Chapter Two

 

 

 

He’d fallen asleep easily, but now he was restless, tossing and turning. A strangely lucid yet helpless part of his sleeping mind was aware that he was having a nightmare but didn’t wake him, nor did it allow him to form a rational impression of what was happening. There was the image of a man, blue and frozen, in chains and crying for help. He begged as Quinn stood over him, the overly long and cartoonish barrel of Quinn’s Beretta pointing right at the guy’s head. There was all this emotion with it, too—fear and despair, frustration and power.

A short, sharp crash woke him and he was instantly upright, breathing hard and disoriented. He couldn’t be sure at first if he’d pulled the trigger in his dream, or if the sound had been physically present. The answer became much clearer, however, when he heard his front door slam.

“Oh, fuck,” he swore as he flew out of bed, grabbing his gun and bolting out of the door. Halfway between the car and the garage, the man Quinn had been hoping was dead stumbled and fell onto the frost-covered grass. Quinn took off across the yard, barefoot and in boxer shorts, experienced eyes on the target as the guy managed to get to his feet and continued to stumble forward. He was moving, but much more slowly now and obviously hurting, one arm wrapped protectively around his middle.

To Quinn’s shock and horror, his car chirped cheerfully to life and the engine started. Panic set in as he realized his prisoner wasn’t going to be so much longer. “Stop!” he bellowed, raising his gun. The man wasn’t moving fast, but he didn’t stop.

“Oh, fucking hell.” Quinn ran, his bare feet screaming at him with every step on the frozen ground. He skidded over some slippery leaves and stumbled painfully in the gravel outside the garage, but finally managed to launch himself at the target and bring him down with his bodyweight.

The guy screamed in anguish and Quinn’s key fob flew out of his fingers. “Oh, God. Nonono! Fuck!” He fought Quinn hard, writhing and scrambling beneath him, but his cries of pain quickly grew more intense and it wasn’t long before he was panting and gasping.

“That’s enough!” Quinn barked.

The guy’s panting turned into sobs but he stopped struggling as ordered.

Quinn got to his feet and retrieved his key fob, shutting the car off and locking the doors. He looked down at the guy and sighed. “Can you get up?”

All he got in response was a miserable groan. Quinn was fucking freezing outside in nothing but his boxers, his feet hurt and he couldn’t feel his goddamn toes. He needed to get indoors quick. He leaned down and lifted the guy up by one arm, which he hooked over his shoulders, realizing as their bare skin touched just how ice cold his captive was, as well. He wrapped his arm around the guy’s back and slowly they made their way up to the house, whimpers and groans cutting through the chilly night air.

Once inside, Quinn moved quickly. He sat the guy in his wide overstuffed armchair and threw several logs into the wood stove, then hurried to the bedroom and pulled on sweats and a T-shirt, and dried his feet. After finding his slippers, he grabbed an insulated flannel shirt and went back out to the main room.

Quinn’s charge was slumped over the arm of the chair and seemed nearly as blue as he’d been in Quinn’s nightmare. Even his bruises looked pale. Quinn hadn’t been able to shake the emotions of that fucking dream. Even knowing what was at stake, Quinn couldn’t just let this guy die under his roof. He’d leave that to the boys when they arrived.

Quinn got the flannel on the guy, covered him with a blanket and put the kettle on. Thinking that might not be enough to warm him quickly, Quinn pulled a wool hat off the hook by the front door and jammed it on his captive’s head, then dug around until he came up with a first aid kit.

Half an hour or so later, his hostage was still out cold, but Quinn had managed to coax some color back into him and had cleaned him up a bit. The guy’s right eye was swollen shut, and most of the right side of his face was purple, but it wasn’t bloody and it didn’t seem like Quinn needed to worry too much about infection. The bruising around the target’s neck didn’t look so bad up close, and Quinn had to wonder what the muscle boys had been thinking. Between his neck and the ugly bruising around his ribcage and left side, it seemed to Quinn more like they’d been playing with him than trying to kill him.

He’d boiled the kettle and put it on the wood stove to stay hot, figuring he could eventually offer the man some tea or one of those instant soup things he kept around. Quinn’s own feet had warmed back up just fine, and it was plenty toasty in the main part of the house now. He leaned back into the couch and watched the guy.

“Who are you?” Quinn asked out loud. “Why does the Boss want you six feet under?” Quinn had never given much thought to the why of things—it wasn’t his affair and knowing too much was unwise in his line of business. He shifted and put his feet up. “What am I going to do with you?”

