A/N: Can we all just take a moment to hug my beta, the endlessly talented MarinaBlack1? She deserves it. She is a writing/editing MACHINE, ladies and gentlemen. Truly! And while we're spreading love and hugs, I'ma send a shoutout to Persepholily and Lucawindmover, as well... this trio of ladies is such an incredibly talented group, and I am SO proud to call myself their friend.
A/N2: I also want to hug all of YOU, especially those of you taking that extra minute at the end to leave me feedback! It's so incredibly rewarding, and always makes me want to post again IMMEDIATELY. I truly appreciate it.
Part 4
"Took you long enough," Chick's drawling baritone seemed too close in the darkness, and Dylan froze with one foot on the wooden porch of the farmhouse. Fuck.
"Chick. You're here."
Chick appeared around the corner, scary and slow. "Of course I'm here, Dylan. You know what's not here though? My money. – Hey, no you don't…" Chick jumped onto the porch with surprising agility, cutting off Dylan's path to the door. "No need to rush in there and check on your little houseboy. Gunner's just fine, and he'll stay just fine long enough for you and me to enjoy a nice heart-to-heart."
Dylan glared. Adrenaline poured through his veins, setting his muscles on fire.
"Caleb owes me fifty thousand dollars, kid. I'd love to say my beef's with him, and him alone… but he's not here. So. Sins of the father, and all that." Chick shrugged. It was like watching a mountain shrug. A mountain with a shotgun.
"I can't help you, Chick." Dylan licked his lips quickly, thinking. "Caleb… Caleb took off without telling me anything. I don't know where he went, okay?"
Chick laughed and wandered proprietarily over to an Adirondack chair at the edge of the porch. It looked older than the house itself and when he sat down, the worn boards groaned in protest. Dylan cursed himself for leaving his handgun in the pickup truck; for the first time in days, he remembered how oddly comforting he'd found Caleb's presence. It had been a long time since he had felt this naked and alone. The vulnerability gnawed at him.
"Oh, Dylan. Dylan, don't fuck with me. I know you're smart, and I know you were the one looking for easy money. There's no way your father conned you out of all that cash. So give me what's mine, and we can get back to the business of being neighbors."
"I d– look, I don't have your money, okay?" Dylan spread his hands out, palms up. "I just... don't."
"That's bad news," Chick said, nodding. "And here's my current problem with that answer. See, I'm getting my fifty grand back no matter what. Now, I can't exactly threaten you, because I need you to make it happen. But I can threaten the people you care about. I hate to do it; it's fucking messy when things get to this point. But you've left me no choice, Dylan."
She shouldn't have been the first person he thought of. He should have thought of his mother, his brother, even Gunner, before Emma Decody's broad easy smile and soulful eyes… but there she was. Never mind that Chick had no idea who she was, or that she had crept into Dylan's world so quietly it scared him. Dylan choked slightly on the idea of his neighbor touching her, ever.
"I'm not trying to cheat you, Chick. How can I make you believe me? If I had your money, I'd sure as hell give it back to you."
Chick stroked his rough golden beard. He stared at Dylan, still, silent, and the younger man grew restless under the scrutiny. "You'll get it to me. I have faith in you. And you know what? I'll even give you time. Because I am nothing if not a generous neighbor." Chick stood and nodded cordially, then stepped down from the porch. "Don't be a disappointment, Dylan. I'll give you one month, but that's it. My generosity has a limit."
As soon as those broad shoulders and long hair had faded into the shadows of the woods, Dylan rushed inside the house to find Gunner. The teen was sprawled on his cot in one corner of the small main room, already snoring, a half-melted bag of ice on the floor beside him. Besides a face full of colorful bruises and a healthy dose of blood staining the front of his shirt, he seemed fine. Dylan sighed, relieved and annoyed in equal measure. He cleaned up the ice before grabbing a beer and heading back outside. He skipped the chairs, grabbing a seat on the edge of the porch and leaning into a wooden post for support.
