Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  As Whitney popped a chunk of gooey chocolate chip cookie into her mouth, she said, “It is, until I bring a man around. Speaking of men… What’s going on with Kaleb?”

  Lucy hadn’t meant for a smile to spread across her face, but that’s what happened.

  “No,” Whitney gasped, lurching forward. “Did you guys…?”

  “No! No, nothing like that,” she blurted.

  “But you want to, right?”

  Lucy gave it some thought then voiced a reasonable fear. “He gets around so I’m staying cautious.”

  “Good,” said Whitney.

  “Courtney Harrington is evidence enough that I probably shouldn’t go down that road.”

  “Courtney’s got a screw loose, if you ask me.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “No, seriously,” Whitney said as her eyes widened, indicative of gossip to come. “She’s been running around town insisting that you damn near flew through the diner at her like you’re some kind of witch woman.”

  Lucy felt every muscle in her body tense up as she asked, “Oh?”

  “And people think you’re on drugs,” she teased with a little eye roll. “Courtney takes the cake in that department.”

  “Tell me about it,” she replied uncomfortably.

  “You know,” Whitney said with firm consideration as she watched Ryan Gosling’s character brood on an old, dusty porch. “I think I might be happy being single.”

  “I thought you just said you wanted a lifelong romance?”

  “Part of me does,” she allowed. “But part of me likes being independent. I’m telling you, I feel different now that I’m packing heat.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened all over again. Whitney had mentioned it more than a few times. Her gun.

  “Every time I squeeze the trigger,” she went on, but snapped her mouth shut as Rick entered the den with two tall glasses of chocolate almond milk in his hands.

  “Ladies,” he said, handing each of them a glass. “As per your specifications, my dear.”

  “Thank ya, Daddy!”

  Lucy couldn’t shake how uncomfortable she was growing, but she managed to thank Rick before he mentioned, “I’m gonna have me a shower and turn in. You girls need anything else?”

  “We’re great! ‘Night!” said Whitney, and the sheriff turned on his heel and left them.

  Whitney waited for her father to turn up the stairs so that he wouldn’t hear them, then said, “There’s something about keeping a firearm on me at all times, I feel powerful, like I don’t need anyone or anything.”

  Except your daddy to make you cookies, thought Lucy.

  “You’ve gotta try it.”

  “Try what?” Lucy asked.

  “Shooting a gun.” Whitney straightened up on the couch and planted both bare feet on the floor. “Come on,” she said, getting up.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’re going to shoot my gun.”

  “Whitney—”

  “Trust me,” she said as she took Lucy’s arm and pulled her out of the armchair. “You’re gonna love it.”

  Whitney grabbed her purse from the couch, slung it over her shoulder without releasing Lucy from her grasp, and dragged her clear through the house. When they reached the foyer, she slipped her feet into a pair of sneakers and listened out for a quiet beat. The sounds of the shower running on the second floor satisfied her so she urged Lucy, “Put your shoes on.”

  Outside, the air was especially crisp and the sky was especially dark without a single star shining down.

  They rounded to the back of the house where Whitney’s significantly smaller cabin was. Flanking both cabins on the east side was about fifty yards of lawn, which they crossed, Whitney walking fast with an excited air of urgency and Lucy padding apprehensively after her.

  The lights from the cabins fell away as they descended a little decline, coming to a dirt expanse that Lucy realized was the length of Rick’s outdoor shooting range, one end of it had a block of wood that Lucy figured was meant to hold guns and ammo. At the other end was a tall mound of dirt.

  After walking the length of the dirt range, Whitney set her purse on the block of wood that was about waist high and pulled out the handgun her father had supplied her with.

  She cocked it and Lucy flinched.

  “Oh, don’t be so jumpy,” said Whitney.

  “How can you be so confident?”

  She shrugged and told her, “I was raised with guns. They’re not dangerous if you know how to use them.”

  “Right.”