Quinn’s patient moaned softly and lifted his head before letting it drop against the back of the chair again. Whether coincidence, or the guy had actually heard him speaking, Quinn couldn’t tell. It was quiet and still in the house for a while, but when his captive started to moan again, Quinn figured he was finally coming around.

“Hey.” Quinn rolled off the couch and gave him a gentle shake, sitting on the arm of the big chair. “Hey, man. Wake up. You in there?” That earned Quinn a groan, and something mumbled that Quinn didn’t understand. “Say again?”

“Where?”

“Oh. Um, well, you’re still with me. Quinn. But you’re—whoa!” Quinn lunged forward and caught the guy as he desperately tried to get up. “Ho there… You’re not… You can’t. Just sit.”

The target’s good eye was wide and terrified. “Fuck.”

“Relax. How the hell did you get out of those chains?”

“What?”

“The chains?”

“Oh. Knocked over the radiator and broke ’em.”

“You knocked over a cast-iron radiator? Are you fucking kidding me? What are you, the Hulk?”

“Name’s Cooper.”

Hm. Cooper. “Yeah? Got a first name, Cooper?”

“Tony. Anthony.”

“Tony Cooper?” Tony Cooper. Anthony Cooper? Quinn played the name over and over in his mind but it didn’t ring a bell at all. “Well, Cooper, don’t—do not—try to steal my car again. Are we clear?”

Cooper nodded. “Tony.”

“What?”

“Call me Tony.”

Quinn snorted. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? You’re practically dying in that chair and you’re worried about what name I call you?”

“Sorry, Randy.” Considering the shape he was in, Tony really pulled off the sarcasm.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, smartass.” The guy had balls, Quinn had to give him that. “You hungry?”

Tony shook his head.

“Yeah well, we’re going to try something, anyway.” Quinn snagged a packet of chicken broth from his pantry, dumped it in a mug and stirred in some water from the kettle on the wood stove. He tested it himself first to make sure it wasn’t too hot. “See how this goes down.”

Tony resisted at first but finally took a small sip. Swallowing seemed hard for him.

“Take it slow.”

A few more sips and Tony pushed it away. “Enough.”

“Sure, okay.” Quinn set the mug on the brick hearth to keep warm.

“That stuff is vile.” Tony shifted in his chair and groaned. “I feel like I’m dying.”

Quinn shook his head. “Unfortunately for me, I doubt it. If you were, I’m pretty sure it would have happened by now. But you look like the fucking Purple People Eater.”

Tony snorted. “Side hurts.”

“Yeah, I checked it out. Your ribs don’t seem to be broken, but I know a guy. If it’s still bad I’ll call him in the morning.”

“A guy?”

“A doc.”

“You’re…going to call a doctor?”

Quinn shrugged. He was a little surprised himself, but, yeah, that was the plan.

“I thought you wanted me dead?”

“Well, that would be easier for both of us, yeah.”

“But you’re not going to—”

“No. That’s someone else’s job.”

“What?”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to get it. It’s a gangster thing. Murder isn’t in my contract. Now, if you touch my car again—”

“Won’t.”

“Good boy.” At some point, while Quinn played fucking nursemaid, he came to the unfortunate realization that his predicament was entirely of his own making. In hindsight, he really ought to have agreed to the Boss’ offer and put a bullet in Tony’s head back in that rancid motel room. At this point, he saw three potential scenarios, and two of them didn’t end well. First, Tony might somehow manage to escape, with or without stealing Quinn’s car, for which the Boss would likely reward Quinn by cutting off Quinn’s fucking head. Second, Tony could get a hold of Quinn’s gun, or the fire poker, or some other heavy, deadly object and kill Quinn himself before making his escape. The final scenario, the one far less hazardous to Quinn’s health, was that the boys would show up before either of the first two scenarios came to pass and finish the job they were too fucking stupid to do properly in the first place.

So, that left Quinn with a sixty-six percent chance of ending up dead in the next few days, and the more optimistic thirty-three percent was riding on the backs of a couple of morons. Fucky Mcfuckstick.

“Want a beer?”

“A…beer?”

“I’m getting a beer, do you want one?”

“I don’t guess you have anything stronger?”

“Bourbon?”

“Perfect.”

Quinn nodded. Apparently, Mr. Cooper had done some math of his own. Quinn came back with two glasses and a bottle of Wild Turkey. He poured a generous splash into each and handed one to Tony. “I’ll tell you what. This is a much better idea.”

Tony nodded and swallowed his drink down in one gulp, then held his glass out for more.

Quinn was on it. “I got ya.”