Shallow Creek (22 page)

Chapter 52

The phone stared him down, but Brendan didn’t feel like turning it on.

He
pocketed the small device and rested his chin on his hands.  The door to Michelle’s room was closed now, and presumably the sisters were engaging in one of the most difficult conversations of their lives.  A bit of an unfortunate way to rekindle their relationship.

And speaking of trying relationships, Brendan hadn’t even told his parents yet that he’d killed their eldest son.  That would be a fun one, he was sure.

The guard at the door nodded to Brendan.  “Rough night, guy?”

Brendan leaned back in his chair, which faced Michelle’s door.
  “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Heard you killed your own brother
.”

“That’s the rumor.
” Brendan put his head back against the wall.

A nurse pushed a bed past them, prompting Brendan to slide his heels back under his seat.  Once the hallway was clear, the cop spoke to him again.
  “Also heard you tried to save that hot DEA chick.”

“Tried
.”

“Shitty.”

Brendan sighed and looked up and down the hall, searching for any kind of distraction.  On cue, the latch on the door to Michelle’s room clicked and Kim appeared, tears brimming in the soft hospital lights.  Brendan had barely stood up before she strode and grabbed him in a tight hug.  He returned the gesture uneasily, not entirely sure what was going on.

“Is Michelle okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine.”  Kim sniffed against his shoulder.  “Thanks to you.”

“It was nothing.
”  He moved his lips close to her ear.  “Are things going to be okay between you two?”

Kim didn’t answer immediately, but then said, “It’ll take time, but I think it’ll be okay.  Eventually.”

“Are things going to be okay between us?”

“Miche
lle told me the details of your—”  She searched for the right word, shooting a sideways glance to the guard.  “Encounter.”

“Not my proudest moment,” Brendan said as Kim broke their embrace.

“It’s totally gross and weird that Michelle did that to you, but she said Grant forced her into it to blackmail you, or something like that?”

“Something like that
.”

“It’s not like I expect
you to be a virgin or anything.” Kim ran a hand through her hair.  “I mean, we’re not in high school anymore.”

“No, we’re not,” Brendan mumbled, arguing internally over the merits in sharing the exact details as he knew them.  No smart couple ever shared every little secret, right?  Was it worth trying to explain that Grant had wanted Michelle to totally fake it, in order to guilt Brendan into leaving Shallow Creek?  With Grant dead, he was a good enough scapegoat, at least for now.

Another thought popped into his head.  He asked Kim to stay out in the hall for a second while he went in to see her sister really quick.  Once by her side, he gently roused her from a shallow sleep.

“Hey, when you ran out of the diner crying and those
assholes jumped us, did you and Grant set that whole thing up, too?”

She imme
diately burst into tears again.  “I’m so sorry.” She grabbed onto the bottom of his shirt.  “Grant promised you’d leave if you got beat up.  He told me he wouldn’t have to kill you then.”

“Nothing like brotherly love, huh?” a voice said from behind.

Brendan turned to find Special Agent in Charge Norman lurking in the entryway to Michelle’s room.  Michelle’s grip on the front of Brendan’s shirt slackened, and then she finally withdrew completely.

Norman scowled, as usual. 
“We need to talk.  Now.”

Chapter 53

Brendan and Norman stood in the doorway to Michelle’s room.  Kim slid past both of them and took a seat on the far side of her sister’s bed.  Brendan kept an eye on the pair as they chatted quietly.

“What are you doing here?” he asked the agent.

“I was visiting Tyson again,” Norman said.  “Docs are still trying to work out how to fix his face after the beating your brother gave him.”

The tone riding through Norman’s words reeked of blame towards Brendan, but he ignored it.  His brother had battered one agent and killed another, and Brendan made an easy target.  He tried to divert the conversation.

“I’m sorry about Spee.”

“Nothing you could’ve done.”  Norman’s tone indicated otherwise.

So much for diverting the conversation.
  Brendan took a different tack.  “How did you find us out on the road anyway?”

“Because we bugged their phone,” Norman said plainly.  “If you’d given a better description of the location, we could’ve arrived earlier.”

And saved Agent Spee.
  Those words didn’t need to be said for Brendan to hear them.  At least he now had a clearer idea of why Norman blamed him so much for what had happened.

The agent cleared his throat.  “Also, I’m willing to forget that you assaulted a sheriff’s deputy and escaped from police custody, because you did us all a favor by killing Jasper.”

Brendan’s ears perked up.  “What did you just say?”

“That I’m glad you had the balls to take down your own brother,” Norman explained, spelling it out slowly.
  “Not a lot of folks could handle that.”

