The Negotiation

by Tyler Anne Snell

  Dane rolled his eyes, but not in annoyance. He was grateful Chance had offered to take them to the school. Not only that, but act as backup. He had a gun permit, was a solid shot and had a good head on his shoulders. Plus, he was quick with his reflexes. When a situation turned on its head, he reacted swiftly and kept his cool. He was the only reason Dane had agreed to let Rachel come along, too. The last time they’d been ambushed, he was outnumbered. Even though Dane had killed the man they would hopefully find out more about, he liked having another gun on his side.

  The drive to Kipsy South Academy was uneventful. Rachel used Dane’s burner to call and check on Lonnie, while Dane and Chance reviewed the case. Again. He was starting to feel like Rachel had the night before. So many questions he felt like he was constantly on the brink of a headache.

  “I think the lady should do the talking,” Chance said. He parked in the private school’s side parking lot and cut the engine. Kipsy might be a big city, but its private school was on the small side.

  “It’s easier to catch flies with honey,” Dane said.

  Rachel seemed to agree. “I don’t know much about this school, but I have heard about the man who runs it. Gerald Boyle is what one of the PTA moms at Darby Middle calls a man with a Napoleon complex, especially when it comes to being around other men.” She gave them a wry smile. “Translation, don’t try to assert any dominance, or not even my assurances that he’s important will land.”

  Dane raised his eyebrow at that. It earned a deeper smirk from the woman. She leaned closer. “You’re wondering if I have ever done that to you, aren’t you?”

  She winked. Chance laughed.

  Apparently, Dane wasn’t the only one starting to get excited at the prospect of a new lead.

  Gerald Boyle was a short, stocky man in his early sixties. He wore a full suit and abruptly made it clear he wasn’t fond of Dane. The PTA mom and Rachel had been right on the money. He’d started talking about them needing a warrant. Around that time Rachel had steered the man into his office, honey in her voice. Minutes later and they were laughing. He led them to a classroom in the back of the school. It belonged to the yearbook students and had a closet filled with at least one copy of each year since the school had opened in the seventies.

  “Take your time,” Gerald said, attention on Rachel only. “And let me know if you need anything.”

  Rachel said thank you, smiling for all she was worth.

  When Gerald had gone, Dane couldn’t help himself. “Fly, meet Honey,” he whispered.

  Rachel laughed. Then it was down to business. Chance stayed by the empty classroom’s closed door, just in case, while Dane and Rachel divided and conquered searching for the yearbook in question. It took longer than he would have liked, but finally Rachel clapped her hands and pointed to the leather-bound book.

  “Here’s hoping Tucker and his friend weren’t talking about playing football in middle school instead,” she said.

  The mood in the classroom changed as they flipped through the book to the football team spreads. Dane scanned the group picture, but it was too small to really tell many of the players apart.

  “At least we know he was on the team for sure,” Rachel said when he went to the next page. She pointed to the individual picture of Tucker. Even now Dane felt some residual anger for the man. He turned to the next page, not recognizing the man who had attacked Rachel. “Oh, look! There’s Knife—”

  Rachel stopped midsentence. Even out of his periphery, Dane saw her tense. He was a second from asking what was wrong when he saw two things. Or, rather, two people.

  The first was indeed the man from the day before. Younger but with a smile that caused anger to erupt in Dane all over again, the teen staring back at them was Wyatt Hall. Their Knife Guy. A man Dane had felt no guilt about stopping before he could hurt Rachel anymore.

  However, it was the teen’s portrait next to Wyatt’s that had stalled Dane out.

  “What’s wrong?” Chance asked, concern lacing his tone. He strode over, cowboy hat in hand. “Did you find him?”

  Dane was the first to recover.

  He nodded.

  “His name is Wyatt Hall,” he answered, phone already out.

  “Then what’s the problem? What’s got you two stiff as boards?”

