by Penny Reid
“We saw you!”
“No, you don’t understand.” He turned to me, but Sandra anticipated his movements and blocked me from view. “Janie, I wasn’t with her, we weren’t ‘hiding salami’; I was trying to help.”
“Then why was your shirt off, Quinn, if that is your real name?” Elizabeth asked, sounding like a suspicious Sherlock as she punched in three numbers on her cell.
“Because Jem is bat-shit crazy and burned me with a cigarette then bit my…” He huffed. “We don’t have time for this!”
“Seriously, big guy, you just need to make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here.” Sandra crossed her arms over her chest, her voice low with warning.
Quinn stuttered for a moment, his eyebrow lifting at Sandra’s crude dismissal. “I can’t leave until I know she is safe.”
Marie crossed her arms over her chest. “Safe from who?”
Elizabeth spoke into the phone at her ear, giving the 911 operator our address before adding, “I need the police.”
Elizabeth didn’t finish the sentence because the phone was roughly pulled from her grip and she was knocked to the floor. A collective shocked breath fanned through the room; all eyes rested fitfully on three very large, very sinister-looking skinheads with neck tattoos who invaded the small apartment, made significantly smaller by their looming thickness.
One of the men was holding Fiona around the waist. He had a gun in his hand that was pointed at Quinn, but their collective attention was rigidly affixed on me.
“Well, hell, Jem. It’s been a long time.”
The taller one of the three addressed his comment to me, and I recognized him as the scary stranger from the park.
“What the hell are you doing, Sam? Does Seamus know you are here?” Quinn stepped in front of Sandra, Kat, and me, hiding us from two of the goons and Sam.
I heard rather than saw Sam’s harsh reply. “You shut the fuck up, Quinn. You said you didn’t know where she was.”
“You are making a serious mistake.” Quinn’s voice made me shiver. Even though they held a gun on him, his tone made it perfectly clear that he was not to be bothered with trivial things like bullets. “Like I told Seamus, this is not Jem.”
I noticed Marie shifting on her feet; her hand was still around the bottle of tequila, and her eyes were wide as they moved between Quinn and the skinhead called Sam.
I heard the click of something, which I guessed was the safety of a gun, because Quinn became suddenly rigid, and the threatening tenor of his carefully spoken words was almost tangible. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m taking that bitch. I’m taking her back to Seamus, and he can decide if she is Jem or not, but I’m sick of dicking around Chicago.”
Unexpectedly, it was Marie who spoke next. “Like hell you are.”
A few things happened at once.
I didn’t really see everything as I was behind Sandra who was behind Quinn, and Kat was to my right, also partially blocking my view. But what I did see was the aftermath, and I was therefore able to put the pieces together.
Marie must have thrown the bottle of tequila at one of the skinheads, the one who had been holding Fiona, because his gun went off and the bullet hit the wall somewhere above the window. He staggered backward holding his head. Fiona must have been preparing for this moment, because she withdrew two long Susan Bates knitting needles from her project bag, the long thick ones that beginners typically learn on with the white nobs at the end, and she stabbed him in the shoulder. Immediately the gun dropped from his hand.
Elizabeth, who had been on the floor the whole time, reached for the gun as goon#2 tripped over her legs and fell heavily against the bookshelf.
Kat yelped when the gun went off, and she grabbed my hand. To my surprise, she threw both of us behind the couch. I landed on the floor quite ungracefully, taking the brunt of my fall on the left side of my body.
Quinn flipped the coffee table up on its side, presumably to offer a modicum of cover against the potential impending rain of bullets, and he reached for a previously hidden Glock in the back of his pants, training it on the skinheads just as Sam pulled out his handgun. However, before Quinn or Skinhead Sam could fire a round, diminutive and petite Fiona screamed and pushed Sam forward.
