by Vicki Tharp
Jenna cut him a look. Though the fading light masked the details of her expression, he figured it could freeze ice. In the Mojave Desert. At high noon.
“What would gum have to do with anything?”
Quinn’s brain scrambled for an answer that didn’t sound completely lame. His heart rate climbed. One beat. Two. Three.
“Quinn was telling me Kurt chewed mint gum a lot when he was trying to stay away from the drugs,” Jenna said. “We just—”
“It would mean a lot to me if I knew that in some way, he was trying to stay clean.” The truth. Mostly.
“No. No gum. Not that I know of.” The sheriff returned his gear to the back seat of the truck and climbed in. Quinn and Jenna waved good-bye.
As he drove out of sight, Jenna gave Quinn’s shoulder a light shove. “What was that all about? I almost landed on my face.”
“I had a hand on you the whole time. I wouldn’t let you fall.”
Another look. Either ‘go to hell’ or ‘asshole.’ Difficult to tell.
“I didn’t want you mentioning the gun.”
“Yeah,” she said with a frigid laugh, “I got that. You don’t think the gun is something the sheriff should know about?”
“Maybe.” He reached a hand to the back of his neck and worked the stiff and knotted muscles there. “You could be right.”
He dropped his hand to his side, the mental and physical exhaustion slamming into him as hard as if he’d walked into the rotor wash of his Sikorsky CH-53. “And for what it’s worth…I know this shouldn’t matter…but I don’t want the sheriff getting the wrong impression of him.”
“Kurt really meant a lot to you, didn’t he?”
“More than a brother.”
* * * *
The next morning, Quinn rose before the roosters or the sun. The breeze whipped and fell and ozone filled the air. He jogged up the two-track road from his cabin, the familiar scrunch-scrunch of gravel under shoes came from the darkness behind him. Only, the rhythm was off—a slight hesitation in the cadence.
Boomer fell into step with Quinn, as the combat veteran jogged out of the darkness.
“Where’s your blade?” Quinn asked.
“Trying out the new prosthetic.” Boomer’s breath came out heavy, but steady. How long had he been at it that morning? “The leg’s got fu—freaking sensors and shi—things. Real Six Million Dollar Man stuff.”
“What’s with the language? You sound like a Disney cartoon. I’m a Marine, man. Cuss words don’t make me blush.”
The eastern sky eased toward gray, exposing a far-off bank of clouds thick with rain. Boomer grunted, picking up the pace as they passed the big house. “Pepita is saving for a new saddle. She gets paid for extra jobs around the ranch, plus a dollar for every swear word.”
Quinn huffed out a laugh, though it lacked about as much substance as the thin mountain air.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“Oooh, I’m telling.”
“Shit.”
“Buy her”—Quinn panted. Either the air was a lot thinner than he’d remembered, or he was in worse shape than he’d thought—“the damn saddle…and be done with it.”
Boomer picked up more speed. Quinn gave up conversation in exchange for air.
Together they ran to the main road and back twice before the sun had fully risen. Three miles, he estimated, at a blistering pace that left his lungs raw and his muscles shredded.
They quit their run at the round pen. Quinn caught one of the rungs with his hand, bending at the waist trying to catch his breath. Sidney stood in the center of the pen; a black horse raced around the inside perimeter, kicking up dust and dirt clods. They pelted his chest, and he coughed on the sandy clouds, but he didn’t have the stamina to move away.
“How’d the leg do?” Sidney asked her husband.
“Slowed my pace a bit. Not as much as Quinn, but I think the leg’ll be good once I’m used to it.”
“Asshole,” Quinn huffed out.
Boomer grinned.
“Language.”
“’S okay.” Quinn straightened, his lungs catching up with his oxygen deprivation. “I’ll add my dollar to the two Boom owes the jar.”
“Hey!” Boom socked him in the shoulder. It mostly didn’t hurt. “Grab a shower and change. I’ve got a truckload of hay that needs delivered before that rain hits.”