  Dane didn’t look at Rachel’s expression, but not because he was worried what it showed. Instead he was worried what he looked like. He’d gone from trying to solve their present to slam bam, back in the past. Still, he answered. “The boy next to Wyatt is Marcus the Martyr.” Apparently named Marcus Highland, something the department had never been able to figure out. “The leader of the Saviors of the South.”

  Chance whistled again.

  “So Tucker, Wyatt and Marcus all knew each other when they were teens,” he reiterated. “How much do you want to bet this Levi guy is in here, too?”

  Chance took over searching through the yearbook. Dane texted Billy and Detective Foster Wyatt’s name. Rachel remained quiet.

  “Well, he wasn’t listed in the football roster but—” Chance waved Dane back over. He pointed to a single class photo. The name Levi Turner was listed underneath it. “It’s either a series of incredibly relevant coincidences or—how much you want to bet—this Levi is the same man tangled up with Tucker and the late Marcus and Wyatt.”

  “You think Tucker and Levi want revenge for Marcus’s death? And that’s what this is all about?” Dane ventured. It had been seven years since Marcus had been taken down by a SWAT sharpshooter on loan from the next county over. Exacting revenge now for their friend would be an interesting move. One that didn’t make sense, especially when Lonnie was involved.

  “I’ve seen men and women do crazy things,” Chance said, picking up on his thoughts. “The reasoning behind waiting years before avenging a friend can boil down to a lot. Maybe they had to bide their time until they got the funds or the plan in place. Maybe they tried before and something went wrong. Heck, maybe Tucker decided he didn’t want to be a part of whatever it was and tried to hide from Wyatt and Levi, but they found him now anyways.”

  “That could be why he tried to run,” Dane conceded. Though it didn’t feel right. Why not take Lonnie with him if he was bailing? And why did the men want Lonnie to begin with? Unless it was to use him for leverage against his uncle. Yet Wyatt had talked about keeping the boy safe.

  It still wasn’t adding up.

  Dane was going to say as much when Rachel finally spoke. Her voice was even, calm.

  “Maybe we’re missing a key piece of the puzzle.” She turned and met Dane’s gaze. Sweet blues pulled him in. “And, maybe, Marcus isn’t dead at all.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chance left Rachel and Dane at the cabin like a dog homed in on a new scent. In the time it took her to watch the cowboy drive off, Dane wasn’t that far behind. He set up shop at a small dining table with his laptop and phone. Rachel watched as he worked, calling what seemed to be an endless list of contacts, trying to make sense of the connection between Marcus, Levi, Wyatt and Tucker.

  And also trying to track down Marcus’s body.

  Neither man had fought hard against Rachel’s theory that the leader of the Saviors could still be alive. She’d fully expected pushback. Yet Chance had surprised her.

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” he had admitted. Then he’d shared a look with Dane that was loaded. One neither elaborated on out loud. On the way back to the cabin, they’d sidestepped the possibility to talk about slightly more plausible reasons why Tucker would do what he had done.

  They’d also switched over to the broadcast, wondering if it was Levi’s voice filling the car.

  Rachel held back while Dane continued to thrive in his element. She picked a random book off the bookshelf and flipped through its pages, but the words blurred every time she tried to focus. What if she was right? W
hat if Marcus was alive? What if the man who had killed her husband was still causing chaos?

  What if he was after Dane now?

  Rachel’s heart squeezed at the thought. Then she was angry. She fisted her hand against the love seat. One person shouldn’t be allowed to take so much from another.

  It just wasn’t right.

  Rachel sighed into the open book. Her emotions were all over the place. She needed a distraction. She needed a reprieve from her own mental torture.

  “I need wine,” she announced.

  Dane looked up from his laptop, eyebrow cocked. Rachel jumped off the love seat and headed to the pantry without a follow-up. The small closet had cookies, chips, pasta, pancake mix, cereal and two boxes of fruit snacks. Surely, Suzy had added wine to the obscure list. Rachel continued to go through the kitchen when the pantry search proved fruitless. Dane watched her but kept quiet. Which was good; she was two seconds from picking a fight out of frustration.

