Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Dean reminded him, “She’s been questioning all of us. If anyone at the station has been trying to figure out whether or not us Quinns are werewolves, it’s Rachel.”

  “I’m aware of that,” he allowed, “and I’ll be in an excellent position to dispel that possibility in her mind. This could be a good opportunity for us. Jack Quagmire hasn’t been feeding us intel on any of the sheriff’s pursuits and investigations since he’s gotten intimately involved with Angel Mercer and you all know it. Now that those to have been united, I haven’t even seen much of Angel at the diner or Jack at the bar.”

  “True,” Shane agreed. “Those lovebirds have been holed up inside Angel’s cottage fairly consistently.”

  “Thank you,” Conor said, glad that at least one of his brothers appeared to have his back. “Let me see what I can find out.”

  “Fine,” Troy said, though he looked skeptical. “Keep in mind, however, Rachel is smart and calculating. If you think she’s going to flat out tell you everything she knows straight out of the gate, you’re naïve. She’ll keep what she knows tightly guarded and she’ll spend her efforts first mining for information you have. It’s going to be a serious game of mental chess, Conor.”

  “I’m prepared.”

  “Dean,” Troy said, shifting his focus to his youngest brother. “Go on over to Adelaide’s and let me know if she’s agreeable to allow you to serve as her bodyguard until her son’s killer is caught. Get as much information as you can from her, and keep your amethyst on you. If Dante has turned her, then it could’ve made her son a target.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Dean said, as he pulled his holstered gun over his shoulders, fastened the buckle, and started through the cabin.

  As he opened the door, Troy caught him and said, “She’s out there, Dean. I can see it.”

  In an instant, Dean’s entire expression brightened.

  “She’s not from the Fist. A big city girl. But she has ties to this town and she’ll be here before long.”

  Dean’s one true mate. It was all the motivation he needed to spark a little pep into his step, and when he left the cabin, having closed the door behind him and jogged down the stairs that led to the parking area where his pickup truck was parked, Kaleb asked, “Is that true?”

  Troy nodded in the affirmative, a swell of conviction flared behind his intense, dark eyes.

  “Good for Dean,” Shane said.

  All of the brothers knew the weight Dean had been carrying, eager and anxious to connect with his one true mate. To hear that Troy had seen the woman with his gift of foresight was a ray of hope they all needed.

  Conor was seriously tempted to ask his king if he’d had any visions with regard to Conor’s own one true mate, but he held his tongue. Instead, he mentioned, “Rachel should be at the station by now. I’m going to swing on in. We don’t have a second to spare on this, and if anyone sees Dante in town—”

  Troy interjected his kingly order, “You let everyone know ASAP.”

  The men agreed and Conor started off for his own pickup truck, eager to spend time with Rachel, who he was starting to hope—strongly—would turn out to be the woman he was destined to spend all of eternity with.

  Chapter Four

  RACHEL

  Rachel was standing in the briefing room of the station among her fellow officers. Some were seated, others sat on tables, and a handful, like Rachel, stood against the walls. The sheriff was in front of a large board where a large photo of Jake Marple had been tacked. In red marker, he’d written on the dry erase board two names, Adelaide Marple, who Rachel couldn’t conceivably believe could’ve slashed her own son’s throat, and Harry Marple, the estranged husband and father that Adelaide had fled from years ago.

  He went on addressing the team. “We believe, according to Adelaide, that Jake was supposed to be in Montana.”

  One of the detectives raised his hand and informed the sheriff, “I confirmed it. Jake had been up in Montana since the first of June. I talked to one of the program directors at Habitat for Humanity. He was supposed to work with them in Montana until August 31.”

  “Who saw him last up in Montana?” Rick asked but before anyone could answer, he added a second question, “And what date and time was that sighting?”

