by Peter Styles
WORTH A SHOT
WORTH IT: BOOK 5
PETER STYLES
CONTENTS
Hello!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
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1
“Bro, stop. Be serious. This is serious. Come on, for the last time.”
I tried putting my foot down with Quinn as we pulled into the parking lot of the Worthington County State Penitentiary.
Quinn sort of chuckled about whatever shit he was shooting the entire way up there. Not that I had been all-the-way paying attention. I’d been way too focused on the visit I was trying to pay and what I was trying to get accomplished on this trip. It honestly might have been easier to call the prison, ask when the inmates would have phone time, hope that nobody fucked with my Tio Oliver or anything to get him in trouble, call him when he had phone time and then try to have this whole conversation with him over the prison’s shitty connection.
Nah, fuck that. I’d rather make the drive up myself and, though it was nice to have Quinn for company and I normally liked listening to him ramble on about whatever dude he was currently working on trying to add to his “collection,” I had almost no focus on what seemed like petty, meaningless stuff while I had such an important conversation waiting for me as soon as we arrived.
“Yeah, I didn’t hear you complaining earlier when I just filled that whole trip with what are, to be honest, amazing stories.” Quinn laughed. “I should have told you about the dude from Juarez I was talking to the other day. You wouldn’t be complaining then.”
I rolled my eyes as Quinn pronounced Juarez like someone was trying to say “Wah-Rez” and at his insistence that we talk about—okay, fun, yes—but ultimately pointless bullshit to avoid talking about what was really going down. I don’t know. I didn’t want to talk about it. It was fine. It was fine. I was just on edge, I told myself.
“Relax,” Quinn said, as if he could read my mind and was following along with what I’d been thinking the whole time. The benefits and the downside to staying friends with an ex, I guessed. “It’s good news, man. Don’t worry about anything.”
Yeah, he was right. Nothing to worry about. I was only here to talk about the beginning of an idea that could hopefully, possibly lead to something, anyway. It was fine. I swallowed hard in my throat and nodded to myself a couple of times, trying to calm down before I went inside. Eventually, I stuck my chin up at Quinn and nodded backward to show him I was fine.
“You’re good?”he asked, like he didn’t completely believe me. He was right to not believe me. I didn’t completely believe myself, but it was fine, I repeated.
“Yeah, bro. It’s cool. I’m fine,” I said, definitively.
Quinn looked like he knew better but he nodded back up at me.
“All right, here we go, then,”he said, and then unbuckled his seatbelt to get out of the car.
“I bet you we have a wait inside, though. You can keep telling me about your boy-piece from Wah-Rez, though, if you want.”
“Man, I should have taken a picture. You should have seen this dude. Not to make it weird or anything, but he was about your size, kind of tanner, a little older, he was—damn, I mean—damn,” Quinn explained as we checked into the prison and sat, waiting to be called back.
“Like, seriously. Again, not to make it weird but just because you and me, we know each other like that? He found that little spot—you know that spot? —like it was nothing.” Quinn was just getting to the obviously graphic part of the story that I didn’t really want to be discussing in a prison or in any kind of official building. The way that my Uncle Oliver brought me up, you went to an important building and you stayed quiet and minded your own business until it was your turn.
“Bro—” I started.
I was about to interrupt him to voice my opinion on how inappropriate his story was becoming right when a chunky little guard stepped out through the metal detectors and yelled, “Suarez. Suarez. Nico Suarez.”
“Come on.” I motioned for Quinn to follow me. “Dale.”
We stepped through the metal detectors, got patted down by the guard, but definitely not without Quinn shooting me an—again—inappropriate wink over top of the guards reaching down to feel around his shins.
When we finally made it inside, I sat down at the little booth with Quinn beside me, and I picked up the phone. Before I could say anything, almost by instinct, I pressed my palm up to the glass. I pressed it lightly enough to show the guard that I knew trying anything stupid wasn’t a good idea here, but I pressed my hand, regardless. My tio wasn’t too into big displays, and when I was a kid, I was as embarrassed to be affectionate as any other kid was, but things had changed when I’d grown and since he’d landed in here.
I heard Oliver suck his teeth in sympathy through the phone at the gesture and he quickly pressed his palm back up to mine from where he sat on the opposite side of the glass before we both pulled back.
“Hi, mijo,” he said, forcing a tired smile. No, I wasn’t his son and he knew that, and I knew that, but, as far as I was concerned, he was the only dad I’d ever known and so mijo always felt natural. “Como estas?”
“Fine, tio. Fine,” I answered. “How are things in here?”
“They’re okay,” he shrugged. I never knew what that meant. Things could have been shit or they really could have been fine, he’d never say either way. There wasn’t much time for small talk when you were in prison anyway, so I cut to the chase.
