Page 32 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)
The two men looked at each other, and Stubby frowned. “Oh, no fucking way you’re doing that to me, buddy,” he snapped. “I know all about your plans for getting out of this town.”
“I do want to leave this town. It’s not as if I’ve been hiding it,” Skinny snapped right back. “I want to head west. Lots of opportunities for a guy like me out west.”
“Sure, but it’s pretty close-knit,” Austin added. “They’ve got families out there who have been doing this for decades.”
“Sure, but I bet I can find a pretty young thing to come over to my side, to join her knowledge with mine—and other things.”
“You really think so?” Austin asked, with a smirk. “I don’t.”
“Why? What the fuck’s wrong with me?”
“For one thing, your attitude toward women. They can smell that a mile away, unless you’re planning on kidnapping and coercing them, and that won’t go down too well with some papa bear.”
“Whatever.… I don’t care. I’ll find something. Women are great to have as friends and all.”
Austin smirked. “Until, when push comes to shove, you can’t trust them.”
“I’m not at all worried about that,” Skinny bellowed. “This whole BS of revenge has me wondering about staying here any longer.”
“Any idea why that middleman of yours has got revenge on his mind?”
“Yeah, something to do with his wife.”
“His wife?” Austin repeated.
“Yeah, his wife. I think he’s pretty stuck on the fact that she left him. Left him for somebody else, and took his son with her too.”
“Well shit,” Austin muttered, as an answer to this puzzle piece that he hadn’t even considered as an option reared its ugly head.
He knew it was more than time to put an end to this.
“So, what’ll it be, guys? That’s law enforcement coming your way, pretty damn fast,” he noted, as the noise picked up.
“What the hell?” Stubby grumbled, as he looked over at his buddy. “We have to get out of here. We also need the goods though,” he added. “You know what’ll happen to us if we lose them,” he told Skinny.
“I wouldn’t worry about that middleman boss you’re talking about,” Austin interjected in a conversational tone. “We’ll pick him up in no time.”
The men looked at him, then at each other, and Skinny shouted, “Fuck it, I’m not losing everything.
” He turned the gun in Austin’s direction, but a sudden snap and a howl came from Skinny, as Cowboy leaped forward from the underbrush where he’d been sitting and took Skinny’s gunhand down to the ground, pulling the man with it.
Skinny continued to scream and to shout.
Meanwhile, Stubby froze for a second and then turned his gun on Austin too, but he was facing a shotgun.
“Go ahead and fire, asshole,” Austin taunted him. “I’ll make sure you’re dead before you take another breath. Besides, your buddy here is going to hand over all the information that we could possibly want because I won’t give him any medical treatment until we get that.”
Stubby, his gaze narrowing cruelly, turned his gun and fired, shooting his buddy.
“Well fuck,” Austin muttered, as he stared at Stubby. “That’s a pretty low thing to do.”
“He won’t stop screaming, and, besides, he’s been pissing me off, talking about how he’ll make it in the big-time as soon as he gets out of here.
He would never make it big-time. That guy’s nothing but a piece of shit.
Most of the girls he picks up he has to beat into compliance because, believe me, they aren’t willing. I think it’s a shit game.”
“What’s your game?”
“Nothing,” Stubby spat. “I just make money on every deal I broker,” he explained. “It’s all about that for me, and then I’ll get out of here.”
“Really? How do you figure you’ll do that?”
The guy lowered his handgun ever-so-slightly.
“Because you’re my ticket out of here,” he shared, “and all I need is to get loose of this. I don’t give a shit about the goods that you pick up here or the ones that are still hidden.
I really don’t give a crap. I’ll hand over all the information, but I’m not sticking around to take the fall. ”
“You didn’t have anything to do with the shooting at the house?”
“No, that was the piece of shit… middleman, and you’re right. It’s all about revenge,… but I don’t know who all the players are. You better watch out though. That one’s got a poisoned history.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Austin said, “but that won’t get you off the hook.”
“It will if I pass everything I know over to you.”
“You’ve got to make that deal with the feds, not me.”
His eyes widened. “Feds, huh ? That’s not exactly the way I thought this would go.”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t, but, if you think you’re getting out of here scot free, think again.”
At that, Cowboy sat glaring at the body of his victim, but then his gaze now glommed onto the second man.
“I’ll just shoot him, you know? If that dog comes after me, he’s dead.”
“Because you’re the kind of guy who shoots animals.”
“I kept it penned up, thinking he would be a good guard dog, then something about his ownership seemed to tick off our boss. He wanted the dog kept permanently because somebody else was suffering.”
“Yeah, she was suffering all right. It was her dog.”
“People are stupid to get hung up on emotional stuff. Then it just backfires on them.”