“You called him Jasper.”

“Right.  That was the codename his crew used for him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Norman said, exasperated now.  “It was their name for the leader.  That’s all we know.”

Michelle was now observing them intently, ignoring Kim’s idle chatter.  With everything else going on, Brendan’s brain had a tough time slotting all the puzzle pieces toget
her.  His brother wasn’t Jasper; that much was clear.  Before her death, Spee had whispered Michelle’s name.  Brendan had thought she’d been worried because Michelle had been shot, but now that he thought about it, Spee couldn’t have known about that.

Michelle’s stare riveted right through Brendan, probing and cold.

Maybe Spee had worked out what everyone else had missed.

Kim leaned in close to say something.  Michelle’s expression turned to stone.  Her head turned robotically, her eyes locking on to her target.  In a blur, she trapped Kim in a headlock and brought a bright object up to her neck.  Brendan moved in, followed by Norman.  The agent drew his gun.

“Freeze!” Michelle said, the agony of her wounds penetrating her voice as Kim struggled.  The IV stand flew to the ground when Kim’s leg swept under it.  “I swear to God, I will kill her.”

The two men held their ground as the deputy guarding the door finally woke up and peeked inside to check out all the commotion.  Michelle gave her sister’s head a violent twist and finally Kim ceased thrashing around.  The knife was just barely in view from where Michelle held it under the forearm securing Kim’s head.

Brendan shook his head in disgust.  “How did I not realize this before?”

“Because y
ou’re not very smart.”

“The guy at Trish’s even called you Jasper.”

“And I had him killed for that.”

Nobody moved for a few precious moments as Brendan weighed his options.  Even with Michelle heavily sedated, there was no way to get the blade away from her before she sliced her sister’s neck open.

“So what’s your play here, Jasper?” Norman demanded.  “Killing your sister won’t accomplish anything.”

Brendan felt like he’d already had this same argument with another psycho two days before.  Michelle started to lose her cool, shrieking out each syllable as she ranted and raved from her bed.
  “Grant was trying to edge me out of the business!  I’m the only reason it worked at all.  I’m the one who found Serge.  I’m the one who put the whole damn thing together, and Grant had the nerve to push me out?”

Michelle blinked hard a few times and yawned impressively, but her knife stayed concealed under Kim, who remained motionless.  Presumably the white sheets would’ve turned red by know if Michelle had already stabbed her sister’s throat.  At this point, Brendan noticed a weird clicking sound coming from some of the medical equipment next to Michelle’s bed.

“But I owned Grant,” Michelle insisted drowsily.  “He even followed my last little order.”

Her voice dropped off completely as her head gradually tilted to one side.  Kim’s head jerked up out of the headlock.  A lightning-fast fist to her sister’s face drew out a sharp crack, but Michelle
’s blade shot up and dragged under Kim’s retreating forearm. 

B
rendan immediately jumped in front of Norman.  “Don’t shoot!”

“Get out of the way!”

“No, don’t shoot her.”  Brendan spread his arms, palms up.  “She’s down.  She’s not going to hurt anyone.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kim
muttered, applying pressure to the long slice traversing almost from her elbow to her wrist.

Norman sighed, but kept his weapon drawn.
  “Deputy, secure Mrs. Rhodes.”

“Thank you.
” Brendan stepped in front of the cop and edged around the bed.  Kim immediately collapsed into his arms.  “How did you do that?” he asked, genuinely impressed.  He examined her arm and determined the scalpel hadn’t penetrated an artery.

“After that
thing
I told you about, I started taking self-defense classes,” she said weakly, no signs of tears coming.  “I never missed a week.”

“I can see that.”

“Plus, I was clicking the hell out of that morphine drip.”

Brendan laughed, despite the serious situation.
  Kim showed signs of shock and he had to keep her talking.  He set her down in a chair and grabbed a blanket hanging over the back of it.  Blood soaked the thin fabric as Brendan wrapped her forearm and applied pressure of his own.

“Can someone get a nurse—” Brendan started, but a pair of them plowed through him and quickly disassembled his makeshift bandage.
  One even took a moment to glare back at him in acute disapproval.

Brendan watched Kim intently as the nurses worked.
Her eyes stayed locked on her unconscious sister, whose nose still gushed blood on the previously white sheets.  Agent Norman barked commands into his radio while the sheriff’s deputy carefully handcuffed Michelle to the bed and removed the scalpel from reach.

Epilogue

Asphalt hummed loudly under the pickup’s oversized tires.  Their only companions on the long, empty stretch of highway consisted of a kettle of vultures circling over some carrion.  Brendan didn’t even know why he knew the collective name for vultures, but maybe that was part of his West Texas education.

