Brian: A Montana Bounty Hunters Story

by Devlin, Delilah

  Both officers crouched down behind the racks as they made their way steadily toward the darkened doorway.

  Marc pointed down an aisle, indicating she should come at the door from another angle.

  Keeping her breathing even, she nodded and sped silently to the end of the row.

  Another nod, and she moved with her back to the wall, easing toward the doorway. From this angle, she could see the bottom of a dirty sneaker, unmoving on the floor.

  She lifted her finger and pointed to the door, indicating she saw one person. When they stood flanking the door, she reached out an arm to open it wider, a loud creak sounding in the silence. It thudded softly against the wall of the small office.

  Marc edged around the corner, stepped over the young woman on the floor and went to the door at the far side of the room, which stood wide open, sunlight streaming inside from the alley.

  Ash bent over the young woman and placed a hand on her chest, felt movement, and then pressed her mic to call for an ambulance. But behind her, she heard another creak and stiffened.

  Marc swung around, his weapon raised. “Get down!” he shouted.

  Ash ducked toward the woman, not wanting to get in Marc’s line of fire. Above her, a loud blast boomed—a shotgun round. Her body stiffened, and she glanced toward Mark. Blood burst from multiple places on his face and neck, spraying outward. His arms flung wide.

  She screamed and came up, swinging back with her elbow and connected with hard muscle. No time to think. No time to pray. Marc had to be okay. She had to get to him. But first, she had to live.

  As she turned, something struck her cheek. She went down, watching as though in slow motion as a man in a hoodie raised a gun and pointed it at her. Her own weapon entered her line of sight. A loud explosion sounded, the recoil jolting her arm. He jerked, his arms going limp, dropping the shotgun, and then he lurched past her, stepping on Marc as he exited through the door.

  She got back to her knees and crawled toward Marc who lay so still, too quiet. His face was a mess, blood dripping down both sides into his thick black hair, pockets of flesh gone. What worried her most was the sluggish pulsing river flowing from his neck wound. She pressed her hands over it and leaned toward him. “Marc, hang on, baby. I’m here. I’m here.”

  He didn’t blink. Didn’t move.

  She pressed harder with one hand and lifted the other to her radio. “108. Officer down. Officer down. Shots fired.” She knew her voice sounded ragged, strained. They’d know the situation was bad. Please come fast.

  She fought to control her panic. Do her job. Again, she pressed the button to let them know the suspect was fleeing the scene. “Six-feet-four male, gray hoodie, jeans, sunglasses. On foot.” She released the button and let the mic hang from her shoulder as she bent over Marc, all her concentration going now to her partner who was dying. She knew he was. Her chest pinched, and she could barely breathe. No miracle would save him.

  And then...a hand touched her shoulder. “Ma’am, let me help. I’m a doctor.”

  She glanced to the side, shock making her quiver. “Save him, please.”

  A kind face beneath a shock of thick gray hair entered her vision. “I’ll do what I can.”

  As she side-stepped on her knees down Marc’s prone body to make room, she shook her head, feeling like she was falling, like she was about to faint. Black spots danced before her eyes. “No, no. This isn’t what happened. That didn’t happen,” she said, her voice sounding from far away.

  The doctor glanced at her with cold blue eyes. “Isn’t this what you wanted to happen?”

  Ash took a deep breath then shot a glance at Melanie Oats, the psychologist she’d been required to see since the shooting.

  “The dream was different this time?” Melanie asked, fingers steepled beneath her chin.

  Why had she confided the fact she’d been having nightmares? She was getting tired of reliving Marc’s death. “It’s always different. In little ways,” Ash muttered. “But this time, I felt hope. That doctor appearing. That didn’t happen in actuality.” She took a deep breath and pressed her lips together. “Didn’t really matter. He didn’t change a damn thing.”

  The woman’s expression remained a professional mask. “Did you expect that his arrival would...change something...?”

