by Dahlia West
In his hazy vision, a female form shimmered into view to his right, barely lit in a darkened corner of the room. She had long brown hair that fell around her shoulders. Jack could see that much. “Erin?” he whispered.
All the lights came on now, blinding him momentarily.
The woman in the corner wasn’t Erin. The woman in the corner screamed.
Jack felt like screaming himself, but he couldn’t muster the energy.
He had the feeling of floating, but part of him realized that Chris and Barnes had put him on the table.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Chris yelled.
Penance, thought Jack, but he couldn’t get the word out.
“What are we doing here?” someone yelled. “What are you doing here? Holy shit. Is that guy dead?”
Jack licked his lips and swallowed hard. It took most of his strength to open his eyes. Some of their faces were blurry. Most of them he didn’t even recognize. “Give me a minute,” he replied. “I’m working on it.”
The girl whimpered and that made Jack feel bad, even if it wasn’t Erin. He tried to reach out to her, but he missed. His hand fell limply to the side.
“Get out,” Barnes snapped. “And shut that door.”
“Did you shoot him?”
“Fuck no. I would’ve finished the job.” That was Barnes. Part of Jack wondered if the man would try now.
Chris removed Jack’s shirt, half-ripping, half-cutting it with scissors.
Jack watched in detached fascination.
“Roll him,” Barnes said.
Jack didn’t think that was a good idea. He opened his mouth to tell them that, but it was too late. Chris had him by the shoulder and the hip.
Pain surged through Jack’s body.
“Through and through,” Barnes declared. “But if it nicked your intestines.”
Suddenly, inexplicably, laughter bubbled up from inside Jack. It seemed so…appropriate. So just. “Live in shit, die in shit,” he replied.
Cold hit him, competing with the fire in his side. It was Chris splashing water onto him. Diluted blood ran off Jack’s belly in streams.
“Shooter. Deal with that for now. I’ll look him over when I can.”
It took Jack’s hazy brain a few seconds to process that Barnes wasn’t talking about him.
Chris herded the others out, leaving Barnes alone with Jack.
Jack lifted his head, a scant inch off the table, and watched Barnes threading a needle. “How…” He paused to catch his breath. “How do they let a guy like you be in charge of saving lives?”
Barnes glanced up at him coldly but kept threading.
Jack knew what Barnes was, even if the others didn’t, or wouldn’t admit it. Jack Prior had been raised around too many outlaws not to spot one trying to blend in with polite society. “You don’t have to,” said Jack, just passing time. “You could just…wait.”
Barnes reached out and pinched the edges of Jack’s entry wound together.
Jack winced a little but didn’t protest.
“My orders are to save you,” Barnes informed him.
Jack snorted. “Good little soldier.”
Barnes jabbed the needle through Jack’s skin. Hard.
Jack grunted.
Barnes smiled. “He didn’t say anything about pain.”
“Sadist,” Jack grumbled.
“Murderer,” Barnes replied evenly.
Jack raised an eyebrow at the man stitching him up. “Like I’m the only one in this room.”
Barnes pursed his lips instead of replying.
Yeah. Jack had this man’s number.
He shut his mouth then, and let the man do his job. Every stitch was agony, but it was so much less than Jack deserved, he supposed, so he grit his teeth and let the pain wash over him.
As Barnes worked, the pain got worse, not better, and Jack was finding it harder and harder to breathe.
Barnes cursed, low and sharp.
Jack opened his eyes and watched the man blow out a long breath.
“You need a hospital.”
“No,” Jack replied.
Barnes shook his head. “I don’t have shit here, Prior! I don’t have saline, or blood, or a BP monitor…”
“No…hospital,” Jack gasped.
Barnes frowned. “If you die—”
“Then I die.”
“But—”
“No,” Jack growled.
Hospital meant prison. And prison meant no Erin. She wouldn’t wait for him. How could he even ask her to? Jack groaned at the thought. Apparently Barnes thought it was from the pain.