Kim reached across the center console and put her hand on his forearm.  He turned his hand over and grimaced as his right biceps reminded him Grant had shot it a few days before.

After recovering from the initial shock of almost dying at her older sister’s hand, Kim had begged Brendan to take her on a road trip to San Antonio, to get her mind off things.  Brendan had readily agreed, maybe a little too quickly for Kim’s tastes.  She’d clearly indicated then that they’d
sleep in separate beds each night.  That was fine, but Brendan wasn’t sure that would last long.  They’d been inseparable since the collapse of the Jasper drug ring, taking solace in each other’s pain.

The doctors hadn’t kept her in the hospital long.  Apparently something as trivial as a six-inch-long knife wound meant little when insurance companies ran the show.  They’d stitched her up and
left her in the foyer before Brendan had finished eating lunch in the cafeteria.

On their way to the exit, they’d run into Marcus escorting Taryn into the hospital.  His sister had wrapped her arms around his neck, and the first thing he’d noticed was the same sour odor from last time, but instead of disgust, he’d only felt pity.

Marcus explained that he’d picked up Serge packing bags for himself and Taryn, and she’d been so out of it that she’d have followed the big bald bastard anywhere.  A nurse met them at that point and led Taryn off for a check-up before they decided what kind of treatment she qualified for.  Marcus had called ahead and organized the appointment.

Brendan thanked Marcus
for helping his sister, and for the text earlier, claiming it had almost saved a life.  In truth, all the text said was that Marcus had found Taryn and she was safe, but Grant didn’t know that.  After exchanging a brotherly hug, Marcus excused himself and headed back to his office to tackle the mountain of paperwork caused by all the excitement in Shallow Creek.

At that point, finally left alone for more than a few seconds, Kim had asked Brendan to take her the hell away from Shallow Creek.  He spent the night sleeping on her couch, but kept his promise now as they sped away from the small town.

Brendan’s cell phone rang, so he hit the button to transmit the call through the hands-free system in his truck.

“Mr.
Rhodes,” Special Agent Tyler Norman said.  Brendan hadn’t even known the guy’s first name until the day before, when the agent had given him his card.  “I just got word that a text was sent from someone at the cabin to your brother’s phone when he was driving off with Special Agent Spee.”

“And what did it say?” Brendan asked, not wanting to reengage in this crazy situation, but unable to help himself.

“‘Kill her.’”

“Whose phone was it?” Kim asked.

“Belonged to one of the dead guys, if Mr. Rhodes’ story holds true.”

“I’m guessing Tyson didn’t shoot that text out,” Brendan said.

“He says he only left your sister-in-law alone for a minute while he looked for a way to cinch a bandage for her.”

“But she was shot,” Kim said.

“For all her other faults, your sister is one tough lady,” Brendan pointed out.

Kim nodded sullenly.
  “It’s just so crazy that she was the one pulling most of the strings.”

“It was such a crazy notion that we all missed it,” Norman said.

A thought occurred to Brendan, something else he’d missed.  “Whatever happened to Scott Fisher?  He was Casey’s informant, right?”

Norman sighed. 
“We just found his body rotting in a dumpster outside a derelict warehouse across town.”

Kim gasped, but Brendan
felt little loss.  The son of a bitch and his crew had beaten his ass while the jackass snitched for the DEA.  Maybe Scott had to prove his commitment to Grant and Michelle’s cause, but that didn’t matter to Brendan’s bruised body.  In the end, apparently his secret didn’t stay secret enough.  Brendan wondered if that was why Spee broke her cover, because his brother had already burned Scott.  Or maybe her breaking cover directly led to his death.

He’d never know.

“I need both of you to stay in town for a while, so we can sort all this mess out and close the case file for good.”

“No can do, sir,” Brendan replied.  “We’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“Not acceptable,” Norman snapped.  “Get your asses back here now.”

“If you want us, come and get us
.”

“But the Torres—”

Brendan ended the call and thumbed his ringer off.  They rolled on in silence, eating up the highway and watching nothing in particular.  Brendan took Kim’s hand in his own.  She looked over with tears in her eyes, but smiled weakly before staring out her window.

There was a lot for the
two of them to work through; that much was obvious.  But they’d already cruised right through a mountain of treacherous terrain that would’ve crushed a lot of relationships.  Brendan leaned back against the headrest and took a deep breath, watching the painted lines on the road stream by.  He and Kim had a long journey ahead, but they stood a better chance of reaching their destination if they stuck together.