Quentin (The Bourbon & Blood Series Book 4)

by Seraphina Donavan

  “I’m sticking this time, Lowey. Whatever it takes. You can count on it.”

  “I want so badly to believe that,” she whispered.

  “If you let me, I’ll prove it,” he promised. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat, then traced his tongue over the arc of her collar bone. “Starting now.”

  Quentin reached for the button of her jeans and freed it with a flick of his thumb before sliding the zipper down. Tugging them over her hips he dropped them onto the floor and the pressed her back onto the counter top. He let his hands roam over her, touching her everywhere, savoring every shudder and moan from her.

  With Lowey it wasn’t just about his own pleasure, and making her come had nothing to do with his own ego. It went beyond that, to something deep and visceral. Primal even. She was his. In every way that mattered, and whether she stayed with him or not, this part of her would be his forever. Maybe it was ego, after all, because he wanted her to feel that. He wanted to know that long after he was gone, she’d still bear his mark on a part of her that no one else would ever touch.

  Quentin kissed her again, taking her mouth, staking a claim. And then he moved lower, trailing kisses along her neck, her breasts, pausing to tease each nipple. Just as he reached the band of her underwear, a loud and obnoxious bang sounded at the door.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he muttered and rested his head against her hip for just a second. “Who the fuck would be looking for us here?”

  “Ciaran,” she said. “Or one of your other siblings… They’re the only ones who know where we are. Whoever it is, they have shitty timing.”

  He pulled his pants up and then gathered her discarded clothing. “Epically shitty… but this—this is not done. The minute we get rid of them, I’m going to lick every fucking inch of you.”

  “Well that’s romantic.”

  “It will be,” he said. “And if it isn’t, it’s going to feel so damn good you won’t care.”

  He walked toward the door, but stood there, waiting until Lowey was fully dressed again to open it. The pounding resumed along with a booming announcement.

  “It’s the Sheriff! I know you’re in there and you need to open up the door immediately.”

  Quentin glanced back at Lowey. “This isn’t going to be good.”

  “It never is. But let the son of a bitch in.”

  Quentin opened the door to see Silas standing there accompanied by two Fayette County officers. He was out of his jurisdiction since Ash Grove Farm was over the county line.

  “Silas, you’re an unexpected and unwelcome surprise.”

  “Can the attitude, Darcy,” Silas said. “I’m here to serve a warrant.”

  “For?” Quentin demanded.

  “The warrant is issued to my cousin-in-law, not you.”

  “Former cousin-in-law,” Lowey corrected as she stepped forward. She accepted the paperwork from Silas and frowned as she read through it. “Why are you searching The Kicking Mule? There’s not enough left of it to hide anything.”

  “We’re looking for a weapon… a handgun in particular. It seems someone shot Joey this evening.”

  Quentin frowned as Lowey asked. “Is he okay?”

  “Why the hell would you care?” Silas demanded.

  “For Joey, I don’t. But Juanita loves his worthless ass and that woman has enough misery in her life already,” Lowey snapped at him.

  “No. He’s not okay. He’s dead, and frankly no one has more cause to want him that way than you do,” Silas replied. “I wouldn’t advise taking any trips, Harlow. We’re going to want to talk to you again.”

  “You’ve served your warrant,” Quentin said. “Now get the hell out.”

  Silas lifted his chin challengingly. “You might run Fontaine, Quentin, but you don’t run me. I’m here in an official capacity.”

  “Which has been completed, and now you can go. Any time.” Quentin looked at the officers with him. “Unless there’s something else, gentleman?”

  The officers looked at one another and then one of them looked at Silas. “We’re done here, Sheriff Barnes.”

  After they left, Lowey cursed. “Son of a bitch. We need to get to the bar. I know there’s not much left of it, but what is left will be torn all to hell if Silas has his way.”

  “How many guns do you have in the bar, Lowey?”

  “I’ve got my Papaw’s shotgun and I’ve got a forty-five stashed there as well. Why?”

