21. Deacon
DEACON
“Get your fucking hands off me,” Rat growled.
One of the deputies slammed my holding cell door closed as I rubbed my wrists.
“Could you have made them any tighter?” I asked.
“Yes,” was all the deputy said.
I shot him a look and the sheepishness rolled across his features.
“Get me the fuck outta here!” Rat exclaimed as he slammed his wrists against the bars.
The deputy who hauled him in took a beating stick off his side and slammed it against the bars.
“See!? Two can play that game,” the deputy said.
Rat’s eye twitched. “See you in hell, pig.”
The deputy leaned forward until his nose practically touched the bars. “I really fucking hope so, Rat.”
He snarled at the man as the deputy tucked the beating stick back into its holster on his hip.
The door slammed open, and I watched as Deputy Carlyle exchanged places with both of the officers.
His head swiveled between me and Rat as the three of us listened to those two guys backtrack.
And when the door closed behind them, he started murmuring to himself.
“Uh, what’s he doing?” Rat asked.
I watched his lips. “He’s counting, give him a second.”
And once he got to twenty, he turned to Rat. “You good?”
Rat nodded. “Yeah.”
“What about you, Deac?” he asked as he turned to me.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. How’s Char?”
He grinned. “Brilliant as always.”
Rat snickered. “Sounds like someone’s gotta crush.”
Carlyle smiled. “She reminds me of my sister back home.”
“This isn’t home for you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Raleigh, North Carolina.”
Rat scoffed. “The fuck brought you all the way out here?”
“Why does anything else bring a man completely across the country?”
I sucked air through my teeth. “What’s her name?”
“His name,” Carlyle corrected me, “is Bradley. But I’m not here to talk about pleasantries. I’m here to tell you that until we get everything resolved out there, you guys are stuck in here. We’ll try and resolve it as quickly as possible, but there is a chance you guys could be here until morning.”
Rat shrugged as he went to sit down. “I’ve been in worse sleeping places.”
“Same,” I said as I eased myself down onto the concrete bench in the middle of the holding cell floor.
Carlyle turned toward the door. “I’ll keep you updated as I can.”
“Hey,” I said.
He paused. “What’s up?”
I nodded. “Good job today.”
He beamed with pride. “Thanks.”
I watched him as he left, and I wondered if Char was still putting on the waterworks for everyone.
“You never tell me good job,” Rat murmured.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said as I peered over at him.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a smirk.
I couldn’t help but grin. “Seriously though, your bruises are healing up well.”
He nodded as he looked down at his feet. “Yep, they are.”
“Yeah! I’ll be right there!” Sheriff Nielson exclaimed as he slammed the door open.
I leaned forward, peering around the bars as I watched the man come toward us. He stopped in between mine and Rat’s cell, and I saw him murmuring his lips just like Carlyle had.
“The fuck are they doing?” Rat asked.
“Sh, just keep your eyes on him,” I whispered.
And when Nielson was done counting to twenty…
“This’ll be the last time we can turn off those cameras and talk, so put on your listening caps,” Nielson said.
Rat and I pressed ourselves against the bars just to get closer to the man.
“Hit us with it,” I said.
Nielson launched into the plan. “We’re making your arrests look as real as possible while Char currently plays the victim. Hopefully, between your arrests and her sobbing like crazy to this woman about how she was right, we can convince Marcie to call her superiors down.”
“Wait, you want more feds in the area?” Rat asked.
“To what end?” I asked.
Nielson looked over at me. “We’re hoping to get them down here before we corner them with the footage of Doc. Surely she’s broken some sort of law or crossed some sort of line.”
“That’s a rough fucking plan ya got there, Sheriff,” I glowered.
He shrugged. “It’s our only play right now, but it is working. She fully believes we’re on her side of this, so I still believe that we can pull this off.”
“Is it smart to deal with more federal agents, though? We’re wrapped up in this with her investigation. It could put us on the spot in a bad way,” Rat said.
I pointed at my brother. “What he said.”
Nielson nodded. “I know, I know. It’s not perfect. But I do have a Plan B in case this doesn’t pan out according to how I see it panning out.”
“Are you gonna grace us with said plan?” I asked.
He shook his head, though. “It’s for later, and I don’t want to reveal details unless we absolutely need it.”
I eyed him carefully. “Don’t you dare stick Char into the middle of this again. She’s been through enough.”
