a pleasant day, it was hearing his own history told back to him. He understood that he was in for another hard time—probably a beating—and he sighed. He put his mug in a safer place, and he prepared himself for what was surely to come.
    Bobo was a big man, and a fit one. He ran three times a week, and he did his martial arts warmups and katas every day. He didn’t actually enjoy hitting people, but he figured he was going to have to this evening. “I don’t know anything about my grandfather’s secrets, and I don’t believe in his racist, homophobic hogwash,” he told his unwelcome visitors. “You might as well shove off.” Bobo knew he was wasting his breath.
    “No,” said the shorter man. “I don’t think we will.”
    Predictable,
Bobo thought.
    “We need those rifles, and we need those explosives. I think we’re going to have to
talk
about this some more.” The short man sounded certain he could make Bobo talk. He produced a knife. It looked very sharp. “You need to change your attitude, or we’re going to have to change it for you.”
    “I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” said a new voice, and the two strangers tensed visibly, their eyes searching the shadowy depths of the pawnshop, the deep interior where the sun didn’t reach even during the day. From behind some shelves that held a memory lane of blenders, Olivia Charity appeared. Bobo’s face relaxed in a smile. It was two on two, now.
    When they saw a woman (a woman clad in a black bra and black bikini panties), the two men relaxed their vigilance, though Olivia was armed with a longbow, arrow nocked and ready. The taller man, the one with the trimmed mustache and beard, sneered, “You think you’re Robin Hood’s little girlfriend or something?” He pulled a gun with his right hand and seemed to feel that put him in charge of Bobo and Olivia.
    Olivia shot him.
    It was almost funny how surprised the taller man was when he saw the feathered shaft sticking out of his right shoulder. After a second of horrified astonishment, he screamed, and the gun clattered to the wooden floor from his useless right hand. His boss, the brown-haired man, dropped his own knife as insufficient. He pulled a pistol from under his jacket and fired at Olivia in a very smooth move.
    But she wasn’t there. Neither was Bobo, who’d moved into a shadow and crouched down the instant he’d heard the bow twang. The short man looked around, confused, trying to locate someone to shoot.
    Instead, there was a quick motion and a noise from the floor to the short man’s right, the motion and sound in such quick sequence they were almost simultaneous, and from a white blur that appeared by the short man’s side two hands reached out, seized the shorter man’s head, and twisted. There was a particularly nauseating meaty snap, and the short man folded onto the dusty floor. Bobo jumped up to see what had happened.
    “Jesus, Lem,” said Bobo, startled but not surprised. “That was pretty extreme.” Olivia rose from the floor with a groan, shaking her head; Lem had knocked her down as he sped past, and she’d hit the floor hard.
    The taller man, his sleeve soaked with blood, opened his mouth to scream again, but Lemuel was there before the sound could escape the man’s lips. He did not break the man’s neck. He clapped his hand over the man’s mouth.
    “Bobo,” Lem said, in his deep, antique voice, “I’m taking this one downstairs so’s I can ask him a few questions in