At Any Cost Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Fawkes, K. M.

  But Steve being on duty at the same time as a bunch of their stores were stolen was one too many coincidences for him. The man had a bad attitude, and he happened to have been guarding the storeroom when there was a robbery?

  “Color me biased, but—”

  “Sure does look like Steve’s our man,” Alice finished, already making her way toward the door. “Let’s talk to Manny first, see if he noticed anything out of place when he switched with Steve this morning. Make sure he’s okay. Then we find Steve.”

  When they found Manny, he was in the back of the schoolhouse, smoking one of the cigarettes they’d picked up in one of the first towns they raided. There had been cartons and cartons of them in one of the houses, and though Garrett had thought it was disgusting—and not something they should encourage—some of the men had insisted on taking all the cartons, just in case. In the end, Garrett had given in, figuring all supplies were good supplies. Even if they had evidently belonged to some sort of hoarder.

  Manny had been more excited than anyone else in town about it. Evidently he’d been a dedicated smoker in his previous life, and had been anxious to jump right back into the practice.

  Garrett still thought it a horrible habit. But for Manny he was willing to overlook it.

  “What are you talking about?” Manny asked, aghast, when they asked him if he’d seen anyone around the schoolhouse. “I’ve been here all day and haven’t seen a soul, aside from the people who take walks during the day. You think I’d just see some stranger walking around out here and let them? And then forget to tell you about it? Are you guys going crazy out here in the desert or something?” He gave Garrett a suspicious look, and then directed an accusatory glare in Alice’s direction. “It’s like you guys don’t know me at all.”

  “Did you go inside the storeroom?” Alice asked quietly.

  Manny gave her another long, narrow-eyed look. “And why would I have done that? As far as I knew, everything was A-okay in there. You two said so, and you’re the ones obsessed with the paperwork. I don’t exactly go in and catalog the place, like you and the captain there.”

  “I’m not a captain,” Garrett said automatically.

  Manny grinned at him and cast a glance at Bart. “Okay, Cap.” Then he grew serious again. “I didn’t see anyone. Traded off with Steve this morning, just like I always do, and I’ve been out here ever since. Changed locations several times, like I’m supposed to. One of the girls brought me lunch and I ate it right here. I ain’t seen nothing.”

  “And Steve?” Garret asked. “Did he seem to be acting… strange when you switched with him?”

  Manny snorted. “You mean was he suddenly a nice guy, all generous and happy and talkative? No. He was his normal self. An asshole. Claimed I was late, and that he’d been freezing all night because the people who were supposed to bring him blankets hadn’t shown up. God forbid he think about bringing a blanket with him when he comes. You’d think he’d never stood guard at night before.”

  “You’d think,” Garrett said quietly. He turned to Alice. “How often has Steve stood guard at night? Is this the first time?”

  Because he’d just realized that they changed things up regularly, for this exact reason. It was fall and the nights were turning chilly. Garrett went out of his way to keep men from having to stand guard overnight more often than they had to. And if he was remembering correctly…

  “Last night was the first time,” she answered immediately. “We’d never put him on nights before because we didn’t trust him.”

  “And his first night on, stuff goes missing,” Garrett said. He turned to Manny and gave him a mock salute. “Thanks, Manny. Get yourself to your house and get some warm food. I’m about to have an awkward conversation with Steve, and I might need you to back me up.”

  “You know where to find me if you need me,” Manny answered with a nod. He turned on his heel and disappeared around the corner of the building while Garrett turned back to Alice.

  “Far as I can see, Steve has one, never liked me and two, always thought he could do a better job as leader. If anyone was going to let strangers into the camp—or steal our goods for himself—it’s him.”

  “And the first night he stands guard, half our stuff goes missing. Seems like an awfully big coincidence,” Alice said with a twitch of her eyebrow.

  Garrett nodded. “My thoughts exactly. Bart, you’re on duty here. Alice, let’s go have a chat with our good friend Steve, shall we?”

  He didn’t want to think Steve had done it. Didn’t want to think one of their own had actually sold them out like that. But they weren’t in any position to allow this sort of theft to go mysteriously into the night. And it had definitely happened on Steve’s watch.

  If the man was an enemy, Garrett needed to know about it right now, before it went any further. Yes, he had plans to move the group out of the town at some point, regardless. But he didn’t want to be forced into it by some mole in the village. And if they had a mole, he didn’t want the guy knowing where Garrett was taking the townspeople—or when they were planning on leaving.

  If a man had flexible enough morals to sell out his own group, then he also had flexible enough morals to try to sell that group out to someone else. It was a risk Garrett couldn’t afford to take.

  Chapter 3

  They found Steve right where Garrett had thought they’d find him: in what passed as the bar of the town. Garrett got the idea that this was where the tough guys had hung out when the town was still fully functional, and it was certainly where Steve and his friends chose to hang out now. They were in the corner, at the pool table—which worked just as well now as it ever had.