Quinn glanced toward the mountains and the gray clouds building up behind the ridgeline. As fast as those clouds were moving, chances were, they and the hay were getting wet.
Not twenty minutes later, Quinn directed Boomer as he backed the flatbed trailer beside the stack of square bales in the hay barn.
Boomer tossed Quinn a pair of leather work gloves and hopped on top of the stack. “Try to keep up.” The good-natured challenge hung in the air.
Bale after bale rained down, in solid, sixty-five-pound rectangles. And bale after bale, Quinn grabbed the string binding the hay together with one hand and used a hay hook with his weaker hand. When the grip on his right hand gave out, he tossed the hook and wedged his tingling fingers behind the tight string to help his grip, and kept stacking.
He kept up with Boomer. Barely. By the time they had the trailer loaded and the hay tied down, all those long runs in full gear during his boot camp days almost seemed luxurious.
“Tired, kid?” Boomer said, as he doffed his cowboy hat and swiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
“Hardly.” But Quinn’s chest rose and fell as quickly as when they’d finished their run. By the smirk on Boomer’s face, he hadn’t swallowed the lie.
“All that lazing around has made you soft.” Mostly Boomer was joking, but the truth in his words rang as crisp and clear as a church bell on a cold, winter day.
It proved how ill prepared Quinn was to pass his physical. He massaged the sore muscles in his damaged forearm, worked his wrist this way and that, and straightened then bent his fingers, hoping that in a month he’d be strong enough to keep his career from slipping through his weakened grasp.
Pepita rounded the corner of the hay barn with a backpack over her shoulders and a plastic grocery bag in one hand. “Breakfast tacos!”
Boomer took the bag from her and planted a quick kiss on her temple. “An angel of mercy.”
He grabbed a fat roll of tinfoil-wrapped taco, handed the bag to Quinn. Boomer peeled the foil back. Steam rose, and Pepita grabbed his wrist and bit down on the corner.
“Whoa, there, hotshot, you had your breakfast.”
“Si, trienta—I mean, thirty minutes ago.” The way she said it, made it sound like thirty minutes was a lifetime. She had a funny accent, somewhere between Spanish and too many 90210 reruns.
“Did you finish your homework?”
“Weekend,” she said, the duh implied. “I didn’t have any.”
“That book report is due next week. Read ahead.”
Pepita tucked her thumbs into the straps of her backpack and rolled her eyes as she backed out of the hay barn. A horn honked. “Gotta go. Bus.”
Quinn waited until Pepita was out of earshot. “A kid? What gives?”
The breeze picked up, and a dust devil of dirt and hay swirled at the barn entrance, beating the side of the truck and choking the air with dust. With it, the temperature dropped by ten degrees.
“Let’s go, or we’ll be delivering in the rain,” Quinn said.
“Don’t expect to be paid.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.”
Boomer settled in the driver’s seat, dumped his hat in the space between them, and started the engine.
As they pulled out, Quinn said, “Seriously, what’s with the kid? No offense, but she looks nothing like you. Don’t tell me Sid convinced you that you were the father.”
“We’re fostering her until the authori
ties can either find her parents or confirm that she no longer has them, or any other family members, who can take her in.”
“How long have you had her?”
“About four years now.”
Quinn whistled, surprised at the length of time.
“Remember when Angel and Sidney’s horse, Eli, were stolen a while back?”
“Yeah, something about you and Sidney being caught naked—.”
“We weren’t nak—”
“In the stock pond, if I remember right. No clothes, no prosthetic, no weapon… Not sure I’ve ever seen Mac that pissed before.”
Boomer tapped his thumb on the steering wheel, a dark, relentless beat. “Finished?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Quinn waved a hand, telling him to continue, and swallowed the smile.
They turned left onto the main road, behind the bright yellow school bus with Pepita onboard.
