Harlan Mosby breathed out a shaky, shallow breath. They said it wouldn’t be much longer … a few days at the most. He tried to be okay with it. Dying wasn’t too bad. Pain was as distant as the sound of the machines, hovering but never really penetrating his consciousness. What he felt most was a disappointment in what he’d had. Never had much and was leaving with even less. Had a wife once but she left him after a couple of years and a few too many drunken binges. Be nice if he had a kid or two by his side, but since he’d never cottoned to kids, he hadn’t had any. His only relatives were a couple of distant cousins who didn’t give a hoot in hell if he lived a hundred years or died yesterday. Which seemed fair since that was pretty much the way he felt about them, too.
Preacher had come by this morning and wanted to know if he wanted forgiveness for anything. As if he’d tell a damn preacher. What he had inside him he’d take to his grave. That’s what he had promised, and if nothing else, Harlan Mosby was a man of his word. A small niggle of regret did hound him, though. He had pledged to do the best job he could as Midnight’s chief of police and thought he’d done a pretty good job. Kept the riffraff to a minimum, protected law-abiding citizens, and when a citizen misbehaved, he’d seen them punished—some of them by his own hand. Folks might have looked down on him if they knew some of the things he’d done, but there was no regret in that. Sometimes you gotta get covered in a little manure if you’re gonna watch things grow.
A small smile twitched at his mouth at the thought. Zach Tanner had learned that lesson all too well. Damned if he hadn’t enjoyed that night about as much as he’d ever enjoyed anything. Watching that no-account kid get the shit beat out of him and then get covered in cow shit was still funny after all these years.
The fact that Tanner was now the police chief of Midnight stuck in his craw like a dry chicken bone. If he’d had any money, he would’ve paid to have someone take care of Zach Tanner once and for all. Trash like that running his town? Maybe it was good he was dying.
No, he had few regrets except maybe when it came to the Wildes. Hell, they’d been a good family … a little too highfalutin for his taste, but they’d never done him any harm. The whole thing had bothered him. Yeah, he’d been paid well, but that money hadn’t lasted all that long. He hadn’t dared ask for more, though, ’cause he didn’t trust that he wouldn’t be next. The killing of pretty little Maggie Wilde was about as messy as he’d ever seen. Poor woman hadn’t had a prayer. And then having to string up Beckett Wilde hadn’t been fun, either. Poor bastard had woken right at the last minute and had stared them down, all of them.
Even now, pumped up on morphine to the hilt, he felt a shiver of fear sweep through him as he remembered the burning hatred in the man’s eyes. Harlan hoped to hell he didn’t have to meet him in the afterlife. He sure as shit wouldn’t want to have to tangle with him.
He blew out another shallow breath. Nope, not a whole lot of regrets for sixty-eight years of semi-rough living. Now he was headed to eternal peace, which sounded pretty damn good to him. That is if he didn’t believe what that old preacher man had told him about hellfire and eternal damnation. He sure as shit hoped that wasn’t true.
The sound of a door squeaking open hit his consciousness. Probably one of those horse-faced nurses checking on him. Seemed like if a man was on his deathbed, they’d have the courtesy to send someone halfway decent-looking to take care of him. Having one of those old biddies being the last face he saw sure as shit didn’t help a fellow die peacefully.
Harlan blinked as a shadow came into view. The figure was kind of short and a little on the skinny side. Didn’t look like one of the nurses … maybe an orderly or some kind of helper. Doctors had stopped coming a few days ago. Guess they figured there