“You keep her away from that woman,” Rat said.
“She’s my only priority right now, outside of getting that woman out of town. But I have to go. Just sit here, and throw up a stink whenever someone comes in. Got it?”
I looked over at Rat. “Got it.”
“Yep,” Rat said as he shoved himself away from the bars.
“Good,” Nielson said, “now fuck it up when I walk back through that door.”
I grinned. “Understood.”
I wasted no time in cursing that fucker out the second he walked away from us.
Rat picked up something and threw it at the bars of his holding cell before letting out an earth-shattering scream.
I picked up my curses as I pointed my finger and slammed my hand against the bars.
The door thudded closed behind Nielson, and I made sure to kick it up for a few more seconds before both Rat and I calmed the fuck down.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
I smiled. “Kick up a stink until that bitch comes back here? Hell yeah.”
So with a smile on his face that I hadn’t seen since before Bait’s death, he grabbed a stool in the corner and heaved it across the holding cell.
He slammed against the bars and broke into four pieces that fell to the ground.
“Fuck this goddamn motherfucking place! You pigs deserve to burn on the stake!” Rat exclaimed.
I walked over to the toilet in the corner and slammed my foot against it. I slammed it down again and again until the water pipe busted. Water came shooting forth, splattering against the concrete floor. And as I reached down for the porcelain attachment, I ripped it up and whipped myself around.
I slammed the fucking thing into the wall and listened to it shatter.
“Fuck all of you motherfuckers!” I roared. “I dare you to take me on in my own territory! You have to hide behind your guns and your fucking badges when I could strangle you with my bare goddamn hands!”
Rat snarled as he picked up something else and threw it at the holding cell bars.
I yelled at the top of my lungs with my voice threatening to give out altogether.
Our voices bounced off the unforgiving walls.
Curses I’d never once strung together fell from my mouth, igniting the electric air around us.
Until finally that locked metal door slammed back open.
Revealing a very angry sheriff and an unusually calm Marcie.
“All right,” Sheriff Nielson said as he took his beating stick out and banged it against the bars.
That shut me and Rat up as Marcie glared at us, her head on a fucking swivel.
“The two of you wanna talk to me about why some dirty ass low lives such as yourselves feel like you can kick up a stink and ruin everyone’s evening just because you didn’t get laid today?” Nielson asked.
For a moment, I had to remind myself that he was putting on an act. “Why? You wanna throw your hat in the ring?”
“His ass isn’t nice enough,” Rat said as he tilted his head.
“I wasn’t talking about his ass,” I said flatly as I stared Nielson down.
But the ringing of a phone on speaker caught my attention and I found that Marcie dialed a number on her cell. Right there in the middle of the massive concrete room with Rat and I in our holding cells.
Who the fuck was she calling?
“This is Hadley,” the groggy voice said.
“Commander, it’s Dickerson.”
Shuffling around was heard before the man spoke with a much clearer voice. “Jesus Christ, Dickerson, it’s been days since you were supposed to contact. What the hell happened out there?”
“It’s been a long past few days, but I’ve finally got them, Boss. I finally got the men who killed Murphy to cover their tracks.”
So that was her play: make us take the fall for the man she killed. My jaw hit the fucking floor as my gaze darted to Rat. He looked like he was about to pull those goddamn metal bars apart just to get to that woman’s fucking neck.
Was she really trying to pin our brother’s death on us?
Could she really get away with something like that?
“God, that’s the best fucking news I’ve had all month. Do we know how they got to him?” her boss asked.
The woman grinned at me as she drew in a deep breath. “Money, Commander. That’s how they always get to you. Way, way, way too much money.”
“Explains his bank accounts,” he muttered.
“Anyway,” the woman said as she tossed me a wink before turning toward the exit, “I just wanted to call and fill you in now that things have sort of wrapped up here.”
“And where is there, exactly?”
I ground my teeth together as I glared at her, but deep down I was smiling.
For once, she walked right into our fucking trap.
She got cocky. She allowed her emotions to get the better of her.
And now we knew her plan. Now we understood what she was doing, at least with Bait’s death.
Pin it on the guy she already killed to make it look like an investigation gone belly-up.
I had to admit, it was a stroke of genius.
But she was about to find out that we were much, much better than that.
That’s right, I thought as the door closed behind her and Nielson, walk right into it.
Goddamn it, I loved it when a good plan finally came together.