The Highway (Highway Quartet #2) QUOTES

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

2 " Her nightmares came from what she saw and experienced when the door had opened to reveal evil and violence that until that trip had been closed to her. Now she knew what some people—despite their manner and packaging—were capable of. It still shook her to her core. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

3 " For the next few minutes, time stood still and Cassie was transported into a real-life version of hell. Even as she watched it, she knew she’d never be able to scrub the images from her mind for the rest of her life. She had to remind herself to breathe. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

4 " It came in horrible flashes, and Cassie found herself fast-forwarding, getting the gist but not dwelling a second longer than necessary on the actual details. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

5 " That morning, inside the cabin below, they’d found the body of Roger Tokely, fifty-eight, slouched forward in a straight-back chair, head bent, as if examining something on the floor between his feet. His beer belly prevented the body from falling forward to the floor. He faced a big-screen television mounted on the eastern wall in front of him. His arms hung on either side of his body, palms out. He wore baggy gray sweatpants and a yellow T-shirt. His feet were bare and swelled grotesquely, the thick toes looking like stubby purple Vienna sausages. There was a large pool of blood on the floor beneath Tokely’s chair. Cody guessed it was thirty inches across. The outside four inches of the pool was clear and the inside was dark and oval-shaped. Next to the pool on the right side of the body was a stainless-steel revolver. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

6 " Cassie felt as disgusted and abused and as horrified as the murdered missing girl as she removed the headphones, closed her eyes, and croaked, “Holy Mother of God. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

7 " HE CALLED HIMSELF THE LIZARD King. The prostitutes known as lot lizards feared him. More precisely, they feared his legend, the idea of him. None of them who’d ever seen his face up close lived to describe it. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

8 " HE CALLED HIMSELF THE LIZARD King. The prostitutes known as lot lizards feared him. More precisely, they feared his legend, the idea of him. None of them who’d ever seen his face up close lived to describe it. He was parked in the back row of trucks with his diesel engine idling, his running lights muted, his hair slicked back, and a bundle of tools on the floorboard on the right side of his seat within easy reach. He was hunting but there was no need to go after his prey. The lot lizards would come to him. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

9 " From his high perch in the dry and warm cab, his sight lines were clear. The truck plaza itself was filled with activity and he noted it carefully. Vehicles entered and exited the long banks of fuel pumps in front of the garish low-slung building a hundred yards away. Professional truckers filled 150-gallon aluminum tanks with diesel fuel on one side of the lot, passenger cars and vans filled up with gasoline on the other. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

10 " Cassie tried to make her voice professional, to jolt Jenny out of her pique. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

11 " The act is unjustifiable that either begs for a blessing, or, having succeeded, gives no thanksgiving. —Francis Quarles "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

12 " Hold still, you little bitch,” he croaked and she saw him for the first time—huge, rough, flushed, fleshy—lips curled back to reveal crooked yellow doglike teeth, fresh blood from his forehead or scalp coursing down—and got a glimpse of the electrical device he had poised over her face and plunged into her neck. The sensation was sudden and massive and debilitating. She no longer had control of her body, which stiffened, and she had an image of lightninglike electricity firing out from the tips of her fingers and toes. Every muscle and sinew seemed fused together with steel and she felt welded into a single mass of flesh. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

13 " But she was still conscious. She had no concept of time or motion, but she could hear the sound of his boots scraping gravel outside the car. And she could feel the sharp prick of a needle through the fabric of her jeans into her inner thigh. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

14 " Then there was his dad. He wouldn’t be as emotional or judgmental about the situation. After all, he’d saved all their lives. But his dad was at best unpredictable. When Cody Hoyt had his fuse lit, anything could happen. Justin wasn’t sure he wanted to be the one holding the match. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

15 " Out of habit, Pergram checked traffic ahead and behind him on the highway—there was none—before slowing and taking an unmarked two-track that wound through high sagebrush toward the mountains. Tiny pellets of snow rattled across the hood of the car and against his driver’s side window. Twisted fingers of forsaken lone sage scraped the undercarriage of the Riviera as he drove. The old road took him through a narrow stand of old mountain ash trees and down a switchback slope. He crossed an ancient bridge constructed of railroad ties that sagged over a creek. Every time he drove the tractor over it he expected it to cave in, but it never did. The trees cleared and he topped a rise and the old Schweitzer place was laid out in front of him. It wasn’t really a ranch because it had too few acres—maybe a thousand acres—to feed enough cows to make a go of it, he’d heard. But when crazy old man Schweitzer bought it in the early 1950s, ranching wasn’t his main priority. His thought then was to find a location that would withstand a nuclear war with the Soviet Union or Red China. That’s why he chose acreage with high mountains on all four sides far away from any population center that might be a target. That’s why he built the bunker beneath his house with three-foot reinforced concrete walls and ceiling. It wouldn’t withstand a direct hit, but humans inside could conceivably live through just about anything else. The air-filtration system was on its last legs but it still worked. They’d know when it failed when they found asphyxiated dead bodies inside. So far, though … "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

16 " The problem with people your age,” he said, “is you never understood the difference between thinking and feeling, and to you feeling is more important, which is bullshit. You felt like you were doing the right thing, so you did it. You felt that it was probably okay to screw your partner because your boss told you to do it. You felt like all you needed to do was come in here tonight and I’d see how genuine your all-important feelings truly are and I’d say, ‘It’s okay, Cassie. You meant well. All is forgiven, Cassie. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

17 " As the bartender delivered drinks to everyone, Cassie said, “I was asking you how you knew all this about the sheriff.” “You were?” “Yes.” He held her eyes with his, and he smirked. “Have you ever met Dixie Tubman?” he asked. “The sheriff’s wife?” He tilted his head and grinned. It was an unfamiliar man-to-man gesture that unnerved her. “Before Jenny came back I catted around a little,” he said, still smirking. “Dixie gets kind of lonely in that big house all by herself when Tubman is away giving speeches or politicking.” “You slept with the sheriff’s wife?” she said, raising her voice. Someone had fed the jukebox and the guitar intro to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps” was playing. “I fulfilled a need.” Cody winked. “Didn’t do much actual sleeping. Damn, I always liked that song. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

18 " Then to her: “Don’t get me wrong. I admire your guts coming here tonight. That shows me something. But I’ve got a question for you.” “What?” “Who is going to protect these people now?” he asked. “You?” He said it with incredulity. She felt her face flush hot again, and she sipped the glass of wine for something to do. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

19 " There was a small white house on the valley floor. Next to it was Legerski’s cruiser and Jimmy’s Jeep Wagoneer. He parked next to Jimmy’s Jeep and climbed out of the Buick with the ammo cans from the seat. But instead of walking toward the sagging front door of the house he went to the side where there was a thick concrete abutment emerging from the ground. He leaned over and grasped the steel handle of the door and pulled. It was unlocked. As he went down the wide stairs, his rage suddenly morphed into absolute calm and he became the Lizard King without even willing it to happen. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)

20 " Cody sat in embarrassed silence although his heart was racing and the comforting buzz of alcohol coursed through his blood stream. Home was a beige two-story ranch with a double garage, on a block lined with beige two-story homes in a new development on the north side of Helena. So new, that he could still see the seams of grass sod on the front lawns and all the cue-stick-sized tree trunks were secured with wires to T-posts so the wind wouldn’t blow them away. Justin swung into his driveway and nearly kissed bumpers with Jenny’s car, missing it by inches. "

― C.J. Box , The Highway (Highway Quartet #2)