Chapter 3

Scotty couldn’t breathe.His feet left the floor as the hand around his throat got tighter and tighter. Blood rushed in his ears, loud, but not loud enough because he still heard himself scream. How he managed that with a fucking vise around his throat, he didn’t know.

The sound of the gun going off echoed in his ears still, muffled by his scream. The owner of the mechanic shop didn’t look like it, but it was clear his slender form hid a strength that could crush Scotty. He tasted the panic in the back of his throat, heart thumping furiously as he tried to speak. Furious brown eyes snapped from Scotty’s to the body on the floor.

Was the person dead? Had Scotty killed him? Bile filled his mouth at the thought. No, no. Please. Tears flooded his eyes, the memories from before rushing in. He had to get out of there. He had to get money so he could buy what he needed to drown it out.

But he’d shot someone and that person’s blood was even now darkening the floor underneath his unmoving body. The shop owner—African American, probably in his mid-thirties—spoke, but all Scotty saw was his lips moving; he couldn’t hear shit over the racing of his pulse.

No.

This couldn’t happen, not to him. Not again. His vision darkened, his body went limp, and he found himself on the floor, on his knees, body bent over as he dry-heaved. His stomach cramped. All that blood. The fear came rushing back, the helplessness. Then the aftermath. Don telling him it hadn’t happened. Calling him a liar, giving him that first bump of coke to shut him up.

Tears flowed down his cheeks. The sob in his throat cut off abruptly when the shop owner fisted his hair and yanked his head back. Scotty couldn’t make out his features through the tears.

“Get the fuck up.”

He cringed at the barely concealed rage. He’d fucked up. He’d known it the moment he’d pulled the gun he’d stolen from Don and pointed it at the mechanic. The shop owner hadn’t been afraid or cowed. He hadn’t cared that Scotty pointed a loaded gun at him. In fact, he’d walked toward Scotty, taunting him to pull the trigger. He had, but he’d shot the wrong man.

An innocent man.

“I said up!” The shop owner kicked Scotty then grabbed his t-shirt, yanking him to his feet.

When Scotty faced him on unsteady legs, he found himself staring down the barrel of his own gun. He threw his hands up with a yelp. “I’m sorry.” Shit. The tears just kept flowing. Don was right. He was a fuckup. Look at what he’d done. “I’m sorry. Please.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Save that apology. Ill let you know when I want you to beg for mercy.” He handled the gun as if it was an extension of him, whereas the weapon had felt clumsy and wrong in Scotty’s grip. “Close the door.” The owner motioned with a jerk of his head. “Lock it.”

Scotty gaped at him. “We—we need to call 911.”

“We don’t need to do shit.” A jerk of the gun. “You need to lock the door, then get back here before I lose my patience and fulfill your death wish by shooting you where you stand.”

He would do it, Scotty didn’t doubt it. Something in the man’s leather-brown eyes, in his stance, in the way the gun never wavered, in the growl of his accent that Scotty couldn’t quite place. New York, maybe? He would shoot Scotty. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Don would be happy. Scotty wouldn’t be a problem for him anymore. He could say see, I told you, the kid was a mess. You can’t trust a junkie. Just like his mother.

No one believed Scotty. Because who would take his word over Don’s?

He did as ordered, sliding the bolt on the shop’s front door in place. Locking himself in with a man holding a loaded gun and apparently zero qualms about using it, and a possible dead body. Scotty had wanted money. Because Don had gotten him fired from his latest job of course. Working as a cashier at a general store wouldn’t make him wealthy, but that didn’t matter to his uncle. Don had ensured that Scotty couldn’t feed himself, let alone buy the stuff that made the memories go away. The stuff that quieted the screams. He didn’t use coke all the time, only when everything got to be too much. He’d wanted a reprieve, one night where he didn’t walk the streets to outrun the memories of things everyone told him hadn’t happened. He’d thought the mechanic shop was empty. Figured he’d sneak in and grab a few items to sell. Quick cash. How was he to know the owner would be in the back? How could he have anticipated a customer coming in when the shop should have been closed in the first place?

Fuck.

He could almost hear Don cackling in his ear, feel his breath on his neck. Don had wanted to kill him that first time he gave Scotty coke, but he’d been incompetent. The shop owner looked like he was nothing if not competent. If he wanted Scotty dead, he would be.

The thought was almost a relief.

“Check him.” The man motioned to the body on the floor.

Scotty blanched. “I-I can’t.”

The man cocked his head slowly to the right and tapped the trigger. “Repeat that?”

Heart in his throat, Scotty got the message. He didn’t want to die, despite everything, so he dropped to his knees beside the body on the floor and lifted a trembling hand to the guy’s neck. He waited, eyes closed, breath halted…exhaling with a choked sob when he felt a steady pulse under his fingertips. He hadn’t killed anyone. Yet. The relief was just as powerful as the fear had been. “He’s alive.” The words trembled something awful, but he didn’t think he’d ever been so relieved. The only time he could recall coming close to this feeling was the rush of finally moving out of Don’s place when he’d turned eighteen.

He just about jumped out of his skin when the owner knelt beside him, tapping Scotty’s temple with the gun. “Sit over there.” He motioned to a spot on the floor within his line of vision. “I’m only gonna give you one warning: you move and I shoot.” His gaze was unnervingly serious when he said, “And I only ever shoot to kill.”

Scotty scurried over to do as ordered, hugging his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth. He watched as the owner put the gun down and rolled the man onto his back.

The mechanic’s hands stilled when he gazed down at the unconscious man. “Son of a bitch.” Recognition came and went over his face before his features blanked. He tore open the man’s shirt, jostling him.

A moan left the wounded guy, and Scotty covered his mouth with a trembling hand. Fuck. He hadn’t ever hurt anyone. Never. Not even when things got really bad. Yeah, he would steal from Don because that fucker deserved it, but this was something different.

He’d shot someone.

“What’s your name?”

He blinked at the shop owner, but the guy wasn’t even looking at Scotty. “Um.” He licked his lips. “Scotty. Scotty Fallon.” Shit. Should he have used a false name or something? Fuck, he wasn’t even a good criminal. But it was too late.

The guy looked up from frowning at Scotty’s victim’s bleeding wound. “Any relation to Mayor Fallon?”

The question was innocent enough, but the hair on Scotty’s nape still stood in a warning he didn’t quite understand. “He’s my uncle.” Don didn’t like when Scotty told people that. He would prefer no one knew they were related. Scotty was the one piece of baggage his uncle could never rid himself of.

“Uncle,” the shop owner muttered with a shake of his head. “Of course.” He finished stripping the unconscious man’s shirt off, leaving his chest bare, the bullet wound in his right shoulder exposed.

Scotty swallowed and glanced away, shaking, fighting the urge to throw up. He couldn’t look at what he’d done.

“Well, Scotty Fallon, you fucked up.” The shop owner held up a wallet, flipping it open with one hand, showing off the ID and badge inside. “You fucked up good.”

Scotty’s body went ice cold as he read the identification.

Vince Hardin. U.S. Federal Marshal.