Disturbance

TWENTY-NINE

Donovan Cotter heard the shots and saw panic cross Nicholas Parrish’s face. Donovan’s arms were full-Irene had passed out again-and while he was tempted to drop her and pull out one of his weapons, instead he set her on her side behind the large couch and took cover there himself.

“Fuck you!” a voice shouted from upstairs.

More rounds blasted before Parrish, who had stood frozen in the middle of the room, belatedly followed Donovan’s example.

“Get up there and stop them!” Parrish said.

Donovan stared at him.

Parrish scowled back. “Do you want her to live or-”

“You know she is little more than a curiosity to me,” Donovan said calmly. “I am far more interested in staying alive myself.” He thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll be right back…”

Parrish grabbed him. “You’re not going anywhere!”

“I have a-let’s call it a first aid kit-in the back of my vehicle. From the sound of things, if anyone survives, we’ll need it.”

“You fail to return, and I’ll-”

“Yes, I know. I’ll be back in a minute.”

When Donovan returned with his field kit, Parrish eyed it warily, but they were both distracted by screams from upstairs.

They heard more shots, followed by several loud thumps.

Then silence.

Donovan waited.

From upstairs, groaning. Parrish looked increasingly anxious but said nothing more.

They heard another groan.

“Help,” Quinn called weakly. “Help!”

“Drop your weapons,” Donovan called.

He heard two heavy thumps.

“Kick the guns away from you.”

They heard the sound of one gun sliding. “I can’t,” Quinn said.

“Hurry,” Kai moaned.

Donovan strapped his field kit to his back, stood, and made his way cautiously up the stairs, gun drawn. Parrish crept behind him.

He found Kai and Quinn sprawled at opposite ends of the hallway. He glanced between the bleeding men. Kai had a wounded arm. Quinn had a head wound, and his right thigh had been hit. Donovan told Parrish to help Kai. He picked up their loose weapons, holstered his own, quickly gave Parrish a pair of gloves and packet of gauze, and told him to apply pressure to Kai’s wound. He then moved toward Quinn.

The hallway was in shambles. Wood, plaster, and a small table lamp had sustained more hits than either combatant. What lousy aim, Donovan thought. He made his way over the debris and knelt beside Quinn, who was lying half out of a bathroom.

“That goddamned crazy son of a bitch shot me!” Quinn said, his right hand pressing down on his right leg, the other hand held to his head.

“Looks like you did the same to him,” Donovan said. He took a pair of gloves out of the field kit and put them on. After a quick look at Quinn’s leg, he decided the bullet hadn’t hit an artery and put a thick gauze pad over the wound. He moved Quinn’s left hand away to look at the head wound. “Use both hands to keep the pressure on your leg,” he told him.

“I feel faint.”

“You’ll be all right. Press hard.” Donovan could see that the head wound was superficial, although he was sure it was painful. He took out another sterile pad and pressed it to the wound, then had Quinn put his hand back on it. He returned his attention to the leg wound, quickly cutting away most of the bloody pant leg.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Quinn asked.

“You’d better hope so,” Donovan answered distractedly. The leg looked like hell, and there was a lot of blood, but Donovan had seen many gunshot wounds and knew Quinn was relatively lucky. He’d need to get to a hospital, but it was survivable.

Quinn screeched in protest as Donovan applied more pressure.

“If you’d rather bleed to death, fine. And if someone heard gunfire and next hears your screams, you’ve bought yourself more trouble.”

Quinn gritted his teeth but stopped crying out.

Donovan took a packet of Celox from the field kit and used it to stop the bleeding. He added a field dressing and turned toward Parrish. He was surprised to see him frozen in place.

“Parrish!”

Parrish looked at him blankly.

“How’s Kai?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Come here!”

Parrish hesitated, then crept forward.

Donovan had done extensive research on his father and his brothers, and on Irene Kelly, Frank Harriman, and Ben Sheridan as well. He knew that Parrish rarely shot his victims but was no stranger to firearms, and certainly the long list of Parrish’s psychopathic behaviors included plenty to make one believe he wasn’t afraid of blood, wounds, or body parts.

But perhaps, in Parrish’s world, he had to be the one who inflicted those wounds if he was to tolerate them.

Donovan regretted that circumstances wouldn’t allow him to toy with Parrish’s reaction to his sons’ mayhem. Instead he sharply ordered him to discard the gloves he had on and put on a new pair, so as not to transfer contamination from Kai to Quinn. Parrish obeyed. “Put your hands where mine are. Apply pressure-steady pressure.”

Donovan quickly headed back to Kai, taking the field kit and changing out his own gloves.

