Page 26 of Quinn

“Would you rather she expose us…our family…our business? Crush us…everything we’ve built? Our contacts can only do so much. So, are you saying you would put a woman you barely know before your family? You know what happened with Langone who refused to stay, do you want that to happen again? It might not be one of our contacts Arabella turns to with her story about our family.”

The arsehole had a point, Langone had been with us for three days, long enough to know about our drug business and go running to one of the officials in Lae because unlike the rest of our men, we hadn’t been able to intimidate him with threats. Fortunately, the Police Chief had been one of ours and had escorted Langone back to the compound where we’d disposed of the traitor. But in my heart I knew Arabella could be trusted not to turn on us and she was starting to mean something to me. Oh, who was I kidding, she already meant something. How the fuck had that happened? Why the fuck did I care so much about her? Before I had a chance to answer Connor, we were interrupted.

“Boss. Boss.” Waigi’s voice had a startled tone and all five of us in the room catapulted onto our feet.

Connor moved to the obviously distressed man’s side.

“What the fuck is wrong?” he growled.

“You have to come. Jasiter is in the wood shop. He has a nail in his head.”

Jasiter was a carpenter of sorts, one of our men who built wooden structures we had a need for and he also worked the fields.

“What do you mean he has a nail in his head?” Jake asked, as puzzled as the rest of us in the room.

“You have to come, Toriomo has fainted and Jasiter has a nail sticking out of his head.”

Connor swung into boss mode. “Logan, call Barry and tell him we need him down at the wood shop. Daly, work with Logan to get the flight plan done and book the hotel. Jake, Quinn, come with me.”

We hurried down the hill to the wood shop where we found Toriomo laid out on the floor and Jasiter sitting in a chair with his hand against his forehead.

"Take care of him, Waigi." Connor pointed to Toriomo before moving to Jasiter’s side where we joined him.

We all bent forward and took in the sight of the pointy end of a nail protruding through the back of Jasiter’s right hand. Connor reached up to lower the hand but Jasiter moved away.

“It’s stuck to my head.”

Oookay…The three of us looked at each other before I asked, “What do you mean it’s stuck to your head. Has the fucking nail gone through your head and come out the front?”

Jasiter shook his head tentatively.

“Explain, Jas.” I was getting rather frustrated with trying to figure out what the fuck had happened.

“You put an old piece of wood through the band saw, didn’t you?” Jake obviously had some idea of what had taken place in the wood shop.

Jasiter nodded.

“How many fucking times have you been told not to do that?”

Jasiter shrugged.

“Jake?” Connor questioned.

“One of the things carpenters are taught is to never, ever…” Jake glared at Jasiter. “…put an old, used piece of wood through a band saw because you don’t know if there are any nails still embedded in the fucking thing and you’re likely to end up with it embedded in your fool skull.”

“But how the fuck would a nail end up going through his head?” I stepped closer and checked the back of Jasiter’s head but found nothing.

Jake shrugged. “It hasn’t but I’m not sure exactly how it got embedded in his forehead.

Waigi had brought Toriomo around and helped him onto a chair.

“What happened Toriomo?”

The man mopped at his face with a wet cloth Waigi had handed to him.

“We were working on the new seedling boxes for Miss Katrine.”

“You used old wood.” Jake accused rather than asked.