Accusations

At the first mention of a gun, Jennifer White was on high alert. Everyone was a little shocked, and some scared, except Heather, but it the Silver Park Ranger who reacted first. After arriving at the cabin, she had allowed herself to relax, but in a split second her body was straight and tight, and her mind was racing with tactics and questions. Her hand dropped to her side and unclasped her holster. Though she didn’t draw the weapon, she wanted access and her fingers hovered nearby, ready to pounce if the situation became more dangerous. All of this happened near instinctively, the fruits of her training ripened by years on the job.

“Where did you last see the gun?” Jennifer asked while taking several steps closer to Kurt.

The last time they were this close, it had been in Shawn’s apartment when they’d almost fucked. But as handsome a man as he was, as he had become, as much as that memory and what could have been made her body shiver and tingle all over, she compartmentalized and stayed focused. She boarded up her lust in a room in the back of her mind, while the cogs and wheels got to work solving the mystery. It was a temporary fix. Being this close to him, her feelings wouldn’t be held back for long, but she hoped that temporary was all she needed.

“I-”

“We’re going to die.” Amber’s voice shrieked, drowning out Kurt. “I don’t want to die.”

“No one is going to die. The boys probably just didn’t look hard enough,” Ashley said dismissively.

“Nothing bad will happen,” Chloe said, almost at the same time as Ashley. “See, we have Jennifer here to protect us.”

“She has a gun too,” Amber said, pointing. “Just like that other Ranger that almost shot me.”

“Why does Robert even have a gun?” Leon asked, his voice overlaid with Amber’s so the soundwaves became tangled like nest of wires. “And he just kept it in the cabin where anyone could stumble on it?”

“Don’t you all just think we’re overreacting, just a little?” Brandon asked loudly, although almost everyone ignored him.

“Yeah, we need to take a step back, and figure this out calmly,” Gavin agreed, although his voice was softer and almost no one heard him either.

“There’s nothing to figure out,” Kurt shouted to be heard over Amber’s continued lamentations. “I already know who took it; Kendra McKenzie.”

“What? You’re just going to throw her under the bus?” Victoria leapt in amidst all the other voices. “After she risked Shawn’s wrath to come here and help us?”

“Who’s Kendra McKenzie?” Leon asked, but no one had time to answer him.

“She’s the only one that make sense. You two were here all day. No one else was down there until Brandon and I went to get the generator,” Kurt argued. “And now she’s gone.”

“You just left Victoria here? With Shawn’s most trusted partner in crime-”

“Ex-partner in crime,” Victoria corrected Ashley.

“Shawn could have come for her at any moment and she’d have been wide open for the taking,” Ashley finished her initial thought.

“I can take care of myself!” Victoria snapped.

“If the last few days have proven anything, no, you can’t,” Ashley barked right back, then whipped her head around, directing her fury again at Kurt. “Why didn’t you take her with you?”

“She didn’t want to come,” Kurt muttered ashamedly.

“You’re the one who give us all these chores and told us to go out to get everything set up for Heather’s party,” Chloe jumped to his defense. “What was he supposed to do? Drag her along, kicking and screaming?”

“You can’t expect Ashley to be everywhere and do everything herself,” Leon took her side, his mind still on the quarter of a million extortion that he had no idea how Ashley was going to cover. “She’s been through a lot.”

“Okay, dude, we get it, you want to get in her pants,” Brandon laughed. “I still think everyone is overreacting.”

Leon, who was still under the illusion that Ashley and Brandon were dating, immediately clamped his mouth shut tight and blushed. The last thing they needed amidst this chaos, Leon thought, was for Ashley’s boyfriend to find out she’d sucked him off in the back of a night club just a few hours prior.

“Haven’t we all been through a lot?” Madison added. “We’re just trying to figure this out as we go.”

“This coming from the girl who went in half-cocked all by herself, and got fucked and videoed for her trouble,” Ashley growled. “You of all people should know how dangerous Shawn can be, how he manipulates, how he can twist a situation to his own benefit. How can we be sure that Victoria hasn’t already been turned? Again.”

“Oh, fuck y-” Both Victoria and Madison began to shout.

“ENOUGH,” Jennifer projected her voice, just as she’d been trained, bringing an abrupt end to all conversations until only Amber’s restrained whimpering could still be heard. “Now, we’re going to get to the bottom of this, but you’re only going to speak if spoken to, and you’re going to let me do my job.”

No one disagreed.

“I’ll ask again, where did you last see the gun?” she addressed Kurt.

“It was in the storage room beneath the deck. A couple of days ago, Brandon and I went down there to get the inflatable mattress because we were running out of beds. It was in this ornate box and-”

“Was the box locked?” she asked.

