The End of the Day

TWO HOURS later Rory was buzzing along in a refrigerator truck the size of a U-Haul, muttering to himself, "This is so stupid. So stupid. So dumb. I can't believe those assholes talked me into this. This. Is. Insane."

Oh, it was. It was nuts. But it made a twisted amount of sense.

Dean had done most of the prearrangement, which just proved he was one of the coldest, most organized motherfuckers Rory had ever worked with. Rory had to admit that he and Val were a much better fit. There was something visceral about Val. He was smart, and a planner, and he'd cold-bloodedly put his client's and company's needs ahead of his own. But then he'd taken out five meatheads in a minimart with only a black eye and a busted lip and cheek to pay for it. Apparently the thing Val Royal had in spades was the ability to back his word up with actions.

Rory approved.

And now it was his turn.

Dean had taken care of the two refrigerator trucks and the notary to witness shifting part of the load to each truck—backed up, of course, by the cameras Val had hooked up on the back end. Prock's work on the refrigerator unit in the big-rig trailer held up, and the interior had been a frosty zero degrees Fahrenheit to back up the smaller self-contained units inside. Every gauge had been triple checked—there should have been no heat degradation of the product at all in their rather epic twenty-three-hour drive from Bakersfield to Austin, detours and all.

Now all that remained was getting proof that something was wrong with the sample before the Cassidy brothers forced Val's rig off the road.

Val was the one who was bonded to the job— he was responsible for getting the payload to the lab, where Vinnie was waiting to take possession and submit the cannisters for testing. While having backups, Dean and Rory, get there with samples that would hold up in court, the contract Vinnie and Val had signed was very particular: Vinnie had to be there, and there had to be video verification.

But that didn't mean they couldn't use a little bit of distraction and theater to make that happen.

The tablet on the dash rang with Val's number and then Dean's, and while Rory understood why they'd need to communicate with phones, there was a reason CBs were still favored by truckers—the ease and clarity were better.

They just really didn't need anybody listening in on their convo.

"I'm here," Rory told them when the line connected. "You see any bogeys?"

"I got two on my ass," Val said. "Our buddies in the F-450 and one of the big rigs I saw when we were getting fuel in Arizona. They're both right up my sphincter, so I'm going slower. How about you two?"

"I got nobody," Dean said. "My ass is pristine. Not a dingleberry in sight. McCauley?"

Rory checked his mirror and grimaced. "I see two of those assholes from Arizona, one on my ass and one on my front, but I don't know if they know it's me yet. Everybody stay on the line so we see if this gets better or worse."

"Great," Dean muttered. "That's gonna be damned boring."

Val gave an absolutely evil laugh, and Rory heard the first notes of "End of the Day" first.

"Oh hell no," Dean protested, and Val started to belt out the lyrics at the top of his lungs.

And what was Rory supposed to do, leave him hanging?

For the rest of his life, he'd remember the next twenty years, erm, minutes as though orchestrated by the writers of Les Mis —oh, there was gonna be hell to pay, indeed.

Val, Rory, and Dean were each taking a different route toward the lab, which was in a big industrial complex on the outskirts of Manor, itself about an hour outside of Austin. Manor was close enough to the intersection of two major freeways and a sizable intersecting road for there to be more than one route. Rory and Val were on the two major freeways, and Dean was on the intersecting road about ready to take surface streets to the complex, so it was logical that he didn't have any "dingleberries," as he put it.

Since Dean was their most unimpeachable witness for delivery, they figured it was important for him to get there first, unnoticed, so the product could be well on its way to being tested before Val and Rory—and their shadows—arrived.

So it didn't surprise him to hear Dean's interjection of, "Guys, I'm here. The lab is ready for us with their first bay door open."

Rory was going to say, "I'm ten minutes out," when suddenly, over the phone, they could hear the rat-tat-tat of something that sounded like fireworks, but oh shit, oh shit, oh shit—

" Fuck !" Dean shouted. "Guys, there's an ambush. An F-450 and two 150s in the back bay. Them good ole boys got guns. I'm pulling out! You know what to do!"

And with that Dean's call ended, leaving Rory feeling cold and angry—and sure Val was going out of his mind.

"Okay, then," Rory said. "I'm ten minutes out of location B. Val?"

