"Here Comes Trouble" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kauffman Donna)

Chapter 20

By the time Brett got to the inn, his heart was lodged in his throat. The bad sensation in his gut had only gotten stronger the closer to home he’d gotten. And still nothing from Dan.

He almost laid the bike on its side in his hurry to get up the hill, park, and get inside the house. There were lights on and everything looked perfectly peaceful, like any other evening, from the outside. But then, his hotel room had appeared normal, too.

He ran through the front door and immediately checked himself, made himself slow down. With everything else she’d been through today, Kirby didn’t need him racing into whatever room she was in looking like an out-of-control wild man. Though that’s exactly how he felt.

He blew out a heavy breath, trying to get a grip on himself, but before he could call out to her, he heard voices. Coming from…the kitchen? Whatever calm he might have found deserted him completely as he headed through the foyer to the dining room, barely clipping the foyer furniture and dining room table, only to come to an immediate halt when he finally hit the kitchen and saw who Kirby was talking to.

“Dan?”

His friend was sitting at one end of the middle butcher block counter on a stool. Kirby was at the opposite end, also sitting. But after a quick, life-affirming glance at Kirby, who appeared fine, his gaze went right back to Dan, who looked anything but. If someone had used his face for a punching bag the night before, they’d gone on to take out considerable frustration on the rest of his body today, if the torn shirt, bloody stain on one shoulder, and half-swollen, ravaged face was anything to go by.

“What the hell?”

“Brett, my man,” he said, trying to smile, then wincing when it pulled at skin that couldn’t handle any more movement at the moment. He seemed…not drunk, exactly. High?

Brett couldn’t tell. “What the hell happened?”

“You’ve been to the hotel?”

“Yes. Police are there, paramedics.”

Kirby’s eyes widened, though her gaze would go to him, then right back to Dan. She had looked calm enough when he’d come in, but now that he’d had a moment to focus, he realized…she might appear to be okay, but she was terrified. Her hands were knotted together on the kitchen counter and the set of her shoulders was rigid. He started to walk over to her.

“Let’s just stay where you are. For now,” Dan said.

He glanced from Kirby to Dan again. “I don’t underst-”

Then Dan lifted the hand that was in his lap behind the counter…revealing the gun he was holding.

“Jesus, Dan. Man, what the hell is going on here? This is not a good idea. Where did you get the-”

“Well, I thought it would be a good idea to keep Maks from beating the hell out of me with it, before he decided to shoot me. It was self-defense.”

“Why was Maks beating you?”

“Do I really have to spell that out for you?”

Brett had no idea what was going on, but walking into the middle of this was like walking into the middle of a nightmare that made no sense, and he couldn’t slow his brain down enough to grasp it. “Listen, we’ll make this work out. If it was self-defense, then that’s what it was. But you need to put the gun down. This isn’t going to help. But I can. Let me help you, let-”

Dan erupted in a painful gurgle of laughter. “Right, right. Let you help me. What the hell do you think I’ve been trying to get you to fucking do?” He waved the gun at that last part, making Kirby shift back on her stool as it swung past her direction.

Brett immediately put his hands out. “Okay, okay. I know we can figure this out, but Dan, you have to put the gun down to make that work.”

“No point in that now. Can’t you see that? You saw Maks, right? You know?”

It was all too surreal. Maks’s body in his hotel room, Dan sitting in Kirby’s kitchen waving a gun about. Like he’d left Pennydash earlier today with Kirby and found the answer to all his dreams, only to come back home to some kind of alternate universe nightmare. “I saw Maks,” he said, trying like hell not to picture that in his head. He needed to keep his wits about him, and at the moment, that was going to take immeasurable focus. “What happened? Start at the beginning.” Maybe if he could get Dan talking in some kind of rational form, he could figure their way out of this and no one else would get hurt.

“Put it together, man,” Dan said, agitated. “All the shit that went down back home? Me here, Maks here? Come on, you’re the college degreed rocket scientist here.”

Brett just stared at his friend. Or the man who used to be his friend. He didn’t recognize the man seated in front of him now. It was like he was talking to a complete stranger. “Why don’t you tell me?”

The room was chilly, and not just because Dan was sitting there, half unhinged, terrifying both him and Kirby, albeit for different reasons. Then he realized the back door to the porch was open, letting in the chill night air. Was that how he’d gotten in?

Brett contemplated heading over to close the door, which meant he either had to circle around behind Kirby, which was the long route, but that would give him a chance to block her at least momentarily from Dan’s site range. Maybe give her a chance to duck down and escape the kitchen. Or circle around behind Dan. Maybe disarm him. Somehow.

