by Tijan
“No.” Caldron pointed at some of his buddies. “Block him. We don’t want the rich daddy dearest to get away scot-free, not after we wipe the floor with his sons.”
“This is getting old.” Nate growled, stepping toward some of the guys.
I did a quick count and stopped after I hit more than twelve.
“You came out in full force, Caldron.” I turned back to him. He was the leader. He had all the answers. “Why don’t you show some decency and say why?”
“Yeah.” Logan stepped back toward us, but four guys hurried around to block him from getting to us. “How do you know about any of this? What do you know about Quinn? And why the fuck are you here?”
“That’s right. Your rich prick of a father was supposed to ‘take care of me,’ wasn’t he? Well, he did. He transferred me out to another job location. I was there last month when suddenly I got a call saying I was fired.”
Logan and I shared a look. James wouldn’t fire Caldron. There’d be no point.
He saw the look. “Oh yeah. That right there says I’m right. I got ‘handled’ just like I’m here to ‘handle’ you guys.”
“Who fired you?”
Caldron looked at me, his arms folding over his chest. The bat hung down at his side. “The person who hired me to go after your asses.” He pointed the bat at everyone around him. “That’s what we’re doing here—what I was hired to do in the first place.”
“And that was?” I was getting tired of his chatter. A deep anger began to boil inside of me.
“Yeah.” Logan shoved at the guy closest to him. “Get to the fucking point.”
Caldron smirked, and I smirked back, but I glanced over at Nate. All the attention had been focused on us. Even the guys who were “watching” Nate hadn’t been watching him. I caught a quick flash of light from his phone. He stashed it back in his pocket and nodded to me.
He’d called the cops.
It was the old system we had in place for times like this: Logan and I drew everyone’s attention, and Nate called for backup. Sadly, our backup had to be actual law enforcement this time. These guys weren’t just here to hurt us. They were here for blood.
We needed to hold them off long enough, or we were dead.
Logan rolled his shoulders and gave a small dip of his head. He was ready.
I squared off against Caldron. I wanted to fight, but I wanted answers, too. “Who really hired you? You’re not after us because of Budd, are you?”
Caldron started laughing, tipping his head back like a hyena. “No, no. You guys did me a favor with him. Since he’s out, I’m the guy in charge. With him gone, I’m on top.” A serious look settled in his eyes, and I knew I was looking into a murderer’s gaze. “Quinn hired me the same day he and your daddy had a meeting. He knew I was already working for your dad. We were supposed to do the landscaping for that hotel they’re opening. Quinn thought I could keep an eye on you, but your dad messed that up. He postponed the landscaping. We don’t start until this next week, now that everything’s almost done with the hotel. But it doesn’t matter, because this is the real job he hired me for. I was supposed to keep you from getting too close to his son.”
“To Adam?” That was why he kept trying to attack us. “That’s why you went after Sam so much?”
Caldron nodded, swinging the bat like he was warming up for batting practice. “Yep. She’s your weakness. Keep going after her and you wouldn’t be able to concentrate on whatever your daddy put you up to. You’d be too focused on keeping your girl safe.”
He paused a moment. “My guess is your dad stuck you with little Quinn to watch him, right?”
I didn’t offer a response, and he shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter if you don’t confirm it. I know it’s true, just like I know I got a call an hour ago to be on the lookout if you made a move. I’m thinking you coming to your dad’s office at midnight was the move. Am I right? I know I am. I also know there was a breach in security at some offsite location Quinn uses. I know your girlfriend had a cozy chat with Quinn Jr.’s fiancée, and that same fiancée broke down crying to Quinn Jr. earlier this afternoon. Now,” he spread his arms, “I have no clue what you made a copy of, but that’s what I was told to get from you. Since we got here too late and it looks like you’ve already delivered it, we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
“You mean the bloody way.”
“Whichever way you want. Either your daddy brings it out to save your asses, or we step over your bodies to get it. It’s up to you.”
I heard sirens in the distance, but they were almost coming too soon. I wanted this guy’s blood on the ground. I wanted it all over, and I wanted to be the one who broke him in half. We’d had enough. I didn’t need to hear any more to understand what had gone down.
“I would’ve thought you’d get tired of this, Caldron.”
“What do you mean?” His eyes twitched, just briefly.