  Steve was up, and was bent over the table, wiggling his butt as he lined up his shot and slid the pool cue in and out of the V between his thumb and forefinger a few times, making sure he had a smooth track for it. Garrett pressed his lips together and put up a hand to stop Alice until he was done. This conversation was going to be unpleasant enough as it was. He didn’t need to make it any worse by screwing up the guy’s shot.

  Besides, there was a part of him that was still trying to make the man like him. If Steve hadn’t done anything wrong and did have a good alibi—unlikely, but still a possibility—he wanted to start the conversation in the gentlest way possible. Not by interrupting a shot and potentially costing Steve money—or whatever it was these guys were betting on the game.

  The two men in the corner glanced up and saw Garrett, and their brows lowered in confusion. Garrett cast them a glance and shook his head slightly. He wasn’t here for them, and they weren’t in trouble. At least not that he knew of.

  Alan and Scott weren’t bad guys, necessarily. Sure, they’d become Steve’s sidekicks and tended to back him up when he had an idea, but they’d never intentionally gotten in Garrett’s way and they’d never actually caused any trouble. In fact, Alan had been invaluable when Garrett and a small group had found trouble in a nearby town, the truck they’d been driving blowing through a tire on the way into the city. Alan, a former mechanic, had made short work of finding a vehicle in a nearby parking lot that had tires of roughly the same size, and had jacked both trucks up and changed out the tire on his own while the rest of the team went scouting for food and water.

  It wasn’t the action of someone who was actively selling out the group, and Garrett didn’t think he could expect trouble from those two. They were just sidekicks. They made Steve more obnoxious, for sure, because he thought he had backup against Garrett, but those weren’t the sort of guys who actually acted on anything. All talk and no action. Garrett had known plenty like them in military school. They’d always acted like they had a bone to pick with the higher-ups, but had kept their mouths shut when those same higher-ups got them backed into a corner and started shouting insults at them.

  Steve, though, was the sort who lashed out when he felt cornered. It was going to make this even trickier. Garrett had to figure out how to get him to answer questions without tipp
ing him off to the fact that Garrett didn’t trust him.

  In front of him, Steve pulled back the cue, paused for a moment, and then shoved it smoothly forward, hitting the cue ball with a loud thwack and sending it flying toward the group of balls in the corner.

  Garrett’s eyes moved quickly, following the ball, and while several of the target balls went flying in different directions, none of them went into any of the pockets.

  Great. Turned out Steve wasn’t that good at pool, either. And Garrett had a feeling that miss was going to make the coming conversation even more difficult. Steve wasn’t the sort who took failure in stride.

  The truth was, Garrett was angry. Furious, in fact. Many of their supplies were missing, and he thought it very likely that he was looking at the man responsible. Even if Steve hadn’t stolen them himself, he’d been on guard when it happened. He should have told someone that something was wrong.

  If he was innocent, he would have.

  But he’d dealt with people like this before. Attacking him wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He had to at least start by playing it cool.

  When Steve stood up, cursing, he noticed that Alan and Scott were looking at something behind him, and whirled around, eyes blazing. Those eyes narrowed and turned cold when he saw Garrett and Alice standing in the doorway.

  Garrett put his hands up in what he hoped was a peaceful sort of gesture and stepped forward. “Don’t mean to interrupt your game, Steve. But I’m hoping I can have a word with you.”

  Steve snarled and drew himself up even straighter. Then, after thinking about it for a moment, he seemed to come to the conclusion that this wasn’t the time or place for a fight. “Right, okay,” he said slowly. “Alan is up, so I have a moment. Guess I can spare you the time.”

  Garrett did his best to smile at the slight concession. “Terrific.”

  He took a deep breath. Play it cool, play it cool, he reminded himself. You get more bees with honey. Even when those bees have a bad attitude and are looking for a fight.

  “Alice and I have just been over to the storeroom to do some inventory, same as we do every night, and Steve, we’ve got a problem.”

  He watched the guy closely, waiting for a tell. Waiting for something that would indicate what he thought to be true—that Steve did in fact know something. Or, at the minimum, that someone had knocked him out and then proceeded to rob the place. But there wasn’t a glimmer. Not even a wink from the other man.

  “Problem?” he asked gruffly. “Does it have to do with me, or are you just keeping me updated about the goings-on around here?”

  Garrett forced another smile. “Has to do with you, I’m afraid,” he said. “Half of our supplies are gone. And it looks like you were the one on guard duty when they disappeared. Don’t think I have to tell you how that looks.”

  And now there were tells all over the place. Steve’s eyes narrowed, his lips drawing up in a snarl, and his hands clenched into fists. Garret’s own hands balled up as well, and he leaned onto his toes, ready for whatever was about to happen. Beside him, he could feel Alice tensing as well, and wondered suddenly if she had the Bowie knife she always seemed to carry around with her.

  He hoped they wouldn’t need it, but you could never tell with this guy.

  “And how exactly is that my problem?” Steve growled, leaning forward. “You guys can’t keep track of your supplies? So what? That ain’t got a damn thing to do with me.”

  “Except that you were on guard duty,” Alice growled back. “You forgetting that little detail? Because it means that it’s got everything to do with you.”

