Guns [John Hardin 01] Read Online Free Page A

yanked out two of his chest hairs and rolled over to put her back to him.
    He started the Toyota and rattled around the harbor toward the Ocracoke General Store to get the Salems for her and two or three of those big Butterfingers for himself. He knew from last night that she wasn’t a real blonde. He would bet one of his inevitable Pulitzers that Samantha Blackstone wasn’t her given name, either.
    Inside the dim, dusty, and cluttered general store an attractive young black woman with intricately braided and silver-beaded hair was behind the old-fashioned mechanical cash register, talking to an older couple who looked like island natives.
    “The boat sank not long after they got the Stilleys off,” the young woman said.
    Ira’s antennae bristled like those of a just-launched satellite.
    “Mrs. Stilley is okay,” the young woman said. “Mr. Stilley’s pretty badly hurt but stable, they say. This wind is letting up some so they’re going to send a medical helicopter to fly him over to Pitt Memorial in Greenville. The motor lifeboat is supposed to dock any time now. It’s been pretty rough out there.”
    “Good thing they found them fast enough,” the man said.
    “Sam Bass really found them,” the young woman said. “He heard about them early this morning and he flew out there in that little Cessna of his and found them almost right away.”
    “Excuse me,” Ira said. “I’m Ira Cohn with the Raleigh
Sentinel.
Are you saying somebody flew a light plane offshore in this storm?”
    “Hello,” the young woman said pleasantly. “I’m Danielle. Yes. Sam Bass. He’s a friend of the Stilleys’. That’s his flyer right there in the brochure rack, there on the top left. My boyfriend Melvin Stanton is in the Coast Guard. He runs the Ocracoke Station. I just got off the phone with him.”
    Ira picked up one of the rack cards. It was cheaply done in dark blue ink on white stock, with a muddy blue aerial photo of Ocracoke Village. It said Sightseeing Flights across the top and below the photo said Reasonably Priced and Safe Air Charters Anywhere, with the pilot’s name, phone, and beeper numbers, and an Ocracoke address. Ira thought the name Sam Bass was somehow familiar.
    Ira always carried his very expensive Nikon F4 in its Tamron bag on the floor in the back seat of his Toyota, where it was always close to hand, amid the discarded Coke cans and burger wrappers. He had a white towel over it to keep it cool and hide it from any nocturnal cruising powdery-nosed camera buffs. The bag also contained polished wide-angle and telephoto lenses, a powerful flash, a small Sony tape recorder, and a thick six-by-nine notebook.
    “Do you think Melvin would let me interview him if I went over there now?” Ira said.
    “Oh, sure,” Danielle said, smiling. “In fact I’ll call and let him know you’re on your way. Mr. Bass is over there, too.”
    “Thank you, Danielle.”
    He was halfway out the door when she said, “Did you want to buy something, Mr. Cohn?”
    “No, thanks. I was after a pack of Salems but the lady who wants them ought to quit anyway.”
    As he was rattling back around the harbor at speed he was thinking
find out the exact weather numbers from earlier today, get the model number and specs on the light plane, find out if the Stilleys are anybody and what kind of boat they had, what they were doing out there. If he’s conscious grab a quote from him before they chopper him off to the hospital. Talk to her, talk to the boat crew, maybe get an aw shucks quote from this idiot Bass—hey, why couldn’t the Coast Guard have done the aerial search? Get a few shots of her giving Bass a big hug…
    Melvin Stanton met him at the door of the small station quarters carrying a thick coffee mug in one hand. Ira had his camera bag slung from his shoulder. They shook hands and Stanton led him down a hallway. The quarters were immaculate, with vinyl floors waxed to high gloss. The door to a radio room was open, a