Page 35 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)

Chris stared at him. “No way we can sell this. It’s been in Jake’s family forever.”

“But not your family, and, as long as you’re the one who gets it at the end of the day, nothing else matters.”

Chris looked over at Rox. “I didn’t set this up,” he said, raising his hand as if swearing on a Bible. “I just heard in town what the hell was going on. I knew about some of it, about the weapons being stashed, and I’ll admit to knowing about that.” He shook his head. “I still wasn’t a part of it.”

“I don’t think anybody will believe you now,” Rox said, frowning at him. “You’re way too far into this nightmare.”

“I’m not though. I haven’t done anything.”

“Yeah, well, standing by and not saying anything is doing plenty,” she declared, glaring at him. “You know they shot Dad, right?”

He looked over at his stepfather and winced. “Jesus. No, I didn’t know that.” He took a hesitant step forward as he looked at Jake. “I’m sorry. I should have told you before it came to this.”

Jake just glared at him, then reluctantly nodded. “I didn’t think you would be a part of it, but I wasn’t sure, not when we saw how bad things were getting.”

“It wasn’t anything to do with me, I swear to God. It wasn’t,” he said almost desperately.

“Shut up,” Joe roared. “I told you before how I don’t like all that whining.”

“I know you don’t,” Chris snapped. “You don’t like anything about me.

All I’ve ever been to you was a tool, a way to get back at Jake, and I didn’t even see it in time to do anything about it.

You’ve just been using me, and you’ve lied to me, turning me against them.

They’ve been nothing but good to me, and all I’ve been to them is a jerk.

A lousy stepson, a lousy son to poor Mom, and a lousy brother to Rox,” Chris admitted.

“I’ve been so angry I couldn’t see what was really happening. ”

“And what? Now you’ve suddenly seen the light?” Joe asked mockingly.

“Yeah, I’ve kept myself drunk and loaded so I wouldn’t have to deal with it, but I’m sober now, and I can see for myself what the hell has really been going on right under my nose,” he declared defiantly. “Do you know what some of those guys have been doing? The guns aren’t the half of it.”

“Quit your sniveling bullshit,” Joe bellowed. “As I told you before, we’ll get the ranch for you, we’ll sell it, and everything will be fine.”

“I don’t want to sell it. It belongs to this family, and Rox is the one who should end up running it. It’s her place and always has been. She’s worked hard her whole life on this ranch, and it’s very much where she wants to be and what she wants to do.”

“That’s just too fucking bad,” Joe snapped, “because I won’t let my place stay in her hands.”

He raised his handgun toward Jake, but Chris stepped right in front of him. “No, Dad. That’s enough of this bullshit. You’re letting your own anger and hatred cause all this.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you think. Now move your ass before I shoot you too.”

Squaring his shoulders, Chris leaned forward and glared at his father. “Then shoot me,” he dared Joe. “Why the hell not? Everything else in my world is pretty well fucked up now anyway.”

Joe glared at him and pushed the gun directly into his belly.

Immediately Austin yelled, “This has gone way too far.” He looked over at Chris and nodded. “Thanks for coming, Chris.”

“I wasn’t ready to hear what you had to say at first, but I eventually got your message,” he said.

“Almost too late, it seems. However, once you showed up, everything changed. It was just like old times, and, like always, it pissed me off. Yet you could always talk to me, Austin, even when I couldn’t talk to myself, and that’s bullshit too,” he muttered, as he shook his head, his gaze going back to his father.

“Dad, this has gone on for far too long, and it needs to stop.”

“Oh, it’ll stop all right. It’ll end here today.” Joe took a step back, raised the gun until it was pointed right under his son’s jawline and growled, “Now you fucking move.”

Austin stepped forward, beside Chris, and said, “Leave Chris alone.”

The gun switched to him, as Austin just smiled—and in a move that Rox had never seen before—he did something with his foot that pulled Joe forward, right into Austin’s fist. The gun didn’t even go off, but it went down with Joe, and Austin’s boot followed onto Joe’s gun hand, crunching bones.