“Tio,” I started. “Mira,” I said, directing him to look at the letter that I’d come all this way to show him. I pressed it up to the glass, so he could read it through the dirty fingerprints all over the pane.
As he scanned over the letter, still holding the phone, I couldn’t help myself and I summarized it for him. “This letter says it’s from someone who was there the night of—you know, when Nora Grant was murdered—it says that there might be a witness, someone who was there that night. But, mira, most importantly it says that whoever this witness is…”
My uncle was still scanning the letter as I talked, but he looked up at me when I paused.
“Tio, this letter says that the witness didn’t see you there but maybe they did see the real murderer. They could be a witness for you,” I finished excitedly.
Uncle Oliver finished scanning the document, too, just as I finished talking. I looked into his eyes to see any glimmer of excitement, not completely understanding why I didn’t find anything there.
“What’s wrong?”
“Mijo, the trial was on TV. Lots of people probably know details about the case. This, this isn’t even signed. It’s signed by “N”? Who’s ‘N?’ Sometimes crazy people like to say they know things when they don’t. It’s for attention.”
<
br /> “No, tio, no,” I shook my head at him. “It’s worth a shot. This could mean that you get out of here. I know that being in here has made you lose hope. I get that. Anyone would. But we’ve both always known that you didn’t do anything, and this could finally be the way to prove that you’re innocent.”
“No, Nico,” my uncle shook his head at me. “No. This? This isn’t proof. This is a waste of time. I’m fine. The only thing I want you to prove is that you can finish school. When you go to law school, or, whatever you wind up doing, you can do stuff like this but...” He shook his head again like he was trying to convince himself that it was pointless. “…you must know from school, right? That this is nothing to go off of?”
“That’s not true!” I raised my voice a little, in response, but a look from Uncle Oliver and an elbow in my rib from Quinn made me catch my tone before someone thought I was starting a fight.
“I’m sorry, tio,” I said quickly and backed down, sighing. I wasn’t ever good at calming myself down but now more than ever seemed the time to try, so I held it together. “Look, I promise I’ll finish school, okay? I promise. But I can’t rest knowing that there’s something or someone out there who might help us get you out. I want—” I looked up and locked eyes with my uncle, so he knew I was serious, just as he’d taught me. “I want you to watch me cross the stage. For that to happen, I have to graduate but you have to be there. So, I’m not picking. I’m doing both.”
My uncle blinked back at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking; he was quiet and solid like that, sometimes. Eventually, he smiled a little to himself and jerked his chin up at me.
“Dale, then. I think it’s pointless, but just so I can watch you graduate one way or another.”
“Okay, tio, you got it. I understand.”
After he’d had the final word, my tio dropped it, like he always did. We spent the rest of our time together chatting, Quinn cracked wise, over my shoulder and into the phone and even made Uncle Oliver chuckle a time or two. But time was up before we expected it and, pretty soon, we’d crossed back over the metal detectors and were back in the car on our way home.
“Sooo…” Quinn started.
“Yeah?”
“All that stuff that you told your uncle about finding the witness. How do you figure you’re going to do that?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. But, I mean, I may not be done with school, but I’ve got two years of criminal justice under my belt.”
“Not a badge, though,” Quinn pointed out.
“No, not a badge,” I agreed. “Maybe I can get one on my side, though, if I show them the letter and explain the situation. Anyone can see that my uncle’s not a killer and, well...I’ve been making some calls.”
“Okay…” Quinn said, carefully, like he was afraid of who I might have called. “Who’d you call?”
“Well, the Sheriff—honestly, fuck him—laughed in my face way back when they first arrested Uncle Oliver, but there was a deputy who was not such an asshole about it. I kept his card, and I called him. Landon Case. I left him a couple of messages.”
“Huh,” Quinn said aloud. “Landon Case. He’s friends with Houston.”
“Houston who?” I shot back.
“Houston Collier. He and Finn are engaged now.”
“No shit?” We didn’t work out as a couple, Quinn and I, but he was a good friend, and I was suddenly very thankful that all his sleeping around kept him well-connected.
“None,” Quinn answered. “I’ll give Finn a call. Maybe I can get him to tell Houston to tell Landon to get back to you.”
“All right,” I said, nodding as the information gave me a plan to go forward. “All right. Thanks, man.”
“No worries,” said Quinn, relaxing back in his seat like he’d just solved the murder for us. “Maybe now you won’t be so mad when I ask you: is it weird that I think that your uncle’s new tough-guy prison vibe is kind of…sexy?”
“What the f—. Yes, Quinn. That’s my uncle, my tio. Calmate. Chill with that.”
“I’m just saying. That’s all.”
2
I sprawled out in the kitchen chair, sighing as the stretch relaxed parts of my aching back. I nursed my beer and watched Noah move back and forth in the kitchen from the cutting board, to the sink, to the stove over a pan and then repeated.
