Chapter 32: Chapter 32

CANNON

“CAN WE COME WITH YOU?”

I wish you would kiddo, I wish you would.

I knelt on the ground, my duffel bag hanging loosely on my shoulder.

“Your mom needs tough guys like you to protect her. You up for the challenge?”

“I’m strong, I can protect her”, Connor grinned.

“I’m strong too”, Jr lurched forward and I ruffled their hair.

“No fighting. Be nice and protect mom at all costs okay”

Not that I wouldn’t protect her. All the security cameras were routed to the phone in my back pocket and best believe I would keep an eye on them like a fucking hawk.

“Are you coming back?” Connor asked, his eyes too fucking sad for my liking.

“I always come back. You are my family. Come here”

Hugging them, pushing the mellow crap aside, I watched as they both ran to the house. My eyes strayed to Nicole’s bedroom window.

Apart from the light white curtains fluttering in the wind, she wasn’t there and fuck after what happened last night maybe this was for the best.

I needed space to clear my fucking head even though said space was with a bunch of morons who didn’t know a fucking thing about camping or hunting as Frank fucking Hanks put it.

God, I needed whiskey or something to shoot in this fucking little town for pit’s sake.

Being a family man wasn’t exactly as thrilling as I thought it would and fuck myself for even thinking it but I missed the B&A guys. Jason mother fucking Bates included.

Honoring Nicole’s wishes of letting Berkely handle the Lucas situation bit me in the ass. If I was handling Lucas Hawkins at the moment, the guy would be dead and I would have been back home a bodyguard with a family, a mercenary doing something better than teaching a couple of man babies what it really meant to live in the fucking wilderness.

I would have been grimmer if Flames was handling the Lucas situation but even the psychotic bastard was somewhere in Alaska with a woman under witness protection. Last I heard they were running from Bryant Knox and he of all people was taking care of Bryant Knox’s wife.

Flames of all people, him. The guy who’d once chopped both hands and feet of a person just to make him talk and now? Look at where he was?

Damn we were hardcore men, the tough of the toughest a few decades later we were groveling for women who didn’t even know that we would burn the whole world for them if it meant being together.

“Nice truck”, Billy Duncan praised, his hands gracing my dashboard far more than I liked. A little further to the right and his hands would wander to the secret compartment that had two grenades, a loaded Glock and a few fake passports.

“You and Frank been buddies for long?”

God, I was bad at small talk but anything to keep the man from touching my things.

“Try high school buddies. He was the jock and I was the nerd doing all his homework”, He laughed.

Hard to believe Frank Hanks was a jock given his small stature and the balding head he was trying to hide with a toupee.

“Life turned out great for both of you I see”

I mean for a man like Billy Duncan this was life to him. Living in a small town, a good wife and kids behind a white picket fence, this was it. Every fucking boring man’s dream.

“Wouldn’t really call it great. I’m driving with you for instance because Joey took our family SUV for a girls’ night out. And the kids? That’s a whole different issue seeing as to how they are little nagging brats who pull my hair out at night when I’m asleep so basically that’s my life”

“You ever shot anything before?”

“Does shooting water from a water gun count as shooting?”

“Jesus Christ you’ve never held a fucking shot gun? Why tag along to Frank’s shitty camping”

He turned to face me but I preferred gluing my eyes on the road. This was the longest I had spoken to a normal man without mentioning guns or joking about killing like I did with my buddies from Miami.

“Same reason you are here. Taking a break from family life”

This time I fucking grimaced. Nice to know I wasn’t the only one who’s life wasn’t fucking sugar plums and rainbows.

“Left compartment, open it”

He hesitated yet he leaned from his seat, his hands where I directed him.

“With a beast of a vehicle like this one, I wouldn’t be surprised if you carried hand bombs in it. Wait do you have bombs in here?”

“No”

Not in that fucking compartment anyway.

He opened it and from my peripheral eye I could see his eyes widen with awe.

It wasn’t fucking beer but the best liquor out there. The type of liquor that you would drown in and not feel a thing the whole night.

I always kept a bottle handy for emergencies and for this shitty activity, my truck was loaded with a few bottles of whiskey sours.

The bottle looking a little bit colossus in his hands, Billy scraped through the label.

It was fucking expensive but worth it.

“I can’t—”

“You’ll need liquid courage if you are going to spend a whole weekend with Frank Hanks”

“He’s not that bad”

“He calls himself an alpha”, I joked.

“Fair enough”, Billy chuckled uncorking the bottle of Macallan and dunking it down his throat within seconds.

“This is some good shit”

“If you are still talking then the liquor hasn’t done its job yet”

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Oh Fuck!

“Callan! Nicole said nothing about you being here today”, Leonard tapped my shoulder like we were fucking buddies from preschool.

