Page 62 of The Barn: Frost and Q
Frost nodded. “Can you imagine him not?”
His lover was nosy as hell.
“No, not really. You know, I don’t mind it at all. That kid had a knack.”
“Still does. The only thing wrong with him right now is that he can’t keep his balance for shit. The bullet didn’t hurt his legs, just his balance, and I figure if that’s the worst, if that’s the entire takeaway from this, I can live with that.”
Chauncey nodded. “No shit. How’s your resort thing that you’re working on the side?”
“Good, good. Making money. I do all this—” He waved his hand dramatically. “—for fun.”
“You mean you’re not in it for the cash?”
“Nope. What about you? Everything going well?”
Chauncey shrugged. “As well as can be expected. I’m thinking about retiring.”
“Yeah? That means you’re going to get hurt, you know that, right?”
“No shit on that. I tell you. It’s not the firefighting; it’s not anything on the ground. It’s hell, just trying to keep up with my damn PT.” Chauncey patted his belly, which was like stone. “Every so often I’d like to just have a day where there were no crunches and a piece of cheesecake in my future.”
“I had cheesecake just the other day, and it was damn good.”
“Fucking flyboy.”
“Uh-huh. Of course I wasn’t expecting to be jumping. I was expecting to be flying your skanky asses out there.”
“Yeah, I know. I wasn’t expecting it either.” Chauncey shook his head. “Fredericks got it bad. He was going down into a ravine, and I swear to you, that fire chased him all the way up the chute. By the time we pulled him out, it was bad. You know how it is. Reminded me a lot of that time outside the Albuquerque area, down there by the Sandias and things got hairy. They dropped us off into the fucking desert on the backside of that big fire.”
Frost nodded. That’s where they’d lost Ed Yazee. He didn’t know what to say about Fredericks. What did they say every time somebody got really badly hurt? Every time you lost somebody? They just had to suck it up and do their jobs. “Is there a place that we can send money for his family? I know he’s got kids.”
“Yeah, there’s a collection going up, and she’s on her way. She wanted to get someone else to watch the babies, and I don’t blame her. That’s some deep-core horror movie shit right there.”
Suddenly, all he wanted to do in the world was to talk to Quentin. “All right, man, I’ll deal with that. I’m going to go talk to Q, tell him what’s up.”
Chauncey nodded. “Give him my best. And tell him to keep his eye on us. We can use all the help we can get.” Chauncey leaned forward, expression so serious. “And everybody knows about his gut.”
Frost waited to call until all his gear was set and everything was ready for his early-morning drop. Then he dialed.
Q picked up immediately. “Hey, how’s it going? I miss you.”
“I hear you. I’m leading A-Team tomorrow on the ground.” There was no reason to sugarcoat it. Q knew what was what.
“Somebody get hurt?”
“Yeah, Fredericks. Couple other guys too. His was the worst.”
Q sighed softly. “So you’ll need to send me all your information where you’re going with this, and I’ll keep you informed. I’m not loving the way the wind patterns are doing this, but when I know exactly where you are, I can keep things tight. What happened with Fredericks?”
“Got caught in the saddle, everything went to hell.”
“Damn it.”
“Yeah, I know.” Frost sat on his bunk. “How you doing? You’ve been sleeping, eating?”
“I can’t sleep without you, you know that, but yeah, I’m fine. Doing all my stuff, keeping busy, ready for you to come home.”
“Soon. Soon they’ll have to trade us out, and I’ll come home—love on you, get some rest, you know, the good stuff.”