  Whitney took aim, squinting one eye shut in a way that looked highly amateur, and then…

  BANG!

  The round fired off and popped into the dirt mound on the other side of the range and Whitney laughed maniacally.

  “It’s exhilarating! You have to try it! Here!”

  Lucy was reluctant to take hold of the handgun that her friend was now forcing into her grasp.

  “Hold it up at eye level,” she instructed.

  As Lucy did, she complained, “I can’t even see what I’m shooting at.”

  “Don’t worry about that. This isn’t about aim. It’s about feeling the power in your hand. Trust me,” she said again, “you’re going to love it.”

  Lucy doubted that, but she gave it a try and, hoping to God there wasn’t a deer or bear wandering through the target side of the range—she really couldn’t see a damn thing out here—squeezed the trigger.

  BANG!

  There was such tremendous kick-back that Lucy’s entire arm flailed up into the air and Whitney laughed and clapped.

  “Do you feel different? Do you feel like a new person?”

  “I feel like my arm’s gonna be sore for at least a week,” she told her as she very carefully offered the gun back to Whitney.

  If Whitney’s crazed laughter had seemed odd, what she did next was downright terrifying.

  Her bright-eyed smile darkened and her eyes went dead as she gripped the downward aiming gun. It almost seemed like she’d fallen asleep with an eerily-calm quality, but her eyes remained opened, a mile-long vacant stare coming over her.

  “Whitney?”

  Her friend’s expression was now long, almost inhuman, and Lucy’s stomach dropped.

  Somewhere out in the dark wilderness, a flock of crows startled out of their quiet resting place, cawing madly and rustling tree tops as they broke out across the sky.

  When Lucy returned her startled gaze to her friend, having caught sight of the ominous murder of crows, she found Whitney in a zombie-like trance, aiming the gun at her.

  “Whitney,” she breathed, suddenly terrified.

  But it was like Whitney wasn’t in there anymore. It seemed like she’d been overtaken by some dark force that had compelled her to take aim at her lifelong friend.

  “Don’t,” she breathed, trying to reach Whitney who she prayed was still somewhere inside the vessel of that red-headed, athletic body. “Don’t do it, Whitney,” she pleaded.

  But Whitney did.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  BANG!

  Lucy felt her entire body light up with the heat of a thousand flames and at first, she assumed the sensation was evidence she’d been shot in the chest.

  But she was glowing, having burst into an energetic force field that the silver bullet of Whitney’s gun hadn’t penetrated.

  Whitney instantly collapsed, dropping the gun and falling to her knees, her palm pressed flat against the dirt as she fought to catch her breath.

  Lucy snuffed out her eternal flame and rushed to her friend, first flinging the gun off to the wayside before clutching her friend’s shoulders.

  “What…? What was that?” Whitney asked breathlessly. “What happened?”

  My God, thought Lucy. She didn’t remember?

  “Did I faint? I think I blacked out for a second there,” Whitney decided as she shook it off and carefully rose to her unsteady feet. “Must have been all that darn sugar
I pounded.”

  “Yeah,” Lucy feigned to agree. “It must have been. Let’s go on back inside.”

  Before she wrapped her arm around her friend, Lucy collected the handgun, stuffed it in Whitney’s purse for safekeeping, and together they made their way back to the sheriff’s cabin, all the while Lucy looked around to see if the wolf-man was somewhere out there.

  There was no other explanation for what had just happened.

  ***

  The sky had lit up like the goddamned Fourth of July and Rick knew the sound of a Glock when he heard one fire off three rounds in the dead of night.

  He’d been in the midst of wrapping a towel around his wet body, but he was hustling now, tearing through his bedroom to throw on a pair of sweats, never mind a shirt or shoes.

  Downstairs, he checked the den. Where in the good goddamn were the girls?

  He grabbed his shotgun from the gun rack in the foyer and ran out into the chilly night, Whitney’s safety at the forefront of his worried mind.

