A Desperate Man

by Tia Fielding

  “Uh, Brody.”

  “Fuck.” Quinn let out a low whistle. “I guess all that getting high and playing CS really paid off, huh?”

  “I can hear you, asshole,” Brody said, loping out of the darkness. “You guys good?”

  Quinn inspected his arm. “Yeah. Aaron tagged me, but I’ll live. And speaking of getting tagged…” He rounded the cruiser again. “Jimmy? You gonna live?”

  Jimmy was clutching his injured arm, blood pumping out between his fingers.

  “You want me to call 911?” Brody asked. “Also, I really hope that badge you showed me was real, dude, because otherwise I got two dead guys to explain.”

  “I really am,” Quinn said. “And no, I reckon I can patch Jimmy up well enough, don’t you, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy stared at him, narrow-eyed.

  “And while I do,” Quinn said, “we’re going to have a little talk.”

  * * * *

  Quinn and Brody dealt with Jimmy. Aaron leaned against the police cruiser and stared at Uncle Will. Uncle Will was sitting down now, his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands still cuffed behind his back. He looked like the man Aaron had known, and trusted, his whole life. Aaron stared at him, waiting for his familiar mask to fall away and reveal something else underneath, but it was just Uncle Will. The same Uncle Will as always, and wasn’t that the kicker? Aaron had loved this man, considered him family, and invited him into his house.

  “Did you set my dad up?” he asked at last, his voice rasping.

  “Aaron, kiddo, come on.”

  “Did you set my dad up?” he asked again.

  Uncle Will smiled slightly. “Son, things work in Spruce Creek for a reason. It’s how the game is played. It’s how it’s always been played. Your dad didn’t understand that at all.”

  “So you told Robert MacGregor to kill him?”

  “No,” Uncle Will said firmly. He held Aaron’s gaze in the gloom. “I just gave things a little push, so that the opportunity presented itself to Robert.”

  Aaron didn’t even realize he had his Glock pointed at Will’s face until Quinn’s hand was on his shoulder.

  “Aaron?”

  Aaron drew a deep breath, feeling a cold, black rage settle deep in his gut.

  “You really want to do this?” Quinn asked quietly.

  Jesus. He did. He really did.

  “Since when were you the voice of the angel on my shoulder?” he asked, not taking his gaze off Will.

  “I’m not,” Quinn said, and Aaron could hear that reckless grin in his voice. “Just making sure it’s what you really want.”

  “He set my dad up.”

  “I know.”

  Aaron swallowed around the painful lump in his throat. He lowered the Glock, his hand shaking. “My dad was a good man.”

  “The best,” Quinn said. “Better than mine.”

  “He knew about us, and I never got the chance to tell him myself. I never got the chance for him to tell me it was okay.” That moment…Aaron had feared that moment, feared rejection, but he knew now, thanks to Quinn, that his dad would never have disappointed him like that. His dad would never have failed him, so why hadn’t Aaron had the courage to tell him? Why had he let his fear hold him back? Because he’d been a kid. Because he’d thought he had time.

  It was one of a thousand moments Will Henderson—he could no longer think of him as his uncle—had stolen from him. His dad seeing him maybe get married someday, maybe have a kid. It was hundreds of fishing trips and camping trips where they did nothing but hang out and talk. It was decades of Thanksgivings and Christmases and birthdays, all cut short because Will Henderson had sold Paul Larsen out. Sold him out, and destroyed the lives of his wife and son in the same moment.

  And then he’d had the audacity to pretend he was their friend.

  His anger blazed again, going from ice cold to burning heat in a moment.

  “Do you want to do this, Aaron?” Quinn asked again, his voice serious this time.

  Aaron stared down at Will Henderson.

  Did he really want to do this?

  He raised the Glock.

  Chapter 21

  Quinn’s forearm throbbed in an all too familiar way. The wound bled sluggishly now, as he bandaged Jimmy’s arm in lieu of taking care of his own.

  He needed to call all of this in, but it was hard to know who exactly to call in this situation. Definitely not the local cops, and nobody who had heard the shots would call them either. They knew better than to mess with MacGregor business, after all.

  Except…shit, he needed to text Charlie.