  The same detective, a thirty-year-old man by the name of Eddie Friendly who was tall, athletic, and as far as Rachel was concerned, arrogant, shot his hand into the air again and answered the sheriff, “The program director I spoke with, Judy Samuels, said she saw Jake last at their group dinner two nights ago. I’m waiting to hear back from her about anyone else up there who might have interacted with Jake after that. She promised to get back to me.”

  “Good work, Friendly,” Rick praised, and Rachel had to make a concerted effort not to roll her eyes.

  Despite the detective’s surname, Eddie was anything but friendly. She’d come to regard him as her stationhouse nemesis, in fact, since Eddie’s gloating personality and competitive edge had screwed her over more than once. He’d been hired at the precinct years after Rachel, and yet he’d made detective before her. Thinking about it made her jaw clench. The last time Rachel had put in for detective, so had Eddie, and when the sheriff had promoted the guy over her, his reasoning had been that Eddie had cracked a burglary case wide open. He hadn’t. What had really happened was Rachel, herself, had questioned a number of local boys who had ties to the house that had been burglarized. She’d sought them out on her off-duty days, gathered information using her pointed and aggressive feminine wiles, and had made the colossal mistake of sharing what she’d learned with Eddie. At that point in time, she’d been buying into the guy’s folksy, friendly demeanor and liked him just as much as every other cop in the station. It had been a hard lesson to learn, when the next thing she knew, the sheriff was praising Friendly in front of everyone in the bullpen for having ferreted out the critical information. Rick put Friendly at the helm of an intense interrogation, which Eddie had nailed. When all was said and done, he’d gotten two out of the three boys involved to confess, and the sheriff had promoted him because of it, offering him the shiny detective badge that belonged to Rachel.

  She hoped he would choke.

  “What’s the matter, Friendly?” she sneered. “To good to take a drive up to Montana? Or maybe Jake’s murder doesn’t warrant you going the extra mile?”

  “Oh, Clancy,” he mused with a grin as if she entertained him like a cute puppy nipping at his ankles. “You would waste hours in a car for a little scenic drive, wouldn’t you?”

  She pressed her mouth into an insulted line and cut her eyes to the sheriff, who of course was on Friendly’s side.

  “Eddie’s got a good head on his shoulders,” he defended. “If an in-person interview isn’t worth his time—”

  “He’s trusting that some woman up there is going to do his job for him and do it effectively,” she argued.

  “Would you like to make the trip?” Rick suggested. “Work under Friendly’s directive?”

  It was literally the last thing Rachel wanted to do so she piped down, disturbed at the threat. She couldn’t be away from the Fist, not even for a day. It would completely yank her out of the investigation and she’d be out of the loop, which was what she had hoped would happen to Friendly. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have suggested it.

  “Yeah, Clancy,” Eddie agreed. “How’s about you head on up and ask around?”

  She glared at him, which he seemed to like. He grinned at her then made something of a performance of shining up his silver detective’s badge, rubbing it in her face that he’d been promoted over her.

  The sheriff went on, soliciting from the team everything they’d learned about Adelaide, Harry, and their murdered son, Jake.

  As he wrapped up the briefing, he reminded the team, “I want to know how Jake spent every second of his final days alive. We’ll reconvene tomorrow morning. We’re going to catch this guy.”

  Rachel started for her desk but before she reached it
, Eddie caught up with her and angled another boastful grin down at her.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “I thought it was an excellent idea,” he complimented, but she wasn’t about to trust him. He was messing with her like he always tended to do. “I think you should head on up to Montana.”

  “And I think you should go to—”

  “Clancy!” Rick barked from his open office doorway. He’d breezed past them and she sincerely hoped he was about to order her to go to the Habitat for Humanity site in the neighboring state.

  “Coming, Sheriff,” she said. She shot Eddie one more glare as she grabbed her notepad, then joined Rick in his office.

  “Shut the door.”

  She did then sat in the chair across from his desk.

  “I’ve got some news you’re not going to like, but I need your full obedience and cooperation,” he began.

  She didn’t like the sound of that and realized she’d stopped breathing.

  “Sir?”

