“Ciaran is sending him out… to the house. I think the best bet for us is to be where there are witnesses. Silas can’t take out the whole Darcy clan without raising a shit ton of questions, but he could take out the two of us without giving it that much thought. You resisted arrest and I interfered with the intent to harm an officer of the law… yes, it would be suspicious, but not entirely unbelievable.”
She shook her head. “I miss the days of thinking Joey was the only member of the Barnes family who actually wanted to see me dead.”
Nineteen
Sitting in his office, feet propped up on his desk, the other deputies gone home for the night, Silas was having second thoughts. Not about the necessity of killing Joey, on that score, he was still certain. But the way he’d done it had left too many loose ends. It would have been better to stage a murder-suicide—kill Lowey, set the scene to make Joey look guilty and then stage his suicide.
He was feeling nervous and he didn’t like it. It was a new feeling for him and he didn’t like it. Killing her and Darcy would be too suspicious. So, he was stuck.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Ciaran Darcy walked into. Yeah, he was stuck. That son of a bitch wouldn’t be here otherwise. Silas glared at him, but the bastard just smiled at him.
“It was a nice touch,” Ciaran said softly.
“What’s that exactly?” Silas demanded, thought he strongly suspected that he already knew.
“Letting yourself into Lowey’s bar, stealing her gun to kill your dipshit cousin, and then replacing it without anyone being the wiser… Except her security cameras, of course.”
The bar had a shitty security system, but he’d known about it. The cameras were something he hadn’t considered. Why would she bother? There was nothing in the place worth stealing. But then again she was a woman alone, and a woman who knew all too well just how dangerous a man could be. Why wouldn’t she? But he wasn’t ready to admit it just yet. “You’re full of shit, Darcy. And if you don’t watch it I’ll be taking you to court! Those kinds of accusations aren’t taken lightly.”
Ciaran laughed. “Still trying to brazen it out… You may be short on brains, Barnes, but you’ve got balls the size of a truck!”
When he’d had Samuel Darcy in town, that would have been enough. “I’ve never liked the Darcys. Doing business with Samuel was a necessary evil in this town, but his high and mighty, holier than thou children? I despise the very ground they walk on… even the bastard ones like you.”
The Irishman didn’t appear to be phased by the insult. He just smiled. “To prevent any further ugliness, I should tell you that the security footage has already been sent to several other people… You do anything to harm Harlow Tate or my brother, and you’ll burn for it. It doesn’t matter what you do, Barnes. You’re not getting out of this.”
Silas closed his eyes, let the reality of the situation sink in on him. He was done. Completely done. “Get the hell out, Darcy. Tell your brother he and his little whore are safe.”
Ciaran looked at him quizzically. “You’re just going to let this go quietly?”
Silas considered his options. Suicide was one. He could try to pin the murder on Harlow Tate and go to prison himself. He could just put a bullet in his head and call it done. Or he could try to make a deal with the Darcys one more time. Reaching beneath his desk, he pulled out the pistol he kept there. “Lots of murders go unsolved. Joey’s will be one of them… assuming you’re willing to let the footage vanish.”
“And if I don’t?” Ciaran asked.
Silas pulled the hammer back on the revolver. “I’m not going to prison. I’ll die first… and if I’m going to die, I’ve got nothing left to lose and nothing to stop me from taking you with me.”
Ciaran nodded. “That’s kind of what I thought you’d say, Silas. That’s why I didn’t come here alone.”
Silas looked up then to see Matt Crawford and two state boys standing in the doorway. “Drop your weapon. Silas Barnes, you’re under arrest for the murder of Joey Barnes,” one of the troopers said.
Silas did the only thing he could in that moment. He put the barrel of the gun under his chin and squeezed the trigger.
Twenty
Lowey was seated in the living room of the Darcy house, listening to Quentin explain the whole dreadful mess to his family. Annalee and Mia were sympathetic, as they would be. Clayton and Bennett were just pissed. They wanted to go beat the hell out of Silas and be done with it.
“Ciaran is handling it,” Quentin replied. “Him and Matt. We need to stay out of it.”
“Well look at you two!” Mia exclaimed. “Suddenly thick as thieves when you couldn’t even be in a room together for more than five minutes without coming to blows.”
Quentin just shrugged. “He’s gone kind of above and beyond to make up for that.”
At that moment, the door opened and Matt Crawford walked into the house, Ciaran right behind him. They both looked like they’d seen better days.
“What happened?” Lowey asked.
“They’re keeping your gun as evidence for the investigation, but there’ll never be a trial. Silas is dead,” Crawford said.
“What?” Lowey rose to her feet, too stunned to remain still in the wake of what they’d just told her. She couldn’t quite grasp what they were telling her. “You had to kill him?”
“No,” Ciaran answered reluctantly. “He killed himself. When he knew he was caught and knew that he was going to face prison for it, he put a gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.”
She sank onto the sofa again as Quentin came toward her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine. I guess I’m better than fine… it’s over. But I just didn’t expect this.”
“What happens now?” He directed the question to Matt.
