Quinn Security Page 3

  Nikita started for her, then thought better of it, and remained amongst her sons, standing tall behind them as if to declare she had their backs.

  The youngest Quinn, Dean, neared Troy and suggested in a private tone, “We could do a sweep. Send all the males. Whatever attacked Curt’s dog needs to be found and exterminated before it hits the heart of Devil’s Fist.”

  “If it hasn’t already,” Conor chimed in, speaking low enough that Curt couldn’t disagree with more outrage.

  Turning his back to Curt and the pack, Troy told his brothers, “I’m not sure what did it.”

  “It’s a sign,” Curt piped up. “A bad omen and Xavier would’ve agreed, damn it. So how in the hell are you planning on handling this?”

  “I’m going to handle it how I’ve handled everything else and how my father handled every single one of us for as long as he lived,” Troy shot back. “Doing everything in my power to keep our kind unexposed.”

  Unimpressed, Curt snorted a disgruntled laugh and shuffled off to complain directly to his fellow mechanics, as the rest of the pack looked on in empathetic fear.

  Shane stomped over to Troy, Conor, and Dean, as Kaleb tended to their mother, quelling her silent fury at the entire pack that her eldest son would be so openly distrusted by their kind.

  “We’ve got to act and act fast, brothers,” insisted Shane. He was a soldier through and though, which meant he followed orders to the letter. But until that order was given, he wouldn’t be one to keep his opinions to himself. “If the sheriff catches word…”

  “Abernathy won’t catch word,” Troy barked.

  But he couldn’t be so sure.

  And the last thing any of them needed was for Sheriff Rick Abernathy to stick his nose where it didn’t belong.

  ***

  At about the time Troy was climbing back into his pickup truck, the werewolf meeting in Yellowstone National Park having disbursed, the sheriff was stalking across Abernathy Way on foot, veering caddy-corner to make his way to Main Street.

  He felt his chest swell with a firm rush of pride as he past the street sign—Abernathy Way. He’d earned it, having a street named after him, no doubt about it. Devil’s Fist might have the lowest population in all of Wyoming, but that didn’t mean his duties to keep these parts safe and sound hadn’t been an up-at-dawn, day-in-and-day-out challenge. There had been theft and drugs and a few whores that had liked to loiter around the only bar in town. Rick had single-handedly driven every last one of them out of the Fist. As far as he was concerned, there was not one devil in all of Devil’s Fist, courtesy of Sheriff Abernathy, thank you very much. And he’d managed to do all that before he reached the distinguished age of fifty.

  He fancied himself a silver fox. Had the salt-and-pepper hair to go along with it. But he knew he’d have to shed a few pounds and get back in the swing of pumping a little iron at the back of the stationhouse if he wanted to maintain his good looks. At the moment, that was neither here nor there. His uniform slacks might feel a bit snug, but as far as he was concerned, it was a small price to pay for the pints of beer he liked to reward himself with for a long day’s work done well.

  Libations bar was where he should be starting off to at this hour, he thought as he glanced at its glowing picture windows from across the street. But duty had called. Some kind of animal attack behind the library just past Trout Street. If the attack had occurred anywhere else, Rick would’ve climbed into his SUV. But the library sat just one block away from the police station and tonight was a hell of a night for a stroll, it being a full moon and all.

  He lumbered his stocky 5’11” frame, barrel chest heaving and heavy gait brisk, around to the back of the library where he understood the attack had occurred.

  As he came around, he found Mrs. Yeats wringing her hands in the flashing red and blue glow of an idling police cruiser. She was standing beside young Reece Gladstone, who was about Rick’s own daughter’s age. For a stinging moment he wished his Whitney had never become such a wild thing. Why couldn’t his daughter work in the library like Reece instead of gallivanting through Yellowstone all the damn time on that dusty, old horse of hers? Rick had already lost his beloved wife some five years back to breast cancer. The last thing he needed was for the only other woman in his life to break her neck because she refused to give up maneuvering some rickety horse over fallen trees in the bowels of Yellowstone, for Christ’s sake.