  Rick let out what sounded like an apprehensive or regretful sigh, then informed her bluntly, “We’re dropping the Alighieri investigation—”

  “What?!”

  “What did I just tell you?” he barked, silencing her.

  She flinched at his booming tone, but she was as irate as she’d ever been in her whole life. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I can,” he warned. “We’re going to drop it. If we had enough to arrest Alighieri we would’ve done it by now.”

  “We haven’t had a chance!” she argued. “He’s slipped through our fingers time and again, Sheriff!”

  “Stop getting hysterical,” he said calmly.

  The insult had her chest breaking out into a furious sweat. Hysterical? She was being reasonable! How could Rick drop a promising investigation? How could he order her to turn a blind eye to all the damage and destruction that they both knew Alighieri was responsible for around the Fist? This was unacceptable!

  She made a concerted effort to temper her emotions and in a steady tone simply asked, “Why?”

  “I received a threatening phone call from Dante’s attorney—”

  “And you’re running scared?”

  “I’m not running scared, Clancy!” She flinched again then really bit her tongue. As Rick went on, she tasted blood in her mouth. “Legally speaking, we don’t have enough to arrest him. We’ve already closed the van Dyke and Whitaker cases, Pamela Davenport had been responsible. Yes, the Gladstone wrongful imprisonment is a goddamn mess, but what can we do? Even Reece dropped everything. The D.A. knows it. You think the D.A. over in Jackson Hole wants to try a case without the support of the only witness? If Reece isn’t willing to testify than the whole thing amounts to hearsay. We both know Angel wants to get as far away from this thing as humanly possible. We’ve got nothing and Alighieri’s attorney knows it.”

  “What about Delilah?” she challenged. “Dante killed her and you know it.”

  “What I know,” he countered, “and what the autopsy and witnesses told us, is that Delilah took her own life. Yes, she took it in a terrible way, but that’s what happened, and Hardcastle and that stable boy confirmed as much. I’m telling you right now, Clancy, you will cease and desist all investigation of Dante Alighieri. That’s an order, now. Do you understand?”

  Hardly, but what could she do? This was a waking nightmare. All the work she’d been doing on her personal time would be for not! And the biggest blow? Rachel could feel it in her bones that building an ironclad case against Alighieri, one that would send him to prison for the rest of his life, was supposed to be her ticket to making detective.

  This would be a very hard pill to swallow.

  “Clancy,” he warned, “tell me you understand.”

  Her mouth tasted bitter as she murmured, “I understand, Sheriff.”

  “Good,” he said, relieved.

  “I think you’re making a huge mistake,” she pushed.

  “Clancy,” he warned again.

  “I’ll back off,” she assured him. “But I won’t like it.”

  “Close the door on your way out.”

  When she reached the door, she felt overwhelmingly compelled to assert, “Sheriff, I have put in for detective three times. You know no one in this station wants it more than I do.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you want. It matters what you deserve.”

  “I deserve it,” she told him, her voice rich with conviction.

  But Rick didn’t agree. “That’s yet to be proven.”

  It felt like a fist slamming into her gut, the insult of that man, but she kept her mouth shut, left his office and closed the door as he’d requested, and made her way to her desk, dragging her feet as she went.

  Dropping the entire Alighieri investigation didn’t sit right with her, not by a long shot. The sheriff got some phone call from some big city attorney and he was backing down? It didn’t sound like Rick Abernathy. It didn’t sound like the man who had stopped at nothing to clean up the Fist decades ago, the man who had gotten a street named after him.

  It gave her serious pause.

  What if…?

  No, that was impossible, she told herself, but her fast-working mind had already latched on to a very dark possibility.

  What if Dante Alighieri had gotten to the sheriff?

  She might have been on the fence about getting together with Conor Quinn to come at Alighieri from both directions, but now more than ever she was anxious to sit down with him. She wasn’t going to burn her investigation.

  Rachel Clancy was fully committed to seeing this thing through.