Joe screamed, as Austin bent down and removed the handgun from his fingers and handed it off to Jake.

“That’s part of the cache, so be sure the feds get it,” he stated, with a warning look at Jake.

Jake glared at him, then down at the man who’d brought this all to his family.

Austin shook his head. “No, Jake, it stops now.”

Jake glared hard for a few seconds, but Amie stepped into the room, her voice soft as she said, “Leave it be, Jake.”

He looked over at her, and his shoulders sagged as he nodded. He quickly removed the bullets from the gun, put everything on the table, and pulled out his phone. “This fucking better be over now,” he muttered. “I’m damn tired of this shit.”

Then he walked into the other room to make the call.

Much later that evening, everybody had a chance to air their views.

It ended so late that Chris was even spending the night, while they all tried to process the events of the day.

As Austin hopped out of a shower, not very quickly and definitely not easily, he put his prosthetic partway on his leg, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist, as he hobbled out of the bathroom and over to his room.

As he got to his door, the door beside him opened, and there was Rox in a nightie.

“Come on in here,” she said. When he hesitated, she shook her head. “No way. I’m not sleeping alone tonight.”

“I thought we were going to take it slow.”

“You can take it slow,” she replied, with a nod, “but I have no intention of it.”

He headed her way, saying, “Look.… I’m… It’s not pretty.”

“I don’t give a shit about pretty,” she stated. “I’ve seen so much more of you these last few days. More than I ever saw before. I don’t care about whatever it is you are worried about. I just know that I don’t ever want to see you facing down a gun again.”

“That’s a good thing,” he quipped, “because it’s really not on my to-do list either.”

She looked at him briefly and cracked a smile. “That was another one of the things you were always really good at.”

“What?”

“Deflecting a tough situation with humor.”

“Sometimes it makes things easier.” He managed to get into her room and collapsed onto the side of the bed.

She looked at his leg and asked, “Do you need to take that off?”

“Yeah, for sleeping I do. Plus, it’s good to have it off for a while.”

“Then take it off now,” she replied.

It came off quickly since he hadn’t put it on properly in the first place. Lowering it to the floor, he rubbed his stump.

She stepped forward and critically examined his leg. “It looks puffy and sore. What do we need to do for that?”

“Some cream helps, but I didn’t bring it. It wasn’t exactly normal duty today,” he noted, with half a smile.

“So, Kat is the one who built that for you?”

He nodded. “Yeah, we’re constantly working on new designs. I figure, by the time she’s finished working her magic on this one, I should be in really good shape. She’s always working on new and better designs.”

“I suspect this is the kind of thing that you’re never set for good on, are you?”

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I prefer to think that I’ll get it to the point where everything is good enough.”

“No, not you,” she argued. “You’ll still be striving to get a better leg, better movement, or better whatever it is you think you need.”

“It’s not even so much about need ,” he pointed out. “I just want to be back to as good as I was before.”

“You have metal sticking out of your leg,” she noted, frowning at him.

He nodded. “I had osseointegration surgery where that titanium was implanted. They make it for the prosthetic, so it’s a whole lot easier to get it on and off.”

She nodded slowly. “Wow, there’s a whole world here I hadn’t even considered.”

“If you’re serious about wanting to try again with me,” Austin began, “this is how I come.”

“Good. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She gave him a gentle push backward, so that he was stretched out on her bed.

“Are you sure?” he asked, as she scooched down beside him. He watched the smile in her eyes grow and deepen, as he sighed happily. “You know we don’t have to.”

“I know that, but I figured that, with everything else going on tonight, nobody would care either way. However, I care. I care so much, and I knew that we came awfully close to losing each other today,” she added. “I don’t want to go through that again.”

He nodded and pulled her close and gave her a gentle kiss.

“Besides,” she muttered, “I also had no clue about your leg, and I wanted to know if you would be comfortable enough to share it with me.”