  Ash couldn’t meet her gaze. If Ash told her that some folks she knew believed dreams weren’t just something brains concocted to help work people through problems, that dreams could be doorways into other worlds, the therapist might wonder if Ash believed that, too. And Ash couldn’t have Melanie doubting her mental state. She needed Melanie Oats’s seal of approval, her report that gave her a clean bill of health so she could go back to work. A score needed to be settled.

  That last thought made her go still. Her burning desire wasn’t just for revenge against the skinny motherfucker who’d killed Marc; she wanted revenge against the whole dirty city. Better hide her anger, or Melanie Oats would never give her blessing.

  The psychologist let out a breath and cupped her crossed knee. “You’ve never spoken about your family.”

  Hell no. “My family has nothing to do with this. With me.”

  “Do you understand why that would concern me?”

  Ash grunted. Melanie Oats had never met her family.

  “I can’t approve you returning to work. To wearing a gun. Not yet.” She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I think you should take my previous suggestions to heart. Take some time. Visit with family. Deal with the grief, instead of bottling it up. You won’t talk to me. Maybe there’s someone else you trust you can unburden yourself to.”

  The woman thought she should unburden herself? Did she even have the right to let go of her guilt? She’d been the one who’d opened that door, who hadn’t looked behind it. Never mind the guy had to have been as skinny as a rail to fit in the narrow space. She shook her head to rid herself of the vision of that dark area behind the door. Every time she imagined it, the space was deeper and darker. Maybe the therapist was right. “All right. I’ll take some time.”

  But she wouldn’t go home. She’d handle this on her own. Like she’d handled every other problem she’d ever faced.

  “Good. I’ll see you in two weeks?”

  Ash pushed up from her chair and gave the woman a vague nod. First order of business was finding a drink. Maybe several. Tomorrow, she’d do something for herself. She didn’t want to continue this path. She had work to do. Maybe tomorrow she’d run along Wisner Trail beside Bayou St. John. She needed to keep fit. Needed honed strength to be ready the next time.

  Is this what you wanted to happen?

  What had that doctor in her dream meant? Yes, she’d wanted a miracle that day as she’d knelt in Marc’s blood. She’d cursed and prayed for divine intervention, but a doctor with a dozen bags of blood at his fingertips still couldn’t have saved him.

  Or had he meant something else? Not that she’d wanted Marc to die, but that she had expected him to leave her at some point. Hadn’t she always been waiting for the other shoe to drop in her relationship with Marc? In a flash, they’d fallen into lust and immediately into love. Too damn easy. Nothing good in her life had ever come that easily.

  Ash pushed on the glass door and entered the sidewalk, assailed by the heat and the street noises, the honking and shouts, the music in the distance. The therapist’s office was on Canal, blocks away from the constant hubbub in the heart of the French Quarter. While seedy and dirty, the Quarter was filled with whores and tourists, but she never felt afraid there. There was a rhythm to the streets, a flow that seeped into her bones and had her swaying as she walked. Her strides were longer, her breaths deeper. The scent of liquor lured her, and she followed the curled fingers of a black man with an easy smile beckoning her at the open bar door, calling in the tourists. He didn’t have to cajole her. She probably wore a desperate look.

  She slid into the darkness, away from the sunlit door, and passed the band on a dais, taking a
break to drink. Cigarette smoke wafted in from the street, following her, and she wished she hadn’t quit years earlier, because she’d love nothing better than to drink and smoke herself into a stupor. But then she’d have to wander outside to puff. So fuck that.

  “You back again?”

  Ash glanced over her shoulder to see a woman with a long weave and two-inch ruby nails teeter toward her on impossibly high heels. “Got a problem with it?” But she gave Gennie a tired grin.

  “Sugar, you can come back as often as you like, but what you need ain’t in any bottle.”

  Someone else telling her what she needed. Ash rubbed a hand over her face. “What I need is to get back to work, and I can’t do that because that bitch of a shrink won’t let me.”

  “That bitch be doin’ you a favor, hon.” Her hand curved over Ash’s shoulders, and she gave her a squeeze. “Go home,” she said, leaning to speak into her ear, because the band had started tuning their instruments. “Jus’ go home. What you need is rest. And family. Go see your Auntie.”

