18. Chapter 18 Watering Hole Showdown
Cole
The Watering Hole is packed.
It's a Friday, so that's expected. Jett's bar fills up every weekend like clockwork. Ranchers are off the clock, teachers are done with their week, and half the town is spilling in for cold beer and bad decisions. The jukebox is loud. The air smells like wood smoke and whiskey.
I'm not here to relax.
I'm sitting at the far end of the bar with a beer I haven't touched, watching the room.
Suzanne is three tables over with Willa and a couple of Willa's teacher friends, laughing at something I can't hear.
Her whole face opens up when she laughs.
Head back, eyes creasing, and one hand pressed to her chest like the joy is almost too much to hold.
I make myself look away.
I check the front door and the side exit. The hallway that runs past the bathrooms toward the back. That hallway connects to the alley. One way in, one way out. The lighting back there is garbage.
Jett slides a fresh beer in front of me, even though I haven't touched the first.
"You look like a man doing recon," he says.
"I'm fine."
"You're scanning the room like Nash on a bad day." He leans on the bar, lowering his voice. "Are you expecting trouble?"
"I'm expecting nothing. Just be careful."
Jett doesn't argue. He nods once and moves down the bar, but I catch him murmuring something to his head bouncer near the door. Good. Jett doesn't ask twice.
I let myself look at Suzanne again.
She's wearing a green dress that does things to my concentration. Her hair is down. She's holding a glass of water. She's been careful about that since she told me. And she's doing what she does best: making everyone around her feel like the most important person in the room.
She's working so hard to look okay.
I take a pull from the beer I told myself I wouldn't touch. Doesn't help.
I know the difference now. The real laugh is looser and messier. This one has an edge to it, like she's performing calm instead of feeling it.
The envelope from last night is still sitting in the back of my mind like a hot coal.
They know about the baby. They've known this whole time.
The words had come out of her in a whisper, standing in the empty shop under the humming lights. I'd made her lock up and come home with me, and she'd let me, which told me everything about how scared she actually was.
Tonight was Willa's and Holly's (Beau's wife) idea. Get her out of that apartment, and let her breathe. I hadn't argued because I couldn't figure out how to say the walls are closing in and she needs to feel normal without sounding like I was losing it.
So here we are.
I check the door again.
That's when I see him.
He comes in like he belongs. Unhurried, suit jacket open, and a drink in his hand before he even reaches the bar. He didn't get that drink from Jett. He must have been here earlier, waiting, blending in with the Friday crowd.
The fixer.
My jaw locks.
He doesn't look at me. He's good at this. Moving through a room without creating drag, without snagging anyone's attention. He drifts toward the back of the bar, toward the hallway, and I'm already off my stool.
But he's faster than I expected.
By the time I clear the crowd, he's already beside Suzanne's table. He doesn't touch her. He doesn't need to. He just leans down and says something near her ear, and I watch the color drain straight out of her face.
Willa and Holly go rigid. Willa's hand finds Suzanne's arm across the table.
The fixer smiles. Cool, patient, the kind of smile that means he's done this before, and it always works.
I'm ten feet away when it happens.
A sound like a feathered grenade going off.
General Tso comes screaming out from under a table near the hallway. How he got inside is a question for later, a question Jett is going to have opinions about. He launches himself at the fixer's left pant leg with the fury of a rooster who has decided this man is a personal affront.
He stumbles back. His drink goes sideways.
The whole section erupts. A woman shrieks. Two guys jump up from their barstools. Someone yells what the.
Then Nash steps out of the hallway shadow like he'd been standing there the entire night.
He doesn't announce himself. He doesn't need to. One second, he's trying to shake a screaming rooster off his shoe, and the next, Nash has him by the collar, pinned face-first against the wall beside the hallway door with his arm twisted up behind his back.
"Ow." The fixer grunts. "Get your. I'm not."
"Quiet." Nash's voice is flat and cold.
I'm there in two steps. I put myself between the table and the fixer, facing him, close enough that no one else in the bar can hear what I say.
"You're going to want to stop talking."
