by Vicki Tharp
Only she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a grown woman.
Jenna listened with half an ear as Quinn filled St. John in on the bar fight. She’d heard the story on the drive over after she’d bailed him out of jail.
Quinn leaned back in the chair. “And when I asked him how to find him. Moose said, ‘I’ll find you.’”
“Make sure you’re gone before he does,” the sheriff said, more command than suggestion. “He’s not someone you want to get involved with.”
“I’m not leaving before the funeral,” Quinn said. Jenna had to listen hard to understand the slur in his words from his damaged tongue.
“Which should be soon. The medical examiner thinks he can release the body in the next day or so,” St. John said.
“Dad said Kurt’s mom is driving in tomorrow night,” Jenna said. “No funeral, an intimate service. Lottie offered to hold it at the ranch. Probably only be everyone from the S and his mom.”
“Good,” the sheriff said. “Then no need for you to hang around much longer.”
Quinn flicked a glance at Jenna. His expression was sour, but with the swelling in his jaw, it was kinda hard to tell what he was thinking.
“Get results from those drug tests on the hair samples yet?” Quinn asked.
St. John picked up the phone and dialed. He identified himself and asked for the results from the lab. St. John frowned, then thanked someone. When he hung up, he looked from Quinn to Jenna, and back again. “Sample is clear. They’re rechecking, but you were right. Kurt hadn’t been using in the weeks leading up to his death.”
Quinn slapped his palm on the arm of the chair. “I knew it.”
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t responsible for his own death, whether accidental or intentional.”
“What about that sample of blood you got off the hay bale?” asked Jenna.
St. John picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers, with one of those looks on his face like a parent deciding if they were going to tell the kids the truth.
The pen stilled and he said, “The lab did a quick blood-type test. The blood isn’t Kurt’s.”
“Damn,” Hank said.
“Someone was with him right before he died.” Quinn’s leg started bouncing, and Jenna reached over and took his hand. His return grip was fierce, excitement blazing in his eyes.
With apparent reluctance, the sheriff said, “It would seem so. And the ME put the time of death between eleven p.m. Friday night and four in the morning. Which coincides with the time when Jenna saw that second set of headlights.”
Jenna’s hand went clammy, and her stomach tumbled. The Lazy S didn’t need any more trouble. They’d had enough of it the past few years to last them a decade or two.
Quinn gave Jenna’s hand a squeeze. She looked over at him, and he raised his brows and indicated the parking lot with a tip of his head.
The gun and their other evidence. He wanted to know whether they should tell the sheriff about what they’d found.
“It could only help,” Jenna told Quinn.
The sheriff glanced from her to Quinn.
Hank started pacing behind them. “What’s she talking about?”
Quinn was slow to answer, as if he hadn’t decided yet what he was going to say. If anything. “You fill them in. You’ve got the car keys?” he asked Jenna.
She handed them over, and he stood, grunting from the pain. “I’ll be right back.”
Hank stopped pacing. “Jenna, what have you done?”
Jenna kept her eyes on the floor, feeling like she was five years old again and her dad wanted to know how all the horses had magically gotten out of all the stalls.
“Quinn and I—”
“You’re gonna have to speak up,” her dad said.
She met his eyes. Saw the caution, the concern, the disappointment. The caution and concern, she understood. It was the disappointment that she found impossible to swallow. It sat there at the back of her throat, a messy lump of sticky emotions that threatened to choke her.
She would have preferred him to get angry. To shake his fist, stomp his feet, ground her until she was thirty. Anything would be better than the disappointment.
She rubbed at the tightness in her chest and started again. “Quinn and I did a little poking around.”
“Jiminy H. Christ,” St. John said. “Is that how your boyfriend ended up in my jail?”
“‘Boyfriend’?” Hank parroted.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” For the first time in a long time, though, she wished it wasn’t true. Wished she’d handled things differently. Wished Quinn had… “And, yes, that’s how Quinn got arrested.”