"I'm passing location A on Dean's ass," Val said tensely. "I've got everybody's attention, and yeah, these good ole boys got little meth-boy popguns like he said."

"Little guns, big guns—" Rory began, but Val wasn't stupid.

"It's the bullets that kill ya," Val told him. "Get your ass to the B site, Rory. Me and Dean, we're gonna run a family pit maneuver here and see if we can't get some more backup now that Dean's got confirmation that there's active hostility to getting the payload to its source. I gotta call the USDA to see what's up. You…." Val trailed off, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant even in the middle of the sudden-stop audible he was calling.

"This old boy knows how to keep lead out of his ass," Rory told him. Then, soberly, "Watch your own ass, Val." They'd planned for this, yes—Val and Dean heading for the first agreed-upon location. But however the Cassidy brothers got their info, it did not extend to the hurried conversation Dean, Val, and Rory had held while splitting the load between the rig and two smaller refrigerated units, when they'd engaged the services of another lab, just in case, and plotted a way for Rory to get there.

But that didn't mean Rory wasn't going to be listening, heart in his throat, until he knew those assholes with the guns were far away from two guys he at least regarded as friends.

"First I gotta get rid of these fuckers on Dean's tail," Val muttered tersely. "Signing off."

Rory checked his online map and glanced up, almost swerving off the road as a torn-off bumper from the shoulder came loose in the wash of the rig in front of him. God dammit . Sure enough, the pickup in front and to the left of him was slowing down, and the rig behind him was speeding up. They were on a freeway with civilians but—oh thank fuck .

The guy in the SUV coming up in Rory's blind spot suddenly veered right, probably having gotten a flat from some of the same debris Rory had barely missed. Rory braked hard and, spotting his hole in traffic, swerved to his left. The SUV skewed in front of Rory's pursuer, and the two of them skidded off road in a swirl of dust while the rig in front of Rory charged down the dead man's strip, bumping haphazardly as the driver strove to stop the heaving hunk of metal without jackknifing the trailer from the rig.

This branch of the highway stretched three lanes in either direction, with the exit just a mile away. Rory saw traffic starting to slow down as the debris marked its damage path through the speeding cars, and caught his breath. The only way— only way—the people on Val and Dean's six gave up their chase was if somebody got to the lab and got the product tested first.

As the red lights of slowing traffic began to pop up on the horizon like warning lights on a computer console, Rory took a deep breath and stepped on the gas.

VAL SWORE and used his considerable body strength to keep the rig on the road. They were ostensibly in a commercial area, although traffic was thin and mostly traveling fast and light, which was good. Val had no idea how to keep civilians safe in this situation.

The PIT maneuver had been developed to hamstring high-speed chases in congested areas. One vehicle—in this case Dean, who was being pursued—would slow down enough to hamper the instigator's room to evade. Then another vehicle, one with some heft , would tag the backside of the instigator's ride—in this case, the Cassidys' F-450—hard enough to spin it sideways and then box the speedsters in.

This looked great on television, when the biggest hurtling projectile was an SUV. Driving a big rig in a PIT maneuver was a good way of cooking up cream-of-adversary roadkill soup and a manslaughter charge, not to mention endangering Val's little brother in a big way.

But Dean was bitching on the phone for Val to man up and do it already, and Val thought that no jury on the planet would convict him.

"You had better be in good enough shape to take care of the guys with the guns on my ass," Val snapped. "If your rig goes over and you get shot in the face, our parents will never forgive me."

"Oh please," Dean retorted, his voice the teeniest bit breathless. "You've been their favorite since your first baby scowl. We're totally clear for the next mile, Val. Now, goddammit, now !"

Val tapped the gas—even a love tap in a big rig took considerable strength, and a spurt of speed took a good long runway. This wasn't a matchbox car; this was thirty-five tons of machinery, including the moderate load in the back, and it did not start on a whim or stop on a dime, and if Val was aiming it at this F-450, he goddamned well better mean it.

He watched as the little guy in the passenger seat stuck his arm out the window, holding a pistol. It could have been a .45, but from this distance it looked like a peashooter. Val's blood ran cold nonetheless because the bastard was aiming that thing at his little brother .

Val stood on the gas, engaging his entire body and core as he steered the thing, aiming at the already demolished back quarter panel and a little sick with the knowledge that he was about to take out a $100,000 truck for $60,000 of bull jizz.