  “Do you trust Silas to do an honest search? Do you think he’s above planting evidence?”

  Her face paled. “Let’s get to the bar. Now.”

  Seventeen

  Ciaran went straight to the Kicking Mule. He’d texted Quentin and knew that was where they were going. Matt had given him a heads up that Joey had missed an important meeting with the suppliers. Without seeing the transactions go down, Matt was stuck. He couldn’t arrest them simply for being present, which meant he’d have to lean on the cousin Tommy, get him to step up and take over as point man so they could finally put an end to all of this.

  In the meantime, Ciaran had his own suspicions about Joey’s death. Silas was a man with his eye on the prize. His current position was nothing more than a stepping stone. A power hungry politician with a liability like a relative of Joeys’ ilk was a recipe for disaster. And Lowey was a perfect scapegoat.

  Easing his truck into the parking lot of the bar, he noted the two Sheriff’s vehicles present. He could hear the breaking of glass and smashing of furniture from inside. He could also hear Quentin yelling.

  He acted quickly, crossing the gravel lot at a run and entering the bar. “You’ve a search warrant for a gun,” Ciaran said. “You’ll not find it hiding in the bottom of a clear vodka bottle. Smashing it is willful destruction of property with witnesses!”

  The deputy tossed the bottle to the floor, glass and liquor scattering as it shattered. “It slipped.”

  Ciaran looked back at Lowey who stood there with her lips clamped firmly together and an expression of pure hatred burning in her eyes.

  “It can all be replaced,” he offered.

  “No. It can’t. And I’m note even sure I want it to be,” she said. “Maybe this is what I needed to push me out of the bar business after all.”

  One of the deputies reached beneath the bar and retrieved a wooden box. Opening it, he removed the handgun from inside it. “Looks like we’ve found our weapon.”

  “You’ve found a weapon,” Quentin stated, “Not the weapon.”

  The deputy, one of Silas’ brown nosing sycophants, grinned. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck… Where were you this afternoon, Miss Tate?”

  “I was with Quentin at Ash Grove Farm,” she replied. “And then at around five, we went to have dinner with his siblings at Mia’s home.”

  “There are witnesses who can corroborate that?”

  The question had come from Silas who’d just walked into the bar behind Ciaran.

  “Mia Darcy, Bennett Hayes, Clayton and Annalee Darcy were all there,” Lowey replied. Her tone was robotic, without any inflection at all, as if she’d gotten so used to Silas’ accusations and harassment that it no longer registered.

  Ciaran didn’t point out that he’d been invited to the fete and elected not to go. The object was to remove Lowey from the suspect list, not to put himself on it. But he did watch Silas closely for a reaction, and he wasn’t disappointed. The man’s face paled and his breath quickened. He was cared, Ciaran realized, and guilty. Very, very guilty.

  “Did the kids who found the body see any vehicles near there? Were any tire tracks found?” Ciaran demanded.

  Silas turned on him then. “You might be Matt Crawford’s errand boy, but that doesn’t give you any jurisdiction here.”

  Ciaran walked over to him, met Silas’ guilty gaze directly and warned. “If you don’t dot every I and cross every T on this, you’ll regret it, Barnes.”

  “Are you threatening an officer o
f the law?”

  Ciaran smiled. “Only with legal action. You are an elected official and any elected official can be recalled… especially if there are concerns of corruption and miscarriages of justice.”

  “You might want to take a step back. This isn’t a John Grisham novel,” Silas replied. “And bringing yourself to the attention of law enforcement and immigration might not be to your advantage.”

  Quentin stepped in then. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that since his father is a citizen, Ciaran’s kind of good there. But maybe you need to consult John Grisham on that.”

  Silas flushed angrily. “I can arrest you for obstruction, Darcy. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “You’ve found what you were looking for,” Lowey said. “And you’ve destroyed everything that was left intact in this bar after your cousin opened fire on it. So, just go, Silas. Take what you came for and go.”