  Stiffening, Ash shook her head. “She’ll only hang a gris-gris bag around my neck and tell me to make nice with the spirits. That isn’t happening.”

  “What about that sister of yours?”

  Ash shrugged. She and her half-sister weren’t close. Hell, they hadn’t known they were sisters until her father’s bigamy came to light at his funeral. She’d known Siobhan when they were children. They’d shared the same classrooms, played together on the monkey bars, but their father’s sin had pushed a wedge between their two families. Her mother’s bitterness had ensured whatever friendship they’d had was set aside out of family loyalty.

  Her “Auntie” was a woman she’d seen only rarely in their small town because she lived deep in the bayou. They’d become better acquainted when her own mother fell ill and no amount of pain medication could soothe her through the final stages of the cancer that finally killed her. Her mother had sent her into the bayou for a remedy.

  Something that had shocked Ash, because she’d known her mother was aware of Auntie Clare and the rumors that swirled around her.

  But Ash’d made that trek, several times, bringing home herbs in a cheesecloth bag that she’d sprinkled into her mama’s tea. The tea had done its job, giving her comfort at the last, ensuring she maintained her dignity until the very end when she’d simply slipped away in her sleep.

  At the funeral, Auntie—for she’d insisted on being called that—had been the one who held her hand throughout the service, while Siobhan had sat stiffly on the other side of her own mother.

  Ash tossed back another shot and shook her head. “Gennie, I can’t go home. There’s nothing for me there.” Her home was gone. Sold at her mother’s death, and the funds used to pay her college tuition. And she’d never looked back. Never again spoken to Auntie or Siobhan.

  At least Ash had New Orleans. The city was her friend. Not a good one. It had led her astray a time or two. But she was familiar. And never judged her. If Ash wanted to stay shit-faced for the next two weeks, no one would raise an eyebrow. Maybe she’d have to find another bar though for her bender.

  Dark thoughts weighing her down, she paid for her drinks and left, winding her way through the quarter, away from the tourist center to a side street with two-storied houses hidden behind small courtyard entrances. At one gate, she pushed the latch and ambled through, her feet dragging over worn paving stones to the porch with an iron railing and the baby bougainvillea she’d been coaxing for months to wind around the porch rail. Didn’t matter anymore. The next tenant might hate the fuchsia blooms. Her lease was up soon. And without Marc sharing the rent, she couldn’t afford to stay. Not that she wanted to. Too many memories lay inside the house’s walls.

  She unlocked the front door and stepped over the threshold, kicking the door shut behind her and stepping over the pile of mail the mailman had dropped through the slot the past weeks. She supposed she should go through it in case a bill needed paying, but the thought slipped through her mind and faded in an instant as she passed the living room and headed straight to the kitchen.

  Cheap scotch sat on the counter. Yesterday’s tumbler beside it. She swished it clean with tap water, then poured a drink and headed back to the porch, to an overstuffed chair pulled close to the railing. She settled into the chair and set her feet on the rail, her drink resting on her belly as she stared between the branches of the old oak in the courtyard at the huge silver moon.

  A breeze feathered her hair against her cheek. Almost like the light stroke of fingertips, and for a moment, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to imagine Marc’s fingers on her skin.

  But only for a moment, because in the next, a deep painful twinge tightened her chest. She took a sip of her drink, let the liquor burn its path down her throat, and then breathed deeply. Why couldn’t it have been me? I could have blocked the shot with my body if I hadn’t dived over the clerk on the floor.

  If only I could go back and change it. I’d give anything. Please, God. Please.

  A tear slipped down her cheek, and she sniffed then grimaced and wiped it away with the backs of her fingers. She’d cried enough. Doing so didn’t change a thing. Only left her with a headache and grogginess. And she’d had enough of both.

  Ash set her drink on the porch rail, dropped her feet, and stood, swaying a little. She’d thought she’d have to finish the rest of the bottle before sleep consumed her. Maybe not. She reentered the house and made to step over the mountain of mail.