  “Brody? Text Charlie it’ll be a while longer and to wait for us,” Quinn told the apparent fucking sharp-shooter.

  “Sure.” Brody tapped away on an ancient looking Nokia phone.

  Quinn glanced at Jimmy’s arm. He was much worse off; Quinn was pretty sure the bullet had grazed the bone as it went through.

  “Do you have anything for the pain?” he asked, making Jimmy’s glazed-over gaze snap into his.

  “Coke,” Jimmy grunted, then shook his head, wincing. “But I don’t want it. Just…bandage it and I’ll live.”

  Quinn shrugged in a “suit yourself” way. He would’ve brought his cousin that hit if he’d wanted it. Gunshot wounds were a bitch when they started to hurt.

  Brody had wandered off and came back just as Quinn finished with the first-aid kit. At least Jimmy had been prepared for everything.

  “We can put him in the room over there, it’s empty,” Brody said, pointing at a door Quinn hadn’t noticed.

  Jimmy winced in a different way now. He seemed to deflate, and it took until Quinn frog-marched him to the doorway to realize why that was. The room had obviously been furnished for the human trafficking. There were mattresses on the floor and buckets nearby. That was it.

  “You have any more guns on you?” Quinn asked, not really wanting to pat Jimmy down. He could tell how fucking defeated he was already.

  “Nah, I don’t bother with knives and you took the pistol.” He used his good hand to dig out his phone and handed it to Quinn. “There.”

  “Thanks. Now go in.”

  “There’s water in the office fridge…”

  “I’ll get it,” Brody said, jogging off.

  “Thanks,” Jimmy murmured.

  Quinn was pretty sure it had nothing to do with water. “I need to go check on Aaron.”

  “Don’t…don’t let him kill Henderson.”

  The words surprised Quinn enough that he didn’t know what to say.

  “Here,” Brody came back and tossed a couple of bottles of water on the closest mattress.

  Jimmy lowered himself on the mattress and leaned his head to the wall. Then he went quiet.

  Brody shrugged and Quinn closed the door, leaving Jimmy in the light of one dangling bulb on the ceiling.

  “What a shitty place,” Brody spat out. “Trafficking?”

  “Yup. I need to take care of Aaron. Can you go get my badge from that compartment in my car and bring the cell that’s there?” He needed his ID for whenever the cavalry arrived. And he needed to call Day, or someone up the food chain anyway, right the fuck now.

  “Yeah, sure. By the way, Aaron has your backup gun.” Brody jogged off toward his side of the road.

  Quinn winced. Possibilities ran through his mind. What could happen here, how he could spin this. Jimmy wouldn’t say anything, he’d be mute right up until they were figuring out how to put him away and then he’d sing arias if they pressed a little.

  He got to the cruiser just in time to see Aaron holding a gun to his uncle’s head. Thinking quickly, he tried to diffuse the worst of the situation, but it didn’t work really, but at least Aaron lowered the gun.

  It struck him then, that Aaron had taken his cue, shot when he’d told him to. Well, he’d thought whoever Aaron had as backup might if not Aaron himself, but in the end it had been Aaron who did it. Despite the years in between, they were still connected in ways h
e couldn’t explain. He wasn’t sure if he should let Aaron do this or not. So he gave him the choice.

  “Do you want to do this, Aaron?” he asked, then watched as Aaron raised the gun again.

  Aaron swallowed hard. “I…”

  Quinn glanced at Henderson and saw something change in his expression.

  “Did you know it was me who first wanted to date your mom?” he asked, not looking at Aaron.

  Quinn realized that the sheriff had found his way out of this…whatever this was. He needed to get the gun away from Aaron. “Can you give me my gun back, Aaron?”

  When he lifted his hand, Aaron jerked his away, still pointing at Henderson.

  “Your dad wasn’t into her at first, but I was. Fuck, she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I didn’t tell Paul. I knew I could have her if I wanted, I mean, your dad looked plain. He was the pimply geeky kid and I was the fucking track star, right?” Henderson chuckled darkly. “But she didn’t want me.”

  Aaron twitched, completely immersed in what his uncle was telling him.

