Abercrombie’s eyes shift sideways to find that his comrades are not, in fact, falling in line beside him. “What?” He scoffs.
Before his gaze can slide back to me, my hand wraps around the barrel of his shotgun, jerks it from his grasp, and swivels it around so the butt now rests against my shoulder.
A throaty exhale stumbles out of the moron, who’s at least wise enough to raise his hands as he stares down his possiblefate, his gait swaying slightly as he seems to remind himself to breathe.
“Doesn’t feel too good having one of these pointed at you, does it?” I ask him as the distant rumble of a motor approaches, getting incrementally louder with each half second.
I don’t even turn as my oldest brother Forest pulls up in his SUV—emblazoned with an Owens Wildlife Wardens logo—from the access road. He swings the vehicle onto a nearby patch of land, and his boots hit the dirt at the same time he kills the motor.
“Welcome to the party,” I offer, with Abercrombie’s gun still pointed at him.
“Sir, there’s been a mistake. We didn’t do anything.” The genius tries to infuse his words with urgency and confusion. “This lunatic is threatening to shoot us!” His eyebrows raise, as if willing my brother, the very head of our outfit, to believe him.
“Save it, Junior. The trail cam caught the whole thing,” Forest barks, ambling up beside me. “You all are ballsy but stupid.” Forest hooks his thumbs in his jeans pockets, and I lower the gun and unload it.
Abercrombie seems to think he can put his hands down, but what he doesn’t know is that my twin brother, Hawk, and youngest brother, River, sit on opposite sides of the horizon behind them. Hawk straddles his ATV while River stands in his Jeep, leaning his folded arms over the windshield.
“I’m going to need you all to place your weapons on the ground and take a step forward,” Forest hollers to the whole group. Then to Abercrombie he says, “What’s your name, kid?”
The kid gives him a bored look, like he’s been inconvenienced. “Kenneth Bruchard,” he says as his minions step in line with him, laying their shotguns a few feet ahead of them on the ground.
“Bruchard?” I echo, hearing a bell go off in my head.
“As in Sheriff Bruchard?” Forest lifts his eyebrows at the kid.
“Fuck yeah, Sheriff Bruchard,” Abercrombie—Kenneth—verifies, full of pride like he’s just played four aces.
The tick in his jaw tells me this is his last-ditch effort to display any kind of dominance.
“This keeps getting better and better.” Forest sighs in satisfaction.
Kenny Boy clenches his teeth and slants his eyebrows. His shoulders twitch, and he bends his knees. It’s clear he’s thinking about going for one of the guns, but before he has a chance a gunshot blast bounces off the nearby trees, and a gust of dirt wafts up between Kenny’s legs.
“We’ve got guns too!” Hawk sings in a falsetto, waving his rifle from where he still sits on his quad.
“Hawk!” Forest booms over at my twin. “You unhinged fucking menace!”
“Goddamn psycho,” I mutter as Hawk bellows out a laugh that echoes over the quarry.
Kenneth is stock still as a dark patch plumes on the front of his pants.
“Enough fucking around!” Forest reaches for his cuffs. “Line up, all of you!”
“Hopefully you’re all ready to cooperate?” I lift an eyebrow over my shades and look at each of them. Four heads nod like bobble toys as they raise their hands in the air, ready to be read the riot act. Forest closes in on the sheriff’s boy, but I hold up a hand. “Nope, this one’s mine.” I cuff Kenny, take hold of the back of his neck, and march him toward my brother’s SUV. “Let’s go make that call to your dad.”
“Fucking bullshit,” he grumbles under his breath, adding more about his dad’s pull not getting him jack shit.
“Sorry,” I let out as I help him lower his head into the vehicle. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
“Speaking of popping back some beers, and blowing off steam,” Forest eyes me after all the SUV doors are shut.
“The way Hawk is acting, I doubt he’s sobered up fromlastnight,” I mutter.
“Exactly,” Forest retorts my observation. “I’m going to need to tear that little shit a new one and put him on Park duty for that stunt and I’m going to need alcohol and moral support while I do it,” he huffs out, and I can see the stress clouding his eyes.
“Can’t fucking wait,” I mutter, taking a couple steps backward so he can open his drivers door and I can start the trek back to my truck.
After starting the engine, Forest calls out to me through his open window. “I need you to do a quick sweep of the river before you sign off.”
