Chapter Three
~ Ransom ~
Delivering lunch to my future brother-in-law, the deputy, wasn’t my idea of a productive Tuesday.
But Harlow asked, and Harlow was the only human in McKenzie River I let boss me around.
Which is how I found myself at the front steps of the sheriff’s station with a brown bag of vegan banh mi under my arm, standing in front of an American flag faded to that special shade of toothpaste white.
Inside, the sheriff’s department was doing its best impression of a malfunctioning beehive.
Phones rang off-tempo, voices shouted over each other, and the hum of ancient fluorescent lights bathed everything in a colorless haze.
The air was so thick with stale coffee and cheap cologne I thought I’d walked through a curtain.
I let the door close behind me, and for half a second every head turned my way, like a pack of hungry dogs noticing the vegan at the barbecue.
“Can I help you?” asked the desk deputy, his voice more nasal than nature intended. He didn’t look up from his paperwork, which was exactly the kind of contempt I respected in a public servant.
I hoisted the lunch bag. “Here to feed one of your own. Deputy Latham. Harlow called ahead.”
The deputy flicked a look over his glasses, weighing my worth as a person, or maybe just wondering what the hell kind of man wears a black tee in April. “Sit tight.” He jabbed a button on the ancient intercom, which squealed, then barked: “Latham—front desk, you got a delivery.”
I took a seat on the only free bench. The vinyl cushion stuck to my arms, the friction fighting every movement.
Someone had left a copy of Guns I leafed through it anyway, mostly out of spite.
I was halfway through an article on “Defensible Backyard Perimeter”—tip one: don’t skimp on the motion sensors—when Latham walked in, already looking apologetic.
“Hey, Ransom,” he said, keeping his voice down. “Thanks for bringing it.”
I stood and handed off the bag. “It’s the least I could do. Next time, order something normal and you won’t get this kind of abuse.”
“Ignore them,” he said, nodding at the front desk, where two deputies were watching us like it was the most action they’d seen all week. “They’ll eat anything that doesn’t eat them first.”
I grinned. “You know how I feel about cops and oral fixations.”
“Classy,” Dan said, but his eyes crinkled at the corners, which is how I knew he appreciated it.
A phone started ringing again, then another, and suddenly the tension in the room shifted—something electric, like the seconds before a bar fight.
One of the dispatchers slammed a fist down, shouting, “We got a 10-96 at the Blacktail. All units.” Then the radio squawked, words tumbling over themselves: “Subject’s armed—repeat, subject’s armed. ”
It was instant chaos. Chairs screeched as everybody in the room lurched into motion.
Deputies clipped on gear and sprinted for the exit.
Dan’s eyes went wide; the paper bag crumpled in his hands, forgotten.
And then—right behind me, so close I smelled his aftershave—a hand closed tight around my bicep.
It was Floyd. Of course it was. Who else in town had hands like a vise and an attitude to match?
“Come with me,” he said, his voice low but sharp enough to leave a mark.
For once, I didn’t have a comeback. Maybe it was the way he looked at me—like I was simultaneously a suspect and the only lifeline he could trust. Maybe it was the press of his fingers, so deliberate I felt every callus through the sleeve of my shirt.
Or maybe it was the siren wailing to life outside, all adrenaline and inevitability.
He didn’t wait for me to answer. He pulled and I followed, barely keeping pace as he hauled me through the side door and down the concrete steps to his truck.
I noticed, with a distant part of my brain, that he never loosened his grip—not until he’d shoved me into the passenger seat and slammed the door behind us.
Even then, he hovered, breathing hard, as if ready to physically restrain me if I bolted.
The inside of the truck was even smaller than I remembered.
Maybe Floyd made it that way on purpose, a moving interrogation room.
There was a rifle rack bolted to the back window and a plastic divider that looked like it could take a bullet or two.
The radio jabbered with overlapping voices; the whole dash shook with the idling engine.
“What the hell, Floyd,” I managed, but it came out softer than I liked.
He put the truck in drive. His hand hovered on the shifter, veins up under the tight skin, and he finally looked at me—not just at me, but into me, like he could see all the way down to the bone.
“Don’t say a word,” he said. “Not right now.”
I didn’t. For once in my life, I didn’t.
He floored it, lights flashing, siren blaring, and for the next ten blocks I could feel the imprint of his grip on my arm, radiating heat through every inch of me.
