Jesus. He did. He really did.
“Since when were you the voice of the angel on my shoulder?” he asked, not taking his gaze off Will.
“I’m not,” Quinn said, and Aaron could hear that reckless grin in his voice. “Just making sure it’s what you really want.”
“He set my dad up.”
“I know.”
Aaron swallowed around the painful lump in his throat. He lowered the Glock, his hand shaking. “My dad was a good man.”
“The best,” Quinn said. “Better than mine.”
“He knew about us, and I never got the chance to tell him myself. I never got the chance for him to tell me it was okay.” That moment…Aaron had feared that moment, feared rejection, but he knew now, thanks to Quinn, that his dad would never have disappointed him like that. His dad would never have failed him, so why hadn’t Aaron had the courage to tell him? Why had he let his fear hold him back? Because he’d been a kid. Because he’d thought he hadtime.
It was one of a thousand moments Will Henderson—he could no longer think of him as his uncle—had stolen from him. His dad seeing him maybe get married someday, maybe have a kid. It was hundreds of fishing trips and camping trips where they did nothing but hang out and talk. It was decades of Thanksgivings and Christmases and birthdays, all cut short because Will Henderson had sold Paul Larsen out. Sold him out, and destroyed the lives of his wife and son in the same moment.
And then he’d had the audacity to pretend he was theirfriend.
His anger blazed again, going from ice cold to burning heat in a moment.
“Do you want to do this, Aaron?” Quinn asked again, his voice serious this time.
Aaron stared down at Will Henderson.
Did he really want to do this?
He raised the Glock.
Chapter 21
Quinn’s forearm throbbed in an all too familiar way. The wound bled sluggishly now, as he bandaged Jimmy’s arm in lieu of taking care of his own.
He needed to call all of this in, but it was hard to know who exactly to call in this situation. Definitely not the local cops, and nobody who had heard the shots would call them either. They knew better than to mess with MacGregor business, after all.
Except…shit, he needed to text Charlie.
“Brody? Text Charlie it’ll be a while longer and to wait for us,” Quinn told the apparent fucking sharp-shooter.
“Sure.” Brody tapped away on an ancient looking Nokia phone.
Quinn glanced at Jimmy’s arm. He was much worse off; Quinn was pretty sure the bullet had grazed the bone as it went through.
“Do you have anything for the pain?” he asked, making Jimmy’s glazed-over gaze snap into his.
“Coke,” Jimmy grunted, then shook his head, wincing. “But I don’t want it. Just…bandage it and I’ll live.”
Quinn shrugged in a “suit yourself” way. He would’ve brought his cousin that hit if he’d wanted it. Gunshot wounds were a bitch when they started to hurt.
Brody had wandered off and came back just as Quinn finished with the first-aid kit. At least Jimmy had been prepared for everything.
“We can put him in the room over there, it’s empty,” Brody said, pointing at a door Quinn hadn’t noticed.
Jimmy winced in a different way now. He seemed to deflate, and it took until Quinn frog-marched him to the doorway to realize why that was. The room had obviously been furnished for the human trafficking. There were mattresses on the floor and buckets nearby. That was it.
“You have any more guns on you?” Quinn asked, not really wanting to pat Jimmy down. He could tell how fucking defeated he was already.
“Nah, I don’t bother with knives and you took the pistol.” He used his good hand to dig out his phone and handed it to Quinn. “There.”