“Ciaran and I will have to make a formal statement about the circumstances of Silas’ death. At some point, they’ll probably want a deposition from you all about everything that’s happened over the last two days… but then it all just goes away. It’ll die down and then… nothing,” Matt said.
“That seems almost anticlimactic,” Lowey stated. “I had thought there would be some kind of resolution, some kind of Perry Mason-Matlock legal showdown where we all get cross examined and then Silas gets arrested in court…. I know, it was an elaborate fantasy, but that’s just what I was picturing.”
Ciaran nodded. “Well, that’s not going to happen and we should all be glad of it. The relationship between Silas and Samuel, the dirty money that changed hands—I know the distillery is struggling and that could be the nail in the coffin.”
Lowey hadn’t even considered it. She’d known that Quentin didn’t have the kind of money most people in Fontaine thought he did, but she just thought it was because he’d poured so much into purchasing the distillery. She didn’t know that the distillery itself was in trouble.
“I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry that I’ve put you all in the middle of this mess.”
Quentin closed his arms around her and whispered next to her ear. “You didn’t do this. You did nothing wrong… and as long as I’m with you, I’m right where I need to be.”
“But the business—.”
“Will be fine,” Quentin said. “The investor is in. We’ll have the capital we need to keep it going and we’ll be just fine.”
He wasn’t just talking about the distillery. He was talking about them. She wanted to believe that, to know that now when their lives would supposedly go back to normal that this strange intimacy that had developed between them would continue. But there was no certainty there. No trust. He’d asked for a chance to build that. And she was going to give it to him. Lowey could only pray that she wouldn’t regret it.
“I just want to go home,” she said. “But I don’t even have one anymore. It’s as shot to hell as the bar.”
“Then you’ll just stay with me… not at the carriage house. At my house.”
There was no time for
her to answer. Th loud crash from the other room effectively shushed everyone. For a split second, but one that seemed to stretch on forever, everything went quiet. A pin drop would have sounded like a bomb. It was Mia who broke the spell.
“Mama,” she whispered, and then took off at a run for Patricia’s room with everyone else following behind her.
Lowey stopped in the doorway Patricia was on the floor, having somehow rolled out of bed. It should have been impossible. Based on what she’d always been told about Patricia’s condition, it was impossible. And yet she lay there on the floor beside her hospital bed, eyes open and staring at all of them. But not sightlessly, not as if in some kind of fugue state. She was aware. She knew what was happening.
“Oh, my god,” Quentin whispered, the words barely audible. “Oh, my god.”
Clayton moved forward to lift her, but Annalee stopped him. “Don’t,” she said. “If she’s broken a bone moving her might make it worse. Call 911 and we’ll have her taken to the hospital and checked.”
Quentin still stood beside her, still disbelieving and rocked to the core by what he’d seen.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“She really is waking up,” Quentin murmured to her. “After all this time… something is happening.”
“IT certainly seems that way… We’ll know more after they get her to the hospital.”
Mia was making the call. And then everything became a blur. Frenzied activity followed by waiting and then EMT’s rushing in.
They were in the car and on the way to the hospital before they spoke again.
Quentin was driving and Lowey was sitting silently in the passenger seat, wondering just how much drama one person could go through in the course of a few days. Breakups, reconciliations, death threats, murder attempts, being framed by the police, and the miraculous awakening of a woman from a decade long coma. It was all too intense.
“It’s been a pretty crazy couple of days,” Quentin said, mirroring her thoughts. “But that’s not what we’re about.”
“How do we know? We don’t know what it’s like to be together when our lives are normal.”
He grinned. “If we’re together, baby, it will never be normal… I do love you, Lowey. It took walking out on you for me to figure it out. I don’t want to live the rest of my life being so afraid of losing what I love that I just won’t love anything.”
“I love you, too. And I knew it long before you walked out… So, it’s going to take me a while to get over the fact that you did. But I’m working on it.”
“When I said you could stay with me… what I really meant is that I want you to move in with me.”
Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Oh. That is not what I thought you meant.”
“This is the real deal, Lowey. You and me. I’d ask you to marry me but you told me once that you never wanted to get married again.”
She had said that, but she was surprised he’d been paying enough attention to remember. “Never is kind of a strong word. I don’t want to get married right now… I think living together to see if we can do so without killing each other might be a good place to start.”
“I’ll help you pack tomorrow.”
It was really happening. Holy shit. “Okay. But, Quentin, if you make me regret this, I’ll make what Ciaran did to you look like child’s play. I mean it.”
“If I make you regret it, you won’t have to… And while this won’t be easy, I promise, that every day, I’m going to make it worth it.”
Twenty-One
It was late afternoon by the time Quentin awoke. Lowey still slept beside him. They’d spent hours at the hospital after Patricia had been taken there by ambulance. They’d consulted with specialists and with therapists and with a dozen other people at seemed. The bottom line remained that no one had any real answers. No one could tell them if her brain function had suddenly spiked or returned after ages, what had prompted any of those changes, if those changes were permanent, if there would be continued progress made. The truth was, they knew as little after the fact as they did going in.