“I wasn’t planning on spending the rest of my life hiding in the bathroom. You can bet on that.”

She grinned. “No, I can’t imagine that either, although it might be fun to try.”

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “No more hiding, no more lack of communication, everything open and aboveboard. This is the leg. This is how it is. If you can’t deal with it, you need to tell me now.

If you look closely, you’ll find plenty of new scars since you saw me last, so you might as well check all that out too. ”

She shook her head. “Stop it. You’re fine.

You are gorgeous just the way you are.” He burst out laughing, and she grinned.

“See? You always used to laugh when I said things like that, but I mean it. You’re one of the really beautiful people in the world, both inside and out.

” She placed a finger against his lips when he went to crack a joke. “No, I mean it.”

He nodded. “Thank you. I’m not used to hearing compliments.”

“I know,” she said, “and it’s one of the saddest things in our lives.

We’re really good at knocking each other, but we’re not very good at building each other up or at reminding each other when we’ve done something great, but these last few days have been great.

” She leaned over, lightly kissed him, and then deepened it.

Just like he remembered.

When he groaned, she lifted her head and asked, “Did I hurt you?”

He laughed. “Isn’t that my line?”

“Nope. I know you’re not injured,” she replied, putting air quotes around that last word, “but I don’t want to hurt you either.”

“Honey, I don’t hurt that easily,” he replied, “so you’re doing just fine.”

“Good,” she said, as she waggled her eyebrows. “I just wanted to know that we’re still good to play.”

“We’re still good to play,” he agreed, with a big grin, as he pulled her on top and shifted so they were lying more side by side. “I might be missing part of my leg, but everything else works just fine.”

She laughed. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I figured you weren’t stopping me, so everything must be functioning.”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

She stopped and glared at him. “Even if everything wasn’t functioning, that isn’t the end of the world,” she declared, “although I’m grateful that everything is intact because I do want kids.”

“I know, and so do I… someday,” he added, with a warning note.

“Someday could be sooner than you think,” she teased, “because I don’t have any protection.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “We’ll take life it as it comes.”

And, with that, he rolled over, stretched out on top of her, his weight on his elbows, as he looked down at her and whispered, “I am so damn glad I came to find Cowboy.”

“And I’m so damn glad too,” she muttered, “that I put out the message to the War Department that he was missing.”

He nodded. “Now if only I had some way of knowing if Kat really understood what she started.”

Rox replied, a twinkle in her eye, “Oh, I think she does.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I contacted her.”

He stared at her in shock.

Rox shrugged. “The War Department told me that she was involved in handling issues with War Dogs, so I contacted her, told her where I was and what was happening. She mentioned that she might know somebody who could come who happened to be familiar with this area. I asked if by chance it happened to be a guy named Austin, and, if so, that she should tell him to get home where he belonged.”

He stared at her, lifting up even higher to study her expression.

She nodded. “I’m not kidding. I’m sure Kat will back me up.”

He just stared at her and started to chuckle. Soon, he was laughing so hard that he rolled off onto the bed beside her. “Oh my God, if that doesn’t beat all.”

“I’m serious,” Rox stated. “It was definitely time for you to come home. I just couldn’t figure out how to tell you.”

“You could have just picked up the phone.”

“I did,” she teased, with a quirky smile in his direction. “Just maybe not calling you directly, but calling the person you would listen to. Plus, it made for a hell of a good reason to send you here.”

“Convenient that Cowboy was kidnapped when he was.”

“Don’t you even dare think such a thing. You know I would never hurt an animal. Personally, I get on better with animals than people.”

He placed a finger on her lips. “Stop, all that is over now. Whatever that was, it’s over, and now we’re moving on to a whole new world.”

She smiled. “Glad to hear it. Don’t you think that we should maybe spend a little less time talking and a whole lot more time on something else?”

He smiled, opened his arms, and pulled her into his embrace. “Personally, I would have been okay if we hadn’t talked at all.”

He lowered his head and kissed her the way he’d been wanting to ever since he’d first set eyes on her again.