“I don’t want to give you morphine,” Barnes told him. “I don’t want to slow down your heart rate.
Jack shook his head and ground his teeth. “Don’t want it anyway.”
He didn’t want to get fucked up. He’d spent an entire year not getting fucked up. Right now he had to fight. He had two hands and he clenched them into fists. One for Erin, one for their baby.
He couldn’t afford to let go.
The door opened and Chris came back into the room.
Jack figured he must have looked like death warmed over, judging by the man’s face.
Chris turned away and looked at Barnes. “Doc?”
Jack laid his head on the table.
Barnes sighed. “Well, he’s lost a ton of blood. And I don’t have any. We need to get him to the hospital.”
Jack tried to shake his head, but pain shot through him. “No,” he breathed. “No hospital.”
Barnes looked to Chris for help.
Chris set his jaw firmly, like Jack was in his fucking unit and would just take orders from the man. “Jack—”
“No,” Jack bit out through clenched teeth. His eyes closed again and he knew it was for the last time. They were just too damn heavy to keep open. A sudden burst of panic shot through him, but it was just too late.
In the swirling blackness, Jack heard Barnes say, “We could do it like Jimmy. I mean, he’s almost that far gone anyway, even without the morphine.”
Jack didn’t know what that meant, but he was pretty sure he didn’t like the sound of it. Then he heard Chris’ voice again, cutting through the black haze behind his eyes. “Use me.”
There was a moment of silence before Barnes said, “I can’t type him. You may not be the best match.”
“He’ll have to take his fucking chances,” Chris growled.
After that, Jack heard nothing else.
Chapter Seventy-Five
‡
Jack rose at the sound of the Burnout men stopping for lunch. He’d been napping on Chris’ tattered leather couch in his office, staring at the ceiling until the pain pills Barnes had given him kicked in.
He’d been careful not to take too many, parsed them out until the pain was so intense that he could barely get the cap off the bottle. Then sleep would take him and he would dream of Erin and Thunder Ridge and snow falling silently on the trees.
That had been Jack’s routine for the last week and a half.
This afternoon he sat up, boots scraping the concrete floor. He levered himself to standing and headed out to the large bay area where the guys worked.
Jack lent a hand here and there, since Chris had given some kid named Emilio a surprise paid vacation from the shop in order to keep Jack’s presence a secret. Jack did just enough so he didn’t feel like a fucking moocher, but he wasn’t much of a mechanic and he didn’t like to look at tools. They reminded him too much of the ranch and all the work that still needed to be done there. That damn fireplace needed to be fixed and the hay barn wasn’t finished yet.
Chris’ wife came in, arms loaded with bags. She typically brought in lunch for the boys. She smiled at Jack—she always did—and Jack looked away, never knowing what to do around her. Her little girl trailed along behind her, long brown braids swinging around her shoulders. She snatched a wrench on a nearby workbench and waved it around.
Jack didn’t know Sarah. No
t really. He knew of her and had even had her on the back of his bike once upon a time. Her name was Sarah and the ring on her finger spoke volumes about how important she was to Jack’s former best friend. Slick, Chris called her, but that was between a man and his old lady. Jack wouldn’t say it, not to her face. If anyone ever called Erin ‘little bird,’ Jack would wring their fucking neck.
A week hadn’t really been enough time to know anything other than the fact that she could cook. She could cook better than Erin, but Jack would never tell either of them that.
Sarah dropped the bags off on the break room table and spied Jack’s leather jacket hanging on one of the chairs. Earlier, he’d been looking at the blood on it. He’d put one of his fingers through the bullet hole in the side. He’d felt disconnected from it, like it belonged to somebody else, so he’d just left it there.
He probably should have hidden it.
Sarah smoothed out the leather and, before Jack could stop her, she dipped her hand inside one of the pockets. She drew it back out and frowned at her palm. “You…you have a pocketful of bullets,” she declared. Five brass casings rolled around in her hand, catching the overhead light. The little girl reached up for one and Sarah snatched them away.
