Chapter Sixteen #3
She simply shrugged. “I’m only sleeping with one man. The
women around here are disgusting.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks. I want to deal with the
situation, and the sooner the better. I know the original plan was to find that
safe, but it wasn’t in there, and I don’t know that I have months for Ned and
Billy to spend looking for it when McNamara and Glen aren’t watching them. Her
parents are causing a ruckus,” Kingman admitted. “If Bay talks about what he
saw or if someone else gets an eye on that piece of art he made, there are
going to be questions. I’ve got a documentary filmmaker doing research and
making inquiries. Dirty whore lied about not having anyone. And I did want to
be here to ensure this is over, but it’s not because this isn’t Bailey Kent.”
“Don’t you think his brother knows where that drawing is?”
He recognized his old foreman’s voice, though Dennis hadn’t stepped into the
room.
Shane had three guns on him, so he didn’t turn to make sure
he was right. It didn’t matter.
“Yeah, the way I remember it those two couldn’t take a shit
without each other.” That was Andy.
They absolutely could and did one hundred percent of the
time. “I don’t know where my brother is.”
“You should keep your mouth shut unless you want to tell me
what I want to hear,” Kingman snarled.
“I don’t know what you want to hear.” His gut was twisted as
he sat at the kitchen table.
Where was Brooke? He had to pray Henry heard the first
gunshot and either locked down the barn or had gotten them all out. Had there
been enough time?
Noah. He’d figured out that the first shot had been to stop
Noah from leaving.
Noah was dead. His whole soul ached for Jamie and Hope. How
would they go on?
Kingman got to one knee in front of him, his eyes narrow
slits. “I want to know where your brother keeps his frilly drawings. Son of a
bitch apparently drew a shitty picture of the last time anyone saw Meli Smith.”
Andy shook his head. “It was a pretty good picture, Boss.
That’s what I was telling you. He even got you in the background holding the
hammer you used.”
Why were they talking about a drawing? “I thought this was
about the guns I saw.”
Kingman slapped Andy upside the back of his head before
returning his attention to Shane. “What guns? What are you talking about?”
Dennis stepped back as though he knew he would be the next
to get a slap from the boss. “Uhm, it was the shipment the MC ordered. The
P90s. I needed help storing them, and Shane was around. In my defense, we had
talked about bringing them in.”
“I told you I would bring this dipshit in but not Bay, and I
then explained he would never leave his brother behind,” Kingman argued. He
sighed. “It’s why I was planning on letting them go before they saw too much,
but you needed help. It doesn’t matter. The fact is we killed a bunch of people
in that barn, and we’re not going to get another shot. I need that drawing. She
told me her parents kicked her out, but damn they’re determined to find the
whore.”
“What do you mean you killed them?” Shane’s whole body had
gone cold. Brooke had been in the barn.
Kingman snorted. “Killed as in shot and dead, and now we
gotta haul them all the way back home because I’ve got a place no one will ever
find. My own killing ground, which is where you should be right now, but you
somehow figured out we were on to you. Mostly I like to do the killing right
there, but we’ll transport the bodies and the cops won’t have any clue.”
“I assure you they will, and if you killed everyone in that
barn, I won’t help you. I won’t save you. If you killed everyone in that barn,
I’m already dead and nothing you do to me will make me talk.” Shane felt
something hollow open in his gut. Brooke. She couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t
have brought this to her.
In the distance, he heard another crack of gunfire.
Was that her? Had she managed to hide and now she’d been
found and everything that was glorious and amazing about her was gone?
Kingman got in his face, taking his jaw in one hand and
forcing him to look up. “We’ll see about that. Let’s see how much pain you can
take, you little shit. You and your brother think you can take me down.”
“We weren’t thinking about you at all until you pulled this
stunt, you dickhead.” Shane wasn’t afraid of pain. He’d had enough of it to
know it was simply one more thing to get through. But what this fucker had
taken from him was more than pain. It was his whole heart ripped out and
shredded on the ground in front of him. His soul would go with hers.
Kingman slapped him. Like bitch slapped him hard, making his
head turn, but Shane didn’t make a sound.
If Brooke was dead, he wanted to go with her, but he was
going to take Kingman with him.
Kingman stood, and Shane felt his whole body tense.
“This is a clusterfuck,” Kingman announced. “Someone go and
see if Jones needs help. I’m serious about getting those bodies out of here. I
don’t know who was in that barn, but I don’t want to leave evidence behind.”