  “I can’t bear it, Sheriff!” cried Mrs. Yeats as she rushed over to him the second he stepped into the moonlight that barely illuminated the parking area, the chaotic lights of the cruiser unrelenting. “There’s a rabid coyot’ roaming the Fist! Just look at her! Look what it’s done to our Holly!”

  That’s when he saw her. The body. A lifeless heap on the pavement in the looming shadow of a dumpster.

  “Take a breath, Mrs. Yeats,” he advised, gripping her shoulders because she clung to him like a drowning man on a soggy piece of driftwood. “Can you calm down for me?”

  Reece was huddled off, emotional but unmoving, holding herself and staring in a zombie-daze at the remains of Holly van Dyke, while his PO, Rachel Clancy, held a screwed up expression on her face, looking down at the librarian’s remains.

  Rick hadn’t understood the attack had been fatal. He hadn’t taken the call at the stationhouse. Not directly. Dispatch had alerted the police, and Officer Rachel Clancy had set out to respond. When Rachel had called him directly on his office line, there had been shrill urgency in her tone, sure, but she hadn’t managed this critical detail—that one of their own had been killed.

  That was Rachel for you. The girl had been trying to make detective for years on end, but Rick cared far too much about the residents of Devil’s Fist to let a thing like that happen. She thought herself a no-nonsense police officer, but Rick had seen through that from day one. She was soft and weak, far as he could tell. She liked to pull her wavy brown hair back in a ponytail, but if you asked him, he thought she’d do better to let her brain breathe a little. Wear her hair down. Work reception like a woman ought to. What was the sense in putting her life on the line? Didn’t her daddy know better than to let her go off and do a thing like that? Guess not. If he had, he wouldn’t let the girl live above a bar the way she was. Who’d let their little girl live where a bunch of whores had? Damn shame, if you asked Rick. All of it a damn shame, and if modern day feminism hadn’t been ruining this country for decades, he would’ve never allowed her to put on a uniform in the first place, much less let her wear a loaded gun and collect a paycheck built of honest, taxpayers money. What in the good goddamn were they paying for?

  He realized he’d been tuning out Mrs. Yeats’ hysterical mutterings—women!—so he told her, “You stay right here and keep breathing—”

  “Couldn’t you call animal control?” she complained in a shrill tone that hurt his ears. “Shouldn’t you hunt down the animal that did this?”

  “All in good time,” he said calmly as he pried her clamped hands from his meaty arms and deposited her to the side.

  Nearing Officer Rachel Clancy, whose big eyes seemed to always be searching for his approval, he barked, “Next time, you’d do well to relay all the information, you hear?”

  Rachel’s mouth popped open, but she was speechless. Of course she was. There was no excuse for having failed to mention that Holly van Dyke was dead.

  As Rick stooped and began examining the body, focusing primarily on the poor girl’s throat that had practically been torn off, Rachel mustered some kind of gall to actually dare telling him what he could clearly see with his own two damn eyes.

  “The animal, probably a coyote or wolf, tore into her neck. She must have bleed out in minutes if not seconds. Reece Gladstone came out the back, but didn’t see the animal that had done it.”

  “Alright,” he grimaced, rising to his feet and turning his attention to one very shaken-up looking Reece. “Can you kill those damn flashers, Clancy?”

  “Right,” she breathe
d. “Yes, Sir.”

  She started for her police cruiser to do just that, but in common Rachel Clancy style, she didn’t get very far with turning off the flashing red and blue lights.

  Christ sake.

  “Reece, how you holding up?” he asked in a tender voice as he laid a comforting hand on the young woman’s shoulder.

  “It shouldn’t have been her,” she mumbled confusedly, her eyes remaining locked on the body. “I was supposed to take out the trash.”

  “Well, then, let’s take a moment to thank the Lord you didn’t,” he offered, but his optimism didn’t reach her.

  It barely reached himself, if he was being honest, here. What if the crazed animal had crossed his Whitney’s path out in the wilderness? The thought pained him, so he stuffed it down and tried not to think about it, but that was no easy task.

