Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  The next thing he knew, he was zombie-walking to the sliding glass door that led to the deck. He opened the door, a cool night breeze blowing in, and walked out onto the deck.

  He knew he wasn’t choosing this, but he had no control, as he descended the deck steps and started through the field behind his mansion-sized cabin. The dark dome sky overhead was twinkling with a constellation of stars, not a single cloud in the sky. The moon, though only a sliver above, felt powerful.

  He felt a jolt of terror slam into him the second he saw the silhouette standing farther out in the field. He didn’t have to be able to make out with his own two eyes who the man was. He knew.

  Dante.

  Rick willed himself to turn, to run, to lock himself in his cabin, grab his shotgun, fortified himself and his home, but his body kept moving forward until he reached the dark devil who had claimed his soul.

  “Good evening, Sheriff.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” he warned, though deep down he knew that Dante already had.

  The evil man sneered, a horrible grin spreading across his handsome face. “I’ve been impressed with your standing in Devil’s Fist,” he complimented. “You have a wealth of authority. You’ll serve me well, I believe.”

  “I won’t,” he tried to refuse but he could feel Dante’s power over him. He knew that if Dante chose it, Rick’s knees would give out and he’d be on the ground and at the mercy of his dark lord. “You’re under arrest!”

  Dante laughed and laughed as Rick found himself soon cowering.

  “The first thing you’re going to do for me,” said Dante, “is kill the entire investigation around me. No one at your precinct is going to question me or arrest me. You’re going to convince them that I’m not their man.”

  “I won’t do it!”

  “You will!” Dante stared at him severely for a long moment then said, “You’re going to build a case around Troy Quinn, pinning all of the murders and attacks on him. You’ll make sure the case is air tight, even if you have to plant evidence. And most importantly, you’re going to get rid of that headache that goes by the name Rachel Clancy.”

  “No,” he breathed.

  But Dante firmly responded, “Yes.”

  ***

  Rachel woke with a start, having fallen asleep at her desk, cheek to papers, a dirty plate of what had previously been ramen noodles beside her.

  She listened out, unsure of whether the thud she’d heard had been in her dream or coming from the souvenir shop downstairs.

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard footfall below.

  Quickly, she raced into the bedroom where she’d set her holstered Glock on the nightstand. She grabbed it, made fast work of checking that it was loaded and ready to fire, and then darted to the apartment door.

  She eased the door open, listening out for sounds that indicated an intruder was in fact below, and cautiously aimed her gun down the darkened stairway.

  She ascended the stairs quickly, her bare feet softly padding down, and cautiously traversed the breakroom, coming to the door that connected to the back of Devil’s Advocate.

  Pressing her ear against the door, she heard the distinct sounds of someone on the other side. Footfall. The intruder wasn’t clunking around. It sounded like they were heading straight for the door she was standing behind.

  As quickly and quietly as she could, she unlocked the door, sucked in a deep preparation breath, and readied herself to throw the door open.

  But on the other side of the door, the footfall ceased. Instinct told her that whoever was on the other side was pressing their ear to the door as well.

  She waited and kept her gaze locked on the doorknob, if it twisted, she’d step back, let the intruder enter, and surprise him or her from behind.

  Her heart was pounding so hard that she could hear her pulse thump in her ears. It was too quiet over there. She listened out and a second later she heard something slide down the length of the door—a body?

  It sounded as though someone had rested against the door and slid down to the floor.

  Why?

  She whipped the door open and as she aimed her gun down, a man fell at her feet.

  She gasped. His throat had been cut. There was a trail of blood leading out along the floor.

  She dropped to her knees as the man gasped and gurgled, fighting to breathe, as he shook and trembled in her arms.

  It was Jake Marple.

  Adelaide’s son…

  …and he was dying in Rachel’s arms.