Kai’s eyes were shut tight, and he was moaning softly. He had been shot in the right arm. Probably trying to hit your eye, Donovan thought. Neither one of you can aim.

He shook his head. He should have gone for a gunfight with these two weeks ago, shot them dead in the middle of the park. He despised people who carried guns and didn’t know how to use them.

“How harmful could it be, getting shot in the arm?” Parrish asked.

“Very. Fatal, in fact. If it had hit an artery, he’d probably be dead. But as it is, it’s not too bad.” A little too deep to be called a graze, he thought, and undoubtedly painful. Better to make Parrish and Kai worry about it. He could do that and still tell Parrish the truth, in case Parrish knew more about such wounds than he was letting on. “It may keep him from using the arm for a while. He could easily end up with a bad infection. If that happens, he could lose his arm or even die of blood poisoning.”

Parrish watched Donovan for a few moments, then said, “You didn’t tell me you have medical training.”

“Only what I learned in the service. I’m no doctor. You need to get them to a hospital. Soon.”

“No. Too big a risk. You take care of them.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“You’d fucking better make sure I get to a doctor,” Quinn said between clenched teeth. “You don’t want me to die-I’ve got a little insurance policy.”

Well, Donovan thought, give a few points to Quinn. Under other circumstances, Donovan would have found the stunned expression on Parrish’s face almost laughable. But the coldness that quickly replaced it ended any desire to laugh.

“What do you mean?” Parrish asked.

“I mean, Daddy Dearest, that I’m not so fucking stupid that I’d come up here to spend time around you and your loving sons without putting something in place to protect myself. If I don’t make contact with an associate at arranged times, all sorts of information gets released to the police.”

Parrish struck him hard across his bloodied face.

Quinn hit him back, knocking him to the floor-a move that shocked Donovan nearly as much as it did Parrish.

“Stop it,” Donovan said. “That won’t get us anywhere. Quinn, sit still or you may bleed to death yet.”

Kai opened his eyes and frowned but stayed out of the argument. Donovan continued working and managed to get the bleeding stopped. He looked back at Parrish, who was holding a swollen cheek and looking malevolent.

“I may just go ahead and kill you,” Parrish said to Quinn.

“You aren’t one to make rash moves,” Quinn said. “And that would be rash. You need my resources.”

“Has it occurred to you,” Parrish said, “that perhaps I haven’t put my future entirely into your hands? Kai’s already a wanted man, and so am I. Therefore, the only thing of importance you could tell the police is where we are. We don’t have to stay here, so don’t press your luck.”

Quinn smiled. “What are you going to do? Finally kill Violet?”

“No…,” Kai said.

“No,” Parrish said. “I don’t think I’ll be discussing my plans with you, Quinn.”

“After all we’ve been through together?”

“There’s no need for the two of you to fight,” Donovan said. “Quinn and Kai need to get to an ER as soon as possible. I’ll load the two of them into my SUV and take them to a hospital. I can manage it without being seen.”

“They’ll both be arrested!”

“Kai probably will be,” Donovan agreed. “But if we could arrange your escape, we can do the same for him. There’s no reason for them to arrest Quinn.”

“Who’s going to take care of Violet?”

Donovan nodded toward the stairs. “Irene. She took care of her father when he was dying of cancer, I’m sure she can manage Violet’s care.”

“No!” Kai protested. “I’m not going. I’m staying here.”

Donovan stared at him for a moment, then looked at Quinn.

“While I appreciate what you’ve done so far,” Quinn said, “I want to get professional care.”

“Take him,” Parrish said. “He thinks he’s got insurance? Well, it’s mutual destruction. I’ve got more than enough on him to ensure he’d end up on death row.”

“Exactly.” Quinn smiled faintly. “You don’t try to stab me in the back, I don’t try to stab you in yours.”

“They’ll catch you, Donovan,” Parrish fretted. “They’ll know by now.”

“They may know, but they won’t catch me.”

Parrish helped Kai get settled in bed, something he could do without lifting. It was left to Donovan to carry Quinn downstairs. He placed him on a large leather couch and covered him with a blanket. Quinn looked tired and weakened, but there was no sign of shock setting in.

When Parrish joined them, a few minutes later, Donovan spoke softly to him. “Stay with Kai, keep him warm, watch for signs of shock, and especially for signs of infection.” He named every sign of dangerous levels of infection he could think of. “Right now, I’m going to take care of getting Irene settled next-”

“I’ll stay with you while you do that.”

“Look, someone’s got to keep an eye on Kai-”

“You don’t give the orders around here, Donovan.”

Donovan considered testing that and decided this was not the time. “Fine. While I’m with Irene, it’s important that you don’t say anything.”

“Why?”