She went on to tell them about Frank and his missing daughter. Kurt’s phone. About the pawnshop. The recovered gun. The lead that they’d followed to the bar…to Moose.
Quinn walked into the office, the bag from the pawnshop heavy in his hand. He set the bag down on the desk. “Kurt’s gun and phone.”
The sheriff ignored the bag, and to the both of them said, “You should have handed them both over when you found them.”
“If your guys had done their job and looked harder instead of assuming Kurt’s death was his fault,” Quinn said, “they would have found them.” For once he didn’t sound angry—he seemed too tired, too beat up, to wage another fight.
The sheriff’s jaw raked back and forth. Leaning forward, he picked up the bag and glanced inside.
Quinn said, “That Moose guy pawned it.”
Jenna shifted in her seat. “Don’t you see? Moose is wrapped up with Kurt and could be responsible for his death.”
“Doesn’t prove anything.” A smile leaked across the sheriff’s face. Smug. Condescending. “Kurt could have sold it to him, traded it for drugs.”
“He pawned it the day after Kurt died.”
“And Moose could have had it a week or two before that. No telling.”
Quinn crossed his arms over his chest. “Not unless I ask.”
“You’re not getting near him. This is serious business. Police business.”
Quinn laughed with more frigidity than the snow runoff in spring. He pointed to his own face. “You think this was all fun and games?”
With one hand, he lifted the front of his shirt. Diagonally across his chest, a long, swollen bruise ran from his left pectoral muscle to the upper part of his right abdomen.
A dark and angry bruise.
Jenna gasped, her hand slapped over her mouth, and nausea rolled through her stomach. She should have stayed, should have fought, should have—
“My friend is dead.” Quinn’s voice vibrated with emotion. Thick frustration and anger and grief. “Tell me I don’t understand how serious this is.”
Hank laid a steadying hand on Quinn’s shoulder. Quinn dropped his shirtfront, and Hank said, “That’s why you need to back off and let these men do their jobs. Our investigation is ongoing.”
“Seriously?” Quinn was winding up, like that first twist a tornado takes before it unleashes its havoc on the world. “We found the blood on the hay. We found Kurt’s pawned gun and the man who pawned it. The man who may not have killed Kurt, but may know who did.”
“The ME hasn’t determined that Kurt was mur—”
“But you refuse to accept it as a possibility.” Quinn took a deep, steadying breath, a tenuous leash on nature’s wrath. “You guys are trying to find evidence that fits your narrow narrative. A veteran with PTSD is dead. Suicide. Accidental overdose.” Quinn slapped his hands together. “Case closed.”
The sheriff leaned back in his chair, a hand under his chin in thought. “Say you’re right. Say someone killed him. Why would anyone want him dead? He’s been at the Lazy S, what? A month? Working all day. AA or NA meetings most nights. When does he have time to get on anyone’s bad side, much less make an enemy who
would want him dead?”
Quinn deflated and plopped back down in the seat. Hank dragged in a chair from the squad room for himself and closed the door.
“I think El Verdugo could be involved,” Jenna said. It was a leap, but not such a big one you’d need Olympic training to make.
“Sonovabitch,” Hank spat.
“No,” St. John said, “no sign of him in this area since we broke up his operation in the mountains.”
“Boomer and Sidney,” Hank said, his temper sparking. “Since Boomer and Sidney broke up the operation.”
St. John inclined his head and had the decency to look chagrined.
“He as bad as everyone says?” Quinn asked.
“Yes.” Hank’s word came out with such certainty, confidence, and conviction that Quinn didn’t argue. The sheriff turned his attention back to Jenna. “So, why do you think El Verdugo’s involved?”
“When those guys approached me at the pool table, Moose stopped them and said El Verdugo wanted me for himself. I don’t know if that was true or a ruse to get the guys to leave me alone.” Repeating it leached the heat from her marrow. Goose bumps broke out over her arms.