“This. You. Me. Fighting.” I grinned, knowing it didn’t reach my eyes. “You losing.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “That’s what you think is going to happen?”
Logan and Nate shifted. They were ready to fight.
I stepped away from the Escalade. “I know that’s what’s going to happen. I always beat you, Caldron. I always will; no matter how many guys you bring with you.”
He moved back, as did his guys. It was like I had an invisible force protecting me. But if I’d heard the sirens, they must’ve, too.
“What?” I asked. “You know you can’t finish this fight before those cops show up?”
“Who says they’re coming here?” He tossed the bat up, catching it like he was going to swing at a baseball. He held it above his head.
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“They have to prioritize their calls,” he said. “It’s a small police department. I’d think a burning nursing home would take priority over a text about brawling from someone’s cell phone.” He looked right at Nate. “I saw that, you know.”
“You set the nursing home on fire?” Nate paled slightly.
“They’ll get everyone out, I’m sure.” Caldron didn’t sound like he cared. “But that leaves us to our merry selves.” He dropped the bat and caught it again, right around the handle. He hefted it back up. “How about we get this show on the road?”
And he swung.
I blacked out after that.
The bat swung down. I saw my hand catching it, saw Caldron on the ground. His face was bleeding. His eyes were swollen shut. There were hands at my shoulders, and I was swinging.
Time skipped.
Two guys were on me. I ducked down, ramming my shoulder into one of them. Someone’s arm cracked, and he screamed in pain as it bent at an indecent angle.
More lapses in time.
Nate was on the ground. Three guys kicked him.
I pulled one away, slamming him into the pavement.
Time jumped again.
Logan threw a punch, and a guy’s head snapped backward from the blow. Another guy swung a bat, about to hit Logan in the back of the head—another blackout. I came to again, and that same guy was unconscious.
I was holding his bat.
More blackness.
“Mason.” I heard Logan’s voice in the distance.
There was a buzzing sound. I looked around. What was that?
“Mason.” Suddenly, the buzzing sound vanished, and Logan was right there. His voice was too loud, and he was clawing at my hands. “Mason, stop!” He sounded panicked. My brother never panicked. He kept pulling at my hands, and I looked—they were wrapped around a guy’s throat.
Logan reared back and rammed his shoulder into me. He knocked me backward, but I’d let go of the throat already.
What had I…?
I didn’t want to know.
I shook my head. There was a cloud there, a haze settling over everything. I didn’t feel like myself, and I surveye
d the parking lot and felt sick.
There were bodies everywhere.
Nate sat on the ground, his face covered in blood and only one eye open. He was holding his shirt to his head. The end was soaked in blood.
I looked for Logan. He was right in front of me, and he was bleeding all over, too. He fell into me, and he began to slip to the ground, but I caught him. Wrapping an arm around his back, I eased him down and sat next to him.
My hands were already bruising. They were covered in blood, but there was blood everywhere. Even the Escalade had blood on it.
“Logan.” My voice was hoarse. “What did we do?”
He grunted from pain as he tried to stretch a leg out. “We fought. That’s what we did.”
The sound of someone walking over broken glass came from behind us. I didn’t look. My body was beginning to scream in agony. Everything hurt.
James stepped in front of us, taking everything in. He sucked in a breath. “What happened?”
I wasn’t sure. I kept quiet.
Logan glanced to me, then said, “Quinn knew you sicced Mason on his son. He sicced Caldron on us. We were supposed to be distracted.” He had to stop to spit out blood. “He failed at his job.” He looked up at our dad, his face misshapen and bruised. “You still have that copy, right? We didn’t do all of this for nothing.”
James held up the flash drive. “It’s here.” At that moment, a squad car lit up the parking lot in red and blue. “I was going to use it as leverage against him, get him to back down, but it looks like it’s going to the district attorney instead.”
Two cops got out and stopped a few feet from their car. They looked all around, and one slowly raised his hand to his radio. He called for an ambulance as James said, “Let me do all the talking. If you say anything, it’s to ask for your lawyer. You got it?”
He looked down at us to make sure.
We nodded, and he strode forward, meeting the policemen halfway.
SAMANTHA
James called me and explained the situation, and when I parked in the police station’s parking lot a little after three in the morning, Becky was the first person I saw. She hurried toward me, an angry set to her chin, and I was barely able to shut my car door before she was on me.