She was small and he was big; therefore, other than a momentary inability to balance, Sam quickly recovered and turned his rage and weapon on Fiona. At this point, Elizabeth was able to fire one round. It hit Sam in the stomach, and he promptly doubled over with a gurgled curse before goon#2 reached Elizabeth and wrestled the weapon from her grip, elbowing her roughly in the face as he did so.
“Oh, shit! Ow! That hurt!” Elizabeth cried.
Before goon#2 could raise the weapon, however, Marie and Sandra launched themselves across the room, Sandra yodeling like Tarzan. I heard Quinn exclaim, “Damn it!” before he jumped over the coffee table a second later.
Surprisingly, Marie and Sandra made very efficient work of tackling the big man to the ground. Admittedly, he was still on his knees, trying to scramble up, when they reached him, and yes, Marie kicked him in the groin area with pointed boots immediately on entering his sphere of personal space. Sandra grabbed the 9mm from him while he was distracted, and to my very great surprise, after promptly switching on the safety, she clobbered him with the butt of the gun.
“I
Clobber.
“—am going—”
Clobber.
“—to fuck—”
Clobber.
“—you up—”
Clobber.
“—bitch!”
It took me a moment to realize that Sandra was holding a ball of yarn in her other hand, the one not holding the gun. She stuffed it in the mouth of goon#2 even as she brought the gun down for another bone-crunching blow.
Fiona scrambled over to Elizabeth and cupped her face, trying to shield her from further violence, and Quinn pistol-whipped Sam, knocking the tattooed menace out with a single blow.
Marie picked up the tequila bottle and swung it wildly at goon#1 who, seemingly, had just recovered from the shock of being stabbed with a Susan Bates knitting needle. Goon#1 lifted the hand of his good arm over his face but was a little too late; Marie brought the bottle down with a resounding crash, and the tower of a man fell backward, unconscious.
Kat and I were peeking under the couch. The only sound in the small apartment was labored breathing until someone, I guessed Marie, said, “Oh, shit! Sandra! Is that the Madelintosh Aran limited dye lot yarn you just stuffed into that asshole’s mouth? You know I can’t replace that!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The police arrived not ten seconds later. It was a good thing, too. Marie was holding a broken bottle of tequila, shards of glass in every direction, and Sandra was holding a gun; they were arguing about the apparently very expensive and hard to find skein of yarn that Sandra had stuffed in the mouth of one of the skinheads.
Quinn turned toward me as soon as the police entered. His eyes met mine, and what I saw there was a potent mixture of tension and relief. Nevertheless, he didn’t come to me. Instead, he placed his weapon on the ground then moved his hands to the back of his head, waiting for the Chicago police. The room felt unbearably large, and the distance between us felt impossible.
It wasn’t until hours later, after statements and questioning and a pseudo-physical administered by an EMT, that we were all released; actually, all of us but Quinn. Soon after the police arrived, they handcuffed him and took him to the police station despite protests from Kat, Elizabeth, Sandra, Marie, Fiona, and of course, me.
Ashley arrived exactly when she said she would, and she was quickly filled in on the details by Sandra. As she listened to the story, I watched a spectrum of emotions flicker across her features.
Finally, she settled on exasperation. “Why does everything good happen when I’m not there? I swear, the next time Janie’s hot boyfriend saves y’all from neck-tattooed skinheads, y’a
ll better wait ‘til I’m done with my shift or else I’m gonna be pissed.”
“He didn’t save us; haven’t you been listening?” Elizabeth held an icepack to her chin where she’d been hit by a meaty elbow. “Fiona stabbed one of them with a Susan Bates needle, Marie was wielding a tequila bottle, Sandra pistol-whipped the other, and I shot the third.”
“Where were Janie and Kat?” Ashley looked from me to Kat.
“Hiding behind the couch like sane people!” Kat said before anyone else could speak.
Ashley gave us a sudden watery smile. “Damn it, if something had happened to any of you, I would have been very upset. What were you thinking?”
She initiated a group hug, which lasted well past what would have been considered typical, as none of us wanted to let each other go.
