Page 29 of Quentin
“It was a nice touch,” Ciaran said softly.
“What’s that exactly?” Silas demanded, thought he strongly suspected that he already knew.
“Letting yourself into Lowey’s bar, stealing her gun to kill your dipshit cousin, and then replacing it without anyone being the wiser…except her security cameras, of course.”
The bar had a shitty security system, but he’d known about it. Cameras were something he hadn’t considered she might have. Why would she bother? There was nothing in the place worth stealing. But then again, she was a woman alone, and a woman who knew all too well just how dangerous a man could be. Why wouldn’t she? But he wasn’t ready to admit it just yet. “You’re full of shit, Darcy. And if you don’t watch it, I’ll be taking you to court! Those kinds of accusations aren’t taken lightly.”
Ciaran laughed. “Still trying to brazen it out…you may be short on brains, Barnes, but you’ve got balls the size of a truck!”
When he’d had Samuel Darcy in town, that would have been enough. “I’ve never liked the Darcys. Doing business with Samuel was a necessary evil in this town, but his high and mighty, holier-than-thou. His children? I despise the very ground they walk on…even the bastard ones like you.”
The Irishman didn’t appear to be the slightest bit fazed by the insult. He just smiled. “To prevent any further ugliness, I should tell you that the security footage has already been sent to several other people…you do anything to harm Harlow Tate or my brother, and you’ll burn for it. It doesn’t matter what you do, Barnes. You’re not getting out of this.”
Silas closed his eyes, let the reality of the situation sink in on him. He was done. Completely done. “Get the hell out, Darcy. Tell your brother he and his little whore are safe.”
Ciaran looked at him quizzically. “You’re just going to let this go quietly?”
Silas considered his options. Suicide was one. He could try to pin the murder on Harlow Tate and wind up going to prison himself. He could just put a bullet in his head and call it done. Or he could try to make a deal with the Darcys one more time. Reaching beneath his desk, he pulled out the pistol he kept there. “Lots of murders go unsolved. Joey’s will be one of them…assuming you’re willing to let the footage vanish.”
“And if I don’t?” Ciaran asked.
Silas pulled the hammer back on the revolver. “I’m not going to prison. I’ll die first…and if I’m going to die, I’ve got nothing left to lose and nothing to stop me from taking you with me.”
Ciaran nodded. “That’s kind of what I thought you’d say, Silas. That’s why I didn’t come here alone.”
Silas looked up then to see Matt Crawford and two of the state boys standing in the doorway. “Drop your weapon. Silas Barnes, you’re under arrest for the murder of Joseph Barnes,” one of the troopers said.
Silas did the only thing he could in that moment. He put the barrel of the gun under his chin and squeezed the trigger.
Twenty
Lowey was seated in the living room of the Darcy house, listening to Quentin explain the whole dreadful mess to his family. Annalee and Mia were sympathetic, as they would be. Clayton and Bennett were just pissed. They wanted to go beat the hell out of Silas and be done with it.
“Ciaran is handling it,” Quentin replied. “He and Matt are on top of everything, and we need to stay out of it.”
“Well, just look at you two!” Mia exclaimed. “Suddenly thick as thieves when you couldn’t even be in a room together for more than five minutes without coming to blows.”
Quentin just shrugged. “He’s gone kind of above and beyond to make up for that.”
At that moment, the door opened, and Matt Crawford walked into the house, Ciaran right behind him. They both looked like they’d seen better days.
“What happened?” Lowey asked.
“They’re keeping your gun as evidence for the investigation, but there’ll never be a trial. Silas is dead,” Crawford said.
“What?” Lowey rose to her feet, too stunned to remain still in the wake of what they’d just told her. She couldn’t quite grasp what they were telling her. “You had to kill him?”
“No,” Ciaran answered reluctantly. “He killed himself. When he knew he was caught and knew that he was going to face prison for it, he put a gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.”
She sank onto the sofa again as Quentin came toward her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine. I guess…I’m better than fine…it’s over. But I just didn’t expect this.”
“What happens now?” He directed the question to Matt.
“Ciaran and I will have to make a formal statement about the circumstances of Silas’s death. At some point, they’ll probably want a deposition from you all about everything that’s happened over the last two days…but then it all just goes away. It’ll die down and then…nothing,” Matt said.
“That seems almost anticlimactic,” Lowey stated. “I had thought there would be some kind of resolution, some kind of Perry Mason-Matlock legal showdown where we all get cross examined, and then Silas gets arrested in court…I know, it was an elaborate fantasy, but that’s just what I was picturing.”