One of the men started outside. There had been nine in here
at one point, including the three who had come out for the interviews, but
Shane had figured out Kingman had sent one to murder everyone in the barn.
The barn where Noah had been teaching Henry and Nell.
Where Brooke and Lucy had been with Henry and Nell.
Nell, who was a do-gooder pacifist pregnant with her second
child.
Henry… Henry, who had once been a killer trained and paid
for by the Central Intelligence Agency. Bay didn’t believe the hype about
Henry. He thought it was all Bliss antics. Brooke, too. They’d talked about it
one night while they laid in bed and Brooke told stories about the Bliss of her
childhood. She thought he’d likely been an analyst or some sort of consultant.
But that’s not what Shane heard.
Henry was a ruthless protector, trained in a way very few
people ever were.
Henry might be smart enough to figure out what was happening
and turn it back on his attacker.
Shane felt a surge of hope as Kingman railed on about how
they might as well burn the place to the ground and then they wouldn’t have to
worry about Bay’s drawings. Someone mentioned he might have it on him and they
were debating that when Shane saw the hint of movement outside the window. It
was nothing more than a flash of brown hair as someone moved past the kitchen,
obviously toward the basement walkout. He could access the house from there.
Henry fucking Flanders.
If Henry was alive, there was a shot that Brooke was, too,
and that she needed him.
“I know where it is,” Shane said quietly. “You could burn
down both houses and the barn and the dorm and not find it.”
Kingman stopped yelling and turned his way. “All right,
where is it?”
He had to buy Henry time. If it was Henry. No. It was Henry.
It had to be Henry, and he would get them out of this situation.
If Brooke was alive, he had to buy her time, and he had to
believe that at least someone else in that barn was alive or Henry would go
about this entirely differently. He wouldn’t sneak in while his wife and child
were lying cold on the ground. He would torch the place and not care. So if he
was being careful…there was a chance.
Shane had learned a bit about acting in his weeks helping
Brooke at the theater. You sold a scene with more than words. He let his jaw go
tight and hoped he looked like he was thinking things through. “I think I saw
him working on it this morning. We’re out in the foreman’s house. We haven’t
been in the dorms for days, which is why it wasn’t in the safe.”
Kingman nodded, and two of his guys took off.
“And tell Jones to get his ass back here when he’s done
bagging those bodies,” Kingman called out.
Shane needed to thin the herd. Maybe send some guys for
Henry to handle. He wondered if Jones had already been dealt with.
Shane cursed under his breath.
“What?” The girl who’d come along was the same one who’d
questioned him at The Trading Post the night after they’d made things official
with Brooke. If he’d caught sight of her, he would have known something was
wrong, but now she stood by Kingman. She was at least forty years the man’s
junior, but she slid an arm possessively through his. “I think he remembered
something.”
Denial might help him. “Nah, it’s fine. I’m sure it’s in the
foreman’s house.” He gave her a once-over. “You know he’ll toss you into that
ravine when he’s done with you, too, right?”
Her eyes rolled. “He ain’t going
to be done with me. I’m the one who gives him what he needs. Ain’t that right, Kale?”
“Shut up.” Kingman stepped away from her. “Where else could
it be? I’m not joking, Shane. I want that sketchbook. I can kill you slow or we
can do this easy.”
But they wouldn’t kill him until they had what they needed.
Nope. They needed him alive, and he could send them off on wild-goose chases
because Bay took that sketchbook with him almost everywhere.
Shane let his expression go stubborn. He wasn’t worried
about getting hurt. He could handle it, but he needed to keep them thinking he
wasn’t a problem. They hadn’t even tied him up. They thought the threat of guns
would keep him in line.
Kingman slapped him again.
Shane spat blood and decided it was time to give him another
little something. “Fine. We were here last night for dinner, but Bay wanted to
work in quiet. He might have left it in the basement. But probably not. I can’t
remember. He leaves the damn thing lying around. He’s always losing it.”
He didn’t. He kept that fucker close most of the time.
“Ned, go check,” Kingman ordered.
He hoped he was helping Henry and not hurting him, but it
seemed safer for Henry to deal with them on a one-by-one basis.
He knew if he could get the numbers down in here, he might
be able to make a move. He wasn’t ex-military like some of these guys, but he’d
had plenty of self-defense training. Enough to know that sometimes surprise