“Don’t…” Jack told her. “Don’t do that.” He tried to stand up, but a lick of fire shot through his side and he slumped back into his chair.
Chris leaned over to his wife and plucked one of the bullets from her hand. He held it up as he scrutinized it. “Thirty-eight,” he said and looked at Jack.
Jack merely shrugged.
The little girl skipped over to Jack and put a hand on one of his knees. She grinned at him, gap-toothed.
Jack blinked back at her.
From across the room, Chris started forward, but Jack saw Sarah catch him by the arm. She shook her head sharply at her old man. Chris frowned, clearly wanting to protest, but held his tongue.
Jack suppressed a grunt. Pussy whipped. Of course he was.
The little girl stuck out her hand and passed Jack the wrench she’d been holding. Jack pinched it with two fingers and simply waited for her to let go. She squealed with glee, spun, and took off back to her parents. Chris swooped her up protectively in his arms and sat her on his hip. He gave an irritated sigh just as the break room door opened.
Caleb Barnes strode in and assessed Jack from across the room. “You look good for a dead man,” he finally declared.
Jack raised his water bottle in a mock toast. “My compliments to the undertaker.”
Barnes snorted. “Screw you,” he told Jack. “I did a damn good job on you.” He slid a sheet of paper across the table. “I mean, you’re officially dead.”
Jack plucked the document up with his fingers. It was a copy of an internal email, labeled Confidential in red.
Jack didn’t ask how Barnes had gotten a hold of such a thing. The man surely wouldn’t tell him anyway. But he smirked up at the man towering over him. “I always said you weren’t a cop.”
Barnes grunted.
“What’s that?” Chris asked.
“The final and official statement of Agent Zachary Hayes, previously assigned to go undercover and infiltrate the Badlands Buzzards. This comes courtesy of the Saint Louis office, because he apparently has no plans to ever return to our illustrious, if not slightly charred, city.” Barnes crossed his arms over his broad chest and leveled a gaze at Jack.
“According to the sworn statement of Agent Hayes, while operating as an undercover agent for the DEA, he was forced to execute Jack Prior at a location chosen by Hook Andrews. Because Hook chose the location in advance and drove the truck they used to transport Prior himself, Agent Hayes sincerely apologizes for the DEA and RCPD’s inability to locate the body. It was dark, you see, and he doesn’t quite recall exactly where he left it.
“But Hayes has confessed to pumping two bullets into Prior, the second one right into his skull, and can therefore attest in his capacity as a sworn officer of the law that Jack “Preacher” Prior is well and truly dead. And if no one can find the body now, it’s because animals shredded it and made off with the pieces.”
Barnes snorted and waved his hand dismissively. “There’s some other stuff in there, about how he’s fucking Captain America or some shit, and even though he was wounded, managed to single-handedly fight off two dirty RCPD officers who’d been sent to kill him and his woman over at some shithole safe house outside of town.”
Jack grinned and took a huge bite of his sandwich.
Chris sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, it’s cute, Jack. It’s very you, no doubt. Only you could turn an undercover agent into another one of your minions, but if he changes his mind, changes his story—”
Jack shook his head and swallowed. “He’s not going to. He owes me a debt. He won’t change his mind.”
Chris looked as though he wanted to argue, but instead he sighed, probably knowing it was useless to try.
“Anyway,” Barnes declared, “congratulations. You’re a ghost.” He tossed a large envelope onto the table.
Jack frowned but picked up the packet. “What’s this?” he asked, flipping the top open.
Barnes shrugged. “Well, you can’t be Jack Prior anymore. Jack Prior’s dead, at least according to Captain America, who was, apparently, abandoned by his handlers when he got in too deep, was ambushed by two dirty cops hell-bent on silencing him and his witness, and is probably now on permanent disability for his injuries.