After all the ladies left, Elizabeth leaving with Marie, but before the last police car drove away, I approached a short, stocky guard who I instantly recognized and who’d been watching me since the police escorted us all out to the ambulance for our EMT checkups. It was Dan, the security man from the Fairbanks Building.
We walked toward each other, meeting halfway. His large brown eyes were big and kind, and he gave me a small smile; it almost looked apologetic.
“Ms. Morris.” He nodded to me.
“Dan, the security man.” I nodded to him.
He sighed. “Are you ok?”
I continued to nod. I didn’t want to say yes because I wasn’t sure how I was doing. However, I didn’t want to appear to be a basket case when I needed his help.
“Listen, Dan, I was hoping you could take me to Quinn—um—Mr. Sullivan’s place.”
“It’s ok; I call him Quinn, too.” Dan pointed with his thumb to a car behind him, a black Mercedes coupe. “That’s actually why I’m here.”
I smiled and released a short breath. “Of course.”
“Come on.” He motioned with his head for me to follow.
When we were settled in the car, and he’d pulled into traffic I noticed he was giving me long, sideways glances, as though he wanted to say something, ask something, but he wasn’t sure how to start.
Taking pity on him, I prompted, “Is there something you want to say?”
“Yes.” The word tumbled out of his mouth. “Yes, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”
I blinked at him, wondering how I’d missed his very distinctive Bostonian accent during all the times I’d talked to him before now. “Sorry? Why are you sorry?”
“Because Seamus is my brother, and he is a complete fu—er, he is a very bad guy.”
I shifted slightly and pressed my back to the passenger door so that I could study him more fully. “Yes, well in that case, I suppose I should apologize for my sister. She is also a very bad…guy.”
He chuckled. “Yes. Yes she is.”
I squinted at him. “Did you know Jem?”
He nodded. “She is still just as crazy as she was when I knew her.”
“Oh—you saw her recently?”
He nodded. “This afternoon when you came to the new building with your friend, I was in the apartment with Quinn and Jem.” He glanced at me as he turned the steering wheel to the right and merged onto Michigan Avenue.
I stiffened. “So, you were there?”
“Yep, that bitch—er, your sister—is crazy, but you know this. Quinn was trying to help her. He offered her money to disappear, but she started ranting and shit, and taking off her clothes. I swear, if I didn’t know her already—how nuts she is—I would have thought she was on something. Then she bit him and burned him with her cigarette, right through his shirt. It was crazy; blood was coming from his neck.”
I winced, thinking about Jem biting Quinn with such force that she drew blood. “Why was she taking off her clothes?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. ‘Cause she’s crazy? When you got there, he was cleaning the bite mark and all the blood. He was leaving to get some new clothes. I would have taken a bath in alcohol and hydrogen peroxide if she’d bit me.”
I chewed on my lip as I took all this in; I felt relieved, stupid, and anxious. Dan parked the car in the basement of the building and escorted me up to Quinn’s penthouse. He opened the door for me but didn’t go inside.
I’d been quiet since the car, wanting to sort through my tangled mess of emotions and the evening’s events. But I was restless to see Quinn and not really capable of dwelling on anything until I wrapped my arms around him and felt, rather than saw, that he was safe.
“So…” Dan handed me the keys to the penthouse. “Quinn should be home sometime tonight. When he called me they hadn’t charged him with anything, and they shouldn’t ‘cause he has a license to carry that gun.”
I stopped him as he turned away. “Dan, can I ask you something?”
His eyebrows lifted as he nodded his assent. “Sure.”
I shifted the keys from one hand to the other and tucked my hair behind my ears. “How long have you known Quinn?”
He shrugged. “Since we was kids.”
“Do you know why Quinn left Boston?”
He hesitated; his eyes narrowed as his lips twisted to the side. “Yes.”
I couldn’t help but smile at his one word answer, the very picture of cautious loyalty.
“So do I…I think.”