Tonight the bay was almost still, but not quite: the moon, a warm orb high in the sky, fractured into a million shards of cold light wherever it touched the water. It danced over the crest of each delicate ripple teased into being by a shy breeze. Despite a day that seemed to have lasted years, Dylan let his head fall back against the pillar and gave himself over to the scene. The smell of pine trees and saltwater and dirt. He sipped at his beer and thought about her.
"Nice little piece of land you got here."
Emma belonged to the farm. She loved it as much as he did, and now in the quiet darkness Dylan comforted himself with traitorous daydreams, sunny ones about the kind of family they both wanted but had never quite found anywhere else. The kind where being fucked up wasn't a prerequisite, where love always won and hate was a dirty word. His throat tightened until he struggled to breathe. Dylan pulled once more at the beer in his hand, his thumb picking into the label as he tried to talk himself out of that kind of fantasy. Too many things stood in the way: the imminence of Chick Hogan and his proposed violence. Norma's perpetual drama, and that money-suck of a motel. Emma's no-doubt brutal medical costs. Then there was Norman, of course.
There was always Norman.
Eventually Dylan gave up his seat, the cold of night driving him back indoors and down the hall to the bathroom. He was desperate to get clean, and he peeled off his t-shirt as he walked, shivering at the chill brushing over bare skin. The shower, by contrast, was just a bit hotter than necessary. Dylan stayed in a long time, letting the pressure and the sting of the water coax at least some of the tension from his shoulders. He always felt this way after an encounter with Chick: tight in the gut but also like there was some oiliness the man exuded. Something needing to be scrubbed off the skin, in case it was catching.
"Okay, thinking about Chick Hogan in the shower is kinda fucked up." Talking to yourself in the shower isn't much better, he reminded himself with a shake of the head. It took no effort to arrive on an infinitely more satisfying option. Emma was always right there anyway, waiting on the edge of thought for a chance to peek in and say hello. Dylan ran rough fingers through wet hair and recalled that last touch in the hospital, when her hand had grazed his cheek.
He missed her. They'd been apart only a few hours, but those had been some pretty shitty hours. A lonely hot shower, with Gunner snoring in the front room and Chick hiding out in the woods somewhere… None of this was how he had pictured his life. Not that he'd necessarily pictured Emma in it before, but now that she was, he wanted her in every part of it. He wanted her in the living room, sitting by the fire reading or whatever the hell she did for fun. He wanted her in the kitchen, helping him make breakfast. And fuck he wanted her in his bed, naked and free of all the… the tubes and oxygen tanks. He wanted those dimples and that wide happy grin of hers, he ached with the need to make her moan his name... Dylan rapped his forehead against the tile of the shower wall lightly, twice, trying not to be That Guy. He failed. The water was losing its heat but he didn't notice, letting it cascade over the back of his neck and down the valley of his spine as he gave in to the need for her. He closed his eyes and succumbed to imagined breasts, round and reactive to his touch, his mouth. To the flare of illusory hips shivering under his fingers. To the fantasy of Emma's rough heady voice as he made her come against his tongue, and Dylan Massett curled forward, face in his hands, shoulder pressed into the cool tile, swearing at himself for being such a fucking mess.
The water was frigid by now, and he finished washing in a bitter flurry of self-loathing curses and goose-pimply flesh, grateful for the relative warmth of the cotton towel as he tiptoed across the hall to his room.
… But maybe... He could make it happen. Maybe there was a way to ensure Emma would be safe with him. It was the worst option. But it was also the only viable way to get Chick Hogan off his back, and if it worked he'd even be able to help Norman. He threw on clean clothes and headed back out to the pickup, eager for action now that he'd settled on a plan.
Eager to earn that imagined future with Emma.
Jodi Morgan's barn had escaped the DEA raids, thanks to a certain devious sheriff and his obsessive need for control. Nobody but Dylan and Romero had any clue just how valuable the second floor of that facility really was, and Dylan was fairly confident the police officer hadn't had a chance to move anything yet. There had been too many other distractions recently.
