Necessary Ends

by Tina Whittle

  Rico splayed the beam ahead of us while I sent mine around the periphery. I was hoping to spot runaway livestock, but it also seemed a good idea to make sure we weren’t walking into a trap. Though I wondered what kind of trap involved setting loose a bunch of farm animals. Rico had ideas.

  “Abandoned barn,” he muttered. “At night. This has slasher movie written all over it.”

  “Chill, dude.”

  “Wait and see. Some maniac wearing a mask is gonna come out from behind a tractor and then swack!”

  Rico mimicked an ax slicing into the side of his neck. He’d never had a high opinion of my ability to stay out of trouble.

  “Why the hell are you and Trey messing around out here?” he said. “Is this one of his corporate security assignments?”

  “No.”

  “Because if it is, he and I are going to have a serious talk about letting you—”

  “I said, it’s not.” I sent the beam into the treetops. “And Trey doesn’t let me do anything. That’s some sexist bullshit right there.”

  My flashlight caught a squat brown shape in a pine tree. I thought it was a chicken at first, but then it took off in silent swooping flight.

  “Owl,” I said.

  Rico muttered something under his breath about white chicks and nature specials. He was grumpy, but that was par for the course. I’d gotten used to his grumpy. It was reassuring, like the tides.

  “Gabe the animal wrangler says he’s on the way,” I assured him. “He says he’ll get the donkey and the goats, if the goats cooperate. He said the chickens will have to wait until morning. That they’ve…something. Whatever chickens do at night.”

  “Gone to roost?”

  “Yeah. That.” I spotted the path leading to the barn and hooked a left. “Look at you, with your farm boy vocabulary.”

  This got him to laugh. “I haven’t been to a farm since our mothers made us take riding lessons in middle school. Do you remember that?”

  I laughed too. “Of course. They thought it would make us upright and presentable.”

  “Major fail.”

  We both laughed some more. Horses. In my ten-year-old opinion, they’d been mad-eyed and foam-mouthed, intent on stamping my tender girlflesh into hamburger. It had been an adventure, though, one of the first I’d shared with Rico. As we drove a modified golf cart through a faux English countryside, I was grateful to know that it hadn’t been the last.

  Rico held his flashlight steady. “So what are you and Trey doing here?”

  “The truth? We’re here because someone may or may not be trying to kill Nicholas Talbot, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “What does that have to do with all the animals?”

  “I don’t know. But I am going to find out.”

  The club cart hummed us off the paved path onto the grassy field surrounding the barn. Out here it was even darker, the sky black behind the fat full moon.

  “Do you remember the Buckhead Burglar?” I said.

  “Oh, hell yes. Prime example of rich people panic. Kids getting shot to death in Bankhead, big deal. Some Betties get their heirloom spoons stolen, and the entire city loses its collective grip.” He shook his head. “And then the murder happened, and my ex’s mama acted like it was the Fall of Saigon. The rabble coming for her kind, all that. That was when I stopped dating white boys.”

  It wasn’t, but I didn’t remind him of that. Trey wasn’t the only one trying to reconnect. Rico and I were too, despite our limited demographic overlap. That hadn’t bothered us in high school, where we were both outsiders. We’d bonded in the margins. But the gap between was harder to bridge now.

  We reached the barn, looming against the trees. There was no lighting out here, but even from a distance, I could see the door was open wide.

  Rico cursed. “Yep. We’re in a horror movie. This is where it gets horrible.”

  “Wait here.”

  “Like I’m gonna do anything else.”

  I left him in the cart and aimed my flashlight inside the barn. The space was dark and empty, cavernous. It smelled like sweet hay and manure and…something else. I took a tentative step inside, ran a hand along the wall until I found the switch. I popped it on, and a fluorescent light sputtered to life, revealing bales of hay, a tractor, some riding tack on the wall. The pervasive chemical stench was heavy and unnerving and also strangely familiar. And then I saw it—a puddle on the floor, the candle on its side in the center. Trails of liquid stretched out in four directions, one to each corner of the barn.

  I breathed down the panic. “Oh hell.”

  “What?”

  “Somebody tried to rig up a fire.”

  Rico didn’t move. “Tried?”

  “Yeah. Tried and failed.”

  I dropped into a crouch. Up close, the acrid liquid was eye-watering. Not gasoline. Not kerosene. I closed my eyes and let the memories form, but all I could get was…

  “Sleepovers?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m free associating.” And then I stood up abruptly. “Sleepovers. Of course. It’s acetone. Like in nail polish remover.”

  Rico sniffed. He still didn’t come inside, though. I knew I was supposed to leave everything untouched for the cops, and the cops were absolutely coming now, no way around it, no matter what the Talbots wanted. But I also knew that the candle could still have fire at the wick, and that a tiny spark could flare into an inferno at any second. So I plucked it from the acetone. Just a regular old paraffin candle, cold and crushed, the wick slightly charred.

  “Looks like something heavy and hoofed stepped on it. Snuffed out the flame.”

  Rico gestured for me to put it down. “Leave it alone and call Trey.”