  “Eureka!”

  Above the refrigerator was a lone bottle of Prosecco. There were even a couple of wineglasses.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Dane had the gall to ask. Rachel ignored him until she found a corkscrew.

  “What I think is that, as long as we’re here, I can’t do much to help,” she said. The cork came out easily enough. “Other than do what we already have been doing, which is asking a whole lot of questions. Since I’ve already asked about all the ones I can think of, that leaves me thinking about either being chased by two men, having one almost shoot me the next day, seeing his dead body or...” She paused to fill her glass, then continued. “Or my least favorite, thinking that the man behind it all might just be the man who killed my husband.”

  She turned around, full glass in hand, and tried to ignore the invisible walls she knew had risen around the man. “So, I think the best route for me to take at this particular juncture is to sit on that love seat, try to read whatever book that is, drink that Prosecco we were lucky enough to find, and try to pretend that I don’t feel as helpless as I did seven years ago when that son of a bitch Marcus Highland decided he needed to make a statement.”

  Rachel didn’t wait for a response. She was close to tears, angrier than she thought she had been. She settled back in her spot on the love seat and took her first sip of the wine.

  Dane, bless his heart, did the right thing.

  He didn’t say a word.

  * * *

  THE WINE WASN’T a bad idea, but it wasn’t a good one, either.

  Dane kept quiet as Rachel followed through on her plan for the next few hours. She sat on the love seat, drank her wine and read through a book about a city girl moving to a small town. In that time the acute worry of Marcus and his merry men dulled. The frustration and anxiousness were replaced by a warmth. Dane took calls outside or typed along his keyboard while the day crawled by. For a little while, Rachel forgot about their problems.

  But then the city girl in her book ran into a problem that transcended the pages between Rachel’s hands.

  “You left me,” he said. “Without a word, you got on a bus and came to this hick town. Why?”

  Even though it was nothing more than a book and the situation was nowhere near the same, something in Rachel snapped. Helped, no doubt, by the wine she had once thought would work as a distraction. She put the book down, took a deep breath and finally asked the question she had avoided asking for years.

  “Why did you leave me?”

  * * *

  DANE OPENED HIS mouth to say something, but Rachel kept on.

  “And don’t you deny that’s exactly what happened,” she said, voice rising as she stood. “One day you were there and then one day you weren’t. Then you started avoiding me and, eventually, I gave up trying to connect. I gave up trying to fix whatever it was that had broken. I let it go. But now? After everything we’ve just been through? All I want to know now is why. Why did you leave, Dane? I want to know. I think I deserve that much.”

  Pretending he didn’t know the woman a few feet from him well would have been a lie. Before David had died, Dane had already been friends with the woman, able to be around her with enjoyment and ease. After David passed, that friendship had only grown stronger, weaving together with something else in common. Tragedy. They’d become closer.

  Too close.

  That was how Dane knew that Rachel had reached the end of her grace toward him. Her eyes were shining, her body was rigid. Even from the distance between them, he saw her teeth gritting together after she finished talking. She was angry. She was hurt. She was looking for an answer.

  One Dane still couldn’t give.

  Not after the way the case had possibly turned back toward the past.

  So Dane took the easy way out and felt the fool for it.

  “It was the guilt,” he said simply. Not entirely a lie, not entirely the truth. “The anniversary of David’s death was coming up and there I was, eating dinner with you. Talking. Laughing. It was too much.” He shook his head slowly. “Being around you was too much.”

  The hurt was immediate. Rachel’s whole body was seemingly affected by the sting of his words. Dane hated it. More than anything he’d always wanted to protect her from any and all pain. Yet there he was. The cause of it.

  Rachel dropped her gaze and walked to the bedroom door. Dane watched her go, refusing to follow. It wouldn’t do either of them any good.