Brett looked at the back door. Then he caught Kirby’s gaze from the corner of her eye, trying to somehow mentally signal to her what he wanted to do so she could get herself out of harm’s way once he made his move. But all he got from her was an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

He looked back at Dan. “Are you saying that what happened tonight-here with the laundry out back, and with Maks at the resort, has something to do with what was happening out in Vegas?”

“Give the man a gold star,” Dan said, his clearly barely controlled anger turning snide and even uglier.

Then the pieces tumbled into place. “Wait-”

Dan turned to Kirby and waved the gun in her direction as well, making Brett’s heart stop completely. “Now he’s getting it,” Dan smirked nastily. He swung his gaze and the gun back to Brett. “All that damn time, and never once did you figure it might not be all about you for a goddamn change.”

Brett was only half hearing his snidely delivered commentary; his brain was spinning, almost out of control as every piece of the puzzle finally shifted to make the right picture. “They weren’t coming after me. Maks and Rudov. They were coming after…”

“Me,” Dan supplied. “I was this close to making the money back. While you were playing. Even after you quit, I thought I had it. We were a team, man. A team. It was all going to be okay; I just had to hold them off a while longer. Then you go and fucking leave and I have no chance to recoup my losses.”

“Gambling debts? That’s what this is about? Since when did you-”

“The business was in trouble, Brett. Dad didn’t exactly stick around to help with the transition, you know? And you. Just when I think I’m good to go, you working the circuit, you up and quit.”

“Wait, you…bet on me? On the events?” He thought about what Maks had said, about overhearing Dan trying to get some game action while at the bar.

Dan shrugged, seemingly unashamed by his actions, belligerent almost. “Sometimes I bet against you, too. I could always kind of tell when you were hitting burnout stage, figured my chances were better going with number two then.”

“I offered to help, you could have come to me.”

Dan lifted the gun from his lap. “How many times do I have to pound it into your thick skull? I am not your pet charity project! So I bet on you playing, so what? First it was just kind of for fun, but then I won a little. And when things got tight with the business, I’d bet more. And not just on your events. I got in deeper with the company, and deeper with the casino. So…they kind of came after me. To collect. I promised them when you came on board, they’d get their money back with interest.”

“So why did they vandalize your property? And Vanetta, Dan, how could you let them put her and her life’s work in jeopardy like that? I would have paid them off for you; we’d have hashed it out later. I mean, Jesus, Dan, how could you not do some-”

“I was doing something!” he roared. Dan shoved off his stool, sending it skidding backward, where it fell through the screen door. “I was earning the money back, Brett. Earning it back.”

From the corner of Brett’s eye, he saw Kirby’s gaze stray again and again to the rear open door. It was really cold now. Maybe she was signaling him to do what he’d been thinking about earlier. But what if he was wrong? He couldn’t risk it, risk her.

“I needed one more game, one more, dammit,” Dan shouted, his beaten face contorted with pain and rage and tears. “Then you up and fucking quit. All these years I tell you to leave the damn sport, come work with me. It would have been good. No trouble. I’d have been clean. The business would have been strong. But no. No. So I get in the game, and get deeper, then you fucking leave? But it’s all good, I tell Rudov. I’ll recoup the money with you working for me full-time now. But that wasn’t fast enough for Rudov. So they sent Maks around to persuade me to come up with the money. I didn’t know what else to do. The only sure thing was you playing again, one more time. I could have worked that angle. I thought you’d go back. They all go back. But no, not you! I told him to lean on you, get you to play again. Just once. But…but it got out of hand, and Maks got impatient. Then you left, and…and I was losing work with you gone.”

The tears started spurting from his swollen eyes; his jaw quivered as anger gave way to shame. He looked like nothing more than a trapped, wounded, cornered animal. And for the first time, Brett was really, truly afraid of how this was all going to play out. Dan was so far beyond reason, he wasn’t even hearing anything Brett said.

“Then you up and fucking decide to play again. Here, in this godforsaken shit town. So what choice do I have but to get the hell out here? Why do you think Maks came out here, anyway?” He was almost sobbing now. “And even then, I didn’t want to do it, any of it. I just wanted you to come home. We’d have made it work, man. It would have fixed everything.” He hunched over, slumped, letting the gun dangle down for a moment and in that split second, Brett knew that might be his only chance to do something.

With Dan breaking eye contact, Brett glanced quickly at Kirby to motion her to get down, but her gaze was riveted on a spot somewhere behind Dan.

Just as Brett swung his gaze back, to see what she was looking at, Dan’s head came up and he brought the gun up to his temple. “I could solve all our problems, you know,” he said, his voice no longer wild with pain, but calm, cold, empty. Too empty.