He lifts his eyes to me. Calm. Smiling, even with his cheek against the wall.
"Mr. Harper." Like we're at a cocktail party. "I was just having a conversation."
"No." My voice is low. "You were threatening a pregnant woman in a room full of witnesses. So you're going to explain to me what you said to her, and then you're going to tell me who sent you, and then you're going to decide whether this ends clean or hard."
He doesn't flinch.
Nash tightens his grip, and he makes a sound through his teeth. But his eyes stay on me. Measuring. Recalculating.
"You can't hold me," he says. "I haven't touched anyone. I haven't made a single threat on record." He glances briefly at Nash. "Your brother knows it too."
Nash's jaw ticks. He does know it. We both do. The second we put our hands on this man without more than what we have, we're the ones in handcuffs.
Slowly, Nash releases him.
He straightens his jacket. Smooths his collar. Picks up his glass from the floor, miraculously unbroken, and sets it on the nearest table like punctuation.
General Tso makes another run at his shoes. Jett scoops the rooster up from behind, holding him like a football while Tso screams his tiny rooster outrage into the bar.
The fixer looks at me one more time.
He leans in, just slightly, voice dropped low enough that only I catch it.
"This doesn't end because you want it to." A pause. "Think carefully about whether this little town is worth what comes next."
Then he turns and walks out the front door, smooth as oil, like he came in.
Like none of it touched him.
The bar noise rushes back in around me. Someone restarts the jukebox.
Two barstools over, a couple goes back to their drinks like they saw nothing.
Maybe they didn't. Jett argues with General Tso, tucked under one arm, glaring at him like he's trying to solve a crime.
"I locked every door myself," he mutters.
"I don't know how you keep getting in here.
" Nash is already pulling out his phone, texting with one hand.
I turn around.
Suzanne is standing up from the table. Willa has both her hands. Her face is very still, very controlled, and her eyes find mine across the noise and the crowd.
That stillness breaks me open every time.
She's not okay. She's holding herself together by force of habit, and she's been doing it so long she doesn't even know she's doing it anymore.
I cross the floor. I don't care who's watching.
I take her face in my hands and press my forehead to hers. Not kissing her, just breathing. Just here.
"He said the candidate knows where I am," she whispers. "He said running doesn't work. He said." She stops. Swallows. "He knows about the baby, Cole. He's been watching me long enough to know."
"I know."
"He said I have one week to come back quietly." Her voice is steady, and I hate it, hate that she sounds steady. "Or he stops being quiet."
I pull back enough to look at her. Her eyes are dry. Her chin is up.
God, she is something.
"He walked out," she says. Not a question. She already knows.
"Yeah." I drop my hands to her shoulders, grounding us both. "But Jett's cameras got everything. And Nash is already on the phone."
Willa makes a sound behind her. I glance over.
Holly's face is pure fury, phone already in her hand.
But Willa isn't looking at the door the fixer just walked through.
She's looking at my hands, still cupping Suzanne's face.
At how easy it looks. Something shifts in her expression.
Not anger. Recognition. She doesn't say a word. Not yet.
"We're not doing this here," I say, quiet but clear. "Suzanne, you're coming with me. Holly, text Beau."
Neither of them argues.
Nash appears at my shoulder, phone still in hand. "Fixer's name is Vance Adams. Ex-campaign operative. Three clients, all politicians, all with buried problems that stayed buried." He meets my eyes. "This is what he does. Suzanne isn't the first."
The words settle like a verdict.
"She'll be the last." My voice comes out harder than I intend.
Nash nods once. "That's what I thought you'd say."
Outside, the night air is cool, and the parking lot is bright under Jett's security lights. The bar noise dulls behind us. General Tso has been relocated. I can hear him somewhere around back, still indignant.
I keep my hand on Suzanne's back.
One week, Adams said.
My phone buzzes. Beau. Then Jett from inside. Then, Beau again.
I haven't answered yet. I look at Suzanne. At the line of her shoulders, the way she's already squaring up against whatever comes next.
One week.
Adams walked out like he'd already won.
He has no idea what's coming.