  Ciaran’s lips firmed as he watched Silas’ expression turn smug. God, he hated that bastard and what he was doing to her and to Quentin. Sure, he and Quentin had their issues, but he respected him at least. At some point or other, he hoped they’d be able to at least be civil to one another. But their strange ass family situation aside, what Silas was doing was wrong. The son of a bitch was railroading a woman who was innocent, whose only real crime was to have the unfortunate luck of having been married to Silas’ bastard of a cousin.

  “I’ll go because I’m ready to, not because you demanded it.”

  Ciaran wanted more than anything to tell him it didn’t matter why the hell he left so long as he did. But saying anything would just escalate the situation and keep Silas trying to come out on top. So he bit his tongue and watched the asshole walk out, taking his minions with him.

  When he was gone, Quentin turned to Ciaran and said, “The only way she’s getting out of this is to figure out who did kill Joey Barnes.”

  “That’s an easy enough question to answer,” Ciaran said. “Silas killed him.”

  “What about the Russian drug dealers?” Lowey asked.

  “They were waiting for him to show up,” Ciaran replied. “And when he didn’t, Matt’s whole case went south. He can’t arrest someone for trafficking if they don’t actually ever receive the trafficked goods… Silas is a man with political aspirations. When I told him what his cousin was up to, he saw that political career going up in smoke and decided to do whatever was necessary to prevent it.”

  Quentin shook his head. “That’s a pretty big damn leap there, Sherlock. How exactly , if you’re right, do we prove that?”

  “You don’t,” Ciaran replied. “I do. In the meantime, you all put together a timeline of your whereabouts and anyone who can verify it. You’re going to need it.”

  Lowey looked scared while Quentin just looked pissed off. He wanted to tell them not to worry, but the truth of the matter was they needed to. Silas had the tools at his disposal to make this very ugly, and he was highly motivated to do it.

  Eighteen

  Lowey sat down in one of the few remaining chairs. Half of them were broken, the other half were turned over on the floor, the cushions slashed by overzealous deputies on a witch hunt.

  “He’s going to arrest me, isn’t he?” She wanted Quentin to lie to her, but she knew he wouldn’t.

  “He’s going to try,” he said. “But I’ll do whatever it takes to keep that from happening. We both know you didn’t do anything wrong. They took your gun…. and they knew where to find it. Everyone in this town knows where you keep those under the counter. So why was that the very last place they looked?”

  “So that they could have ample opportunity to destroy every piece of furniture and upholstery that Joey hadn’t?” she replied. She didn’t know why the hell Silas did what he did, but she was pretty damn sure that everything the deputies had done since they’d walked into the bar had been on his orders.

  “I have a sinking feeling here, Lowey… If Silas wanted that gun it’s because he knows it will match whatever slug they dig out of Joey. This would be so much easier if you had cameras in here!”

  “I do,” she replied. “I had them installed with the security system when I moved into the apartment upstairs. They loop every forty-eight hours.” It hadn’t even crossed her mind. The security cameras focused on the areas behind the bar, in front of the store room, and the entrance to her apartment. With Joey’s shooting spree, they’d have been pointless. But if Silas or one of his minions had let himself into the bar to help themselves to her gun, they might have the proof they needed.

  “What time does the loop reset?” he asked.

  “At midnight,” she replied.

  “We’ve got fifteen minutes,” he said. “Let’s get upstairs.”

  Lowey followed him up the stairs to her apartment. The security feed went directly to her desktop computer. She sat down at the desk and opened up the program. Rather than try to play beat the clock, she just downloaded the file and saved it for them to review.

  “Does anyone know about these cameras?” he asked.

  “No. I didn’t exactly advertise that I put them in. The whole point of security cameras is to not tell people where they are so they can avoid them.”

  Lowey pulled the up the footage and started forwarding through the sections that she knew were clear. When they passed the point in the video where Silas had shot up the place.