“No!” Brett shouted. “Dan, put it down. Now. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

“It’s too late now. Don’t you see? Too fucking late.” The gun wavered beside his temple, and Brett was just girding himself to dive over the counter if he had to, when suddenly Dan let out an almost inhuman shriek of pain and pitched violently forward, his body thrashing. The gun went off, the bullet ricocheting up into the ceiling, then all chaos erupted.

Kirby dove for the floor. Brett dove for Dan as he landed on the floor, hand outstretched, still holding the gun. Dan was howling. Kirby was scrambling toward the screen door.

“Run!” Brett yelled at her. “Get Thad.”

But instead she scooted behind Dan just as Brett cleared the counter in one leap, then had to almost twist into a pretzel to keep from landing on Dan’s back, which had been his intended target. He’d meant to pin him down and kick the gun away. But at the last second, he realized the reason Dan had suddenly had what looked like a violent seizure.

He had demon kitty lodged on his back, nails dug in deep, looking more terrified than she had when she was trapped two stories up in a tree.

That’s what Kirby had seen. The stool clattering over, then Dan jumping up and swinging the gun up must have set the cat off. Literally.

“What the hell is that? Get it off me!” Dan was screaming.

Brett kicked at the gun in Dan’s hand, sending it skittering as Kirby stepped in with a dish towel to trap the kitten.

She pried the cat loose and Brett hauled Dan up by his shoulders, prepared to level him with a knockout punch if that’s what it took to keep him from doing any more harm. To them or himself.

Dan took a swing at Brett, but at that point he was pretty easy to subdue.

When Thad arrived seconds later, Brett had Dan face to the wall, arm pinned behind his back. Dan was sobbing, completely broken. And Brett’s heart was breaking as well.

Thad stepped in, and though Brett instinctively moved forward to protect Dan, despite what had happened there that night, Thad quietly but firmly told him to step back and then clear the room once the reinforcements had come into the house as well.

“I’ve got it from here,” he told him.

“He’s…not well,” Brett said, not knowing what else to say. “Don’t-just-he’s done, okay? You don’t have to-”

“We’ve got it under control,” Thad reassured him, still stern, but clearly signaling with the stern set to his face that Brett needed to move back.

Brett did, and he felt what was left of his heart shatter as they cuffed Dan and took him outside to the squad car. Another officer retrieved the gun. Several others stayed behind to ask questions. Kirby was still cradling the bundled cat.

Brett took the towel and went out back on the porch and to the backyard. He crouched down and carefully opened the bundle. The kitten tumbled out, then arched her back and hissed once she was free. “Thanks for the assist, hellion,” he said as the kitten continued to yowl. “We’re even. Now git before you get impounded as evidence or something.” He watched the kitten take off back up the hill, hopefully toward home.

When he turned back around, Kirby was standing in the doorway, arms folded protectively against her middle. Her face was expressionless, but he could hardly blame her for being numb. He wished he was, too.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as he climbed the steps and came back on the porch.

He paused on the top step. “My best friend holds you at gunpoint and you’re telling me you’re sorry?”

“It’s…sad. He’s…he’s not a well man. It’s not your fault, Brett. I know you’re going to think you could have done something to prevent this but you couldn’t possibly know if he hadn’t told you.”

She opened the door and he came inside, but before they could say anything else to each other, Thad stuck his head through the kitchen door. “Your turn. We need your statements.”

Kirby slipped her hand in Brett’s as they stepped inside. It was that small but monumental thing that brought everything into crystal clarity for him.

He tightened his grip, squeezing her hand, wanting to say so many things to her. But first they had to get through the rest of this.

In retelling their story to the police, it settled things inside Brett’s mind, if not his heart. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen to Dan. The only piece of good news was that Maks was actually going to be okay. Apparently Mr. Big’s skills didn’t extend to the medical field. He’d missed the pulse because he’d been checking in the wrong place. So, while Dan still faced some very serious charges, thank God one of them wasn’t going to be manslaughter.


Morning light was starting to creep over the horizon, the sky as gray as his emotions, as they watched the last squad car pull out from the front driveway. Kirby shivered as they stood, arms around each other’s waist, on the front porch.

“What happens next?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t honestly know anymore, Kirby. I just don’t know.” He was past angry and sad. By now, he just felt…hollow. His whole world had been turned upside down…for good. Then flipped over again with this.

Then she turned in his arms, slid both of hers around his waist. She looked as tired as he felt, but her gaze was steady, her voice certain. “We’ll figure out what’s best to do. For him. For you.”