What had become abundantly clear, thanks to the admitting physician, was that the amount of testing done previously to determine the true nature of Patricia’s condition was grossly negligent. And all of that was thanks to Samuel. He’d wanted her in that state. It had made her more easily exploitable.
After it had all been said and done, he’d driven them to his house. All their stuff was at the carriage house and would have to be collected later, along with whatever was salvageable from Lowey’s apartment. But he’d wanted her there. He’d wanted her in his bed. It was long overdue. Even though they’d both been too exhausted to do more than sleep, it had felt right to have her there.
Rolling onto his side, Quentin stared down at her. She’d forgotten to take her makeup off and what was left of it was pretty much smeared everywhere. Her hair was all but standing on end, but she wore nothing but a simple white t-shirt and she was still the sexiest woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
As if sensing his gaze on her, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “No,” she said, and pulled the covers up over her head.
He laughed. “What do you mean ‘no’? I haven’t asked you anything!”
“I know that look, Quentin. I’m tired. I just want to sleep for a little longer.”
Quentin tugged the sheets back down until she was forced to look at him. “Give me one minute to change your mind.”
She glared at him, but since his hands were already stroking her legs, kneading the muscles of her calves, then her thighs, the glare became less heated. “One minute,” she agreed.
He used that one minute to his advantage. Grasping the hem of her t-shirt, he pushed it upward even as he lowered himself between her thighs. With his mouth only inches from her sweet flesh, he felt her shiver with anticipation.
Parting her legs wider, opening her to him completely, he dipped his head and pressed a tender kiss to the inside of one thigh and then the other. He repeated those kisses, gradually working his way to her center. When he pressed his mouth there, letting his tongue slide between her soft folds. He found her wet and eager. Her thighs tensed beneath his hands and her body arched beneath him.
This, he thought, was what he’d wanted all along. He’d fought it, run from it, done everything in his power to sabotage it, but it—and she—had been inevitable for him.
***
Lowey couldn’t hold back the broken sob as his mouth moved over her. God above, he could make her crazy with just the slightest touch. It wasn’t even pleasure, she realized. It was just this primal, driving need that swept her away.
The heat of his mouth, the soft but insistent sweep of his tongue on her clit, had her writhing. Then he slid two fingers inside her, filling her up and easing the ache that he’d created.
Lowey reached for him, her fingers tangling in his dark hair, but he pushed her hands away, planting them firmly on the mattress. “You move , Lowey,” he whispered darkly, “And I’ll stop.”
“So, I’m just supposed to lay here and let you have all the fun?”
“I won’t be having all the fun… I’m going to make you come again and again. I’m going to make you come until you’re begging me to stop.”
She didn’t answer. He’d rendered her incapable with another sweep of his skilled and wicked tongue. The things he did with his mouth were probably illegal, definitely immoral and so fucking amazing she thought she’d die from the pleasure of it. But she didn’t reach for him again, she gripped the bedclothes bunched beneath her fingers and lay there, letting him torture her with his mouth.
He kept her there, hovering on the brink of release. Every time she would get close, he would move away or change speed or pressure. He was tormenting her and they both knew it.
“Damn you,” she whispered brokenly.
“Do you want to come, Harlow?”
He sounded so calm, so reasonable, as if he were asking her if
she wanted a cup of coffee. “You’re killing me!”
“If you want it, all you have to do is ask,” he said, his teeth grazing her inner thigh.
“Make me come.”
“Please,” he corrected.
“Make me come, please,” she said, but the words were about as far from subservient as possible as they were uttered between clenched teeth. But they did the trick. He lowered his mouth to her once more. His touch was different, more direct, more insistent and it rocked her straight to her soul.
Lowey closed her eyes as the tension built again, climbing higher than before. She screamed when it broke, sobbing as the waves of pleasure crashed within her.
She was still shaking with her orgasm, her body trembling from the force of it when he rose above her. He yanked her t-shirt off entirely, leaving her completely naked before him. But as he moved between her thighs, Lowey decided she had other plans for him. She pressed her hands against his chest, halting him right where he was.
“I get to be in charge now,” she stated. “On your back, Darcy. I’ve got plans for you.”
A wicked grin flashed across his lips just before he kissed her senseless. But then he did as she asked, rolling onto his back and bringing her with him. Lowey rose onto her knees, straddling him with ease.Lifting herself up slightly, she closed her around him and guided him to her entrance. But with just the tip inside her, she stopped. It was torture for her, but it was also torture for him and she had a little payback to get.
“Are you gonna stop there? Really?” he asked.
She moved her hips, sinking down just a bit before retreating again. “Maybe. Just the tip… isn’t that what all the boys ask for?”
His gripped her hips tightly, his fingers digging into the soft flesh there. “I’m not a boy, now am I?”
Truer words had never been spoken, she thought. He was all man. Infuriating and maddening, but so damn sexy she couldn’t resist him. Even as she had the thought, he lifted his own hips off the bed, surging upward, filling her so completely that any thoughts of payback faded to nothing. In fact, she lost the ability to think it all. Her world reduced to the points of contact between their bodies as she took him even deeper.
Quentin (The Bourbon & Blood Series Book 4) Page 10
