The Fixer

by Jessica Gadziala

  "There's a woman bleeding in here, and you needed to run to your car?" Quin snapped, snatching the kit out of the man's hands, putting it on my lap, and unzipping it.

  "Figured that kit has Advil at best," Fenway said, and then there was the distinct sound of pills shaking in a bottle, making us both look over to see him jiggling an orange prescription bottle. "That headache behind your eyes, sweetheart, that is a job for 30s."

  "Where the fuck did you get Percocet?" Quin asked, snatching it out of the man's hand, examining it.

  "Don't worry. They're legit. I have arthritis from that time I fell down that cliff."

  "Was pushed off the cliff," Quin corrected. But he unscrewed the cap, checked the pills, then handed me two.

  "I'll get her a drink," Fenway offered.

  "Don't take an hour this time. Alright," he said, dousing some gauze in a saline solution. "This is gonna suck," he warned me just a split second before he moved in to start clearing up the blood and dirt.

  Honestly, pain-wise, the migraine was trumping anything else.

  Still, Quin's hands were deft, but gentle, trying to clean me up quickly, but with as little discomfort as possible. "I think I can get away with some butterfly sutures if you want to avoid stitches."

  "I think everyone would like to avoid needles threading things into their skin," I agreed, watching as he pulled the little package open, then peeled off the sticker backs, then pressed three separate ones to my temple. "Your lip will heal itself. It's just going to suck to eat or drink for a few days. Do you want to get a scan?"

  "Do you think I need it?"

  "To tell you that you probably have a concussion, no. But if you're worried about anything else..."

  "I'm more worried about the questions they would have to ask to explain this," I admitted, waving a hand at my face.

  "Okay. Your choice," Quin agreed, giving me a nod as Fenway came back in the room with a bottle of water, and a cup of coffee, with a straw.

  "Figure you need this, but with that lip, the straw might help," he explained, handing it to me, then untwisting the cap to the water bottle, and handing me that as well.

  Was this the client Quin seemed annoyed to have to deal with? He seemed nice enough to me.

  I rested the coffee between my knees, lifting the water to take the pills, praying they would kick in soon. The last time I had taken anything pain medicine related, I had been seventeen and had just had my wisdom teeth removed.

  "Alright, come on. Let's get you in my office. I am going to call Gunner in. How long after he left were you attacked?" Quin asked as he led me out of the bathroom, his hand at my lower back.

  "Not long. Maybe ten minutes."

  "Maybe he could have seen this woman somewhere. He was likely looking for a man. We all were."

  "Apparently not," I grumbled as I sat down, feeling a bit too sorry for myself.

  "What was that?" Quin asked, turning back on his way toward the other side of his desk.

  Creating distance.

  Or, at least, that was how my brain was choosing to interpret it.

  "Nothing."

  "She said Apparently not," Fenway supplied from the chair beside mine.

  "Fenway, you can wait in the reception area. Rifle through Jules's desk. Piss her off."

  "Tempting," Fenway said, but crossed his legs.

  "Aven's case is none of your business," Quin told him, shooting off a text.

  "Aven, darling," Fenway said, turning to me. "I am here because I fucked a married woman of some very important people on a yacht that didn't belong to me. And then crashed it. See? Now we can be even."

  That was, well, a clusterfuck.

  Maybe that - and not in response to what happened between us - was why Quin pulled his team away. This sounded like something that needed to be handled with kid gloves, that maybe required more of their attention than my case.

  Quin let out a sigh, the long-suffering kind, the kind that said Fenway had been a thorn in his ass since he left me hours before.

  "The fuck do you mean she was attack..." Gunner's voice called as he moved down the hall, then stopped in the doorway. His eyes moved over Fenway, showing clear distaste - something the whole team seemed to feel about the kind, if a bit spoiled, rich guy in the room. But then his gaze drifted to me, his shoulders slumping immediately. "Oh, fuck."