Hearing the stories of Boomer and Sidney’s capture firsthand, she knew what the cartel leader was capable of, knew he gained pleasure from watching other people suffer. The scariest part? According to Sidney, the Hangman wasn’t mad.
He was mean.
Quinn’s brow furrowed, and he rubbed absently at the bruising on his chest. Jenna asked him, “What is it?”
“I flat out asked Moose if he knew El Verdugo.”
“Why doesn’t this surprise me?” The sheriff looked like he was about to throw his hands up in frustration. “Moose deny it?”
“No,” Quinn said. “Didn’t confirm it, either.”
“Probably blowing smoke out his ass,” Hank said, but by the worry on her father’s face, Jenna didn’t think he believed his own words. Her father and Mac had been there for the rescue. Mac talked about it. Her father wouldn’t.
Or couldn’t.
“I told Moose that with Kurt dead, I was looking for a supplier. That I’d heard El Verdugo was the man to talk to.”
St. John’s face went red, and the pen snapped in his hand. He cursed as ink splattered across his fingers. He tried to wipe them on a piece of notepaper, but that only made it worse. He punched a button on his desk phone and growled into the intercom. “Collins, bring me some paper towels.”
When St. John’s color receded to pink, he said, “Why the hell did you go and do that?”
“I was trying to find an ‘in’. If Kurt’s death was a drug deal gone wrong, I want to know. If he was mixed up with something else, I want to know that, too. None of you knew the Kurt that I did. This guy was one of the best men, with the biggest, baddest heart that I’d ever known. I’m not going to accept his death with a shrug of my shoulders and a nice knowing you, kid. Not gonna happen.”
“You’re gonna get yourself killed, dumbass, is what you’re going to do,” Hank said, but Jenna heard a tinge of pride in her father’s tone.
Quinn gave Jenna’s father a tentative smile. He’d heard the pride, too. “I’m hard to kill.”
“You Marines are all alike,” her father muttered.
Quinn’s grin widened. “Oorah.”
Jenna leaned into Quinn and with a stage whisper said, “I don’t think that was a compliment.” Quinn just linked their fingers and kissed the back of her hand.
“You make that deal, and you’ll be breaking the law. I could arrest you. End your career right here.”
“Then put me in there as an informant,” Quinn said. “I’ve established some trust. We can build on that.”
“I’m going with you.” The words fell out of Jenna’s mouth. No thought. A gut response, but she wouldn’t take them back.
There was a knock on the door, and someone brought in paper towels and left. The sheriff slowly, deliberately wiped each finger, deep in thought.
“No way my daughter is going to be an informant on a drug cartel. Tell her, St. John.”
Jenna was a goddamn adult. Her daddy couldn’t tell her what she could and couldn’t do. “You can’t tell—”
“Somebody has to!” Hank shot out of his seat. His spurs tinkled as he paced the room. Then he cuffed Quinn on the back of the head.
Quinn spun out of his seat, bumped his chest against Hank’s. “What the hell, man.”
“Don’t encourage her. You have no idea what you’re getting involved with. If my daughter gets hurt because of some half-assed, harebrained—”
Jenna wedged her body between the two men. With a hand on each of their chests, she pushed them away. It wasn’t easy. “The only one who decides what I do is me. Now, sit down, both of you.”
“Jenn…” Hank said.
“Sit,” she said.
When they were all seated again, the sheriff stopped wiping his fingers and said, “You three finished?”
Hank managed a frustrated nod. Jenna said, “Yes.”
“Their dealing isn’t limited to drugs.” Quinn wouldn’t let it rest.
The sheriff tossed the paper towels in the trash. “At the time El Verdugo was arrested, there were unsubstantiated rumors of weapons, and—”
“Women,” Quinn said.
Hank gave Jenna a look that practically shouted, See? I’m not an overprotective douche.
Jenna figured the jury was deep in deliberation on that one.
“How’d you know?” the sheriff asked.
