Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) Read Free Page B

aunt in Wisconsin gave Gun what he thought was a better option. She opened those big farmhouse doors for the poor motherless Mazy, and he shoved her right through, insisting to the last that this was the responsi ble thing to do. Mazy had ignored the practical, fluttering aunt and said to Gun as he left her, Don’t call it responsible. Call it desertion.
    Mazy was usually right. It was a troublesome thing.
    Now she sat in her dented MG, half frowning at him behind green aviator-style sunglasses. Her thick red- blond hair was chopped off straight at the jawline and her full wide lips were the same shape as her mother’s had been, only set harder. She wore a blue chambray work shirt, collar open at the neck, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and the sun was lighting up the silvery hair on her forearms. It stood straight out from her tanned skin, as though electrified.
    “You’re even starting to look like a journalist,” Gun said. “Here for an interview?”
    His daughter looked off toward the water. Not a single muscle moved in her face. “If I were here for an interview, you wouldn’t be grinning down at me like that.”
    “Guess you’re right.”
    “Burger’s got a few good stories about you. Sports- writer’s nightmare, the way he tells it. ‘Forget the crowbar and you’d never get his mouth open.’”
    Gun laughed, but Mazy’s smile was humorless. And he couldn’t tell what her eyes were doing behind those green glasses. “I’ll tell him hello for you,” she said.
    “You do that.”
    Mazy was twenty-five, and Gun had seen little of her since she turned eighteen. She had gone off to a college in Oregon, then worked for a newspaper in Portland for a couple years before taking the Tribune job in Minneapolis. It was good to have her back in the state, but the truth was, she didn’t come up to see him very often. Not that he blamed her.
    He leaned against the car and took a good lungful of
    fresh air, tapped a little rhythm on the tight canvas top of the convertible. When the clench in his chest had loosened enough he said, “Come in for breakfast. I’ll take my shower and then we can fry up some eggs and bacon. Got some of that good stuff from Harold at the locker. How about it?”
    “You know what I’m here about, Dad ...”
    “Oh, come on.” He yanked opened her door and offered a hand, held the other behind his back in a gesture of mock courtesy. Groaning, she took hold of his fingers. He pulled her to her feet. “That’s my girl.”
    “God,” groaned Mazy.
    Showering, he pictured his daughter moving about in the bright pine kitchen, cracking eggs and brewing coffee, setting the table with Amanda’s old china. He knew perfectly well why she was here. In fact he was surprised she hadn’t come sooner.
    Already six months had gone by since Gun had signed his property over to Mazy—all four hundred acres of it, including a quarter-mile of prime lake- shore. At the time Loon Country had been little more than a rumor. Still, the phone calls from Lyle Hedman and Tig Larson, the county commissioner, made Gun angry. He’d asked himself, What’s a clean, simple way of staying out of things? What do you have to do to make people leave you the hell alone, once and for all? The answer came back. The best thing to do is, you leave.
    He told his daughter he wanted to beat the state’s inheritance laws. If he should happen to die before his time, she shouldn’t have to spend years in the purga tory of probate courts. That’s what he told her. Reluctantly, she agreed to go along with the idea. She didn’t know about Loon Country yet, or not much.
    Gun had his lawyer fix it all up. Mazy got the land
    for a lot less than market value, and Gun financed the sale himself. Nothing to it—except from the begin ning he knew that sooner or later Mazy would figure out what he was up to.
    Now the time had come, and she had one more thing to hold against him.

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    He walked barefoot into the kitchen, making wet