“No one’s going to question Hayes’ statements. This whole operation was a cluster fuck right from the start. No one wants to get their hands dirty by digging into this mess. They’re going to pin a medal on him, give him a nice fat severance check, and he and his woman are going to disappear.”
Jack watched Barnes leave the room, then he drew out his old driver’s license, bent it in half until it snapped, and replaced it with the new one. “So, it all worked out,” he mused, folding it back up.
Chris gaped at him. “You destroyed half the town, Jack!”
Jack shrugged. “Town needed it.”
From across the table, Chris glared at him.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Jack argued. “You know as well as I do the rot that’s been festering here. For years. Since before us.”
“That never bothered you before,” Chris bit out.
Jack shrugged again. “It was mine before.”
“So, you destroyed it because you couldn’t run it?”
Jack didn’t reply.
Chris eyed him shrewdly and shook his head. “No, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe you’d come that close to being snuffed out just to prove a point.”
Jack smiled, mouth tightening. “I did, though. I did prove a point,” he replied quietly.
“It’s the woman.”
Jack’s head snapped up and he shot daggers at Chris. “Don’t talk about her.”
But Chris didn’t listen. “It is her, isn’t it?”
Jack knew Chris well enough that no matter how much he just wanted the matter dropped, Chris wasn’t going to cooperate. Fine. It was Erin. Jack wasn’t ashamed of it. He just didn’t want her name associated with anything that came before. “They reached out to her. They tried to hurt her to get to me. Now no one’s ever going to hurt her again.”
“Jack.” This time it was Sarah who spoke.
Jack grimaced, wishing she wasn’t here.
“Slick,” Chris hissed. “Drop it.”
But the woman didn’t listen. She was about as headstrong as Erin was.
“Jack,” Sarah said to him. “She’s pregnant.”
“Sarah,” Chris admonished sharply.
Jack hesitated for the barest of seconds, then sighed. “I know. I found her pregnancy test in the trash.” He looked at Chris. “You gave her the money, right?”
Chris nodded curtly.
“Then she’s taken care of.”
Sarah gaped at him. “That’s it?!” she demand
ed. “You’re just going to throw some money at her and walk away?”
Jack rubbed his face with his hand and ignored her. It wasn’t that simple. And it was none of her business.
Erin knew now, didn’t she? She had to. With Chris and his boys riding out to the Ridge, Erin had to know by now who Jack was, what he was.
Could a man like that raise a baby? Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Chris holding his daughter and every part of him ached, burned to have that.
But wanting a thing and deserving a thing…well, that wasn’t quite the same, was it?
“You’re just going to leave her,” Sarah repeated, astonished.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Jack told her quietly. His patience was being tried at the moment. Thankfully, Chris could sense it and he passed the kid to his wife and herded her out the door.
“Chris,” Jack heard Sarah hiss. “He can’t just do that. He can’t just abandon her.”
On top of the pain in his side, Jack felt a dull throb begin behind his eyes. He started to reach for the pills again but thought better of it and shoved them back into his jeans pocket.
Chris came back in and slid into a chair with a sigh.
Jack really wasn’t in the mood to hear Sarah lecture him, especially not using her husband as a mouthpiece. “I’m a bad, bad man,” he snorted and threw a glance to the parking lot. He watched Sarah strapping the kid into a car seat. “And yet your woman brought your kid around again today.” He gave Chris an equally withering look.
Chris grimaced, contrite. “She’s…” He shrugged and held out his hands plaintively.
“Slick,” Jack drawled, rolling his eyes.
The corner of Chris’ mouth tugged up. “Pretty much.” Chris sighed as his wife pulled slowly out of the parking lot. “Jack, that woman out there…” He shook his head slowly. “I saw a woman who was torn up because she’d lost you. Sitting here, I can’t understand how the hell that could be, because I know you, Jack. But apparently she knows you, too, in ways that I don’t. And she’s wrecked.”
Jack picked up the wrench, the one the kid liked, and turned it over in his battered hands. Finally, quietly, he asked, “How?”