“It was. I think. Or was it just so rusted over that it wouldn’t open?” Kurt looked over at Brandon, but the quarterback only shrugged. “Brandon smashed it open. That I do remember.”

“Was there anything else in the box?”

“Just a few gold coins,” Kurt said with certainty.

“So, last time you were down in the storage room, when you found the box and opened it, when you left, did you put everything back in the box?” she continued assessing and evaluating. “Were you able to put it back in the box?”

“Yes. Brandon only broke it open, but it’s a sturdy old thing, so it was still in one piece. We put everything back in the box, and agreed not to tell anyone about it.”

“You agreed not to mention it to anyone else?” she echoed the words as she mulled over the fact. “No one else knew about the gun then. Why would you do that?”

“For precisely this reason. Tensions were high at the time. I’d only just broken Victoria out of Shawn’s influence, and Madison had just failed in her own entrapment. Ashley was furious at Victoria for using Shawn as an excuse to mess with her relationships, and if Brandon found out what happened with Madison, we didn’t know what he’d do. When Brandon did eventually find out, he stormed out of the cabin, and only returned after Trent had called him about Shawn’s whereabouts.”

“Hey, if it wasn’t for us, Gavin would still be tied to a chair,” Brandon pointed out. “Maybe someone should take the fight to Shawn for once.”

“Yeah,” Trent cheered. “I’m sick of him and his bitches.”

“Isn’t that what Madison tried to do?” Chloe countered. With a side glance at tall brunette, she added, “I don’t mean any offence, but that’s what happened. You went to him. You tried to catch him out. And Shawn used it against you.”

“That wasn’t her fault. She wouldn’t have been in that position if it wasn’t for Victoria,” Ashley insisted. “She wouldn’t even have needed to go to Shawn at all if it wasn’t for Victoria.”

“I got caught up in the feeling. Lots of guys are obsessed with me, but they treat me like a china doll. Here was a guy wanted me so badly that he didn’t care what anyone else thought, how I thought, or even how he had to do it. He wanted me, and he was going to have me. You’re a puppet in his hands, but you feel powerful. It went to my head. Even if it felt good, I knew it was wrong. Is that what you want to hear? I was wrong.” Victoria glared at her best friend, but Ashley had no reply to give. “Maybe Madison’s plan would have gone better if I hadn’t told Shawn everything about her before they even stepped into that alleyway. Or maybe he still would have found a way to pull at her insecurities and wrap her up in string and make her a puppet too. I know him. That’s just his way.”

“Yes,” Ashley said softly, unable to resist a final jibe. “You certainly know him better than anyone else in this room.”

“We’re getting off topic,” Jennifer said before the discussion could deteriorate further. She had only allowed it to go this far in order to get a clear picture of everyone’s motives, but it was becoming frustratingly clear that almost everyone had a reason to want a gun, whether for protection, or vengeance. She looked again to Kurt, “You said you didn’t tell anyone about the revolver, but it sounds like everyone except Amber and Leon knew about it.”

“It slipped out, here and there. So yeah, by now, probably everyone knew about it.”

“Okay, so tell me about today,” Jennifer continued. “How did you discover that it was missing today?”

“It was Brandon. I was busy clearing some cardboard boxes away from the generator when I heard a crash and looked over at Brandon who was behind me. The ornate box was on the ground, open again, but this time there was no gun.”

“What about the gold coins?”

“They were still there,” Kurt replied, as he understood why Jennifer was asking. “The only object missing from the box was the gun.”

“And ammunition? Did the box contain any bullets?”

Kurt shook his head slowly as he thought about it. “There weren’t any bullets in the box, but I don’t remember there ever being any bullets, even when we opened it up last time. Do you?”

Brandon frowned, but only said “no”, without any further explanation.

“So maybe we have nothing to worry about then,” Madison added. “No bullets means the gun is useless anyway.”

“Yay,” Amber cheered as her temperament immediately brightened.

Though she was loathe to dash the young girl’s hopes, Jennifer felt compelled to warn the teens that not having bullets did not, in fact, mean that the gun was useless.

“It’s possible,” she said, “that the gun was already loaded. Additionally, some types of ammunition from the later half of the 19th century are still in use. So, finding the right bullets might not be difficult either.”

“No!” Amber cried out, her mood crashing as quickly as it had rose, as if someone had just sat on the lower end of a piano.

“Brandon,” Jennifer called on him suddenly, startling the football player. “Tell me what happened while Kurt was clearing the way to the generator?”

“I bumped into the box and it fell on the ground,” Brandon said plainly.

The ranger sighed while Ashley and Madison both rolled their eyes, all three having the exact same thought; Boys are dumb.

“A little more information, if possible, please,” Jennifer requested.