Brett touched her face, humbled by this woman. But never more certain about where he was supposed to be. “I thought you’d have me packed and out of here. I’m so sorry, Kirby. I didn’t know. I’d have never…” He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers, trying to shut out the memories of the night before. “When I thought you might be in trouble…I haven’t been that terrified since I was a kid.”

“I was okay. I was talking to him. I didn’t think he’d hurt me. He was just…mixed up, and hurt, and confused. He’s going to need help. More than legal help, I mean.”

Brett nodded, then squeezed his eyes more tightly shut as another thought hit him.

“What?” she asked gently, pulling him closer and touching his cheek as she lifted his head up.

“Dan’s dad. This…it’ll break him. I-I should call him.”

“I think they’re already doing that. I heard one of the deputies say they were trying to reach him.”

Brett swore under his breath. “How in the hell did it get that out of hand and I didn’t know? I don’t miss much, Kirby. And I completely missed this. He’s the closest friend I have, and I never saw it. I was so wrapped up in my own crap, I never-”

“Hey,” she said, framing his face. “You tried to help him and he was too stubborn, too full of pride, to accept the kind of help that would have put him back on the right path. He’s a grown man. He could have chosen the smarter, safer path, even if it meant swallowing his pride. He’s the only one to blame here. Not you.”

She’d said it quite fiercely, and that, more than anything, cut through his grief and got his attention.

“Brett, we’ll figure out how best to help him, if we can, but he’s got to help himself now. You do know that?”

He nodded and then held her face in his hands. “We?” he asked.

She held his gaze. “We.”

He pulled her tightly into his arms and buried his face in her hair. “When I thought I might lose you, that you might be hurt…” He pushed her back enough to look in her eyes. “I don’t want to ever lose you.”

And though there was still the residual pain and ache from the toll the evening had taken, her mouth smoothed, then finally curved. It was a smile of confidence. And of hope. “That’s good, because the man I want is the man I saw today. Who didn’t back down when things were hard. The hardest, maybe. Who wanted to protect me…and a lifelong friend. We’re both misfits, of sorts, you and me, you know that. From backgrounds that weren’t easy. But I think that’s what makes us strong. And what makes us value what we have, what we’ve earned. I think that’s why we fit, you and me, almost from the moment you climbed off that bike.”

“You do fit me, Kirby.”

“Are you still planning on staying here? I mean, with Dan’s stuff and-”

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re right, we’ll figure out what we can do for him. For his dad. The company, whatever that might take. But this is where I belong now.” He pulled her up close and hiked her up into his arms so their faces were even. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he held her tightly against him. “And one thing I’m not going to do is just play house with you, Kirby. I want to marry you. And I don’t want to wait ten years. Or maybe even ten days. I love you, Kirby Farrell. And I want the whole world to know you’re mine.”

Now the smile did come, shining through tears. But they were tears of joy this time. She wrapped her legs around his hips as he swung her around on the porch.

“Is that a yes?”

“I already told you. I’m all in, Brett. I’ve never been a gambler, but I’d bet on you. Every time.”

“Well, maybe you’ve heard, but I’m one lucky son of a bitch. I don’t like to lose.”

“You’re not going to lose me.”

She slid one hand to his cheek and rubbed her thumb across his lips, making him shudder…and forget every damn thing except this moment. And her.

“I love you, too,” she said. “So, marry me, Brett Hennessey. Because I think I’m one lucky son of a bitch, too. Look!” she exclaimed, pointing behind him.

He turned them both around to see that it had begun to snow. Hard. If the thick, white flakes were any indication, it didn’t look like it was something that was going to let up anytime soon.

“The Hennessey Fortune Factor,” she murmured. “Ha!”

“You are all the good fortune I need,” he said, then kissed her, hard, before he carried her back inside the house. They’d both go down to the station later, find out what came next, what could be done. But for right now, he was going to celebrate life. New life. New dreams. His dreams.

Their dreams.

“Mind if we start the honeymoon part a little early?” he asked.

“I thought we already had,” she said, then squealed as he put her over his shoulder and took the stairs two at a time.

They were both laughing as they landed on his bed. Their bed.

And as he slowly peeled off her clothes and started to make love to the woman who was going to be his wife…somewhere out in the white swirl of the dawn snow, they heard cats howling in unison.

They both paused and looked at each other.

“I’m going to take that as a good sign,” Kirby said cautiously.

“I’m going to reinforce the screen on that door.”

Kirby laughed. “Later.”

Brett pulled her under him, felt her arch up, naturally moving with him as he slid deep into her. “Yeah,” he said. “Later is good. Now come here my soon-to-be wife and let’s see if I can make you howl.”

And he did.