The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) Read Online Free Page A

he wanted to do and damn what anyone else had to say. You give someone like that an inch and chances are they’ll end up taking a mile.
    Lester couldn’t have that.
    He was about to go over to have a word with him when one of the agents, the male one—Wilson? Carson?—came over and took the seat to Lester’s right.
    “Evening, Sheriff.”
    He sipped his beer and looked at him with wary regard. “Evening.”
    “Just thought I’d let you know that we’re leaving in the morning.”
    It was Clayton, he remembered. Special Agent Orville Clayton. Older, moustache that was greying a little around the edges, could stand with losing a few pounds here and there. “You had enough?”
    “We’ve done all we can.”
    “You finally agree those boys aren’t here, then?”
    “It doesn’t look like it.”
    “I won’t say I told you so.”
    “We get a tip, Sheriff, we have to check it out.”
    Lester looked over his shoulder. Milton had taken a stool in the area of the bar that was reserved for those who wanted something to eat and the waitress, a pretty thing called Clementine, was taking his order.
    “I got to say something before we clear out,” the agent was saying.
    “Yeah? And what’s that?”
    “We never really felt all that comfortable up here, Sheriff. Seemed to us, to both of us, that you weren’t all that pleased to have us around.”
    Lester took his eyes off Milton for a moment and, after finishing a sip from his beer, said, “Well, that’s because you didn’t listen to me when I said you were wasting your time. I don’t have a beef with you or your friend over there, but the way I see it, the way my men see it, too, the federal government getting involved in something like this is a waste of everyone’s time. If those boys were hiding out in the hills like you seemed to think they were, well, we’d have found them. We could have saved ourselves a whole lot of time and energy if you people had listened to me right from the outset.”
    “That may be, but the bottom line as far as I’m concerned is we’re all on the same team. I think it’d do you well to remember that.”
    Lester rolled his eyes. Jeez, the attitude on this prick. It would do him well to remember? He was half tempted to give the man a piece of his mind, unvarnished, but he fought against it. What was the point? Him and his pretty sidekick would get into that shiny car that had cost fifty grand of his tax dollars and scoot back down to the city tomorrow and that would be that. What would it achieve?
    Nothing, that’s what.
    It wouldn’t achieve a damned thing.
    But it didn’t do anything for Lester’s mood and, as he turned his attention back to Milton, he felt like he would have to do something tonight to help people remember that, around these parts at least, Lester was in charge. That boy, dumb enough to ignore his clear and reasonable instructions, he was going to find that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong lawman.
     
    MILTON KEPT his eyes off the bottles behind the bar as he ordered a steak and fries and took his orange juice over to the spare table in the eating area. He had seen the sheriff, and he knew that the sheriff had seen him, too. He wondered whether it might not be more prudent to turn around and find somewhere else. He wasn’t in the business of causing unnecessary trouble for himself. Indeed, for most of the recent past he had done everything that he could to stay off the grid: no fixed abode, no records, no credit cards. The risk to his safety had been mitigated by the death of Control and his replacement by Michael Pope as the new head of Group Fifteen, but old habits died hard, and Milton had made a successful career in operating beneath the surface. Antagonising the sheriff had all the hallmarks of being a really dumb move. A man like that, so obviously plumped up with the sense of his own authority, wouldn’t take very well to the feeling that Milton was thumbing his nose at him.