“Oh, um…” Brandon scratched his head. “Well, Kurt had asked me to go with him down to the basement because he thought he might need help carrying the generator up. But while he was looking for it, I was just standing around, bored. I was just looking around when I turned and bumped into the shelves where the box sat. The box fell to the ground and opened.”

“What about the position of the box before it fell?”

The quarterback shrugged his large wide shoulders.

“Dunno, I didn’t see before it fell.”

“And, when it opened, did you notice the gun fall out?”

“I didn’t see that either. It was very fast. I turned around, I hit the shelves, I heard the clatter, I looked down,” Brandon explained.

“He didn’t even realize that the gun was missing until I pointed it out,” Kurt revealed, and Brandon frowned.

“So, it could still be in the storage room?” Ashley suggested optimistically. “I mean, they didn’t see it fall out, but they didn’t not see it fall out too.”

“The only way to know that for certain would be to spend all night clearing out the storage room,” Kurt, imagining how well that idea would go over. In fact, he could already see Amber beginning to bawl.

“But Brandon promised to play a game with me!” She reminded them, although it was a fact that very few cared about.

“A missing gun is a little more important,” Madison scoffed.

“I could call it into the Ranger Station and get a couple more bodies down here to help clean it out,” Jennifer said gravely. “But that would mean turning this into a formal investigation. All of you would need to be officially interviewed, and if Robert doesn’t have the necessary paperwork to own the weapon, then…”

“I still don’t see what the problem is,” As Trent folded his strong arms across his broad chest, it was easy to see why he made such an intimidating linebacker. “Either Kendra stole the gun and kills Shawn, in which case we should celebrate. Or she doesn’t, or the gun is still the basement somewhere, in which case, nothing changes. We’re still waiting around for the boogeyman to make his move.”

“The problem, Mr. Lee, is that shooting someone, even a bad someone, unless under very specific circumstances, is a crime. So far all she may have done is steal a gun, which is still a crime. If she goes out with the intention of killing him, even if she fails, that’s attempted ****, which is a crime. If she succeeds, it is ****, and a crime,” Jennifer told the black teen very sternly. “And my job is to prevent crimes.”

For the first time, everyone was silent. The cabin itself felt deathly still while none of the teens even contemplated speaking back to the formidable Ranger. Until someone burst out laughing. Jennifer wheeled around to see the culprit, Heather Ravers, doubled over and clutching her stomach as she laughed and laughed until she was winded, and she laughed some more, albeit breathlessly and silent.

The first emotion she felt rising up was anger at being laughed at. But it was a photo finish between her anger and her confusion, the latter because she had known Heather for so long. In all that time, she had never known Heather to be so rude. But between her anger and her confusion, she didn’t even know what to say. She had a million questions but no idea which one to ask first.

“Sorry,” Heather wiped a tear from her eye. “I couldn’t help it. This has been fun, like really entertaining, but I can’t let you guys go on any further.”

“What are you talking about?” Kurt asked.

“All this drama over a gun that doesn’t even work,” Heather resisted the urge to laugh again. “It’s a dud. A dummy. It’s never worked since my Grandfather bought it at an auction.”

“I thought it was an heirloom,” Brandon recalled. “That’s the story Kurt told me.”

“Yes, that’s one rumor. As I remember, my grandfather used to tell a different one any time someone would ask,” Heather explained with a wide grin. “But the truth is that he was just a fanatic. He loved all things to do with our family history, and especially Ryker Ravers. That particular revolver is remarkably similar to the one that Ryker himself carried. Whether it’s the same one…well, I doubt it. But he was forever chasing after these collector items, wasting large sums of money on junk, while the company fell a part around him, until the accident, and my father was **** to push him out. I haven’t seen a lot of his prized possessions since he left so I presumed that he took all of them with him, but apparently the gun wasn’t that valuable to him.”

“So…so why didn’t you tell us earlier?” Madison demanded.

“Oh, I should have I know, but it was really amusing to hear everyone fretting about this gun that doesn’t even work. And besides, no one even thought to ask me. I could have cleared up this entire matter in seconds.”

“The gun could still be missing,” Jennifer reminded the teenager. “And if Kendra thinks it works, if she tries to use it on Shawn…what about what happens to her?”

“I won’t let anyone else search the cabin. Not after what happened to Lisa. As for Kendra, if she did indeed take the gun then that was a very stupid thing to do,” Heather noted, but shrugged. “Although, if anyone was worried about that, I’m sure they might want to warn Kendra, before she did anything really stupid.”

Heather looked pointedly at Victoria, electric blue having a silent conversation with emerald green. The blonde didn’t budge or blink.

“Kendra didn’t take the gun.”

“Well, that’s good enough for me. Now…” The future CEO put her hands on her hips, having once again taken control and resolved a crisis, as she turned to attention to Brandon and Kurt. “…weren’t you boys supposed to be bringing up a generator?”