  "Gee, way to make a girl feel good about her busted face," I said, feeling a small bit of self-consciousness. Which was ridiculous given the situation, but it was there nonetheless. It wasn't easy to feel decent about yourself on a good hair day when surrounded by three insanely good-looking guys. So sitting here in unflattering lazy clothes with my hair a mess, and my face made almost unrecognizable, yeah, I was having issues keeping my head up.

  "How the fuck did this happen?" he asked, and as if on cue, Mackey came moseying in, nails click click clicking away as he moved to sit beside Fenway.

  "Oh yeah, I let him in. He was playing guard dog outside of your car," Fenway explained, making me once again feel like the shittiest of dog owners. His whole life with me had been dealing with my trauma and constant fear. If dogs could truly smell that, as the saying went, then I must have positively reeked to him all the time.

  Gunner's gaze went to the dog, making him rake a hand through his hair. "Fuck. I should have dragged him back up to the door before I left."

  "It's not your fault my dog hates me," I said, shrugging.

  "Did you see any women when you were out there?" Quin asked.

  "Women?" Gunner asked, brows drawn together. "This was a woman?" he asked, crossing over to me, pace full of purpose as he got close, tilting my head up.

  "With help from a wall," I explained.

  Gunner exhaled, letting me go, and moving away to stand near the side of Quin's desk. "I didn't see anyone. It was a ghost town over there. But that maybe explains some hair I found hanging from a branch. Too long to be a man's."

  "Let me guess, brown and gray hair?"

  "Yeah."

  "Did you catch anything else about her, babe?" Quin asked, jotting something down on a pad in front of him.

  "She was tall and sturdy. And had on a brown almost ankle-length coat. That's really about it. She was running away when I stopped throwing up to get a look."

  "The fuck did you do to her to make her take a wall to your face?" Fenway asked, prompting a growl from Quin, and a lunge from Gunner, who grabbed the man by the back of his suit jacket and started pulling him toward the door.

  "Time for you to be somewhere else until someone wants to deal with you again," he told the man, tossing him out into the hall, then slamming, and locking the door. "Anything else? What did she say?"

  "She called me a cunt, and asked me where he is."

  "And?" Gunner pressed.

  "And then Mackey got a taste of her leg."

  There wasn't even a pause before Gunner was next to the dog, reaching for his jowls, prying his mouth open, completely unconcerned about the growling noise coming from somewhere deep in the dog's chest. "Got some blood in his teeth. I'm gonna go see if I can get a sample."

  With that, he led my dog out of the room, and Quin and I were alone.

  "I should have followed you home," he said into the silence of the room.

  I looked over to find him getting out of his chair, moving around his desk, then lowering into the chair Fenway vacated, scooting it closer.

  "Gunner had been there, Quin. That wasn't enough to deter her."

  "Then I should have told Fenway to take his problems somewhere else this time, and done what I really wanted to do in the first place."

  My stomach fluttered at that, at the depth I heard in it. "What's that?" I asked, needing to hear the answer.

  "Followed you home," he answered immediately. "Then walked you to your door. Then came in. And stayed the night."

  My gaze dropped, not wanting to give away how much I had wanted that as well, regardless of how silly that was, how unlike me. I wasn't the gi
rl who screwed around casually. I wasn't really even the girl who was other-level attracted to a man she wasn't seeing.

  Hell, maybe it was the trauma.

  Maybe he was the knight in shining armor.

  Ugh.

  That made me the damsel in distress.

  How cliche.

  How beneath me.

  "Then no one would have been outside," I said, lifting my head, meeting his gaze. "Since he comes when men demand things of him."

  "I think we're at the point now where you can't go back to your house, babe. I wanted to keep your life as normal as possible. But this chick will be back. Actually, I think it is time you take a vacation from work."

  "I can't take a vacation from work," I objected immediately, even knowing how messed up my face was, and the endless questions I was sure to be pestered with.

  "Bills will be the last of your concerns if you end up dead, Aven."

  That was a phrase easier said than accepted. I wasn't someone like him. I didn't have a full bank account. I didn't even have a small buffer in case of emergencies.