“Turns out the bastards who took the horses were part of this drug cartel run by El Verdugo—”
“No shit? The Hangman? I remember hearing something about that on the news. No idea it was you.”
Boomer rubbed a finger under his jaw where his whiskers met his neck. “Got the noose scar to prove it. I figured Jenna would have told you.”
“We haven’t been on speaking terms for a while now.”
“That’s what happens when you royally screw something up.”
Quinn cut him a scathing look.
Boomer didn’t react. Quinn guessed that when dealing with a man who’d lost a leg in Iraq and had a noose around his neck, a harsh look hardly registered on his serious-shit meter.
“Anyway,” Boomer said, “Pepita lived in the cartel’s camp. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think we would have survived. She risked her life for us. No one at the camp claimed her, and Sidney put in an emergency petition to foster. We’ve been fighting for adoption ever since.”
“She doesn’t know who her family is?”
“She has no memory of a family. Only of the camps. Either she was sold to the cartel, or her parents were a part of it. Either way, the chances someone will come forward to claim her are remote.”
The bus turned, and Boomer continued down the road, the black clouds marching across the valley floor, and thick sheets of opaque rain obscuring the mountains.
“Did they ever convict him?”
“Fucker got away.” Boomer gripped the wheel, as if he were squeeze, squeeze, squeezing the life out of the Hangman. “Some of his men were killed. Some deported. Some sent to jail on lesser charges. A couple are out. Every last one of them refused to roll over on their leader. They knew prison couldn’t keep them safe if they had.”
“Jesus Christ. Sorry, dude. I didn’t know.”
“It’s done. Nothing for you to be sorry for.” The color came back into Boomer’s hands as his fingers relaxed. “But wanting the 411 on Pepita is not why you agreed to deliver two hundred bales of hay with me. I’m guessing you want to know about Kurt.”
A pain hit Quinn’s chest as if a corpsman was practicing suture techniques on his left ventricle. “I was Kurt’s best friend, and had no clue.”
Boomer turned onto a narrow gravel road that curved over a grassy hill. Barbed-wire fencing lined either side of the road, white-faced cattle lying down before the storm hit as if the whole herd had been carpet-bombed.
“I’m not sure anyone can see something like this coming. People have a way of hiding their thoughts, their troubles. But Kurt…”
Boomer slowed and turned at the entrance to a ranch. The tires rumbled over the cattle guard, the truck’s suspension pitching and squeaking from the potholes. Quinn grabbed on to the hand rest along the window frame to keep from dislodging his spleen, and waited for Boomer to finish his sentence.
At the wood pole barn, Boomer stopped and shifted into Park. “Kurt… I don’t know. I couldn’t read him. He did his work, mostly, but the longer he was here, the more he stayed away at night. Some of that was for AA or NA meetings for his alcohol and narcotics issues, but I always had a feeling there was something else going on. He was jumpy, a little paranoid. Any time I tried to talk to him, he pushed me away.”
“You think he was using again.”
“The negative drug tests are hard to contest, but as a recovering addict myself, all the signs were there. I should have seen them.”
* * * *
With the heel of his sock-covered foot, Quinn kicked the cabin door closed, stripping his wet clothes off as he padded across the wood plank floor, headed for his second shower of the day.
He let the warm water sluice over his aching muscles and worked his wrist and fingers again to loosen the tendons and ligaments.
When the hot water ran cold, Quinn climbed out of the shower and toweled off. At the knock on the door, he wrapped the towel around his waist. “Hang on.”
He opened the door about a foot, resting one hand on the door frame, the other fisted on the towel at his waist.
Jenna stood on his porch, a full plate and a glass of tea in her hands. Dink scooted between his legs and trotted in. She scanned Quinn’s face, his chest, his…towel. She might have smiled, but she ducked her head so he couldn’t be sure.
“Uh… I didn’t know if Kurt had any food in the fridge, so I brought you some lunch.”
Grilled cheese, chips, and a palm-sized vine of red grapes. He wasn’t in the mood for company, but his stomach bitched and complained until he stepped back and let her in.
