Jack Stone - Wild Justice Read Online Free PDF

gentle rise, and in the distance, Jack Stone finally got his first glimpse of the township of Windswept.
    They were still a couple of miles out, so his first impression was of a low, dark smudge crouched and silent and insignificant within the vast wasteland of surrounding dry desert. The smudge had shape, but not definition. He could see dull light glinting off rooftops set against the brilliant oranges and reds and mauves of a spectacular sunset. But not even nature’s breathtaking light-show could make the town look pretty.
    Lilley switched on the Chevy’s headlights.
    “Welcome to Windswept,” she said. “Sorry, we normally have a marching band and parade to welcome visitors.” Another smile, this one making her eyes sparkle.
    “That’s o kay,” Stone said. “I got a taste of the local welcoming committee back at the diner.”
    Lilley made a face and waved her hand in dismissal. The car veered again, then came back to the right side of the road. “That was just Larry and Marv. They’re well meaning boys. They take their jobs as deputies very seriously.”
    Stone grunted. “I noticed,” he said. “I take everyone who points a shotgun at me seriously.”
    Another brief silence. They were coming closer to town. Structures quickly took on shape and size, but not color. Everything looked drab and brown. The outlying buildings were brick blocks, single story: factory-type buildings behind high chain wire fences. Scraggly tufts of dry weed grew between the cracked pavements and around the locked gates. There were no lights. Everything seemed dark and deserted.
    “The brick factory closed down back in the 80’s,” she said as they entered the outskirts of town. They cruised past a roadside sign that was just the same as the one Stone had seen back at the turnoff. Same lettering, same shape, just without the ‘3-mile’ indicator. “That was before my time,” she added. “The cement works closed about a decade ago.”
    Stone frowned. “So what do people do for work around these parts?” he asked. “What keeps Windswept from disappearing off the map and becoming a ghost town?”
    Lilley thought about that as she shifted gears, slowing down as they approached a T-intersection. “We’re stubborn,” she said at last, not because it was necessarily the right answer, but because it was the only answer she could come up with. Stone suspected the truth was that there was no good answer, and no good reason for Windswept to exist. He guessed there were struggling towns like this one right across Arizona and beyond.
    “A lot of the locals work in tourism. I know quite a few folks who commute to Phoenix – and there’s talk of the cement works re-opening.” She shrugged, crawled through the intersection, and then picked up speed again.
    The town began to take on more detail. At the next intersection Lilley braked and slipped the car out of gear. The big engine gurgled and hissed and rattled as it sat there idling. Stone glanced out the passenger window and saw a sign on a pole that told him they were driving down Main Street. Across the intersection he could see a row of low red brick buildings on both sides of the road with big shop front windows. They all looked the same; only the signage for each one seemed different. There were streetlights here so he could read the signs out front of each store, and a cluster of park benches spaced along the footpaths.
    Lilley pointed. “The police station is a hundred yards further on,” she said, like she thought it was important Stone knew. Then she clunked the Chevy back into gear and turned left, cruising slowly along a dark quiet street that had cars parked in front of old houses with wide verandas. “This is West Street,” Lilley said. “My place is just up ahead.”
    She pulled up outside an old weather-worn timber shack that had probably once been charming, but now just looked tired and beaten down by fifty years of summer and dust. The paint was peeling and