  Chapter Three

  CONOR

  Conor had woken up with a hankering for bacon. He was weeks away from the rise of a full moon when his brothers, the pack, and he would hunt through Yellowstone in their wolf forms, thinning out the deer population and eating for real. Until then, he could get by with steaks and bacon and eggs so he climbed into his pickup truck, drove past his brothers’ cabins, turned onto Berry Road heading southbound for the heart of the Fist.

  When he turned onto Bison Road, however, coming upon Main Street he saw flashing lights, police tape, an ambulance, and as many uniformed police officers that worked at the station. It looked as though every cop was on duty, as he squeezed the brakes, coming to an idling standstill at the intersection.

  It looked like something serious had gone down inside of Devil’s Advocate and the second he saw that Rachel Clancy was not suited up in her dress blues, but rather covered in blood and standing barefoot in front of two officers on the sidewalk, he threw his pickup truck into Park and jumped out, leaving the keys in the ignition.

  “What happened?” he demanded as he pressed into the yellow police line that was barricading residents away from the entrance of the souvenir shop.

  “Keep back, Quinn,” the officer warned as he maintained the line, keeping the wall of clustered residents that had gathered away from the yellow tape.

  “Rachel!” Conor called out and she glanced his way, her big, brown eyes widening.

  She wasn’t just talking to the police officers that were near her, she was being questioned and Conor knew she couldn’t be able to extricate herself so easily.

  Ignoring the officer’s warning, he stepped under the police line and started briskly towards Rachel as the officer shouted, “Hey! You can’t go back there! It’s an active crime scene!”

  “Rachel, are you okay?” he asked, beyond concerned. There was so much blood on her. Her hands were stained with it, her shirt was saturated, and he needed to know she hadn’t been shot or stabbed. “Are you hurt?”

  “If I was,” she breathed, “I’d probably be in that ambulance or at the hospital by now.”

  She looked exhausted but her dry sense of humor rang true.

  “What happened?”

  Now the two officers who had been questioning her were pressing into Conor, forcing him back, as he fought them.

  “Leave him,” Rachel ordered them and the officers turned to her, astonished. “It’s fine. He can stay.”

  If she was being questioned, she still had authority over them and they obeyed, starting for the police line where the other officer looked like he could use some help.

  “There’s been a murder,” Rachel told him, speaking in a low confident tone. “And you know you shouldn’t be here.”

  “But I am here,” he countered, fully interested in learning what had happened. “Who was killed?”

  Rachel tried to fold her arms, but the blood that covered them stopped her. She glanced over her shoulder at a frail-looking middle-aged woman who looked as though she was in a stupor, oscillating between horror and grieving despair. Her mouth was quivering, but a mile-long stare had come over her. Conor found her familiar, but couldn’t place her.

  “Adelaide Marple’s boy,” Rachel confided. “Adelaide owns the store here. Her son Jake was supposed to be off in Oregon building houses for Habitat for Humanity.”

  Conor looked Rachel over and asked, “Why are you covered in blood?”

/>   “I found Jake,” she said. “He died in my arms.”

  He wasn’t able to immediately connect the dots so she offered the details.

  “I moved into the apartment upstairs yesterday. I heard sounds coming from downstairs. Thought it was an intruder. Went down armed and found Jake Marple with his throat cut. He bled his way through the store.”

  “Why would he come here?” he asked, confounded. “Why not go to the hospital?”

  “Or to his mother’s house if he wanted to die in someone’s arms?” she supplied. “We have no idea. No idea what had brought him back to the Fist. No idea who cut his throat. No idea why he came to Devil’s Advocate. Adelaide was questioned and it sounds like Jake didn’t know Delilah, so just what in the hell he was doing here, well, we have absolutely no information.”

  “Jesus,” he breathed, wrapping his mind around that much.

  “Adelaide is in quite a state,” Rachel commented. “I can’t imagine what she’s going through. God, and she thought having a cop above her store would keep the peace.”