But then, he wasn't the one who had made that decision, was he?

Over the still open line, he heard the sound of firecrackers through a windstorm, and heard his brother swear.

"Dean? Are you hit?"

"No, but I think we're gonna lose our deposit on this truck!"

"Be ready!" he cried. In his rearview, he could see the two other trucks they'd picked up as Dean had sailed past the lab's loading dock, and he grunted. If he was going to take those assholes out, there was really only one way to do this, and Dean was right—he was going to have to do it now.

5-4-3-2—

Kreeeeeeeeesh!

Unlike the little push they'd given this truck when Rory'd been pulling away from the pumps, this was two great big machines traveling at sixty miles an hour. The crackling crunch of the chrome front of his rig taking out the steel and fiberglass of the F-450 actually felt worse than the jarring to the rig. Standing on the rig brake and the trailer brake while wrenching the wheel sideways pretty much ripped every muscle in Val's core, chest, arms, and back, but by God the damned rig turned when he told it to, and in a moment he was perpendicular to the road, the trailer rocking in desperate, earth-wallowing heaves as it tried to jackknife and topple to the ground.

" No !" Val screamed, every muscle in his body dedicated to the machinery that would keep his rig upright.

Eerk—BAM—eerk—BAM! The sounds of the stressed metal alternating with the crash of the rig when its wheels rocked off the ground and then came booming back echoed in Val's stomach. No. No. No, goddammit, no ! He couldn't afford to let his rig topple, he couldn't afford to let his rig topple—

The sound of the two trucks in pursuit crashing into the trailer and tearing through the metal—even the reinforced refrigeration on the side—drowned out his scream of frustration as the trailer pin tore from the rig clamp and knocked the whole works off the back of his truck and into the massive ditch on the side of the road.

The rig itself gave one last rock and a crash of the wheels to the ground that snapped his teeth shut and then shuddered to a halt. As Val shook like a leaf, he watched his little brother, semiautomatic weapon in hand, stride across the road and aim the thing at the two brothers, who were still wiping blood off their foreheads and trying to remember their own names.

Val didn't even want to see about the henchmen who had ripped apart the trailer and driven their F-450s into the ditch.

In the back of his ringing ears, he heard Rory shouting. "Val! Val! You there?"

"Sort of," he panted, turning his engine to idle in case it would be needed to move the vehicle. Although this stretch of road wasn't busy, he knew that there was a small, steady backup of traffic on either side of the wreckage.

He was still staring, still dazed, when Rory's voice came over their makeshift intercom. "It's over, Val. I got the fridge truck into the loading bay. The lab's got the samples now. Whoever's after you, you can tell them it won't do no good."

"Fucking. Awesome." He took a deep breath and grabbed the phone from the rest in the console. "I'll be back on in five."

Val laughed helplessly to himself before tearing his still-screaming muscles reaching behind his seat for his own gun. He slid shakily to the ground before taking a breath to steady his legs and striding up next to his brother.

"USDA's coming," he told Dean.

"So's the FBI, ATF, and DEA," Dean replied sourly. "I don't care if they should be involved or not. I damned near called the U.S. Marines."

Val was about to retort that they'd probably need the Army Corps of Engineers to sort out the mess they'd just made on this little highway when the two Cassidy brothers emerged woozily from the dented front of the mangled 450.

"Don't matter," the bigger one—Robert—panted happily. "We won. That fuckin' jizz ain't never gonna land."

Val and Dean met eyes and started to chuckle.

"What?" Robert demanded, and next to him his smaller, younger brother demanded the same thing.

"What? What's so funny?"

"Jizz is in the lab right now, boys," Val drawled. "You want to tell us what they're going to find?"

The two men closed their eyes and groaned, and in the background Val heard the wail of sirens through the massive ache in his head as he settled himself down for a long, long wait.

RORY HAD to admit it to himself—if Vinnie didn't have "dedicated family man" written all over him, he would have been a smidge jealous of how loyal the guy was to Rory's Val.

Or, well, Val Royal.

Val's "old high school buddy" had shown up as Rory had been chafing in the lobby of the laboratory, a midsized, quietly handsome man with brown eyes in a tanned face, worn jeans and a neat if frayed button-down shirt, cowboy boots, and graying brown hair cut military neat.