“I told Moose I was looking for a supplier and he said, ‘Drugs, weapons, or women’.”
A horrible, terrible, unbelievable thought came to Jenna. “What if Crystal was one of the women taken?”
St. John scoffed. “Frank reports Crystal missing four or five times a year. She always shows back up. People like Crystal have a way of disappearing for weeks at a time.”
“There any other women in the area missing?” Quinn asked.
The sheriff was slow to answer, as if he knew where Quinn’s line of questioning was going. “Not that’s been reported.”
“What about the women people don’t report missing?” Jenna asked. “All the Crystals in the area without a worried father like Frank. The prostitutes, the homeless, the alcoholics, the addicts.”
St. John rubbed his hand across his jaw, leaving a smudge of blue ink on his chin. “I’ll see what I can find out,” he said. He turned to Quinn. “Go back to the ranch, say good-bye to your friend, and leave us to our job. I find out you’re talking to Moose, I’ll have you arrested. Again. And next time it won’t be so easy making bail.”
“If you do your job, I won’t have to.”
“Leave it, son,” Hank said. “St. John said he’d look into it.”
Whatever choice words Quinn was about to say, he swallowed them. It looked rather painful. He stood and pulled Jenna up with him. “Get me out of here.”
* * * *
Quinn poured himself into Kurt’s bed. No idea of the time. Only that it was dark and he was whipped. Mind and body. He hadn’t been this beat down since the start of basic training.
He lay on his stomach, his muscles going stiff and the bruise on his chest growing a heartbeat all its own.
For a guy who usually fell asleep as if someone had flipped the power switch on a cyborg, he lay there wide awake. He wasn’t sure if it was Kurt or Jenna or something else that wouldn’t let his mind power down.
He concentrated on the numbing monotony of the double-tap echo of, first his heartbeat, and then the throb throughout his bruised chest. Dub-dub, lub-lub, dub-dub, lub-lub, dub-dub, lub-lub…
Tunk, tunk, tunk. Quinn snapped awake. With his tongue stuck to his teeth, in place of “come in,” all he managed was a two-syllable grunt.
He tried to roll over,
but his muscles complained and bitched and snarled. He turned his head instead. Jenna came in with an overloaded tray of food, balanced precariously on one arm, and flicked on the light. She booted the door closed behind her and set the tray down on the table.
“I thought you might be hungry, but I can leave if you want to sleep.”
He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he also didn’t want her to go. He struggled to sit up, and Jenna dumped the tray on the table and helped him to his feet.
“You good?” Jenna released him, her hands inches away in case she had to hold him up.
“Better than the other guys.” The hard consonants came out soft and squishy now that his tongue had swollen to the size of a Mack truck.
“Yeah, yeah.” She pulled out one of the chairs. “Save all the macho mumbo jumbo and sit your butt down before I have to scrape what’s left of you off the floor.” She handed him the glass of ice water. “See if this helps.”
He drained the glass, consciously thinking through all the steps of swallowing to make that possible.
“What’s all that?” he said, a little clearer.
She presented each food item with a Vanna White wave of her arm. “Yogurt. Oatmeal. Applesauce. And a fruit smoothie. Thought these might be easier on your tongue.”
He picked up a dirt-smudged, white-lidded container opposite the smoothie. “And that?”
“Poultice.” She pointed to his chest. “I use it on the horses to help with bruising and swelling. Thought it might help your chest.”
The thought of her hands on his chest made his blood drain south, and now he had a problem with swelling in another part of his anatomy. At least that kind of hurt was the good kind.
He considered the tub and tried not to think of other places he’d like her to rub with her warm hands. “Uh, thanks.” He tried for a smile. It smarted, but she smiled back, so he must have pulled it off well enough.
She sat there and watched him eat, an odd look on her face, almost as if she was looking at a stranger.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I wanted to thank you.”
A slurp of cold smoothie slid down his throat. “What for?”