  It was obvious Rachel was blaming herself, beating herself up. She tried to hide it, but it was clear as day to Conor.

  “How are you, though?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Rachel,” he said softly, aiming to level with her, “there’s no way you’re fine.”

  He’d meant for the observation to be a comfort, an invitation for her to know that he was there for her, but that was far from how she took it.

  “I’m a cop,” she reminded him. “I’ve seen dead bodies. Recently, I’ve seen more than my fair share. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m not worried about you,” he tried to assure her even though it wasn’t the truth. He didn’t push his interest, though, and instead asked, “How old was Jake?”

  “He was in-between his junior and senior years in undergrad,” she said, figuring out his approximate age. “Maybe twenty or twenty-one?”

  Conor deduced that Adelaide must have had her son a little later in life, and then he remembered a detail about the woman.

  “She moved here from Montana, right?”

  “Years ago,” she confirmed.

  “Abusive husband, if memory serves me.”

  “You think her ex somehow rendezvoused with Jake, got him to the Fist, and killed him?”

  It sounded farfetched when she put it like that and her questioning tone didn’t help.

  “Maybe you ought to leave the investigation to us cops,” she suggested.

  “Maybe you ought to engage Quinn Security for protection,” he challenged.

  Rachel’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline as though he must be thinking mighty highly of himself.

  “Conor, I’m the last person who would ever need protection. I’m a police officer. I’m trained in firearms and hand-to-hand combat. But most importantly, Jake’s murder has nothing to do with me. No one but Adelaide and a handful of people at Libations even knew I’d moved. I doubt anyone slashed his throat and sent him in my direction on purpose. I didn’t even know Jake personally, just by face and name since Devil’s Fist has the lowest population in all of Wyoming.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You think I don’t know that? Tell you what, hotshot, a little tip I learned over the years serving on the force. When things don’t make sense, the best way to proceed isn’t to start guessing sense into everything. They call that fiction.”

  “Oh, you think you can teach me a thing or two, do you?” he ventured to tease.

  “I would,” she allowed, “if I thought you could learn,” returning a clever jab that caused his mouth to tug into a sideways grin. “I have to get showered,” she said, looking at her blood encrusted arms, the bloodstained shirt she wore.

  As she turned to do just that, Conor gently caught her by her upper arm. “Hey,” he said and she looked up into his eyes, giving him her full attention. He ignored the spark that had ignited between them the second they’d touched, and whispered, brow furrowing, “Do you have any reason to believe this has to do with Alighieri?”

  She stared up at him for a long moment, narrowing her eyes, and said, “Why?”

  “Who else has been behind just about everything that’s been happening around this town?”

  “Do you think this has to do with Alighieri?”

  She was being evasive, but it gave him an idea, “Maybe we could compare notes.”

  Her big, brown eyes widened and the faintest smile came over her, but she guarded, “I doubt you know more than I do.”

  “I guarantee I know more,” he countered, issuing a challenge he hoped she’d take.

  “Is that so?”

  “Maybe we can fill in each other’s blanks?” he proposed.

  And her response was music to his ears. “I’d like that, Conor.”

  So would he.

  ***

  Bacon would have to wait. Conor didn’t have an appetite for it anyway. After climbing back into his badly parked pickup truck, he flew northwest to Quinn Security, having texted all of his brothers to meet him there.

  When he entered the state-of-the-art cabin, he found Dean and Kaleb present and sitting casually on their desks—not at them—they were tossing a football back and forth. Troy was already in his office, and by the smell of it, Conor guessed that Shane was brewing coffee in the breakroom.

  “Anyone see the commotion at Devil’s Advocate?” he first asked all of his brothers.

  Shane seemed especially interested and Conor had to figure that the souvenir shop’s association with the late Delilah Dane had given him pause.