  “You know,” Rachel started to say, pausing in the doorway and turning to face him again, “when you told me David died because of your plan, I was angry. But, like I’ve said before, never for one moment was I angry at you. Do you want to know why that is, Dane?”

  It was his turn to become rigid. He didn’t answer. He didn’t think she expected him to, either.

  “Because a man named Marcus was the one who killed my husband. Our best friend. While all you did was try your damnedest to save him. I was proud of you for that then and I’m still proud of it now. So whatever hang-ups or guilt trips you want to continue to feed, don’t put any of that on me. I never forgave you, Dane, because I never blamed you.”

  And then she was gone.

  * * *

  RACHEL LOOKED UP at the ceiling and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She’d been asleep, but for how long? A dim light filtered in from beneath the bedroom door. The spot next to her in bed was empty and cold. Not that she expected Dane to be there. She’d finally let him know that his abrupt abandonment and following absence through the years had left their marks.

  Rachel sighed into the silence.

  Now she finally knew why he’d done both and she didn’t know how to process it. She had meant what she said, though. She didn’t want the man spending any more of his days blaming himself and using her as an excuse to do it. Rachel wasn’t going to have that, but at the same time, she didn’t know how to make Dane accept that.

  I guess that’s not up to me, she thought. An ache of loss echoed in her chest at the sentiment.

  Rachel rolled over and looked at the digital readout on her cell phone’s screen. Not only had she retreated to the bedroom before she could really lose it earlier, but she’d managed to take a nap that had stretched well into the night. The emotional toll had been draining; the wine hadn’t helped.

  That same wine was making her feel the need to drink some water. She sighed, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and padded to the bathroom with her pajamas in tow. She had been so upset earlier that she hadn’t changed out of her clothes. She had just wanted to close her eyes. Now she was better. She washed her face, brushed her teeth and nodded to her reflection in the mirror.

  She wasn’t proud that she had gotten tipsy and yelled at Dane, but it had been a long time coming. Now all they could do was move past it.

  Rachel’s stomach dropped.

  How Dane had moved past it bef
ore was to cut her completely out of his life. After the case was solved, would he do that again?

  Rachel felt like she was constantly sighing, but there another one was as she crawled back into bed. She wasn’t tired anymore, but that didn’t mean she was about to go get into Dane’s personal space. Especially since he had admitted being around her was “too much.”

  Rachel felt another sigh about to escape when a knock on the door distracted it. She reached over to the bedside lamp and clicked it on.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Dark eyes swept across the room and landed on her.

  “I heard you moving around,” he greeted. “I... Well...”

  He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. The movement made his biceps jump. Rachel tried to ignore it.

  “Spit it out,” Rachel said, surprised at how brash the command sounded. Still, it did the trick.

  “I tried to sleep on the couch, and if there’s one thing I’m certain about the two of us, it’s that we’re tall people.” He managed to look sheepish. “I was wondering if, well... I know you’re mad at me, but—Well, I—”

  Rachel rolled her eyes and patted the bed next to her. “You can still sleep in here, Dane. I’m not going to kick you out.”

  Dane chanced a small smile. It, plus the promise of him being so close to her again, made Rachel’s heartbeat start to speed up. It was annoying. Dane had hurt her, and just because she wasn’t going to make him sleep on the floor, that didn’t mean she couldn’t stay grumpy. To prove this point to them both without saying a word, she turned the light off and rolled over, her back to the rest of the room.

  Dane was smart not to comment. He moved around the bedroom and bathroom until she felt the bed dip beneath his weight. She tensed, making sure to not slide toward him. She just hoped her body stayed as vigilant while she was asleep. Waking up in Dane’s arms after their short but brutal conversation wouldn’t be ideal.

  A few minutes went by without a word. The silence was almost too loud. Rachel waited for his breathing to even out to let her know he had fallen asleep, although after a few more minutes passed, it remained the same. She had half a mind to roll over and peek. But what would that solve?