He kept his headlights off as he pulled up to the wooden building, just in case one of the handful of scattered neighbors happened to be up late. The barn doors creaked too loudly in the silence of this remote location, and Dylan froze, waiting. He half-expected one of Jodi's dogs to come tearing across the lawn. Or that crazy goat. Instead a lonely cricket continued his song uninterrupted, and Dylan breathed out slowly. He slipped inside the pristine white space, pleased to find a familiar warm glow escaping from upstairs, illuminating the corner ladder.
He could feel Jodi's absence immediately: in the abnormal height of the plants, their rangy wildness, the overall look of work abandoned mid-thought. Romero had kept the lights on and the water flowing, but he was no farmer. Dylan wandered through the grow-houses and lamented the loss of several promising strains Jodi had been cultivating. He found her laptop, damaged from the constant humidity but maybe Gunner could pull something from the attached USB drive. Dylan pocketed the small blue stick and began collecting trays of the youngest plants, pushing back memories of the doomed Morgan family as he worked. He didn't need that kind of curse hanging over him.
The truck bed was loaded with over a hundred viable specimens when he heard it: the unmistakable rumble of an approaching SUV.
"Shit." There was no time to hide his vehicle. He considered hopping in the cab and making a run for it, but he had barely moved half of what he needed. And a strange car speeding down the driveway would arouse too much suspicion; the Morgans' property would come under new scrutiny, its treasures lost to him forever.
No choice, then, really. Dylan grabbed his handgun and tucked himself just inside the barn door, waiting. He swallowed hard when the approaching vehicle stopped, and measured footsteps crunched over gravel toward the building.
"You're a fucking idiot, Dylan, you know that?" Alex Romero oozed annoyed world-weariness even from the other side of the barn wall. "Did you honestly think I wouldn't know the minute you set foot on this property?"
How did he know? Dylan shook his head and stepped outside - into the bright beams of the Sheriff's truck - careful to keep his hands up and his gun visible. "I don't want trouble," he began. The words sounded empty even to his own ears.
"No, you do. You do, you little shit, or you wouldn't be out here trying to screw me over." Romero stepped forward, grabbing Dylan's pistol and emptying it of its clip with an angry sigh. "You said you were walking away, and I believed you. Dammit! What is it with you people? Why do I keep falling for your bullshit?"
"I don't... I don't really understand the question," Dylan mumbled, and Romero squinted at him in exhausted disbelief. "...You know, whatever. Um, circumstances have changed. I need… fuck. I just… need money."
"Yeah, well. Don't we all."
"No, you don't understand. People are… people are counting on me. People I care about. You have to believe me, there's no way in hell I'd be here if I didn't have to be."
Romero paced, his jaw ticking. Dylan shifted uneasily and continued, wondering how many more times he would have to convince people of his sincerity tonight.
"I'm desperate, okay? I wasn't trying to cheat you. I wanna… you know, set up a deal. Like we talked about originally. It'll work. I still have solid connections, and I'm good at what I do. Ask anyone who's worked with me."
"You do realize most of your work references are dead?"
Dylan shifted under the older man's glare. "That's not... well okay, that's true. But I'm not dead, and that counts for something, right? It's pretty obvious you don't know what you're doing with these plants – " he cringed at his own poor word choice and the scowl the sheriff shot him, but plunged on anyway. "But – but that's why you need me, isn't it. Jodi's crops are the best around, it's common knowledge. And there's a hole in the market right now. It's perfect timing if we jump on it. I can handle growing and distribution, you know that – "
"St – just stop talking," Romero snapped. "You people need to learn how to shut the hell up for five seconds, and let me think!" He kept pacing.
Dylan licked his lips and waited. He tried to ignore the heat of the blood pounding through his veins, the fight-or-flight response to this latest potentially deadly situation.
"Okay. Here's what's going to happen."
Dylan sighed and relaxed his shoulders. And let Romero tell him what to do, a surrender of responsibility he found comforting after everything else the day had pushed on him.