  It had been the one secret Shane had ever kept from all of them. He’d been having a secret friendship of sorts with Delilah. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why Shane had kept this friendship from them. Delilah had been known as a free spirit and had been rumored to dabble in light, low-level prostitution, though Shane had never spent time with her for that reason. He had been, however, giving her money to keep her off the streets so-to-speak. Ultimately, not only had his effort to help her failed, it might have also resulted in her murder, since Dante Alighieri, the rogue werewolf who had turned her, had definitely taken her life as a measure to throw Shane in prison—he’d tried to frame Shane.

  And now another crime had taken place near where Delilah had once lived.

  His brothers collectively shook their heads in response that they hadn’t seen Devil’s Advocate or the sidewalks outside of it with their own two eyes.

  “Adelaide Marple owns the store,” Conor went on. “Her son, who was supposed to be in Montana, stumbled in late last night with his throat cut. Apparently, Rachel had just moved into the vacant apartment above and found him, but it wasn’t enough to save his life. He was twenty-years old.”

  The energy in the vaulted room turned grim and solemn.

  Dean asked, “Rachel moved in?”

  Conor shrugged, “Said she wanted peace and quiet.”

  Dean lifted his eyebrows as though that made sense, as Troy asked, “I take it you know as much as the police, which is virtually nothing?”

  “Unfortunately,” he confirmed. “This crime is on the next level in terms of violence. As far as Rachel or anyone could tell me, Jake hasn’t even been around the Fist since enrolling in college. He’s come back for major holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas—but other than that, he was consistently away, even spent his summers on out-of-state projects like the one he was undertaking in Montana. Habitat for Humanity. He’s a do-gooder. I doubt he was associating with Delilah given his age—”

  “Then why would he, in his dying moments, go to the souvenir shop after hours?” Troy challenged.

  “That’s the first major mystery,” Conor allowed. “Maybe he did know Delilah and was trying to get to her. I have no idea, I just think it’s unlikely. I also think his mother would’ve mentioned that to Rachel and the police. She looked destroyed by this. She wants the police to catch whoever is responsible, whi
ch tells me if Jake had known Delilah personally, she would’ve made that known to the police.”

  Dean surmised, “The sheriff and all his men are going to be on this.”

  Conor agreed, “I think so too, which means there could be a big, fat blind spot with respect to Dante.”

  Kaleb asked what they all were thinking, “Is there any reason to believe Dante could be behind it?”

  “It’s not his M.O.,” Conor stated.

  But Shane fiercely pointed out, “Taking photos of Delilah and then framing me for her death wasn’t exactly the guy’s M.O. either.”

  “True,” Troy agreed. “We’ll have to stay close to this. Keep our ears to the ground. Let’s offer our services to Adelaide. Protective services might help her to feel safe and we’ll get an inside perspective on any developments as well. Any volunteers?”

  Troy had posed the question to everyone, but he was looking at Conor.

  “I can stay on her,” Dean volunteered then quickly amended his response. “I mean, I’ll see if she’ll let me. But I have time.”

  Conor could tell from his downtrodden tone that Dean’s abundance of time had everything to do with the fact that he hadn’t yet found his one true mate. He didn’t want to spend his days and nights at the side of a fifty-year-old woman, but if he did, it wouldn’t be like he was leaving his eternal mate alone at home. He probably didn’t want any of his older brothers to have to give up something so precious, even if it was only temporary.

  “I have another angle to explore,” Conor went on, after thanking Dean for stepping up. Troy seemed all ears. “I have an in with PO Rachel Clancy—”

  “An in,” Kaleb grinned suggestively.

  Shane nudged Kaleb as if they were in cahoots and added, “Nice touch trying to formal up the dynamic. PO Rachel Clancy,” he mimicked.

  “Can I speak?” Conor barked, irritated with their schoolyard antics. “She’s willing to swap notes so-to-speak on Alighieri—”

  “Now, hang on, Conor,” Troy objected.

  But Conor knew the major downside that had just slammed into his oldest brother. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not going to tell her anything she doesn’t already know.”