  The shots had sounded like they’d come from out back, from his shooting range, and he forced some logic into his fear-scrambled brain—maybe his Whitney had been tryin’ to show off?

  If that was the case, if she was safe and sound, he’d kill her.

  “What in the hell was all that?” he demanded when he saw the shadowy figures of the both girls crossing through the backyard towards him.

  “Just a little target practice, Daddy,” his daughter told him, and his eyes nearly fell out of his head, seeing her lean on Lucy for support the way she was.

  “At this hour?” he barked, taking hold of her arm. He had a mind to slap some sense into her, but she looked shaken up enough.

  “It’s your fault,” his Whitney had the audacity to suggest. “You got me all hopped up on sugar and I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

  “So you go on out in the dark with the gun I gave ya?” he yelled. “Goddamn, girl, git on back in that house,” he ordered, thrusting her to the front door of his cabin that he hadn’t bothered to close. “Don’t ya know there’re wolves out in them woods!”

  As Whitney stepped inside, Rick turned on his heel to stare Lucy down before she could dare set foot in his home.

  Pointing his finger in her face, he warned, “I see what you are. Whitney might not be able to see it, but I sure as shit can.”

  Her pouty little mouth gaped open, but he wasn’t buying the innocent act.

  “You’re a bad influence,” he told her, and she seemed strangely relieved by the accusation. “You’re a weird, witchy little thing, and I gave my girl the benefit of the doubt with you, but enough’s enough.”

  When Lucy took a step towards the entryway, he stepped in her path.

  “I don’t think so,” he told her. He wasn’t going to let this druggy little troublemaker back into his home. “You’ve made wild claims about a wolf-man—”

  “The wolf-man is real and he’s out there!” she insisted, but Rick wasn’t having it.

  “You scared the bejesus outta me, making me think you’ve had visions of my late wife! Now I gotta deal with a dead girl that’s turned up in your apartment! Something ain’t right with you. Something’s off, and I’m not gonna stop ‘til I find out exactly what.”

  “But, Sheriff—”

  “No buts!” he barked and she flinched. “You stay the hell away from my Whitney! Stay away until I figure out just what in the hell I’m gone do about ya!”

  Headlights blazed up the driveway and Rick cut his eyes away from the witchy-girl to find a pickup truck pulling to an idling stop behind his parked SUV.

  “It was her idea!” Lucy insisted.

  “But it was your influence. Go on. Git!”

  He narrowed his furious eyes on her and watched as she jogged over to the pickup truck just as Kaleb stepped out.

  “She’s all yours!” he called out to him and it looked like Kaleb might have a disrespectful retort coming Rick’s way, but the Quinn boy kept his mouth shut in favor of climbing back in behind the wheel as soon as Lucy jumped into the passenger’s seat. “Good riddance,” Rick grumbled under his breath as they drove off into the dark night.

  When he turned he found his Whitney lurking in the open doorway.

  He flashed her a comforting smile to let her know it was going to be okay. She was all he had left in this world. He wasn’t about to lose her, not without one hell of a fight.

  “How ‘bout a slice a warm apple pie, sweetheart? Just you an’ me.”

  ***

  “What was that all about?” Kaleb asked as they turned onto Bison Road, driving north back into the heart of the Fist.

  “Just drive.”

  “Lucy?”

  She cut her eyes at him and blurted, “He’s out there. The wolf-man.”

  “Dante?” he asked with concern as he touched his large hand against the front pocket of his jeans. His brow furrowed and he stole a glance at her then returned his dark eyes to the road ahead.

  “He almost killed me.”

  Kaleb slammed on the brakes, threw the truck into Park, and stared at her, the darkness of this desolate stretch of Bison closing in on them.

  “You saw him?”

  “No,” she said darkly. “It was worse than that.”

  “Talk to me, Lucy.”