  It was good advice. As I pulled my phone out, I detected another smell at the barn door. It was so faint than only another addict like me could have noticed it. Tobacco. I looked down. Several cigarette butts lay crushed just outside the door. I bent close. The cigarettes were dark and unusual, but familiar. Nick’s brand.

  My phone vibrated in my hand. Trey calling.

  “Hey you,” I said, “we’ve got a very big problem here.”

  “Here too.”

  “My problem is attempted arson.”

  There was a long exhale. “My problem is auto theft with aggravated assault and a missing person.”

  “Oh fuck.”

  Another exhale. “Yes. Exactly.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Rico insisted on accompanying me to the check-in station, and I did not argue with him. Puttering down the curving lanes in the dark, it was easy for Rico and me to be together. I wished that we had time to talk—about Dante, about the letter in my cash register, about life. But time was not a resource for me this night.

  I eased up on the accelerator as we hit a patch of gravel. “It’s strange. You’re like some weird comet that only comes around every seventy years.”

  Rico shook his head. “That is a dumb ass metaphor.”

  “I don’t have literary tastes.”

  “No, you got dangerous tastes.”

  I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t, not really. I was leaving behind an arson attempt, on route to even greater possible felonies. I carried a gun with me more often than I didn’t. Even Trey, as sweet and kind and good as he was, was about as safe as a grenade with the pin half-pulled. I thought about these things as I stopped the cart outside the station. A yellow light glowed in the back room along with the flicker of video monitors.

  I climbed out. “You take the cart back.”

  Rico slid over behind the wheel. “What about you?”

  “Trey will make sure I get back to my cabin. But listen to me—I want you to leave, tonight. You and Dante both. Thi
ngs are going down here, bad things, and I…I…”

  “Yeah?”

  I leaned over and hugged him. And he hugged me back. A real hug, the kind that crushed a little. It reminded me that I was a flesh-and-blood body, dependent and contingent and destined for dust, but at that precise singular moment, alive and loved.

  “Dante and I are out of here,” he said.

  I straightened. “Good. Talk soon?”

  “That’s a bet.” He jabbed his chin toward the station. “Go detect shit.”

  And then he puttered away. Just as he did, the back door opened, and Trey stood there, silhouetted against the amber light.

  I stepped forward. “What’s up?”

  He opened the door wider. “Come in and I’ll show you.”

  The first thing I noticed was the security array—four screens, each one broken into four quadrants showing real-time video feed. Each quadrant was linked to a single camera, which meant sixteen cameras overall. That left exploitable dark places aplenty. The second thing I noticed was the man standing in the corner. He was tall and well-built, with dark hair and solemn earnest eyes and feet splayed, hands folded right below his belt buckle. Cop stance.

  Trey gestured in his direction. “Jonathon Davis, former MP. He’s one of Finn’s.”

  “Tai Randolph,” I said. “I’m one of hers too.”

  The guard nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Seaver told me, ma’am.”

  I didn’t tell him to drop the “ma’ams.” Cops loved to “ma’am” and “sir,” and military police got a double dose of it.

  Trey motioned for me to sit at the monitor where he had a separate screen set up. It was dark, but he tapped at the keyboard, and it flickered to life. The images showed the feed from the parking area, the valet-only section. The time stamp let me know it was recorded footage.

  The video began with stillness, broken by movement twenty seconds in. A club cart drove up, and Oliver James got out. He looked nervous, furtive. He pulled a keyring from his pocket and abandoned the cart on the path and climbed in a Mercedes. He threw a small overnight bag into the backseat.

  Trey pointed to the time stamp. “As you see, at approximately midnight Mr. James got into his car using a spare set of keys he had on his person, not the set he turned over when he had the car parked. He left those behind in the valet podium.”

  “Which is locked, I assume?”

  “Yes.”

  “So Oliver decided to leave quickly and deliberately without telling anyone?”

  “Correct.” Trey held down the space bar. “Now watch this next part.”

  Another car pulled into the lot, barreling right through the gate arm. Oliver took one look and ran into the woods. Two men got out of the backseat, one climbing into Oliver’s car and the other heading straight for Quint’s Jaguar, which he had cranked and ready to go in less than sixty seconds. Before they could pull out of the lot, Jonathon approached. Immediately, the man in the Jaguar peeled out of the lot while the man in Oliver’s car pulled a long-barreled handgun and started firing. Jonathon took cover, and both cars hurtled out of the lot behind the first one.

  I looked up. “Jonathon! Are you okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He looked at Trey. “But I’m not sure what to do now.”

  Trey was absolutely sure. “We call the authorities.”

  “My orders were to run all such decisions through Ms. Hudson.”

  “Yes, she will want to know. But this decision is beyond her preferences. Or mine. Do you understand?”

  Jonathon relaxed a little. He was caught between two protocols, not sure which to use. Trey had no such divided loyalties.

  I was still confused. “They walked right by the Ferrari and headed straight for Quint’s Jaguar. Why would a car thief pass up a Ferrari?”

  Trey tapped at the keyboard to rewind the video. “Ferraris are easily recognized and tracked. They’re complicated as stolen goods go, too complicated to sell or send to a chop shop.”

