Page 14 of Rough Patch

She walked as if she didn’t have a care to the back of the bar and pulled a pistol from where Jez kept it in case of emergency. The sound of the slide pushing a shell into the chamber proved the point she wanted to make, but not so much as when she pressed the barrel against Kale’s forehead. “No. Fuck you.”

He laughed. “You think you’re so safe here. So protected. All these puny bitches at your beck and call. You don’t know shit.”

Fiona shrugged. “So why don’t you tell me. We’ll call it a deathbed confession.” She pushed his forehead back with the gun.

“Your boyfriend is playing footsies with the FBI and your driver was an undercover special agent. I did you a favor.” Nothing earthshattering to her, but not everyone in the room had the benefit of the same information system she did. “The Screaming Demons are a joke. Trying to go legit. Trying to take yourselves out of guns and drugs and whores.”

“We never…” Oh, God. They’d never run women. Her father wouldn’t have… Not the problem at hand. She cleared her mind and stared. If Kale kept talking, Grier wouldn’t last through the night. She looked up at Hamilton. “Get him down to the cells.” The cells underneath the club hadn’t been used in… as far as she knew, ever, but right now she needed them.

Hamilton and Jim wrestled Kale out the door and every other eye in the room honed in on Fiona, standing beside Grier. She put the gun down at her side and glanced at her husband. Her head and back ached, her heart hurt and she had a million things to decide in the next few minutes. But to do it, she had to keep Grier alive. For a little while at least. She nodded to Sage. “Him, too.”

It was for his protection as much as to punish him.

“Fiona!”

Grier struggled against Sage’s hold until One-eye Jim crossed the floor to use the butt of his gun against the back of Grier’s head to knock him out. Was it wrong to be grateful?

* * *

Jez used sandpaper to clean the cut over his eye. Probably just rubbing alcohol on a piece of gauze but felt like sandpaper. He winced and jerked away as she attacked again with her “help”.

“Easy, goddamn, Jez.”

She glared and jabbed the gauze back at his face. “I’ve known that girl since she was three years old.” Not news. “She was raised to take this club over and lead it into the future so we all had something, big money to share in.” Again, nothing he didn’t already know. “And you, little son of a bitch, are not going to take her down.”

He would have answered, might have even looked at her, but currently his jaw hurt too bad to open, and his eyes were swelling with an alarming speed. He sat quietly absorbing the pain she seemed intent to inflict.

“And where’s your head at?” As if to answer her own question, she slapped the side of his skull. “You have a baby on the way and you’re talking to the FBI? You want your kid born in jail? Shipped off to some foster family? You, as well as anyone, should know the dangers there. You want that for your kid?”

Grier didn’t owe anyone an explanation. He’d done what needed doing, found the rat inside their club. Probably would’ve helped to know who was getting Demon information from Kale Riznewski, but that would come. In time. If they let him live past tonight. He had hope. Why would Jez be cleaning his wounds if they just planned to take him out and kill him?

“I won’t let anything happen to her.” It was the most he could manage and as he spoke, his head swam, a haze of black closing in. He probably, at the very least, had a concussion, some broken knuckles. That fucking Kale’s jaw must have been forged in steel or carved in some granite. “I love her.”

“You have a funny damned way of showing it.” His eyes closed and he swayed, but she held him up. “Don’t you go to sleep on me, boy. They’ll be coming for you soon.”

“Who?” The word sounded far away, but a reasonable enough question.

“You know who. Hamilton and Fiona, Sage and Jim. The boys who want an explanation.”

He mumbled incoherent words. “Sedotal. Rape. Hamilton on the hook.” Incoherent if the story wasn’t running on a reel-to-reel in his mind. His brain filled in the missing details but he couldn’t seem to get it all out to make her understand.

“What?”

Grier tried again. “I can’t find Sedotal. So, I called the FBI, asked for help. He tried to rape her, Jez.” She put her hands down, stopped her “mothering” and stared. “He isn’t the kind of guy who will stop coming for her.” A light clicked in his head. “When did Kale show up here? Before or after Sedotal disappeared?”

“After?”

“Doesn’t matter. He killed Dave. But the FBI thinks it’s Ham. And if I don’t hand him over, I’m going down for it.” The details were all there. He just needed to sort them so they made sense.

“Did you kill Dave?”

“No. Kale did. But they think it’s Ham.”

Jez cocked her head. “I could see that. In a dark room, it would be easy to mistake one for the other.”

“And the picture was taken with a night vision lens maybe. It’s blurry and dark.” Every word he said cost him pain and breath, but he needed someone on his side, someone who believed in him. And since it couldn’t be his wife, maybe he could use the woman closest to her. “But it isn’t Ham. The tattoo. We need to find out who Kale is working for, why he’s here.”

The cell was mostly dark except a caged lightbulb overhead. And empty except for one wooden bench bolted to the floor. Not even a toilet. If he couldn’t talk his way out of there, it was going to be a very long night.