Page 15 of Brother In Arms

“Yes, I believe in second chances. Don’t you?” she shot back.

“Still, I can’t guarantee these men won’t press charges.”

I snorted, “Been there before,” I muttered as the officer unhooked the cuffs. My shoulders creaked as I brought my hands in front of me and rubbed at my wrists. I sniffed and walked a few paces away to go talk to our guys who were falling over themselves to ask if I was alright. The doors clapped shut on the back of one of the medic busses and I called out to the paramedic going for the driver’s seat, “Take him to Mercy General, when you hit the ER, ask for Doc Sim.”

“Yeah, I know Doc Sim, he’s one of the best. We’ll make sure your friend is taken care of.”

“Alright man, thanks.”

The paramedic shut his door, chirped his siren, and pulled out. Renaldo didn’t look good. Unconscious and bleeding from his head… fuck, I should have heard the shit going down sooner.

“Where are you going?” Bailey demanded sharply.

“Back to work,” I called back. “Straw ain’t gonna put its self away.”

I left her standing by one of the deputies who told her to let me go, that they’d come find me in the barn if they had any other questions. As soon as I got in there, I hid my gun. Didn’t want to be a felon caught carrying, and I was fuckin’ lucky that they hadn’t had the chance to pat me down to find it in the top of my shitkicker on my right side. I stashed it deep in the hay bales I’d yet to put away and went back to work.

The sharp report of car doors shutting and the crunch of gravel under car tires let me know the cops had taken off. A few minutes later, Bailey slipped back into the barn. I dug out my piece and put it back while she walked towards me. I kept hidden behind the last of the bales and when I straightened, it was with one of the bales on my hooks so she was none the wiser.

I hauled it over to the wall of straw and got it stacked and when I turned she was in my path, holding out the black leather rectangle that was my wallet. The deputy had lifted it when I was being cuffed, to look me up. I transferred one of the hooks to my other hand and took it from her with a mumbled thanks while she stared up at me with wide brown eyes.

“You just waded in,” she said. “There were five of them and they had weapons and you didn’t even think about it, you just went in and saved Renaldo.”

“Wasn’t my first rodeo and those guys were pussies. Local thugs, likely hired by your piss-ant brother.”

She was shaking her head, “One of the men you hurt told the police Renaldo owed them some money before he was taken by the ambulance.”

“And you believe that shit?” I huffed a bitter laugh.

“No! It’s just… the police did. I don’t know what to do.”

Yeah, I’ll just bet they did…I thought. Out loud I said, “Suck it up, buttercup. It’s only going to get worse if you plan to stick this out.”

“How would you know?” she asked, scowling.

“It’s why I was hired, remember?”

She scrubbed her face with her hands and said, “What, fight fire with fire? Pit criminal against criminal?” She said it with such a huge amount of disdain dripping from her sexy as hell voice I couldn’t help but get fired up but not the way you’d think. She was pissing me the hell off.

“Right, next time you have five guys kicking the shit out of one of your people I’ll just stand around with my thumb up my ass like you did. Sound good?”

She scoffed and said, “I called the cops, I’ll have you know!”

“Yeah, and what’d they do? Tried to arrest me for saving the day. What were you going to do in the meantime until the cops showed up, huh?”

“I don’t know, give them suspect descriptions? License plate numbers?”

“Fucking citizens,” I muttered.

“Hey!” She barked. “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t even ask for you to be here, so stop being such an asshole!”

“Why, because you’ve been such a goddamned peach?”

She let fly and I caught her wrist without much effort at all on my part. The hay hooks clattered to the cement floor and I jerked her off balance, facing her into the bales and pinning the lower half of her body with mine.

“Let me go!” she demanded.

“No dice, buttercup. Your mamma and daddy may not have taught you it’s not nice to hit people, but I damn sure will.”

---