  It took forever. Speeding up the footage, slowing it down, checking every strange blip on the screen and realizing that half of them were moths. Finally, they reached the spot where Silas entered the bar.

  “Son of a bitch,” Quentin said. “There he is, bold as brass.”

  Lowey felt sick watching it, seeing him pilfering through the items behind the bar looking for the gun. When he had it in hand, he left the bar. They fast forwarded through the footage until he appeared on the screen again, placing the gun back in its normal spot.

  “He killed him,” she said. “He really did and he’s going to try and burn me for it.”

  “Yes, he did. Email that to me and email it to my lawyer.” He gave her the email address and then called Clayton, giving him the rundown of everything they’d found. After he texted the info to Ciaran.

  “This stays between us and my brothers,” he said. “We can’t afford to let Silas know we have this until we’re ready to use it. Silas is dangerous, Lowey. If he knew you had this—I don’t know what he’d do.”

  “I do,” she said. “If he’d shoot Joey, he’d do that to me or worse. I don’t want to go to jail, but I kinda don’t want to die either.”

  ***

  Quentin stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. It was bad enough when he just thought Silas wanted to make her life hell, but the idea of her being in real danger, and from someone who wasn’t just a fuck up like Joey, terrified him.

  “I’m not letting anything happen to you,” he promised. “I’m not letting you go. Not for any reason.”

  “Quentin, you have gotten sucked into a huge mess… my mess. You’re making all these grand statements because you’re feeling heroic, but that’s not who we are. I’m not a damsel in distress. I can handle this.”

  He laughed at that. “I know you’re not, Lowey. I never thought you were. But just because you can handle it doesn’t mean you should have to handle it alone. As for heroic… No. I’m not feeling heroic. I’m feeling fucking terrified.”

  “What the hell are you scared of? I’m the one Silas wants dead or in prison!”

  He went quiet, thinking about what he needed to say to her. “I’m scared of losing you. I can’t lose anything else in my life, Lowey… but especially not you. So just let me help you with this.”

  “I don’t understand you, Quentin. Not at all. What happened that you’re suddenly this guy?”

  “What guy?”

  Her head fell back as she sighed with frustration. “This guy—the one who talks about his feelings, who admits that he actually has feelings! Where the hell d
id this come from?”

  “It isn’t that I don’t have feelings. God, could this conversation make me sound like more of a pussy?” he asked. He hated these kinds of conversations. They were the primary reason that he typically avoided relationships. But avoiding one with Lowey wasn’t an option. She was as necessary to him as breathing. So if that meant he had to talk like they were on a damned episode of Dr. Phil, he would.

  “Talk to me, dammit,” she snapped.

  “I don’t let many people in. I never intended to let you in.” The admission was uttered softly, but with complete conviction. It was true. He’d thought for the longest time that he could just have fun with her, just indulge his rather healthy dose of lust for her and then move on, like he had with so many other women in his life. But she drew him, maybe because she was so much like him. Their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different, but the way they approached the world, the way they guarded themselves, it was the same. And he’d needed to know what her secrets were, he’d needed to know why she protected herself so fiercely. That had been his first clue that she was different and that somehow he would be different with her. “But it happened. And now that you’re there, I’m not letting go. I will do anything—whatever it fucking takes—to keep you safe and to keep you mine.”

  “So what do we do now?” she asked. “I don’t now how to be this way with you, Quentin. I’ve spent so much time trying to pretend that this was nothing more than sex, mostly because I was terrified that any hint of emotion would send you running for the hills.”

  “The only running I plan to do is whatever it takes to catch you,” he promised. “But first we need to get Matt Crawford out here.”

  “He’s a Lexington cop. What’s he going to do?”

  “Put us in touch with someone at the state level that we can trust,” he answered. “Silas is a son of a bitch, but he’s not without allies. We’ve got to be careful with this thing.”

  “So how do we get in touch with him? I know he moves in your circle but he doesn’t really move in mine.”