  Her body swayed again, and she knew she’d better get to a chair fast. Her foot kicked an envelope the size of an invitation with a beautiful island-themed stamp and sent it sliding over the old, weathered oak floor.

  Nearer the kitchen now, she saw her name written in thick, terse pen strokes. A man’s handwriting. Unfussy, bold. Rather like Marc’s had been, although his scrawl had been nearly illegible.

  Curious, she eased down beside the letter and picked it up. She carried the letter into the living room, to the leather couch she’d used as a bed since she’d come home alone that first night. She pulled an afghan around her shoulders and turned on the lamp on the table beside her to take a closer look. She slid a fingernail under the flap and opened it.

  Aislin...

  No “Dear Aislin”, no “Dear Occupant”...

  It was scam, right? One of those things where they made you think they knew you well, or knew your cousin or best friend at college, and they just hated to contact you, but they were stranded in Paris. Would you please send money? And if you were dumb enough to do it, you got hit with a huge credit card bill when some Ukrainian charged a Mercedes. Well good luck with that. Her credit card was nearly maxed out.

  Or maybe the letter was one of those time-share things where she had to sit through a sales pitch...

  She ought to toss it. But the trash can was all the way in the kitchen. And now, she was just a little bit curious.

  The next line sat like a stone in her belly.

  I’m a friend of Marc’s. We have to talk.

  Below that was a phone number with a note to call day or night.

  Was this from another friend who’d just found out he’d been killed? Ash wasn’t sure she could bear having that conversation even one more time. But she thought of Marc, and the fact he’d had a huge pool of friends, not only on the force, but from his time in the Navy SEALs. Blinking at the sudden burn in her eyes, she could almost hear him saying, “Don’t wuss out now, Dupree.”

  So she rose, slid her phone from her back pocket, and quickly dialed the number before she did just that. Maybe she’d get an answering machine and could just hang up. Tomorrow, she’d forget about the urge that had her waiting as the phone rang.

  She moved the phone away and raised her thumb to end her call, when she heard, “Ash, don’t hang up,” in a smooth deep voice.

  Ash drew a swift breath but remained silent. How did he know the call was from her? And that voice—she’d felt a quiver ripple o
ver her skin. His voice was a call to temptation, but she wasn’t interested. “I’m sorry. I dialed the wrong number.”

  “Wait. Ash.”

  That was the second time he’d used her name. Her fingers tightened on her phone. “How do you know it’s me calling?”

  “Please, don’t be afraid,” came that deep voice. “Marc gave me your number, but I thought the note might be easier than another call from a stranger.”

  The stranger’s voice was smoother yet again. “Marc’s dead,” she said, her voice more strident than she intended.

  “Something I discovered a few days ago when I called the work number he’d given me. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  The very words she didn’t want to hear. Her throat tightened. “Well, thanks for that sentiment,” she said in a rush, ready to end the call as quickly and politely as she could.

  “Forgive me, but this may come as a shock. Marc made arrangements for a trip to a Caribbean island, reserved a cottage, and bought plane tickets. He wanted to spring the getaway on you. Said something about tricking you into thinking you were vacationing on Grand Isle. He didn’t want you to know a thing until he drove up to the hangar where the plane would be waiting.”

  “Grand Isle...” Her hand tightened on her phone. “But he’s gone, now,” she said, tears welling. He’d planned a sexy getaway. Something special. Marc wasn’t a romantic man, but he’d planned this?

  “I’m glad you called. And I know it hasn’t been all that long, but the trip is already paid for. Yours, whenever you have the time to get away. You’ll have complete privacy, a house on the beach.”

  “I can’t,” she said, her voice scratchy as she fought tears. She angled her head upward and stared at the ceiling. “I have work,” she lied.

  “Like I said, any time you can travel. Everyone needs to get away some time, Ash.”

  He paused.

  She was surprised she wished he’d say something else. Something about his voice was soothing, making her feel like she wasn’t the only person in the world hurting. “Where is this island?”