  “He’s trying to get you to shoot him, Aaron,” Quinn said firmly. “He’s going to say whatever it takes to make you shoot him.”

  “So I watched them. She went after your dad, you know? Fucking skinny Paul Larsen. Instead of me?”

  “Aaron, please.”

  “When he asked me if he should go out with her, I said yes. Because I knew that if she was into his type, she’d never be into me, but fuck if it didn’t grate on me. What did that bitch—”

  Quinn struck Aaron’s arm from below, the shot ringing in the dark, glass shattering high on the warehouse wall.

  “No!” Quinn grabbed Aaron and pushed him away from Henderson. “You don’t get to do that.”

  “Why the fuck not? He all but killed my dad! Quinn, you don’t under—”

  “I fucking understand everything!” Quinn roared into Aaron’s face. “He wants you to kill him so everything he’s done to this town goes unpunished. You don’t get to give him that out!”

  Aaron glared at him, then gradually deflated, and handed over the Glock. “Don’t give it back to me.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Guys? Everything okay?” Brody called from the gates as he jogged back, looking startled. “I thought we were done with the shooting.” When he got to them, the scent of weed clung into him like in the old days. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” Quinn took his badge and phone from him. “Take Aaron to the couches or something. Make sure he doesn’t kill that bastard.”

  Brody’s eyes widened and he walked with a scowling Aaron to the warehouse.

  Quinn turned on the burner and saw a missed call from Day.

  To his surprise, Day answered his call immediately.

  “Quinn, what’s going on?”

  “Well, two of the Skulls are dead, more of them are on the way with a truck full of trafficking victims, my cousin and I have both been shot and oh, the corrupt sheriff of Spruce Creek is in cuffs by my feet,” Quinn said, kicking dust at Henderson who turned his face away.

  Day let out a litany of curses and then finally grunted. “Okay, I have some guys coming in from Vegas, and the bigger guns are going to intercept the Skulls on the way. They noticed something changed.”

  “Yeah, something about…You know what, I’m pretty sure Jimmy will talk if you put him in touch with whoever. Just get someone here right now to make sense of this mess. I’m taking my family and fucking out of town as soon as someone else gets here.”

  Day sighed. “Okay, okay…as long as you keep your official phone on you and are ready to do the usual stuff once they sort this shit out.”

  “Yeah. Keep me posted on my other phone. Have the feds or whomever call this one and I’ll make Jimmy talk to them.”

  “Sure. Give me five minutes. And Quinn, stay safe.”

  “Yeah, will do.”

  The debriefing for this whole shit show would be epic and he wasn’t even sure where he’d need to be for it, but he was going to make the DHS and the FBI and who the fuck else accommodate him instead of the other way around. He was so fucking done.

  “Stay,” he told Henderson, who sneered at him. “Don’t push your luck. I bet Brody can shoot you in the kneecaps even while high.”

  He made his way to the couches and told Brody to go keep an eye on the sheriff. “Sorry to have you run around, but you know…There’s guys coming from Vegas soon, so we’ll get it sorted.”

  “Whatever man, I have half of a joint and nothing but time,” Brody replied lazily. He saluted Quinn and Aaron snorted as they watched him saunter away.

  “He wasn’t high before, right?”

  “No, I think he’s very efficient when he wants to be.” Aaron grinned. Then the grin turned into a weary smile. “I’m sorry.”

  Quinn shook his head. “It’s fine. I get it. At least I was there to stop you.”

  He went to the couch and sat next to Aaron, then promptly pulled him close and hugged the life out of him. His arm throbbed still, more insistently now that the adrenaline was gone.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Aaron asked when he pulled back and gingerly examined the torn sleeve of Quinn’s shirt.

  “Someone’s going to call and I’ll make Jimmy talk to them so they’ll be more efficient with stopping the Skulls before they get into town. Some guys Day trusts are coming from Vegas, and as soon as that happens and I’ve explained the situation, I’m going to take you, Charlie, and Lennox, and we’re outta here.”

  Aaron looked at him, then leaned in and kissed him. “Okay.”

  As if on cue, Quinn’s phone rang. “I’mma deal with this. You call Charlie.”

  “Yeah.”