He stood very still, watching me, his eyes moving over my features with concentrated intensity; at length he said, “You know, he is really crazy about you; not crazy like your sister Jem crazy, but trying-to-become-a-better-person crazy.”
I pressed my lips together, and my heart, now whole again, skipped wildly in my chest before I replied, “The feeling is mutual.”
At first, I didn’t even contemplate sleep. I did laps around Quinn’s bare apartment, wishing I’d brought a comic book with me, realizing I didn’t even have my stupid cell phone. In a fit of petulant annoyance, I threw myself onto the bed and promptly fell asleep.
When I awoke, I was confused. The panorama of the park and the lake and the city told me that it was still the middle of the night, but I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. I stretched, planning to get up and check the time on my watch via the light of the bathroom, but I acutely realized that I was not alone.
There was a body next to me.
In fact, I was curled around that body.
And the body was not asleep.
My breath hitched. “Quinn?”
The arm around my shoulders squeezed gently before he removed it then shifted on the bed and propped himself up on an elbow so that he was facing me.
“Hey.” His other hand immediately entangled itself in my hair, and he was tugging my head back so that he could cover my mouth with his. I leaned into his kiss, pressing my body to his, and feeling an overwhelming mix of indescribable joy, relief, and gratefulness.
We kissed, just kissed, for a long time; sometimes I was over him, sometimes he was over me, sometimes we were sitting up, sometimes we were lying down. It went on and on, and if it weren’t for the necessity of air, we might have kissed for the rest of our lives. I would not have complained.
I was straddling his lap and we were on the middle of the bed when he pushed my hair from my face and rested his forehead against mine.
“Oh, Quinn, I am so sorry.” I hugged him to me, my arms around his neck.
“Janie, there is nothing to be sorry about.”
“But I assumed the worst. I saw you with Jem, and I assumed that you…that you and she…”
His arms tightened around me. “You assumed we were playing ‘hide the salami,’ as Elizabeth called it.” Despite the evening’s events, this made us both laugh.
When the short burst of laughter ended, I nuzzled my head into the crook of his neck, careful to avoid his injury. “Dan brought me here and told me what happened with Jem. I am sorry she bit you.”
His hand rubbed circles over my back, and with each pass his hand moved lower until he was stroking the base of my spine just above t
he curve of my bottom. “It’s ok. I don’t care about Jem.”
I pulled just far enough away from him to see his face. He looked tired and weary.
“I don’t either,” I said, and then I sighed at the memory of all the trouble my sister had caused. “You should know that I do trust you.”
He offered me a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “We can talk about it in the morning.”
“No…no, listen.” I shifted backward, and at first, he didn’t let me go, but then he finally allowed me to move to the edge of the bed and stand. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out the folded email, my voice was still thick with sleep, “Olivia—at least I think it was Olivia—left this on my desk yesterday. I was going to show it to you today.” I shoved the paper at him.
He looked from me to the paper, and then with clear hesitation, he took it from my hand. I crossed to the bathroom and flipped on the light, which gave him just enough illumination to read the contents. He pushed to the edge of the bed and stood, his long form unfolding, straightening, then stiffening as he read. A rush of breath escaped his lungs and his eyes flickered to me.
“I haven’t seen this, but Janie, I can tell you…”
I covered his hand holding the paper with mine. “No; it doesn’t matter. What I wanted to say was…what I want to say is that I saw this yesterday, and yes, admittedly, I had a momentary freak-out, but then I thought about it, and I realized that I trust you. I knew there had to be a reasonable explanation, and I was going to show it to you today, tonight, before everything went from Judd Apatow harmless to Quentin Tarantino horrifying.”
Quinn took a step toward me, shaking his head. “I asked them to.”
“You don’t have to explain. I trust you now, and I trusted you when I read it. I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t worried. I-I-I have faith in you.”
This time his small smile did reach his eyes, and he looked almost proud of himself, and a little mischievous. His gaze moved over my face in a slow sweep as he licked his lips. “Let me tell you what this is about, ok?”