Read Online Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1) by James L. Weaver, Kate Foster - Free Book Online

don’t like it, I can hop in the truck and head back to Kansas City.”
    “No, don’t do that. I just meant…” She trailed off, her lip quivering.
    “I know what you meant,” Jake sighed. He sat next to her on the couch and placed his arm across her bony shoulders. No sense in being a dick to her. “It’s the right thing to do.”
    Tears brimmed in her eyes. She wiped them with the palms of her hands. “You going now?”
    He nodded. Though the appointment wasn’t for another two hours and the drive north to Sedalia took forty minutes, he wanted to get the hell out of the house. Maybe go sniff around Langston’s dealership.
    “I’m gonna check on him,” she said. “Call me when you find out something.”
    She shuffled to the master bedroom. Jake slipped on his shoes, grabbed his wallet and keys from the coffee table, and darted from the house before she opened the bedroom door and let the smell of death touch him again.
     
                                                            #
     
    Jake drove to Warsaw in silence, snapping off the radio when he started the truck. The thick morning air produced a light fog that rose off the highway and swirled behind the truck. He noticed he’d put the ring back on some time in the night. He removed it, setting it in the spare change cup under the dash and spent the ten minute drive over the winding and dipping roads thinking about the last of his stash and how big of a chunk this would likely take out of it. Would Keats really give him a fade into the sunset bounty if he took this Shane character down?
    He pulled off Highway 65 and headed toward downtown Warsaw, wanting to grab a cup of coffee at Casey’s before continuing to Sedalia. Traffic was scarce, only a handful of locals in pickups and jalopies passed by on the two lane road, until the unmistakable whoop of a siren and flashing blues and reds in his rearview mirror. Jake cursed under his breath and moved to the side of the almost non-existent shoulder.
    The cop waited in his car for a minute, likely running his plates, leaving Jake to sweat out whatever caused him to get pulled over. The cop grabbed the roof, yanking his massive frame out of the car, and sauntered to Jake’s truck, his hand resting on the butt of his service pistol. Jake kept his hands on the wheel in plain view.
    “You rolled that stop sign, boy,” the cop said as he swaggered to the window. Hanging jowls obscured by a neatly trimmed black beard, his brawny frame stretching the seams of his uniform. Jake's image reflected in the cop's mirrored sunglasses.
    “The hell I did,” Jake replied, matter-of-factly. “You need to get a prescription for those cheap-ass sunglasses. You steal those from the Dollar Store?”
    The cop dragged his top lip over his teeth and sucked in a deep breath.
    “You got a bad attitude, boy. That kinda talk is gonna get you in a heap of trouble around these parts.”
    “Heap of trouble around these parts? What is this? Fucking Hee Haw? Better having a wrong attitude than being a fat-ass cop in some piss-ant Ozark town.”
    The cop glanced up and down the road, probably checking for potential witnesses, grabbed the door handle, opened the truck door, and stepped back.
    “You better get your ass out of the truck. Somebody needs to teach you some manners.”
    Jake swung his legs out, stretching his muscular frame as tall as he could. He rested his big hands on his hips and puffed his chest.
    “You gonna teach me manners, fat boy?”
    The cop feigned a punch to the head that Jake ducked. He dropped his hands and scooped his thick arms through Jake’s arm pits and squeezed him in a bear hug. He started laughing. Jake clapped the man on his back and joined in as the cop twirled him around.
    James “Bear” Parley held his old friend tight for a moment then set Jake back on the ground. His brown eyes twinkled as he removed his sunglasses. He gripped Jake by the