None of that really impressed Rory, though. What did impress him was that while Vinnie's entire livelihood, his family ranch, his stock, his ambitions for the future— all of that—hung in the balance, his first question was about Val and Dean.

"How are they?" he asked anxiously, and Rory shrugged.

"There was a ruckus," he owned. "Our boys are sorting it out with the authorities, and the authorities are sorting it out with their superiors, and somebody is towing all the goddamned trucks."

Vinnie appeared stricken. "Val's rig?" he asked. "My God, that thing is his child ."

Rory nodded and worked hard at keeping his posture against the wall languid and relaxed. "Yup. He says it needs to be checked out, but it was running on its own power when they drove it off. Can't say the same thing for the trailer , which means his brother is going to be in-fucking-sufferable that this entire plan came together."

Vinnie relaxed too, a faint smile on his face. "Dean? Yeah. They were like that when Val and I were in high school. We'd bring home our homework, and Dean would wander in—he couldn't have been more than six—and look at Val's trig or physics and go, ‘Why aren't you doing it that way?'" Vinnie chuckled. "Used to make Val apeshit, but he'd listen, and then he'd do what his little brother said and both our grades would improve." Vinnie lifted a shoulder. "And then Val would get me to cut class so we could scare the crap out of the second graders who kept beating up the six-year-old who had been promoted to their class."

Rory smiled a little. "I knew Dean in the bureau. Could see right then them kids were tight."

Vinnie sighed and sank into one of the lobby chairs. Rory had already tried one. His legs were too long, but Vinnie fit nicely. "Their mom's the best, though. Fridays…." He chuckled again. "We'd stop by on Fridays—practically every kid in the neighborhood. Their mom worked at the local grocery store, and on Fridays they'd clear stock from the shelves. Val's mom would collect the cookie and chip packages that were going to get thrown out and bring them home and put them on the kitchen table. It was a free-for-all, except Val and Laure and Sal were absolutely ruthless about making sure nobody got sloppy or mean. But it was snack time for sure." He sighed a little. "Kids would help her do dishes and confess their deepest secrets. She had a way of making us see our parents as people, not tyrants. Of giving tips. You know, like, ‘Hey, maybe wait until your dad has a chance to take off his shoes and read the paper for a bit before telling him there's one more thing he has to worry about.' And sometimes if the parents really were being awful, she'd intervene. She had a basement room with a couple of old couches, and I know more than one kid spent time down there because going home was dangerous. She'd call aunties or grandparents—or the state, if she was really worried—and make sure the kids were safe." He shook his head again. "Best woman in the world."

"Wow," Rory said, blinking eyes that were suddenly burning. "That explains a lot about that family."

"Val's the best," Vinnie confirmed. "It's why I asked him for help. He…." Vinnie took one of those breaths that told Rory he wasn't unmoved by how much hinged on the mysterious processes going on in the sterile portions of the lab right then. "He was the one person I could count on."

At that moment one of the technicians, dressed in a Tyvek bunny suit, emerged from the back of the building. "Mr. Aiello?"

"Yes, ma'am?" Vinnie stood up.

"We have some… concerning results from the samples your friend brought in. I understand the USDA inspector is coming to consult on this matter. Would you like to wait for him before we discuss—"

At that moment the door blew open and a sixtyish woman wearing a navy pantsuit and an emerald scarf blew in, with three younger men bearing briefcases and tablets in her wake.

"Mr. Aiello?" she said. "I'm Inspector Denise Glen. Have the results come in?"

Vinnie nodded, and the two of them started toward one of the consulting rooms in the back. Vinnie glanced at Rory and gestured him to join them. "Come on, Mr. McCauley. Val's gonna want to know what all the fuss was about."

Rory grinned and decided he could probably learn to love Vinnie Aiello just like Val did. "Wouldn't miss it," he said and joined Vinnie and all the suits to go see what the McGuffin actually looked like.

VAL SAT on the edge of the ER gurney and resisted the urge to lay back against it. He'd done that once when the doc had checked him out, and he now knew it for the trap it was.

"How you doing?" Dean asked perkily from his place on the visitor's chair.

"I hate you," Val said. "Why are we here?"

"Because you were part of an eighty-ton train wreck, and I want you assessed for soft tissue damage," Dean said. "I had my own checkup. Now stop being a baby."