I hated how much I liked it. I hated that I could still feel his hand even after he let go.
And I really hated not knowing why he’d chosen to bring me along, instead of leaving me back at the station like just another town problem.
But that was Floyd for you: always keeping things contained, never letting anyone out unless he decided it was time. I watched the town blur by through the windshield, every storefront and mailbox rendered in high-def panic by the strobing red and blue.
For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get away.
I wasn’t sure if I could.
Floyd drove like he’d been born behind a wheel—both hands locked at ten and two, jaw set, eyes on the horizon.
The siren turned every intersection into an empty threat, and we blew through stop signs with all the grace of a controlled demolition.
I tried to focus on the houses flickering by, the old sheds and horse trailers I could name like second cousins, but in the cab the air kept growing denser.
Floyd’s radio blared with a life of its own. “Unit four, confirm location—subject’s on premises, repeat, subject’s still on premises. Bar staff evacuated through rear, unknown number of patrons remaining. Advise.”
He cut the siren for half a second. “Four, copy. ETA less than two.” Then, to me: “It’s Gator Jenkins.”
“Shit,” I said, before I could catch myself.
He flicked a glance my way. “You know him?”
“Used to. We were in school together. He’s been in a tailspin since Mary threw him out.
” I didn’t mention the rest, but Floyd didn’t need me to—he probably had the full file in his head.
Gator had always been a disaster with a six-pack and a chip on his shoulder, but after the baby, after the miscarriage, something in him went from off to broken.
Nobody in town talked about it. Nobody wanted to.
Floyd’s grip on the wheel tightened. “She said he’s got a handgun. Walked in waving it, shouting about ‘taking his life back.’ Drunk as hell, and probably high too.”
I let out a breath. “You want me to do what, exactly? Talk him down?”
“He’s not talking to the deputies. But he might to you.” He met my gaze, held it longer than was safe at seventy miles an hour. “Sometimes it takes a bastard to reason with a bastard.”
There was a compliment in there, somewhere. Maybe. I snorted and looked out at the road, the blur of blue and red playing across the wet pavement. The world out there was all motion and streaked color; in here, it was a cage match of pride and possibility.
“Fine,” I said. “But if he shoots me, you better do the paperwork right.”
Floyd made a noise, almost a laugh. “You’d haunt me if I didn’t.”
The radio sparked again: “Shots fired, repeat, shots fired. No injuries—glass only. Subject retreated to office. Deputies holding exterior. Civilians sheltering in cold storage. Advise next steps.”
Floyd’s face went hard, but not blank. More like every muscle in his body recalculated the odds. He downshifted, then turned to me, the rawness in his expression so naked I wanted to look away but couldn’t. “We’re going in the front. You stay behind me, do what I say.”
I nodded, surprised by how little I wanted to argue. “Understood, Sheriff.”
For a split second, his lips twitched. “Asshole.”
“Right back at you.”
He parked across two spots, slammed the truck into park, and reached over to pop the glovebox. “If he’s got you in his sights, get down and cover your head. Don’t play hero.”
I grabbed the kevlar vest he tossed at me and slipped it on, feeling ridiculous and grateful in equal measure.
Then he paused, one hand already on the door. “He might listen to you, Ran. I’m trusting you.”
Nobody called me that anymore, not since high school. The word landed like a punch to the ribs, or maybe a pat on the head, and I didn’t know which was worse.
“I’ll try,” I said. “But if he wants to talk about the old days, I’m putting it all on you.”
He snorted, then was gone, out into the late-afternoon sun, his silhouette framed by the open truck door.
I watched him walk away, and only then did I realize I’d been holding my breath since the station. I let it out, one slow exhale, and followed.
Inside the bar, the air was a punch of old beer and fried food, overlaid with the acrid twang of burnt gunpowder.
It took my eyes a second to adjust, and when they did, I saw the world through a haze of cigarette smoke and neon.
The only light came from the Miller Lite sign over the bar, washing everything in the sickly blue of a dying aquarium.
Gator Jenkins stood in the middle of the linoleum, feet spread like a man about to be washed away.
He had a gun, but he was holding it wrong—like someone who’d only ever seen one on TV.
His shirt was inside out, his jeans slouched low, and his face looked like it had been scraped over gravel for a few miles.
I could see the dried salt of old tears in the bristles on his cheeks.