He retrieved a change of clothes from his rucksack and headed for the bathroom. “You can leave the food on the table. Then I’d appreciate it if you’d go.”
He didn’t wait for a response. From the bathroom, he heard the clatter of the plate on the table. Then the glass of tea landed with a bang. He turned around. The tea sloshed and spilled onto the floor. A grape fell free, bouncing off the table and rolling under a chair. Dink hopped off Kurt’s bed, mouthed the grape, and spit it out.
Jenna didn’t look as if she noticed, or cared about, the mess.
He was too sore and tired to give two damns. “Is there a problem?”
“I want to help.”
The sincerity in her eyes had him biting back the automatic “no.” When she looked at him like that, he could almost believe that on some level she still cared, but that ship had sailed a long time ago.
Sailed and sunk and now little fishies made houses out of the rotting hull of their relationship.
“Don’t make me beg.” Her voice cracked as she came around the table and stood in front of him.
She removed her cowboy hat and fiddled with a black feather tucked into the band at the crown, her eyes glued to it. “Look, I know you don’t want anything to do with me. I get that. I got that when you refused to take my calls or let me visit you at the hospital after your crash. We’re done. Message received, no stutter, no static.”
“Jenn—”
“Let me finish.” She looked up at him with the greenest, most earnest eyes. “This isn’t about us. This is about finding the truth, about breaking out the shock paddles to try to save a program that’s in its death throes. Kurt, and the veterans lined up to join the program, deserve that.”
When he didn’t say anything, she added, “We don’t have to be friends or even like each other. We just need to work together.”
If the Marines had taught him anything, it was teamwork. If you didn’t like someone in your squadron, you dealt with it. “I’m probably jumping to conclusions by thinking there’s something sinister behind his death. I just can’t stand the idea that he survived the crash only to take his own life.”
“If you’re going to jump, let me jump with you.”
Hank had been right all along. He didn’t deserve her. Not six years ago, not four years ago. Certainly not now.
“Okay.” He knew it was a mistake
as the word came out of his mouth. But the worry lines on her forehead smoothed and her shoulders relaxed, and somehow that made him feel better.
“So, what do we do first?” she asked.
“First, I’m going to get dressed. Second, I’m going to have some of that grilled cheese.”
“And third?”
“We’ll have to figure that out as we go along.”
* * * *
Light rain pattered against the cabin’s roof, drowning out Dink’s snores. While Quinn got dressed, Jenna sat on Kurt’s bed with Dink curled up beside her and rummaged through Quinn’s rucksack.
He came out of the bathroom and snatched the bag from her hands. “What are you doing?”
Her hand fell free of one of the pockets, and a four-piece strip of condoms dangled from her fingers.
She raised a brow at him. “Magnum, huh?”
“I didn’t bring… Those were…”
He didn’t bother trying to finish his explanation. He tossed the condoms in the garbage can, the tips of his ears turning a fascinating shade of red.
“You don’t have to throw them away.”
“I’m sure they’re expired.”
Jenna didn’t know why that made her happy. Um, yeah, you do.
“Ever heard of asking for permission before pawing through someone else’s things?”
“I wasn’t pawing. I was looking for a charger that might fit Kurt’s cell phone.”
He reached into a side pocket and came out with a Micro USB cord. She grabbed the phone from the table and plugged it into a socket near the refrigerator.
While it charged, he sat down at the table to eat. She turned the other chair around and sat in it backward, her hands resting on the back of the chair, her chin on her fingers.
He took a bite of the grilled cheese. The bread had gone limp, and the cheese had recongealed, but that didn’t slow him down. He pushed the plate toward her. She plucked a couple of grapes free.
“So,” she said. “We have a cell phone, a business card with a phone number on the back, and a book of matches from”—she picked up the matches and got a closer look at the cover—“Cruisers. I think it’s a biker bar on the outskirts of Murdock.”