Val barely refrained from whining. "This bed hurts me more than some painkillers and some sleep," he growled, and the look he got from his little brother was truly sympathetic.

"Yeah, that's why the doc is prescribing you some megadose muscle relaxers and giving you a week before you can drive again. Dude, that thing you did with the rig was truly impressive, and some torn stomach and neck muscles are nothing to joke about."

Val grunted. "Well, it's hard to joke about them when they're screaming in my ear," he admitted.

Holy God did he hurt. Everything hurt. Neck, back, head, stomach, ribs, thighs—upper and lower—head. Had he mentioned his head in that last list? It felt like he needed to mention his head again because that felt like a big meaty painful balloon.

Augh!

"Do I have a concussion?" he asked, trying to determine if that had been gone over. "It feels like I have a concussion."

"Yes, you do," Dean told him mildly, glancing up from his phone. "And the fact that I had to repeat it means you have a worse concussion than you let on when you got out of the truck."

Val groaned. "We arrested the bad guys, right?"

"Yessir, we did," Dean replied. "And the FBI would like to commend you on your driving, Mr. Royal. I told them I'd pass that on."

"Fuck you," Val muttered. "Did we ever figure out what this was about?"

"Sure we did" came a voice from the doorway. "Now scoot on over on that bed, son. I've got a story to tell."

Something—the painkillers, the muscle relaxants, something —must have kicked in right then, because Val could swear he felt everything in his body melt a little bit closer to normal.

"Rory," he said, aware he was near to crying. "God, man, so good to see you. How's Vinnie?"

"Up to his eyeballs in insurance paperwork and Feds," Rory said, and true to his word, he scooched right next to Val on the edge of the ER gurney before draping an arm around Val's shoulders.

Val couldn't help it. He dissolved, slumping against Rory's strong body and going limp with the comfort.

"Tell us the story," he mumbled. "Just know I've got a concussion, and I might not remember it all."

Did he imagine that kiss on the crown of his head, or was that real? Didn't matter, it continued to make things better in Val-land, and that was all he cared about.

"So," Rory said, his voice rumbling his shoulder under Val's cheek, "like you two guessed, this goes back to when the AC died in their stock building, killing off a hundred and fifty head of their top breeders, Ambassador among them."

"Bummer," Val conceded. That much loss of stock—and so horribly—wasn't to be wished on his greatest enemy, including the guys who'd tried to kill the three of them.

"Yeah, well, it would have been the whole herd, because all of Ambassador's baby-makers were in a freezer in the same unit. It was a massive loss, and from what the USDA lady told me, it was apparently chalked up to human error. The AC had been getting weaker for years. The old man had told his sons to replace it, but the boys had racked up gambling debts, and they decided to pay those off instead."

"Fuckers," Val murmured, but without heat. It was hard to be mad, even at idiots like Rob and John Cassidy, when Rory's arm was around his back and his head had finally stopped hurting.

"They're the worst," Rory agreed. "But they did find a way to keep the herd from dying out. Unfortunately, it was illegal and involved cow incest."

"Oh hell!" Val protested. "You were the perfect man, and then you said ‘cow incest.'"

Dean—Val's stoic, number-crunching little brother— snickered .

"Sad but true," Rory agreed. "In this case, it was on a grand scale. One of Ambassador's progeny had been retained as another breeding stud. He hadn't yet been shown or rated, but the brothers were desperate. They needed refrigerators full of prize-winning bull semen, and they needed it stat, so they collected and inseminated and fudged the records and said it was Ambassador's spunk. Which would have been great , except…."

"Genetic abnormalities?" Dean asked, because Val's little brother was smart that way.

"Bingo." Rory touched his nose with his finger. "It's almost like you belong to an organization known for its investigative skills."

"You taught me everything I know," Dean replied flatly. "So all of the new bull's—"

"Dorito," Rory said, amusement lacing his voice. "Because apparently the creature is as dumb as. And also he's orange."

"So Dorito's progeny start cropping up with… what?" Dean cocked his head, and Val was suffused with a wave of affection for his little brother. So smart. So lonely. Too bad. He was a funny little bastard, but sometimes it seemed like only the Royals knew.