  “Yes,” she vacantly agreed. “Thank God.”

  “Alrighty then,” he said, steering her away from the body so she’d have no choice but to give him her full attention. “Now,” he went on, releasing her. “Did you see any kind of movement when you came on out here? Any shadows that might indicate the size of the animal? I’d like to be sure we’re not dealing with a grizzly, here.”

  It was then that Reece collapsed in a fit of inconsolable emotion.

  Rick tried not to roll his eyes.

  He was going to be here awhile but told himself he’d just double up on those reward beers he had coming to him.

  And how in the hell had that twit Rachel failed to shut her damn flashers off by now?

  Women.

  ***

  Flashing lights—blue and red and unmistakably that of a police cruiser—stole Troy’s attention as he drove at a crawl down Main Street, scanning the darkened streets for a wild animal on the prowl.

  The lights were coming from behind the library and it took less than a split second for him to put two and two together. Whatever had attacked Curt Wilson’s black lab had, in all probability, made its violent way into the Fist.

  Reece sprang to mind and he cut a hard left on Trout Street, banged an immediate right, and pulled his pickup truck up into the rear parking area of the Devil’s Fist library. Blood rushed to his head as a surge of protective adrenaline spiked through his veins, the thought that something might have happened to Reece only thinly taking hold in his mind. That’s how it was with Reece on the brain. His body had a way of reacting well before he knew, rationally, why.

  The first thing he saw as he threw his pickup into Park and jumped out, leaving his door open, was the police cruiser and the lower half of a police officer hanging out of it. A second later, the dizzying lights went dark, and Rachel Clancy climbed out, wiped her brow, shut the cruiser door.

  Troy’s gaze was already locked on Reece and Mrs. Yeats, who were standing next to the Sheriff.

  If there was a single man in town whose throat Troy would like to tear out, it was Sheriff Rick Abernathy.

  He had his reasons.

  Knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bloody body lying in front of the dumpster had suffered the same fate as Curt Wilson’s dog, he walked briskly towards Reece, who had barely lifted her eyes to him, but the sheriff cut him off at the pass.

  “Hold your horses, Quinn,” said Rick as he dared press his hand against the firm wall of Troy’s chest to bar him from taking so much as one step farther. “This is of no concern to you.”

  “What happened?” he demanded, but he was asking Reece, whose worried, green eyes were now locked on him from where she stood beside Mrs. Yeats and PO Clancy.

  “Doesn’t concern you,” Rick barked. “And I’ll not have you traipsing through a crime scene.”

  “Crime scene?” Mrs. Yeats blurted in horrified echo.

  But Rick paid her no mind. “You’d be wise to go on back to your cabin and let the professionals take care of it.”

  Troy didn’t appreciate how Rick had used a thick smear of sarcasm on the word professionals. It was a jab that he and all the agents of Quinn Security had taken on the chin far more times than he could count. The sheriff had had it in for all five Quinn brothers from the get-go, but the day they’d opened up shop on the outskirts of town, having formed Quinn Security much to the relief of the residents, Rick had chosen to level-up his antagonism with a whole new texture to his resentment.

  “This isn’t a private security matter,” Rick said, pressing his point as hard as he was his palm against Troy’s chest. He dared to give the bodyguard a firm push, advising, “You best shove off now, boy.”

  “Reece,” said Troy, undeterred. “How’re you getting home?”

  But it was the sheriff who was ready on the quick with an answer. “Officer Clancy’s gonna see to it. Get goin’ now, before I lose my patience.”

  “Is that right?” he questioned, asking Reece directly though Rick was hell-bent on blocking his view of her. “Rachel’ll see to it?”

  “I said as much,” Rick snapped, annoyed. “Didn’t I?”

  From where Troy was standing, it looked like news to Rachel, and he wasn’t satisfied.

  It had been a courtesy at best that he’d allowed the sheriff to physically hold him back, and if Rick’s patience had been wearing thin, Troy’s had flat-out disappeared. He pressed through Rick, who stumbled aside like a paper receipt in the wind, and came right up to Reece, towering over her, face to face.