  God, why hadn't I put more money away when I worked at a better job?

  "Aven, you know this is what has to happen. I get that it sucks, and you're worried. But you're not getting hurt again, or killed, on my watch. No fucking way. I will go with you."

  "What am I supposed to say about this?" I asked, gesturing toward my face.

  "You were attacked," he said, shrugging. "Don't go into detail. Just leave it at that. And you need some time off. One look at that damage, between what you have going on now, and the bruises from before, and they won't deny you anything you want. The pussies will just have to go without a waxing this week."

  My lips curved up at that. "I think you underestimate how seriously women take their waxing. There may be riots."

  "It'll be like the 70s in Navesink Bank for a while," he shot back, lips twitching.

  "So what am I supposed to do, then? If I can't go home? If I can't go to work? Maybe I should take Fenway up on his offer of the Maldives." I was teasing, but a darkness moved across Quin's features nonetheless.

  "I want you to stay away from Fenway."

  I felt my brow lift at that. "Is that an order, Quin?" I asked, feeling my spine straighten slightly.

  This was not something someone as aware as Quin missed. "A humble request, maybe?"

  "Don't worry. Trust fund babies who court married women aren't exactly my type."

  A bit of tension seemed to leave his shoulders at that. "What is?"

  "My type?" I clarified, getting a bit of a chin jerk from him. "I don't know. Self-made men, I guess," I admitted, it being my general preference. I liked men who rose themselves up out of the gutters. Bootstrappers, my father would have called them. There was just something undeniably sexy about a man determined to rise up in the world.

  He nodded at that, looking away.

  "So what now?" I asked again, drawing his gaze back to me.

  "Now, you have to leave your life behind for a while. Until this is completely cleaned up."

  "But... how can it get cleaned up if there is a person involved?" I asked, stomach clenching at the idea of that fix maybe meaning more people shot down. Regardless of what the person may have done or not in life, I was pretty sure it would never sit right in my heart that people were dead because of me.

  "How about I worry about that, and you worry about trying to relax and process this."

  "Easier said than done. So, am I, like, staying upstairs? That's what the rooms are for, right?" A shadow crossed his face. "What?" I asked, brows drawing low until the pull of the butterfly sutures stopped me.

  "Yeah, that's what they're for. Fenway will be staying there as well."

  "And you don't like that," I surmised.

  "He's not dangerous," Quin hedged. "He's just bad news. Stay away from him."

  "I think I already said I wasn't interested. You don't need to warn me off of him. He's nice enough. It might be nice to have a little company to keep my brain from racing. But that's as far as this goes."

  "Good," Quin agreed with a nod. "Come on, let's go get you two settled. It's late as fuck. We can worry about getting you some clothes and everything tomorrow. You need sleep. Those meds must be kicking in."

  The pain was fading, but other than that, all I felt was a heaviness on my eyelids. I couldn't tell if that was just because, as he said, it was late, or a byproduct of the pain pills.

  Quin walked with me to the door, hand at my lower back, something that didn't - absolutely did not - make my belly go a little wobbly. We walked into the reception area where Fenway was standing, seeming not to notice the late hour at all, bright-eyed and sinfully awake, holding a leather overnight bag in his hand.

  "I brought more," he explained. "I figured I would be in for a long spell this time." He looked from Quin to me. "I see you weren't quite as prepared. I can loan you something to sleep in," he told me, kind, generous. Maybe he was only that way to get into a woman's pants. Or maybe he was just genuinely well-mannered. It was impossible to tell. That was the hard part about rich, cultured guys and their attentions.

  "Thanks," I agreed, nodding.

  "Aw, come on, Quin, that's not necessary, is it?" he asked, and I realized Quin had left my side to rifle in the storage closet, coming back with what looked like, well, ankle bracelets. The kind people wore on house arrest.

  "Seeing as the last time you were here, even after locking your ass in, you got out and managed to get locked up for public intoxication in Canada while I was trying to clear up your last fuck-up, yes, it's necessary," he told Fenway, closing the device around the man's ankle. "And, this is just precaution for you, babe," he told me, reached for my leg. "I want you staying inside here for a while, but you're not a prisoner."