  ***

  At the exact moment Rachel was fixing to sink her teeth into her handwritten map of names, one door down from the stationhouse Adelaide Marple stared down at the floor where her sweet son, Jake, had died.

  The police had left. They’d taken down the yellow tape. She’d cleaned her son’s blood from the floor, but Devil’s Advocate felt dark and tainted.

  How could this have happened?

  She felt the urge to bawl her eyes out all over again, but she had no more tears to cry. She felt depleted and empty, like her spirit had slipped out of her.

  She’d told her salesgirl, Peggy, to take the day off. Peggy was the same age as Jake. They’d grown up together. When Jake had earned extra credit as the captain of the debate team in high school, Peggy had done cartwheels and splits, cheering for the football team. They were as different as night and day but had maintained a friendship. They’d even been accepted to the same college and saw each other around campus. Adelaide hadn’t had the heart to tell her. It would destroy Peggy and ultimately pitch Adelaide into another fit of emotion. She resolved to tell the girl tomorrow. She just needed one more day.

  Though she’d unlocked the souvenir shop and turned the open sign to face Main Street, word must have gotten out because there wasn’t a single tourist in the store. It was just as well. Adelaide couldn’t imagine being friendly and personable. Not now. Not with the dark weight of her son’s death on her frail shoulders.

  She walked through the store and rounded to the business side of the counter where the register sat along with the shop telephone.

  There was one person who deserved to hear the tragic news.

  Adelaide was not looking forward to making this call, but she knew in her soul that she had to.

  Her ex-husband needed to know.

  Harry had once been a kind man. She’d met him in high school and at the time he’d been an all-American boy. Charming, athletic, and well-liked, Harry had chosen her and hadn’t let her say no, though she’d tried, her skepticism about the most popular boy at school giving her serious pause. But Harry had persisted, proven himself to be a reliable, responsible kid. Her parents had liked him. And within a year of graduating high school they were married.

  It had taken them a very long time to have a baby. If Adelaide was being honest with herself, in the years following their marriage, she’d discovered Harry wasn’
t at all the man she’d believed him to be. He wasn’t a hard worker. He drank. Eventually, he wasn’t able to control his temper. These had all been factors in her secret refusal to get pregnant, but then one day she discovered that she was. Things got much, much worse when Jake was born, but she scrimped and saved and plotted her and her son’s escape. Jake had been only ten years old when they’d taken off in the middle of the night. Harry had never come after them, but Jake had never stopped asking about his father.

  By the time Jake had become a teenager, he’d insisted on reconnecting with Harry. Feeling sympathetic—Adelaide had abandoned Harry before he ever had a chance to lay a hand on their son—she’d permitted it, given Jake the man’s address, and hadn’t stopped him from going on any of the trips he’d planned to spent time with his father.

  She’d hoped for Jake’s sake he would never see the side of Harry that she had all those years ago.

  Adelaide took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and dialed her ex-husband’s number.

  “Harry? Pick up the phone,” she said when the call bleeped through to voicemail. As far as she’d ever known, Harry didn’t have a cell phone so she figured he was out of the house. “I suppose you aren’t there,” she sighed. “Please give me a call as soon as you get this. It’s urgent.” After relaying all three of her contact numbers—the shop’s, her cell phone, and home landline—she returned the telephone to its cradle and saw Dean Quinn pull the door open and enter her little souvenir shop.

  Discretely, she dried her cheeks, took a deep breath, and forced a friendly smile to greet him.

  “Mrs. Marple,” he said solemnly as he neared the customer side of the counter. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Oh Lord, she was going to lose it all over again. “Thank you,” she managed to say.

  “I’m Dean Quinn,” he went on to introduce himself, but she knew exactly who he was.

  “I know, Dean. This is a small town.”

  “Then you know my brothers and I run Quinn Security. I’m here to offer you our services at no charge. Jake’s murder has shaken the town up and I think you deserve some peace of mind.”