Hot on the Trail. Vicki Tharp

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СКАЧАТЬ of his mangled muscles and tendons in the wall-to-wall mirror of his local twenty-four-hour gym.

      The base had a gym, but he liked the anonymity of The Lift. No one knew him. No one asked him how he was doing.

      Or when he was going to fly again.

      He didn’t work out for the camaraderie. He didn’t work out to outlift anyone, or show off his abs, or delts, or biceps.

      He worked out to save his career.

      Heavy metal music beat against his eardrums. Harsh, horrible, disturbing. As much as he hated the music, the crash of the chords drowned his thoughts and distracted him from the pain.

      A barbell dropped on the floor mat behind him with a thump that reverberated beneath his feet. The gym rat met Quinn’s gaze in the mirror. Held his hand to his ear as if holding a phone and pointed to Quinn.

      Quinn set the weights down, tugged the earbud from his ear, and turned toward the guy.

      “Dude, your phone.” Gym Rat chalked his hands. “Third fucking time it’s gone off in the last five minutes.”

      Wiping the sweat from his neck with a hand towel, Quinn grunted his thanks.

      No one called him anymore.

      He picked up his phone with his left hand, then switched it to his right. It would take him twice as long and triple the concentration to use his right thumb, but the physical therapist was right. If he didn’t work on his dexterity, it would never improve. By the time he’d thumbed to his “missed calls” list, the phone rang in his hand.

      His parents’ area code, but not his parents’ number.

      He managed to answer on the third ring. “Yeah.”

      Silence. The faint buzz of the open line. The whir of the cables in the pulleys beside him. The clank and clatter of weights hitting the stacks. A woman a few feet to his left had one earbud dangling between her breasts. The bass line bumped in Quinn’s chest.

      “Who is this?” Quinn didn’t have the time or the patience.

      Nothing.

      Nothing.

      “I’m hanging up.” He pulled the phone from his ear, his thumb over the End button when he heard the faint, “Wait…”

      He raised the phone again. “I don’t have all day.”

      “It’s me.”

      His scalp tightened. His right hand shook. He switched the phone to his left. Didn’t help the shaking.

      “It’s Jenna,” she said.

      “Yeah.” At least his voice didn’t shake. “What do you want?” The words came out gruffer than he’d intended, less irritation, more accusation.

      Again, the silence.

      He and Jenna didn’t talk. She wasn’t calling to ask him about his day. With the way things between them had ended four years ago, there could only be one reason for her to call.

      His knees went weak, and his quads failed him. He dropped onto the weight bench. The air in the cushion escaped with a hiss. “Kurt.”

      “Yes.” The word came out puny, insignificant, but he knew it was neither.

      “Is he okay?”

      “No. No, he’s not okay.”

      His stomach tipped and dipped and dived. “What’s wr—”

      “D-dead. Kurt’s dead.”

      Dead? His stomach hit the ground—a cable cut—tippy-top floor to bottom basement. A death-defying descent.

      His heart didn’t drop. It stopped.

      “Quinn?”

      He hadn’t been body slammed this hard since he’d crashed his helo.

      “Quinn?”

      Anger flooded in, so hot, so hard, so electric, it jump-started his heart.

      “Hey, you still there?” Her voice didn’t break, but it lacked its usual power, like an engine running on outdated fuel.

      Yeah, he was still there, but the last surviving member of his helo crew was dead.

      “How?” was all he managed.

      Someone tapped Quinn on the shoulder. “Hey, buddy, if you’re not going to use the equipment—”

      Quinn cut him a savage glare. He would have flipped the guy off, but it seemed redundant.

      Alone again, he tuned back in to Jenna’s words.

      “…he fell and lay there.”

      “Fell? From one of the horses? You promised me the horses were safe, that the—”

      “You’re not listening. He didn’t fall from a horse, Quinn. He killed himself.”

      Suicide?

      Fucking bastard.

      Fury hijacked anger. His phone slipped from his sweaty hand, glanced off a dumbbell, and clattered at his feet. The screen shattered.

      Jenna’s voice came from far away, tinny, the words unintelligible, but it didn’t matter what she said.

      Kurt was dead.

      Red, scalding rage—at Kurt, at fate, at the world—steamed through his system. Blood beat against his eardrums, louder, louder, louder still.

      He picked up the fifteen-pound dumbbell, cocked his elbow, but Gym Rat caught his arm mid-pitch, stripping the weight from his hand.

      Gym Rat picked up Quinn’s cell phone and slapped it into Quinn’s hand. “Take it outside, dude.”

      Quinn grunted at the man, bumping him as he shouldered his way past, and ignoring the “asshole” comment as he stalked toward the front doors.

      “Hello? Quinn, are you there?”

      “I’m here.” Quinn shoved his way outside into a pissing rain, and jogged to his vintage Harley. “I’m on the way.”

      “You don’t have to come.”

      “Yeah, Jenna, I do.”

      “Seriously. They have to do an autopsy, and the sheriff has no idea when the body will be released.”

      “Hang on a sec…” At his bike, Quinn activated the Bluetooth headset on his helmet, pocketed his phone to keep it out of the rain, and slipped the helmet over his head. “You there?” he said into the mic boom.

      “Yeah, but there’s no reason to come. СКАЧАТЬ