“You were supposed to keep quiet about what I told you,” she hissed in my face, her hands balled into fists. She held them up like she wanted to hit me, but she only pressed one into my shoulder. She pulled her punch, if it’d been intended as one. “You weren’t supposed to tell, Sam!”
“What’d you think I’d do? I had to choose between Adam and Mason.” The choice was obvious.
She hung her head, her hands dropping to her sides. “The choice was between me and Mason. I trusted you.”
“I’m sorry.” And I was. “But this wasn’t between you and me. It was between them.” It was ultimately between James Kade and Steven Quinn. “We just got in the middle.”
She sighed as a white SUV pulled in and parked next to her car. Adam got out. If Becky had been mad, Adam was furious. His jaw was clenched and a vein popped out along his neck. He started for us.
His eyes were cold as he turned to Becky. “I told you not to come here.”
She stood a little taller. “I wanted to be here for you.”
He turned to look at me again. “You wanted to yell at Sam.”
“So? You would, too.”
He shook his head. “I’m not the one she betrayed.”
“If it’s a choice between Mason and someone else, you know my decision.” He always had.
“Yeah,” he spoke quietly. “I’m well aware.”
“Sam!”
Heather came out of the station, shielding her face with her arm against a sudden gust of wind.
“What are you doing here?” I’d called her, but… “How’d you get here so fast?”
“I already knew what went down before you called. Channing has a police scanner. We were already on the way.”
She hadn’t told me that on the phone. She flashed me an apologetic smile. “I figured it was just easier to explain when you got here.”
I surged forward. “Are they okay?”
“James is the only one here.”
“What?”
“They arrested my dad,” Adam said. “They’re bringing him in.”
Two squad cars pulled into the lot and stopped right before the front door. But instead of seeing Steven Quinn in handcuffs, we watched as Nate and Logan were helped out of one squad car. Their hands were cuffed in front of them, and I gasped, reeling backward.
Their faces were covered in bandages, not to mention bruises on every bit of exposed skin, and their knuckles were scraped raw. They’d been fighting. A lot.
Heather stepped close and steadied me with a hand on my arm. “That’s what I was coming out here to tell you. Everyone else went to the hospital first. All of Caldron’s guys were admitted. Mason, Logan, and Nate—they were hurt, but they kicked ass.”
Mason…
I searched for him, but couldn’t find him. If Logan and Nate looked like this—the back door to the first squad car opened, and I stopped thinking after that.
A sob hitched in my throat. I couldn’t even let that out.
Mason stepped out with his hands cuffed in front of him.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t do anything.
He had fewer bandages on his face, but one side was a giant bruise. His lip was busted, and I could tell he was in pain. He limped. I must’ve made a sound because he turned suddenly. His gaze found mine, though one of his eyes was covered by tape.
He stepped toward me, my name on his lips, but the cop yanked him back.
“Stop!” I ran to them.
Two cops moved to intercept me, but Heather and someone else stopped me before I could get to them. Heather shot a hand out to stop the police from coming closer.
“She’s fine. We got her.” She leaned close and whispered to me, “Chill or they might arrest you for making a scene.”
I could only watch as they led Mason inside. Then I looked to see who else had stepped in to help me.
Becky. She released me, her eyes darting away. “No one else needs to get hurt…or arrested.”
I reached out, saying a soft thank you before Heather started forward, and I went with her. I looked back over my shoulder. Becky watched us go, and I mouthed again to her, “Thank you.”
She nodded, offering a faint smile.
Heather held my arm close to her. “We’ll sing the friendship song with her later. Come on. We have to start harassing for bail.”
But in the end, that was taken care of.
James Kade had called in an army of lawyers. They walked in wearing their three-piece suits like they were secret service—except with briefcases. Once they showed up, it wasn’t long before Nate, Logan, and Mason were released.
I leaped into Mason’s arms as he came out, rubbing at his wrists. He caught me, tucking his head into my shoulder and neck.
“This is worth the pain,” he said.
I’d forgotten, and tried to pull away.
He only tightened his hug, holding me another moment longer. “God, Sam.” He lifted his head. A raw and tender look appeared in his eyes, and he traced my face with his finger. “Caldron could’ve really hurt you.”
Logan murmured, “He was more dangerous than we thought.”