“Hey, you don’t have to worry about all of that, Noah. I don’t need anything fancy.” I offered, feeling sort of embarrassed at the effort that he was putting into the meal. It was sure as shit more effort than I put into things at home. All of my cooking efforts boiled down to cutting the plastic film off of a TV dinner. I appreciated the trouble he was going through, but I’d always had a protective instinct towards my brother and, as much as he hated it, I couldn’t really help when and where it came out.
“It’s funny that you think sautéing vegetables is ‘anything fancy’,” Noah mumbled just loud enough that I could hear him. “Anyway, you’ve had a long day and it’s no trouble.”
That I could agree with, anyway and whatever he was doing was starting to smell delicious.
“How’s work?” Noah continued casually, dumping the vegetables he’d been cutting into a pan of simmering oil.
“Oh,” I groaned, stretching again until something in my back finally released. “Same old, same old.”
Noah chuckled nervously. “You old man. I have no idea how you still manage to get up every morning and hit the streets.”
“Who exactly are you calling old, now?” I asked. “Last I remember, you’ve got two years on me.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have the back of an eighty-year-old, either.”
“Well, neither do I, so mind your business,” I huffed.
Noah laughed again. “Still, isn’t it about time you found something else to do in the sheriff’s department?”
Oh man, if only he knew. I’d joined the department as soon as I’d recovered, and for years, I’d been trying to make the jump to detective. I’d wanted to join the police department in Worthington, but the county sheriff’s department had been hiring at the time. I’d liked the appeal of it, too. I was able to spread out more, and the department was over the whole county instead of just the city itself. Beat work had been fun when I had started out, but now I was ready for the next step. More than anything, I wanted to progress, eventually to run for Sheriff Wolfton’s spot once he retired.
“You’re telling me, bro.” I drained the last of my beer and sat it back on the table. I scrubbed my face. “This is going to be my year. I can feel it.”
“That’s the spirit. Nothing stops you once your hard head decides it wants something.”
I snorted. “Not the only hard headed one in the family.”
“I know you can’t be talking about me.”
“Oh yeah? Hey, they released another one of those superhero movies you like. Let’s go see it.”
Noah looked down and shrugged his shoulders. “Sure, it’ll be out on-demand soon enough.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.”
My big brother had always been quiet, shy, more likely to stay home and practice than to ever go out and talk to people. That’s sort of how I developed that protective instinct, since as a kid it made him an easy target for bullies even if as an adult it made him the kind of brilliant musician that his old bullies pretended to know about to impress their girlfriends. As far as formerly-shy-nerdy-skinny-kids went, he was gifted, recognized, and well-paid for his talents so he was living what I assume is the art-school kid dream until that one night after the symphony.
I wasn’t in the US that night, I was overseas. I still remember my commanding officer calling me to tent HQ and telling me there’d been an accident involving my brother. It makes my blood boil to think about it because that shit was anything but an accident. He’d gotten jumped leaving a performance and by ‘jumped,’ I mean beaten, robbed, and left for dead in alleyway. He spent three days in the hospital before that Case hardheade
dness had dragged him out of bed and into physical therapy. Not long after, I was in physical therapy myself after I’d been shot. I’d been so focused on my own recovery that I hadn’t realized what was going on. Noah had always been a homebody, had always preferred his own company, but that had become extreme. Now, Noah didn’t go out. Ever.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t get over how they’d never caught the thugs who did that to him so as soon as I was able to stand upright, I was trying to get on the force.
I guess we were both still stuck on what we called ‘the incident’ in our own ways.
Noah cleared his throat awkwardly, as though he was nervous that I wouldn’t let the whole ‘movie idea’ drop but I didn’t like to push him. I didn’t like him shutting himself up in his house, but I didn’t like the idea of forcing him to do anything he didn’t want to, either.
I was going to try to change the subject when the vibration of my cell phone changed the subject for me. I thanked my lucky stars before hopping up--back still protesting--and going outside to Noah’s wide-open porch and plopping down on the bench swing. The caller ID was from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Case,” I answered.
“Landon, how the hell are you?” A familiar voice asked.
“Houston Collier! I’m good. How’s soon-to-be-married life treating you?” Houston and I had known each other for a while. He and his boyfriend, Finn—or well, fiancé, Finn now—had made a killing flipping houses all over our part of Texas, starting with Finn’s own family home.
Houston laughed deep. “Can’t complain, well… actually, I could, but that’s where you come in.”
“Me? What do I have to do with any of that?”
“Well, you’re part of the reason I’m not getting my cock sucked, apparently. So, I’m gonna need to ask a favor from you.”
I rolled my eyes. Houston was nothing if not brash about sex. Before Finn had come into the picture, he’d flirted with just about anything under thirty with a set of legs and a working cock.
“Uhhh, okay…” So far, nothing was making sense.