  “He overtook Whitney. I know it was him,” she told him with conviction. “Whitney had taken me out back to shoot some gun the sheriff gave her—”

  “You went outside?” he yelled, furious that she’d directly disobeyed him.

  “I didn’t want to!”

  “The only reason I dropped you off there was because you told me you were just going to watch movies—”

  “Well, that’s not what happened!” she shot back. “We went outside and Dante took control of Whitney and she shot me!”

  “What?!”

  He was searching the length of her, frantically, but she shoved him off.

  “I’m fine. The bullet didn’t hit me.”

  “Like she missed?”

  “No, like I turned to light and the bullet either ricocheted off of the light field, or I don’t know, maybe it cut clear through but I was nothing but ethereal air. I don’t know, Kaleb. All I know is that he’s back.”

  Kaleb fell silent and it was a long while before he faced front and gazed worriedly through the windshield.

  When finally he shifted the truck into Drive, he told her, “We’re going to my place.”

  “What’s wrong with my apartment?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” he said and they drove up Bison, coming along the heart of Devil’s Fist until they reached Highland Highway that would take them west all the way out to the Quinn cabins. “Did she see you?”

  “What?”

  “Did Whitney see you turn to light?”

  “She was standing right there, Kaleb,” she told him like it was a crazy question to ask. But it actually wasn’t. “She didn’t remember a thing. Didn’t remember taking aim at me. Didn’t remember firing the gun. So yes, she saw me turn into a ball of light, but no, it’s not going to be a problem. She doesn’t remember.”

  “Which isn’t to say she won’t,” he pointed out, and they drove the rest of the way in silence.

  When they reached the cabin, Lucy climbed out before Kaleb could round the hood of the truck and open her door for her, though he tried.

  Inside, he flipped on a few lights then turned to face her in the living room and said, “Show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  “What you did out in the woods.”

  “We weren’t in the woods. The sheriff has a shooting range behind his house.”

  “You know what I mean,” he complained.

  “You can’t expect me to turn to light on command,” she told him.

  “Actually, I can. And you should, too.” When she just stared at him, he insisted, “There has to be a way to control it. To use it. You aren’t the victim of your abilities. That’s not how i
t works.”

  “I don’t think either of really knows how it works, Kaleb.”

  “That’s why we have to figure it out. Together. Please. Just try.”

  Lucy didn’t have a clue as to where she should begin. When Whitney had pulled the trigger, not a single thought had entered Lucy’s head. Turning into light had been one hundred percent reflex, like a bodily function she had no control over. She could no sooner stop her own heart from beating than she could will herself to turn into the kind of light that had just saved her life.

  “Are you trying?” he pressed. “Close your eyes,” he suggested.

  “Close my eyes?”

  “Hell, I don’t know! You have to start somewhere!”

  She screwed her face up like the exercise was going to be useless and he advanced on her. The next thing she knew, Kaleb had crushed a hot kiss over her mouth and she was melting into the delicious feel of him.

  When he stepped away, he said, “There. I jumpstarted you.”

  And he had.

  Lucy felt her whole body tingling and it wasn’t just because Kaleb had turned her on. She glanced down at her hands and arms and she was radiating a faint glow of light.

  “Can you try to increase it?”

  She tried, but it didn’t seem to be working.

  Kaleb’s sense of humor returned and he suggested, “I could take you to bed. That ought to light you up.”

  She teased him right back, “It might come to that.”

  But she tried again and though it felt like her brain was swelling under the strain of attempting to will the light field that she was now recognizing was an intrinsic part of her brighter and brighter.

  “It’s working,” he breathed in encouragement. “Keep going.”

  She did and it worked. She was lighting up, brighter and brighter. It sort of felt like breathing. It was a bodily function, but she could control it, like either breathing slowly and deeply or quickly and shallowly.

  She began experimenting. She snuffed the light out then blew it up into bright existence and Kaleb laughed with victory.