As Quentin turned to leave, the window imploded. Flying glass hurled through the air at them. It was instinct more than anything that had him diving over the bar, taking her to the ground with him. It was fear that kept him there, shielding her body with his own, as the sound of gunfire filled the bar.
Glass shattered above them, sharp pieces of broken bottles and the mirrored shelving behind the bar rained down on them. His clothes took the brunt, but a few of the larger pieces weren’t so easily deflected. Even with him to shield her, Lowey hadn’t escaped without injury. He could see blood on her hands from the glass on the floor and minor nicks and cuts.
“Son of a damn bitch,” he hissed. “What the hell is going on?”
She glared up at him. “You tell me! They didn’t start shooting until you walked in! Who the hell else have you pissed off, Quentin?”
“Nobody who’d want to put in a bullet in me!” he snapped. Well, except for his father, but that wasn’t reallySamuel’s style. Even if it was, he’d never do the dirty work himself, and right now he was too damned broke to hire anyone.
When the last of the gunfire faded, the quiet was overwhelming. It was broken by the sound of an engine revving and the spewing of gravel in the parking lot. Quentin stood up and raced toward the door, what was left of it. It cost him. Every bruised muscle, every abused inch of him protested. But he managed to get a look at the ancient beat-up truck and the lack of a license plate. It didn’t matter. He knew exactly whose truck that was.
Turning back to the bar, he saw Lowey staring around in dismay at the wreck of her business. “Don’t guess the sheriff bothered to inform you that his cousin—your ex-husband—was getting out of jail, did he?”
Her face paled considerably, but her lips firmed into a hard line and the look in her eyes would have withered a lesser man. “No. That asshole didn’t tell me.”
Quentin nodded, then looked back at the two old drunks who were still sitting on the floor under broken tables. Neither of them appeared injured. In fact, they were grinning from ear to ear at the excitement, prompting him to shake his head.
“Call 9-1-1, report the shooting.”
She laughed bitterly. “They won’t do anything! Hell, he almost killed me and barely served a year!”
“No. They won’t arrest him. They won’t stop him. But if you don’t file a report, then your insurance company won’t pay for the damages…and I don’t think you’re ready to tackle that out of pocket,” he explained.
She sat down then. Heavily, as if the weight of the world was suddenly pressing down on her. “I hate this. I should just leave. I should just sell what’s left of this place and go.”
He couldn’t tell her no. The truth was that she was right. Getting the hell out of Fontaine was the best thing Lowey could do, for herself and for him. But those words wouldn’t come. So instead, he said simply, “This is your home, Lowey. And you’re too damn stubborn to give it up.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “You’re right about that. You’ll have to call the cops…they won’t show up if I do it.”
Quentin sighed and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He didn’t question her statement at all. The entire family that she’d had the great misfortune to marry into at the tender age of eighteen was full of rednecks and assholes, the two descriptors not being mutually exclusive. He didn’t labor under the illusion that Sheriff Silas Barnes would hurry just because his last name was Darcy.
Two
Lowey retreated to the bathroom of the bar. At the back of the building, the restrooms had at least been spared the worst of the damage. Still, a bullet had traveled through the wall and embedded itself in the mirror. The spider web crack around it brought home to her just how much danger they’d been in. Her hands trembled as she tried to shake the bits of glass and wood from her hair.
She had half a dozen tiny, stinging cuts all over her, but Quentin had borne the brunt of it. She still couldn’t fathom how he’d moved so quickly given the shape he was in. Someone had kicked his ass up one side and down the other, and while she was feeling somewhat more sympathetic to him than normal at the moment, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that whatever he’d gotten, he’d asked for.
No one, not even her nutball, rage-addict of an ex-husband, could make her as crazy as Quentin Darcy could. And he’d made it more than clear that he wasn’t in the market for anything more from her than rolling around in the sheets from time to time. So why was he there? Why, when his life had clearly gone to shit, and she unknowingly needed him the most, did he have to show up? And, of course, he was saying all theright things, too. But then, he was good at that. Quentin could be a charming devil, at least when he was trying to get in your pants, he was.
“Get it together, Lowey,” she whispered to herself. “You’re going to have to face down your asshole ex-in-laws, and you can’t do that if he’s mucking up your brain!”
With some degree of composure returned and most of the glass shards shaken out of her clothes and her hair, Lowey walked back into the main room of the bar and felt it all shatter around her again. It had been her grandpa’s before it was hers. He’d come back from Korea and opened a little watering hole, as he’d liked to call it—a gathering place for men. Eventually, women had taken up coming there too, but by and large, it had been envisioned by him as a place where other old soldiers like himself could gather. It was a place where they didn’t have to worry about being polite or following the rules of a society they didn’t really belong in anymore.
Now it was a shambles. The last connection she had to him, and to her grandmother also, had been destroyed. It looked like the war zones he would never speak of to her, or to anybody else. There were things broken and shattered on the floor, pictures and mementos of his life that she would never be able to repair or replace. Joey Barnes had robbed her ofsomething else, she thought bitterly. He hadn’t been content with convincing her to marry him when she was still too young to know better, then ruining her life. He’d had to come back and fuck it all up again and again.
“You okay?”
Lowey looked up and realized that she’d just been standing in the middle of the room in a pile of broken glass and busted wood, staring around like someone in a trance. The question had come from Quentin, who looked at her with enough concern for her to believe he might actually care. But she knew better than to fall into that trap again. Regardless of what he’d said, he wasn’t someone she could ever count on. Sure, he didn’t want anything bad to happen to her, but counting on him for more than that would just get her heart broken.
“I’m fine. Just trying to assess the damage,” she lied. “You don’t have to stick around. I know you’ve got better things to do with your time than help me deal with the Barnes Family Drama Hour.”
“If I leave, I just have to deal with the Darcy Family Drama Hour,” he said. “Hell, it might even be a two-hour special after today…besides, I’m the only one who saw Joey’s truck. And we both know Silas is going to give you a ton of shit about this. Somehow, he’ll make it out to be your fault.”
Truer words, she thought bitterly. Whatever else could be said of the Barnes family, they knew how to stick together, through thick, thin, and probation. Silas had given her shit at every opportunity since the day she’d turned Joey in for cooking meth. She’d filed for divorce while he was incarcerated for that, and Silas had written her tickets for everything coming and going. Then Joey had gotten out, beat her half to death, and somehow, by sending him back to prison for it, she wasstillthe bad guy.
Thinking about the Barnes family wouldn’t get her anywhere. She’d been questioning the family dynamic and how they functioned for years, and it still wasn’t any clearer. So, she focused on something else altogether.
Curious and wanting to think about anything besides her ex-husband and his misbegotten clan, she asked, “So what did happen today?”