  “So these weren’t professionals?”

  “They were professionals, just not that kind of professional.”

  “A repo team?”

  He shook his head. “Legitimate repo teams don’t shoot at security. Or use suppressors.”

  Of course. No wonder the guns had looked enormous. “So nasty professionals?”

  “Yes.”

  I sat in the desk chair and rolled it closer to the screen. Yes, that was definitely Oliver. And yes, he looked terrified as he bolted into the woods.

  “Where’s Oliver now?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve alerted security, but he hasn’t been spotted.”

  “Hiding? Fled?”

  “I don’t know.” Trey took a seat beside me. “You mentioned attempted arson.”

  “Oh, yeah. That. Should I explain before we call the cops?”

  “I’ve already called them. So yes, please explain.”

  Which I did.

  I gave the same rundown to Finn when she called thirty minutes later, with all the extras added in—the quickie wedding, the injunction, and the legal team headed up at the crack of dawn. I also described the barn burning that hadn’t happened and the parking lot robbery that definitely had. I made sure to include angry Quint, conniving Nick, scheming Addison, sneaky Bree, and possibly drunken but certainly adulterous Portia. Also the fact that Oliver was onto us.

  Finn sighed. “Okay. Keep everybody in their cabins until dawn’s early light. I’ll be there as soon as I get finished with this situation in Florida.”

  “You heard about the Buckhead Burglar too?”

  She didn’t speak for a second. “So much for filling you in on that. Can you two hold down the fort until tomorrow morning?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ve got Jonathon. Sybil and Mickey too. That makes five of y’all on the team, plus the regular resort staff. That’s enough to keep all hell from breaking loose, correct?”

  “I surely hope so.”

  “Good. I’ll see you around nine AM. Give the cops my contact information. Prepare for this to blow up any second, but work it until it does. Shut the place down when it’s done and get everybody back to the city.” She muttered a curse. “Godforsaken wilderness.”

  Trey and Finn had their own confab before Finn hung up, and then he pulled me into his “suite” at the station. A place for on-call security to grab a breather or even a quick nap, it was a spare room with a twin bed and tiny bathroom, rough-hewn and utilitarian. A nondescript closet door and one heavily curtained window and four wood-paneled walls. That was it.

  “Go back to your cabin,” he said. “Lock the doors. I’ll check in once I’ve dealt with the authorities.”

  “I’d rather stay here.”

  He shook his head. “The situation has become complicated beyond its original parameters. I never expected—”

  “For things to get this crazy, yes, I know. How many times have I said that same thing to you? And how many times have you still shown up for me?”

  He put his hands on his hips and looked at me, hard. I let him look, let him get a good eyeful of what I was about to say.

  “The answer is, every single time. And so here I am. Ms. Reciprocation.” I smiled at him. “You asked me to help. Let me help.”

  He hesitated for barely a second before handing me a radio and one of the earpieces. “Channel six is regular communication. Channel four emergencies. Keep the barn secure until the authorities arrive. As soon as they do, I’ll send an officer your way. Jonathon and I will handle the situation here. Do you have your cell phone?”

  I held it up. “Also my weapon. Just in case.”

  He nodded. “Good. Run the app if you decide I need to be aware of whatever is happening. I’ll meet you back here as soon as the police have cleared the scene.”

  “Yes, s
ir. Anything else?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched in a weary, almost-smile. “No, ma’am. Just be careful. Please.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  The next few hours passed in a blur. I met the officer at the barn and walked her through the attempted arson. I pointed out the cigarettes first, and then the candle and acetone set-up. She left me waiting outside for an hour while she investigated. Afterward, she quizzed me a second time to see if my story stuck together, and when it did, she strung up police tape around the barn and sent me back to the check-in station.

  Trey had a similar report. He looked exhausted, his last reserves burned clean. He insisted on updating his information anyway, and had his timeline spread on top of an empty desk in the corner of the video monitoring room.

  “How did Quint react to his car being stolen?” I said.

  Trey pulled the rubber band off a stack of index cards. “Not well. He threatened to sue.”

  “Big surprise. What about Portia?”

  “She’s back in her cabin. Their physician determined that she was not overdosed.”

  “So she was drunk.”

  “I don’t know. She refused to have her BAC tested and locked herself in her room.”

  “Entirely unsurprising.”

  “Entirely.” Trey examined his layout, tapped his pencil against the tabletop. “While I was there, however, I took the opportunity to…inspect their quarters.”

  “You snooped.”

  “Inspected.” He circled a word on one of the cards, then placed it on the table. “The supplement she uses in her shakes does have kava.”

  Portia’s name now had a red asterisk beside it. Trey had moved her to the “suspect” category along with Quint and Addison.

  “You think she poisoned Nick?”

  “Overdosed. And I don’t know. I merely found the means by which she could have.”

  “And she handed me motive on a silver platter. Opportunity?”

  Trey pointed to a section of his timeline. “According to the showrunner’s notes, she was in the makeup trailer right before we arrived on Monday.”