  Quinn got up and started toward the container. “This is Quinn Byrne, who am I talking to?”

  * * * *

  Jimmy spoke with the head of the task force and while Quinn supervised that, Aaron came to him with the remnants of the first-aid kit.

  Obediently, Quinn stripped off his shirts and let him do his thing. It settled Aaron, taking care of him, and if Quinn was honest, he was glad that he wouldn’t have to face Charlie and Lennox in bloody clothes.

  When the Vegas cops arrived with a member of the LVMPD Human Trafficking Task Force—what a fucking mouthful—Jimmy was settled on his mattress again. The EMTs arrived soon after, and took care of Jimmy’s injury. They also checked out the sheriff, but deemed him only bruised as expected.

  “So, what exactly went on here?” one of the cops, detective something, asked Quinn and he started to explain it from the start.

  They questioned Aaron and Brody briefly too, with Brody promising to be across the road if needed.

  “And you two?” the detective asked.

  “I’m going wherever he’s going.” Aaron stared at her.

  She grinned. “Day said you’re leaving town.”

  “Yeah. I’ve done this enough times now I know how it goes. Call me if you need me, but Brody will have all the info. Despite being a pothead, he’s honest to a fault. Oh, and here’s my backup weapon.” He handed it over, happy that his main Glock hadn’t been fired so he didn’t have to give it up. The backup one could go. Aaron had looked amused when he’d realized Quinn’s attachment to the other one, but he’d been a soldier, so he knew how that went.

  * * * *

  It was close to ten when they finally made it to the meeting spot. They’d decided to take Quinn’s car and buy a more spacious one on the way. It was time to go.

  Charlie sat behind the wheel with Lennox on the passenger’s seat. They looked at Quinn and Aaron in the back.

  “You guys look like sh—crap,” Lennox said for the second time. He was tired and not at all surprisingly excited as hell about what’d been going on that night.

  “He’s right. Sleep, all three of you. I’ll drive until I can’t anymore and I’ll find us a motel.”

  “North, then east,” Quinn said, trying to get comfortable. “The truck is com
ing from the east, from the 319, so better get out of the way.” He was drooping immediately. The ibuprofen Charlie had fed him as they changed cars started to take the edge off.

  “Alrighty. Now sleep.”

  They had pillows and blankets, and soon enough, Quinn fell asleep to the sound of the engine.

  He didn’t wake up again until the car stopped. Aaron was still asleep next to him, leaning to the other window because he’d refused to lean onto Quinn in case he’d hurt him.

  Lennox was out like a light too. Speaking of which, the sky was light, and when Charlie noticed him awake, she smiled.

  “We’re in Salt Lake City,” she whispered. “I’m going to go get us rooms. Try to get the boys up, will ya?” She looked tired, but then she had driven for…at least five hours.

  “Sure.”

  He gently shook Aaron’s shoulder and then poked at Lennox, tugging at his hair and the blanket he was wrapped in until he got an extremely grumpy “Stoppit!” in response.

  “We’re in Salt Lake City, kid, your mom needs to rest and we need to get some breakfast and we need to shower. You can sleep more in a motel room.”

  “How are you feeling?” Aaron asked, nodding at his arm.

  “I’m fine. Or will be fine. I’ll drop by a clinic in town before we leave. Get some antibiotics just in case. If we’ll be driving for days, might be worth it not to get it infected.” He tried a rakish grin, but Aaron rolled his eyes.

  “You better not get gangrene and lose a limb, one of us needs to have them all intact.”

  It was Quinn’s turn to roll his eyes. He kissed Aaron, making sure to make enough smooching sounds just to get Lennox to bolt out of the car in disgust.

  “Well, that worked, we need to remember it.” Aaron chuckled, and then winced with pain when he moved his leg. He’d stubbornly kept his prosthetic on and was now feeling it.

  “Hope there’s a tub in the room, you need a soak.”

  For once, Aaron didn’t object.

  * * * *

  There was, indeed, a tub in the room. Charlie said she’d have Lennox either sleep or do his thing until nine so she could get some shut eye, and they agreed to leave town by midday.

  “So everyone figures their stuff out and if you guys want to go look at cars, you can. But only after nine.”