In a fancy wool jacket and some shit hat on his head, that wasn’t enough to cover his grimy face. That face of ‘your wife works for me so we kinda talk a lot when you are not there’.

“Likewise”, I said holding the shotgun that Frank handed to me minutes ago.

Not understanding the concept of personal space, the chum stood next to me with his fucking shot gun and I couldn’t believe I was even saying this but ‘where was Billy Duncan when I fucking needed him?’

“You know you and I would make a perfect team because let’s be honest half of the men here are afraid of their own shadows”

“Are they?”

My voice dripped sarcasm.

His hand again for the second time in the night landed on my shoulder and there were so many fucking ways of breaking his wrist.

“You with your survival skills and I, with my…strategy. We could actually kill some boars before anyone does”

“Strategy? Hunting has no strategy mayor. It’s not a fucking campaign but simple logic. You see your target you fucking shoot”

The smug smile dissipated and he took a step back.

“May the best man win, Callan. For Nicole”

See that’s just the kind of things people said that pissed me off. I had done a background check on him enough to know he was one of those sissies that graduated from high school as valedictorian, went to an Ivy, of course daddy’s favorite golden boy and the loser had never lost anything in his life.

Including elections and by the look of his determined face, he really did think he had a shot at winning this.

“The mayor’s right, may the best man win. For centuries men have ruled this world—”

For fuck’s sake the same fucking speech again?

“…no assistance, we are flying solo tonight. First person to actually kill something wins. Simple right?”

“I thought we would at least do this in the morning. It’s fucking midnight Frank”, Billy who’d stood next to a couple of men by an old hardwood tree spoke.

Frank who’d mostly stood around the flimsy campfire with his shot gun dragged a few mini freezers to the circle we had huddled together.

“See this? It’s empty. Unless you are prepared to sleep hungry tonight, best get hunting boys. And hey Duncan, no one likes a spoilsport. Are we doing this or not?”

The men hurrahed, like legit raised their guns and hurrahed.

As if that shit wasn’t hard to listen to, Toupee Frank blew a whistle and I couldn’t forget Leo’s eyes the minute we scampered into different directions.

Five minutes later, I dug into my pocket treading lightly over the vast forage of dried leaves and twigs. The night breeze was a fucking ass biter since I could feel the draft slap the hollow of my cheeks.

Releasing a breath, I gazed at my phone going through all the feeds of my house. Nicole was in the living room, surprisingly with a few women laughing her ass off.

Even with the blurry screen she still looked hot in satin. I didn’t even realize I liked the feel of satin up until the other night when she wore that blasted nightgown that accentuated her cleavage and hid the fact that she had a lacy thong underneath it.

Moving on to Connor and Jr’s room, a woman was there.

Tina Hanks, I’d recognize that honey blonde hair from anywhere. Her husband might have been an asshole but she seemed nice. Playing with Connor, Jr and a few kids from the neighborhood.

Satisfied that everything was alright back home, I plunged the phone back to my pocket.

It was dark, given the blasting winds, the sway of the trees, my best chances or anyone chances of actually killing something larger than a deer were moot.

Billy was right but Frank was too much of an egotistical bastard to see it.

The flashlights wouldn’t do a fucking thing to make this hunt easier, not even the light of the full moon would do it.

Nonetheless I sauntered towards the darkness ahead ignoring the hooting owls, the chirping of the cicadas and the incessant buzzing of mosquitoes.

If I was lucky enough, I would run into some sort of log or a burrow, strangle a few hares and call this a night.

One second passed before I heard it. Twigs snapping under the mercy of heavy boots. Judging by the weight and the sound, a five-foot male.

I still walked ahead reading between the time frame, the direction and him trying to be stealthy.

I should have ignored, pretended that he was another guy looking for something to shoot like I was but something was up and I felt it. South. North. West.

And now east.

Knew the tactic very well I might as well have said I implemented it. This was circling prey, the way predators did before they attacked.

Trying not to give suspicion that I knew what he was fucking doing, my trigger finger landed on the shotgun.

Kill or be killed that much I knew in this fucking situation. Question was which motherfucker was trying to kill me and who had fucking sent him?

The extensive canopy might have made it hard to spot him and my flashlight might have been groggy but I picked his movements seconds ago.

Circling me while moving in zig zag patterns to avoid a line of direct hit? Come on I wasn’t born yesterday.

I just needed the right moment, the right time and bingo!

Turning around barely blinking, my shot gun was in midair and I pressed the trigger.

“Shit”

The gun wasn’t fucking loaded? THE GUN wasn’t loaded?

I barely had time to process the information when my mystery person fired his gun.

Warm liquid spattered across my face as I groaned a loud,

“Fuck”