"Well, technically it's called BLAD," Rory said. "Don't ask me what it stands for, but essentially it means sick cattle and cows that miscarry more often. So the Elite Cattle Company's herd goes, in the span of two years, from a thriving business to a tragic mess."

"But all the cows we saw were normal," Val remembered. Reluctantly he sat up a little, but he wasn't sad when Rory put pressure on his far shoulder.

"Stop that," he murmured. "Lean on me. I like it."

Well, fine.

"And all the animals we saw were normal," Rory continued. "Because they made a deal to give half their best breeders for the services of another stud, which helped to revitalize their herd. But the brothers—who aren't that bright—are getting offers for Ambassador's sperm, because as you recall, they fudged the paperwork to get Dorito's spunk passed off as Ambassador's so they could inseminate their own herd. Ambassador was a great stud, and he was still on the USDA registry as alive and making babies."

Val had to sit up now, but this time it was with excitement.

"They sold it," he said, getting it. "They're gamblers. They sold that shipment and then stole it. The other guy got insurance, they got the money for selling the shipment, win/win."

"It was," Rory agreed. "And it was a scam they pulled off three more times—once in Wyoming, once in Canada, and once in California—"

"They spread it out," Dean said cannily. "So word wouldn't get around."

Rory nodded. "Indeed they did. And then came Vinnie. Vinnie's business plan was by far the most ambitious—they figured one big score, right?"

"But Vinnie kept trying to buy the same spunk," Val said. "And theft twice was fishy enough."

"This time, it had to be something else," Rory said. "So they tried to sabotage the freight container after you signed off on it. But you were too smart, and for that matter so was Vinnie. So they had to try to either sabotage the container on the road—"

"Or once we decided to get it tested, to intercept it before it got to the lab," Val finished off, the whole thing clicking into place.

"What's bothering me is how they knew," Rory muttered. "We were using telephones, not CBs. How'd they intercept our plans?"

"That would be my office," Vinnie said, stepping into the cubicle and making it officially crowded. "It turns out one of the brothers plays blackjack online with one of the secretaries' husbands. You kept me posted on every move, Val, and she was tapped into all my communications. She's being held pending charges right now."

"Oh my God," Val mumbled. "I am so relieved. I was seriously wondering if they were psychic or something, because those bastards were everywhere ."

"I know it," Vinnie said, shaking his head. "I have to tell you, the extra lab reservation that Dean made was a thing of genius. By the time I knew where Rory was going, the whole thing was over but the shouting."

"No shouting," Val practically whimpered, and Vinnie put a gentle hand on his knee and squeezed.

"Don't worry, I'm only here for a minute, and then I'm stealing Dean and taking him to my place for a steak dinner and a good bed to sleep in before his flight back to Sacramento tomorrow morning." Dean worked at the field office in Roseville.

"I don't get a steak dinner?" Val whined.

"You," said the doctor, who had entered on Vinnie's heels, "get a short hop to a nice hotel. Mr. McCauley here promised he could get you comfortable accommodations not too far from the hospital, with someone who would keep an eye on you for the night."

"Oh thank God," Val muttered. "This fuckin' gurney here, doc—this can't be good for me."

"It's not," the doctor—their age, with thick blond hair and gentle blue eyes—said with a wry smile. "Which is why we're setting you free to sleep and eat with supervision, and then after you come back tomorrow at one for a checkup, you are free to drive the hour to Mr. Aiello's ranch and rest for the week required before you drive your rig back to California."

Val was going to protest. He was good at it. He knew how to whine and bitch and complain until he got his way. But he glanced at Rory, who smiled at him with hope, and suddenly he saw this for what it was.

An opportunity he might not get in the midst of his ordinary life.

"Sure," he said, watching Rory's face relax. "Who can't use a week's worth of R and R. Vinnie's place has a pool ."

"And a Jacuzzi," Vinnie added. "And a cook and a housekeeper and a patio with a mister. It'll be like a hotel, but you'll get to say hi to the wife and kids, who will only be there long enough to delight you and not enough to cramp your style."

"That's a guarantee I don't think you can make," Val kidded, and Vinnie shrugged.

"They're going to Florida in two days for spring break. I'm joining them before you two leave. I think I can about put a gold seal on that."

Val's mouth fell open in surprise—and gratitude—and then the doctor shooed everybody out while he made one last check and the process of leaving the hospital began.