  “I know you like to walk home,” he informed her, “but that’s not happening tonight. Not with a dangerous animal on the loose.” Without asking, he took her tote bag from her shoulder and said, “You’re not going to wait around here for Clancy to drive you home.”

  As Troy started off towards his idling truck, Rick objected, “Now, just you wait a minute—”

  “It’s okay, Sheriff,” Troy heard Reece say behind him. “I’d rather get home now, anyway.”

  The pitter-patter of her shoes over pavement came next and just as Troy had been confident she would, Reece caught up to him just in time for Troy to open the passenger’s side door of his truck for her.

  He’d never stood so close to her, not without two feet of pine in-between them, which amounted to the counter of the library’s front desk. She smelled like flowers, petals warmed with sunlight, and when she took hold of the hand he was offering her to help her climb on up into his truck and he felt her soft skin, something dark and wild and incredible stirred deep in his chest.

  Troy had kept his distance from her as best he could. Anything else would’ve been dangerous for both of them. But here he was, watching her settle in and pull her seatbelt across herself. He closed the door and knew he was about to walk across very thin ice.

  Chapter Four

  REECE

  The headlights of Troy’s pickup truck brightened the length of Main Street as they drove slowly through the heart of Devil’s Fist, but what those low beams didn’t touch caused eerie shadows to slip in and out of existence where sleepy shops were closing their doors for the day if they hadn’t already. Troy eased off the gas as they neared one intersection after the next, sweeping those dark eyes of his left and right, looking for the wolf that had so viciously taken Holly van Dyke’s young life.

  Reece felt tears spill from her eyes—tears that had welled up that she’d tried to blink away. They pooled at the rim of her red-frame glasses so she lowered her head and wiped them as discretely as possible, sniffled, let out an unsteady breath.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed as soon as she’d returned her eyes to the road ahead.

  Troy had seen it too and squeezed the brakes.

  A deer was standing in the middle of Main Street just past the intersection of Bison Road, staring at them. Its comically large ears perked in their direction, its eyes reflecting the light of the truck’s headlights like a pair of amber, glowing coins.

  Having come to a complete stop, Troy waited, but the deer didn’t have the good sense to leap off.

  “Could be lost,” Troy commented.

  Reece looked at him
in disbelief. As far as she could tell, Troy Quinn had never told a single joke in his entire life.

  “Think we should give her directions?” he added.

  “Maybe she’s headed to Angel’s Food,” Reece elaborated with a little snuffle. “In the mood for some angel food cake. You think?”

  For the first time ever, Troy cracked a smile, his mouth tugging at the corner into a crooked grin as he met her gaze.

  Angel’s Food was right there on the corner, and unlike every other place in the Fist besides the bar, it was still open. “I think you got that exactly right,” he mused. “We’ll give her a little nudge then, how ‘bout?”

  With that, he flipped the headlights off completely and they sat in an idle. The glow of interior lights at Angel’s Food was just enough. The deer, now under cover of darkness, got her bearings—headlights tended to disorient these creatures, causing them to freeze up no matter where they stood—and trotted off across Bison Street and took a galloping leap into the wooded wilderness, away from Angel’s Food and all of the Fist.

  “Timid animals,” Reece commented after Troy had turned the headlights back on and eased on the accelerator.

  Where the deer had run off towards the left on Bison, Troy made a right, which both calmed and unsettled her. He was driving her home and he knew exactly where he was going. Was that nice? Or should she be concerned?

  She decided she had enough to be concerned about. She hadn’t even begun to wrap her head around the fact that her coworker and friend had been robbed of this world, a tragedy that Reece herself had only narrowly escaped. She didn’t have the time, energy, or will to consider whether or not she should be disturbed that Troy needed absolutely no directions to get her back to her cottage that was off of Berry Road, on the far northeast side of town. Devil’s Fist was small enough that most everyone knew where everyone lived, if they hadn’t full on been inside your house at some point.