  Steve’s shoulders drooped a bit and Garrett could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to figure out how to get out of this little scrape. No matter what he said, Garrett thought, it wasn’t going to be good enough.

  “I ain’t the only one who was on duty,” he finally said. “I only stood duty last night. Manny’s been there all day.”

  “And Manny’s already cleared himself,” Garrett answered quickly. No need to go into the idea that he trusted Manny more than he’d ever trust Steve about that sort of thing.

  He pressed on. “What happened last night, Steve? We’ve got a lot of supplies missing, and I don’t have to tell you how dangerous that is. In this situation, we’re constantly on the edge. And we all worked for those supplies. What happened?”

  There was another long pause, Steve’s eyes starting to flick back and forth in something that looked like panic but might also have been evasiveness, and then Garrett saw the sag to his shoulders as he decided to give in.

  A coward, at the end of the day, Garrett realized. And that had always been the thing about Steve. He wanted to lead. But he didn’t have the backbone for it. He was all mouth.

  “Yeah, it happened when I was there,” he said, his voice quiet. “But I didn’t have a thing to do with it. I swear. They came up behind me in the middle of the night and hit me on the head with something. I blacked out, no idea how long for. When I woke up and got to the storeroom, I panicked, I…”

  His voice broke, and Garrett almost felt sorry for him. This guy was depending on those stores, too, and knowing that something like that had happened on your watch had to be crushing. Then he remembered that Steve had known about this since it happened—and hadn’t said anything.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Garrett asked, his voice low with fury. “You didn’t think the rest of us needed to know? Didn’t think we deserved a shot at, I don’t know, chasing the guys who did this? Finding out what happened to our stuff?”

  Steve snapped his mouth shut and glowered. “I knew you’d blame me,” he answered coldly. “Hell, for all I knew, you’d think I’d organized the thing. Let someone else take our food and water. I didn’t want the hassle.”

  “And you what, didn’t think we’d figure it out?” Alice hissed. “Didn’t think we’d notice, and pin it down to being something that happened when you were on watch?”

  But Steve was done talking. He’d given them their information, and now he clammed up, simply lifting one shoulder in a motion that indicated quite clearly that he wasn’t going to cooperate any further.

  “You’re off guard duty,” Garrett snapped. “And from here on out you’re not allowed anywhere close to the storeroom.” His hand shot up when Steve made a move to answer. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t blame you for what happened—sounds like you were caught off guard, and that could have happened to anyone. But you should have told us about it immediately. It was your responsibility to the town, and you failed. So I won’t be giving you that sort of responsibility again.”

  He turned on his heel and strode out of the bar, finished with the conversation. Alice followed, her pace matching his.

  “What do we do with him?” he asked, hoping she had some brilliant plan.

  “Exactly what you did,” she answered. “We can’t trust him, and I don’t even fully believe his story. Then again, you’re a lot more generous than I am. Flaw in my character.”

  He heard the slight smile in the statement and would have laughed but for the situation. Maybe he had been too generous with Steve. Maybe the guy had known about what was going to happen and had played a part in it. But his gut told him otherwise. Either way, they had a code here, and he was going to stick to it.

  “Gotta take it to the entire group,” Garrett said. “He might be guilty, but we can’t decide that on our own. It’s not the way we work here. Call a town meeting for tonight. I’ve got something personal to take care of.”

  “Personal?” Alice asked, doubt coloring her voice.

  “Personal,” he confirmed, already walking away.

  Garrett didn’t keep much from Alice. But he had something planned today that was going to cut him to the bone, and he didn’t want anyone else there to see it.

  Chapter 4

  As he walked back toward his house, Garrett let his mind play with the problem Steve had just caused them. True, there was a chan
ce Steve hadn’t been involved as anything more than the guy who’d had the bad luck of being on guard duty when it happened, but he’d still kept it to himself, which meant that whoever had robbed them had had a clear pathway for escaping.

  But Steve was only part of the problem. Just the start of it, really. The bigger problem was the new scarcity of supplies. True, they could go out and try to get more, and he thought that was probably what the group would vote to do later. But what if they couldn’t find what they needed? What if they couldn’t find enough? And what would they do in the future, when they needed more and more and more?

  The adults among them would do their best, and most of them were relatively healthy. They’d be able to cobble together an existence for some time yet. But this group wasn’t made up of only healthy adults. There were children as well, and some of them were sick.

  One little girl in particular, Fawn, had been sick ever since he and his smaller group had arrived. She had some sort of recurring fever. It would leave for a few days and then come back, and without any medical supplies, they’d been incapable of healing her.

  The worst part was that the sickness was destroying her body, which was wasting away in front of them, exhausting its resources as it tried to fight whatever the sickness was. They’d given her as much extra food and water as they could, and made sure she had as many blankets as her frail body could stand, but the truth was, he wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold out.

  It brought to mind something that he’d learned early in his schooling. He couldn’t remember what the lesson had been or for what class, but he remembered the outcome quite distinctly: inadequate food and supplies always affected the youngest and weakest first.