“The substance I gave her has a number of properties. Among other things, it’s a hypnotic and amnestic drug. She’ll obey me, but your presence will just confuse her. As it is now, when she wakes up tomorrow, she probably won’t remember anything after the moments when she started drinking with me this afternoon.”

“What drug was it?”

Donovan looked away, hiding his contempt. “You’d probably call them roofies.”

He carried Irene upstairs to another bedroom, one that connected to Violet’s through a door on the opposite side of a shared bathroom.

Irene awakened and looked up at him in puzzlement. He set her on her feet.

“There’s a bathroom between these two rooms. Take your clothes off and take a quick shower. Shampoo your hair. When you are finished showering, dry off with this towel. I’ll set some clothes out for you to change into.” She complaisantly walked into the bathroom, although she wasn’t steady on her feet, so he helped her take her vomit-stained blouse and pants off, and stayed in the bathroom with her while she took the shower. She seemed a little more alert after that. She dried herself off and changed into the soft, warm clothing he had brought for her, all without argument. At his command, she brushed her teeth. He told her to get into the bed and sleep. She obeyed, falling asleep almost immediately.

He opened a duffel with other clothing suitable for the mountains and hung several of these items, with the exception of the parka (which he kept in the SUV), in a small wardrobe that stood in one corner of the room. He placed the duffel in the bottom of the wardrobe.

Throughout this process, he had been aware of Parrish watching them. He had also been aware that there was something off about the attention, something unexpected. Parrish was interested in her, but not in the way a predator should be interested in his prey.

Donovan placed her soiled clothing in a cloth bag and took it with him.

Parrish and Donovan left the room, locking the doors leading to the hallway, and Donovan saw Parrish look back with a frown as he pocketed the key.

Now or never, Donovan thought. He took slow breaths and made his mind quiet, then turned to Parrish.

“She’s changed, hasn’t she? Not your ideal any longer. Aged beyond that.” He made sure the bag of soiled clothes was between them, the smell of the vomit unavoidable.

Parrish looked at him and answered, “I’ll think of something to do with her. I owe her.” But his eyes had betrayed him. Donovan had seen him glance to the side before he answered, caught the sign of evasion. Saw his nose wrinkle at the scent emanating from the bag.

Donovan considered how to make use of Parrish’s lack of attraction to Irene, which he was sure was not just a matter of having seen her get sick, although that helped. The beginning of a plan came to him.

“Let me have her first,” he said.

Parrish laughed. Donovan stayed silent.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Parrish said in disbelief, stepping a bit farther away from him.

“I’ve been on the hunt for her. I caught her. So yes, I am.”

“What about the child?” Parrish asked.

Donovan shrugged. “As I said before, a curiosity. Nothing more. Let’s be honest, no one in this… family… is capable of much more. I doubt you feel much more than curiosity about me.”

“Hmm. You do intrigue me. More than your brothers do, as long as we’re being honest.” He studied Donovan’s face, then said, “You’d trade?”

“Her for the child? Why not? I’m no more interested in children than you are.”

“Then why have you done as I asked? I was so sure you were not like Quinn or Kai.”

“I’m not. As for doing what you asked-well, let’s say I’ve been curious about you as well.”

Parrish was silent. He looked uneasily back at the locked door, then said, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a small reward. I’ll think about it.”

Donovan left it at that. To press too much would backfire, he was sure of it.

He placed the soiled clothes in a washing machine downstairs and started the wash cycle. He took some clean blankets from a supply in the laundry room, then used them to form a makeshift bed in the back of the SUV. He loaded Quinn into the vehicle and drove off, refining his plans.

Quinn moaned as they hit the first curve of the winding mountain road but didn’t say anything until he realized they were merging onto 91 West.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked irritably, trying to sit up.

“Stay down,” Donovan advised, glancing in the mirror, “unless you want to have to answer some embarrassing questions later.”

“The pain is killing me,” Quinn complained, although he lay back down. “I thought you were taking me to a hospital.”

“I am. In Las Piernas. Just not directly. I’m sure you can understand the need.”

“No, I can’t. Goddamn it…”

“What explanation will you give for being in the San Bernardino Mountains, especially if Nick Parrish’s plans continue to get so spectacularly screwed up?”

There was a silence.

“How are you going to explain being shot?”

“I can’t think straight-fucking hell this hurts!”

“Then let me do the thinking. If you pay attention, maybe I can keep you from dying. If you actually do what I tell you to, I might be able to keep you out of prison, too.”

After a moment, Quinn said, “If you think I’m going to reveal the name of my contact-”

“I don’t,” Donovan said. “If I asked you, you’d only lie to me, so why bother?”

“You’re calling me-”

“A liar? Yes. And for your own sake, you’d better be as expert at it as I think you are.”