“But not you, huh ?”
“No, not me,” he spat, his gaze narrowing as he watched him. “You can bet I’m not so fucked up that I care about that shit.”
“No, you just care about yourself.”
“Yeah, nobody else to care about. You need to remember that the world’s messed up, and, just when you think you’ve got it straightened out, it gets even more messed up.”
“You’re not getting out of this.”
“I won’t talk to the feds. That’s not happening.”
“You’ve got a pretty long record, I’ll bet.”
“Don’t matter what I got,” he stated. “Some things we do in childhood just hang on to us.”
“Some things that you do because you’re an asshole hang on to you too.”
Stubby gave him a sly smile and nodded. “You could be right, but they don’t make deals with me, not when they figure out my history. So, absolutely no incentive to keeping you alive, and, if that damn dog comes my way, I’ll enjoy taking care of him.”
“You might,” Austin conceded, “but I’ve still got my weapon, and, if you think I’ll let you shoot my dog, you’re wrong.”
Stubby’s eyes opened wide. “Another fucking animal lover? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Stubby’s movement had been so subtle, but Austin had seen it before. He knew what happened next, listening for it, and soon Stubby was sent flat to the ground, screaming in pain.
And, with that, two men in suits stepped out from the shrubbery, where they’d been waiting and watching. “That should have been a clean shot,” muttered one of the suited guys.
“You could have stepped in and taken him down at any time, you know?” Austin noted.
But the fed frowned at him and asked, “Why? You had it handled. Besides, we were getting it on tape, so it’s all good.
” He stepped closer to Stubby. “Too bad this one’ll live.
… I didn’t account for the wind at the last minute.
God knows it’s all for best to just knock them on their ass permanently, and then we don’t have to go through the court cases. ”
“Yeah,” his partner agreed, “but Uncle Sam really likes it if we do it this way, as it gives him good numbers to spout out to the public that we’re doing our jobs.”
“Do your damn job then,” Austin grumbled, as he glared down at the body on the ground, “because I’m done with this bullshit. There are also at least six caches of weapons here, so take them all.”
“That is huge,” Fed Number One agreed, with a big grin, “and it’s all on video. We’ll have to do a full search regardless.”
Fed Number Two added, “Plus, we need to set up a sting to get the boss middleman and whoever else may be involved in running the women, the drugs, the guns.”
Fed Number One pointed around. “We’ve got part of that handled. I’m not sure who this other boss is, but you can bet we need to find him too.”
Austin nodded. “Yeah, you need to find him. I’m just not sure where,” he added, “but I have a pretty damn good idea who it is.”
Fed Number One turned to him and asked, “Who?”
“I think you’ll find that it’s Amie’s ex-husband, Chris’s biological father.
And he’ll be pissed even after all these years that Jake isn’t handing off this whole ranch to Chris, or at least a controlling interest, because I think Chris’s biological father figured it would put Chris and him on easy street.
I’m pretty damn sure he’s been planting that seed in his son’s mind for a long time, and then all kinds of shit started to happen at Jake’s place, revealing that things wouldn’t go the way Chris thought they would. ”
“Which is just bullshit,” Fed Number One replied. “Jake will never let anybody but family have this ranch.”
“Sure, but, then again, I don’t think Jake was expected to live very long.”
Both feds nodded, as Fed Number One replied, “Right, and that makes sense.”
Just then came a shout, and Austin turned to see several other team members joining them.
“Now,” the federal agent noted, “you can take your animals and head back to the ranch, where you’ll find a very pissed-off Jake, not to mention your wife—who is basically impossible to keep in line because she figures you are in some sort of trouble.”
“Yeah, that’s what being married is all about.”
“Is it? I thought you guys were separated?”
“No,” he corrected, “we just had to work out a few things.”
“If that’s what you call it,” he muttered, “whatever.”
Austin called to Charlie, who immediately stepped up. Austin hugged his favorite horse, then looked down at Cowboy and gave him a good scrub behind his ears. “I’ll see you back at the ranch then.”
“What about the other caches?” asked Fed Number One.
“I’m sending you my video right now. Go through it and you should see each spot from where you’re standing right now.
The sooner you get that shit out of here, the better.
You might want to leave messages somewhere, like a big sign that reads Hey, we found all of them, which hopefully should get these assholes out of here permanently. ”
At that, the feds just laughed and nodded. “Sure, we can do something.”
Austin added, “Let me know when you guys are through here. I’ll have to come in behind you and fill up all the holes, so the animals don’t fall into them.”
The feds gave him a wave and brought up Austin’s video on their phones.
At that, Austin hopped up on Charlie and called Cowboy to come back with him, and together they trotted for home.