Page 26 of The Barn: Frost and Q

Twenty-One

I t was damn near impossible to pace effectively in a wheelchair.

Oh, Q could manage it just fine, thank you, but it just wasn’t satisfying.

He zipped back and forth and forth and back, wearing marks in the ungodly expensive wood floors. He hadn’t heard from Frost in more than twenty-four hours, and it was driving him out of his goddamn mind.

He knew how it worked. He got it. They were busy. They were fighting fires, and SAT phones didn’t always work, especially not when they had been dealing with a motherfucking eruption.

But he also knew he had been on the line when the flashover happened, and he’d heard the screams as they’d run.

He heard them over and over, and he wanted them to?—

“Stop.”

Quentin blinked up at Carson. He hadn’t even realized the man was in his rooms with him. “What?”

“You have to stop. He’s going to be fine. I refuse to acknowledge any other option, so you’re just going to have to fucking stop it.”

“I can’t just stop it. That’s my guy that’s out there, you know? That’s my man, my husband. I don’t have to just stop it.” Carson wasn’t being reasonable, dammit. Worrying was Quentin’s stock in trade.

“Yeah, you do. Because when he comes home?—”

He loved that thought. Not if, but when.

“—he’s going to need you to have your shit together. He’s going to need you to be able to hold the center. And I’m gonna help you. And so is Boone, and so is Tug. We’re all going to fix this as best we can. But you?” Carson glared at him. “You are going to have to keep your shit together.”

He blinked, kind of staring at Carson a little bit. “Did you give the same talk to Frost when I got shot?”

Carson shrugged. “The same one? No. Was it close? Hell yeah. It was super close. It was a little bit easier with you because one, I practiced more, but two, you’re prepared. You’re ready for shit to go wrong all the time. Frost, not so much. So?—”

He kind of chuckled a little bit. Mostly because he didn’t know what else to do. “I just want him to come home and be okay. Actually, he doesn’t even have to come home if he doesn’t want to. He can stay out there and work, but I need him. I need to know he’s all right.”

“Yeah. Me too, man. I hate this shit.”

He glanced at Carson, surprised. “What?”

“I’m not a fucking adrenaline junkie; I’m a goddamn oil man who owns a hobby ranch.

I ride horses. I have a four-wheeler. My idea of a fun time is to—well, I mean I have some ideas that aren’t any of your affair but—my big idea of a fun time is to just get the hell out and about on my four-wheeler, possibly do some fishing.

How the hell I managed to hook up with a bunch of adrenaline junkies, I don’t know. But I did, and so here we are.”

“You poor abused man. Shut up.”

“I’ll tell you what.” Carson pointed one finger at him. “I know that you are not a traditional submissive, but I have done nothing for you to be ugly toward me, and I don’t appreciate it.”

His lips parted. He had been playing, not being an asshole. “I’m not being ugly. I’m just giving you shit.”

“I don’t appreciate it. Please don’t do it anymore. I don’t like it.”

He nodded. “All right, yes, Sir, I’m… My apologies.”

“Thank you. So, what are we going to do?”

Q tilted his head. “What do you mean? What are we gonna do?” That question didn’t make any sense.

“Are you trying to tell me with all of our money and all of our information and all of your hacking skills, we can’t figure out what the fuck is going on?” Carson stared at him like he was insane.

“Okay. Okay, sure.” He blew out a hard breath. “Well, to be honest, I don’t know.”

Carson didn’t seem impressed. “Well, figure it out. Let’s do this. I don’t want him just floating around without us knowing what’s going on, like we don’t give a shit. We both know that we give a shit.”

“Well, I’ve already made a phone call to his chain of command, and Cap’s not telling me anything, he hasn’t filed any paperwork, and I can’t get through on the SAT phone.”

“So who’s the one above the captain? Who do I call?”

He blinked at Carson. “You can’t just go above Cap’s head, officially.”

That would be a giant pain in the ass.

Carson arched one eyebrow. “Watch me. I’m not asking for them to give me special information. I’m asking whether or not your husband is okay. That’s all I want to know. Is he all right? And if he’s not all right, then what the fuck?”

Quentin shook his head, a little overwhelmed to be honest, but tickled at the same time. Carson was a good man and had his back, even if he was oversensitive to teasing. “I’ll get you a phone number. Do you think you can get me some information?”

That would be a win-win.

“I’ll get you the information.”

He nodded and managed his first deep breath in hours.

“See?” Carson looked him in the eye, pointing at his own eyes, then at Q’s. “You and I just have to work together. We can make this happen, all right?”

“Yes, Sir. We just have to work together. We can make it happen.” He rolled past Carson on the way to his computers and grabbed Carson’s hand, squeezed it. “Thank you. I can’t?—”

Carson held up one finger. “No, you won’t. We’re not going there. We’re going to be fine. Do you understand me? You. Me. Frost. Tug. Boone. We’re all going to be fine. I’m not going to put up with this shit.”

Q nodded and chuckled. He wasn’t going to argue with that. Not him, that was for sure. Not now.

Now he was going to believe.

“You’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”

That was the last thing Chauncey had said to him before the big man had passed out.

They’d been trapped, those of them who had made it to the fire break, and Chauncey had stared at him, those bright green eyes focused and sure.

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You might not have a choice.” Chauncey coughed hard, chest convulsing. “I told you, your man knows things.”

“He always has. He has a knack.” But it didn’t matter right now. Men were dying, and the fire was too big to fight, at least right now. “He wants you to come up to the Barn, come and visit him. He wants to see you. He’s always been unnaturally fond of you.”

“Then you have got to get the fuck out of here.”

They had. They’d lost sixteen men out of twenty-three, and Chauncey was still on the touch-and-go list, part of this whole fucking situation.

“I gotta call my husband. I gotta call Quentin. I need him to know I’m okay.” He stumbled into headquarters, not sure what day it was, what time it was, not knowing anything but that he had to get the smell of burnt flesh out of his nose and he wanted to talk to his goddamn husband.

Right now.

“He’s been trying to get hold of you. I’ve had phone calls from fucking senators, okay? I am done with this bullshit—dealing with jumpers that have money,” Cap snarled. “Tell your son of a bitch husband to quit pulling strings.”

Frost just sort of stared. His brain kept trying to make all of the words that Cap was saying fit into something that sounded like English.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I don’t care.

Quentin is a hacker. If he had strings to pull, he’d be on my phone right now, and I don’t even have a phone right now.

It’s crispy fried! Now I need a phone to call my fucking husband! ”

Whoa, it was hard to scream when you had smoke damage. Yelling made him cough, and he actually had to sit down for a minute, right there on the floor. Cap was standing over the top of him, wavering in and out of focus, which wasn’t very fair.

“—you fucking die on me, you son of a bitch.”

I’m not gonna die. I need my husband. None of those words were coming out loud, he was afraid. They just seemed to be joggling around in his throat, caught in his lungs.

“Somebody get me the EMTs.”

An oxygen mask went over his mouth, and he was sucking air, trying desperately to get it in. I got to talk to Quentin. Gotta talk to my husband.

A phone was held up to his ear, and Q’s voice rang out, sharp and worried. “Can you hear me? You can hear me. Don’t you fucking die on me. Don’t you even think about it. I love you, and I’m coming, but you gotta hold it together. I’ll be there in just a little bit. Do you hear me?”

How could anybody not hear that? Seriously, there wasn’t a human being in the entire state of Alaska who couldn’t hear that shrill squeak. Were they still in Alaska? Maybe he was in California. He didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

He was okay. He was going to be okay.

Surely, he was gonna be?—