  "Lucky," Fenway grumbled.

  "So this is just to be safe," Quin went on, ignoring him. "If you are out, if something happens, I can find you in minutes instead of hours or days."

  "Smart," I agreed, feeling his fingers brush over the sensitive skin on the inside of my ankle. "Alright, let's go," he declared, leading us back to the staircase, then up to the second floor. He gave me the room I had been in the night before, and Fenway the furthest room from that one, something that made both of us share a knowing smile behind his back.

  "Help yourself to anything in the common area. I will have Jules stock it with more since you'll be living here for a while, and we will have dinner ordered in before the last person leaves for the day. Aven, I'm a call away," he told me, giving me a look that said he wanted to make sure I didn't hesitate to take him up on the offer. "I will keep my phone by me. Fenway, the same does not go for you."

  "What? I can't call for a bedtime story?" Fenway asked, looking crushed, then smiling when Quin growled and stormed off.

  "You seem nice," I told him when we were alone, hearing Quin lock the door behind him.

  "I am."

  "Then why does Quin..."

  "Hate me?" he finished for me.

  "Yeah."

  "I'm a pain in the ass. I never do what I'm told. I keep getting into international-type trouble. And I don't take anything as seriously as the Joyless Luck Club down there does." He moved away into his room, coming back with a plain tee. "My pants won't fit you. I will have to suffer with the knowledge that you are just a few feet down the hall in my tee, panties, and nothing else."

  "I could just sleep in my pants," I informed him, waving down at the yoga pants I had put on earlier. Unlike my shirt, there were no blood stains on them. Though I knew that I would be sleeping exactly as he said since I had that weird thing about not liking my legs being contained in sleep.

  "Shh. Nope," he said, closing his eyes, taking an exaggeratedly long breath. "T-shirt and panties. Long legs all tangled in the--"

  "Goodnight, Fenway," I said a little firmly, making his eyes open, and an easy smile pull at his lips.

  "Goodnight, Aven. If you need more of the pain pills,
just knock on my door. Or sneak into bed with me. That's always a nice way to wake up."

  With that, he disappeared into his room, leaving me shaking my head as I moved into my own room.

  But I did lock my door before I went into the bathroom to clean up any remaining dried blood, brush my teeth, and change for bed.

  As I was lowering myself into bed, the cell went off on my nightstand.

  Don't hesitate to call. I won't be away from it again. PS: Gunner is taking care of the dog for the time being. Get some sleep, babe. - Q

  A moment before, my mind had been racing, replaying the events of the night over and over again, berating myself, or blaming myself for being so stupid, for not getting a better look, victim-blaming my damn self.

  But somehow, with that message, I could curl up in bed, and my mind was quiet.

  Just as I was contemplating what that could possibly mean, sleep finally claimed me.

  EIGHT

  Quin

  "Got another death threat for Fenway this morning," Smith informed me as we regrouped in my office, trying to figure out how to juggle two important cases at the same time.

  "Yeah, well, his ass is sitting pretty upstairs, safe as can be. We can deal with him after we figure out who this woman is. This woman who knows who Aven is, and that this man is missing. We can't have that shit out there for anyone to hear."

  They knew there was no room to argue with that.

  If this woman could lead back to Aven, it could mean cops sniffing around. And, sure, they wouldn't find dick. That was why Finn was paid the big bucks. But there was no guarantee that it wouldn't crack Aven. She wasn't practiced at dealing with cops. If they put on a little pressure, she could splinter apart.

  She wasn't going to jail on my watch.

  I promised her that.

  Just because the case was more complicated than it originally seemed didn't mean I didn't plan to keep that promise.

  "Yo," Gunner said, stomping in, his boots dropping clumps of dirt across the floor as he did so. That, and the dirt on his arms and hands, and the scratches on his face - superficial, likely from tree branches in the woods - along with the circles under his eyes telling me that he hadn't seen his bed last night.