Chapter Text
“Think I’ll shoot this place up and break out the lowlifes? I put most of them in here,” Gabriel said.
“Sorry,” the prison officer said. “I can’t let you in with weapons. The warden said no exceptions.”
“Is that right? Warden Sanderson makes plenty of exceptions for you and your colleagues,” Gabriel sneered, but he unloaded his guns and put them in a box. The prison officer took the box with a stony face, and stowed it in a locker. The prison system was a stinking hotbed of abuses and corruptions, but it preferred to keep them in the family behind ten-foot walls and chain link fences. Gabriel had leaned on the warden for more than a week before he had agreed to let him arrange this meeting outside of visiting hours. Gabriel didn’t intend to be escorted out of the prison before he finished what he came here to do.
The visiting room was empty when Gabriel walked through the heavy door. The prisoner side of the visiting room was visible through the row of glass windows that lined a far wall. In front of the windows were a row of stools. The hard plastic seats had been worn down to a dull blue, and the metal legs were scuffed and bolted down to the gray floor. Gabriel was sitting down and getting comfortable, when the door on the other side of the glass open, and McCree was marched into the room by two prison officers.
McCree was wearing an orange uniform and chains around his wrists and ankles. He had a pair of black eyes, a cut lip, and bandages around the top of his head. His shaggy hair had been cut so short that it didn’t cover his ears or the back of his neck, and his cheeks were smooth as a baby’s bottom.
Gabriel could see why McCree had grown out a beard when he had been playing cowboy with the Deadlock Gang. He could be mistaken for a college frat boy without it. Nothing like the grizzled gunrunner that had topped the most wanted list of the Interpol and the FBI.
Gabriel waited for McCree to be pushed into the seat in front of his window, before he picked up the phone mounted on the wall and rapped his knuckles on the glass.
For a moment, it looked like McCree wasn’t going to pick up the phone on his side of the glass. Gabriel rapped on the glass again. McCree looked over his shoulder at the prison guard standing by the door of the visiting room, and visibly sighed. He picked up his phone and squeezed out a smile, which turned into a grimace when it tugged at the scab on his lip. “Well, if it ain’t Commander Reyes. I had a feeling I’d be seeing you.”
“How was your big day?” Gabriel said into the phone.
“I went a few rounds with folks that wanted a piece of ol’ Jesse,” McCree said. “It ain’t nothing to write home about. But I’m sure you knew that already.”
“Yeah, I heard there was a real nasty catfight. I heard they had to put you in solitary for your protection,” Gabriel said. “You’re not so tough without your fancy guns, are you?”
McCree ducked his head and looked to the side. If he were wearing his cowboy hat, he would have hidden his eyes. Since he was bare-headed, he just looked like a sulking schoolboy as he muttered, “Don’t gotta make me sound like a yellow-belly. I’m a sharpshooter; I don’t claim to be no judo master.”
“No shit, you put no weight behind your punches. I’ve taken harder hits in pillow fights,” Gabriel said.
“Now you’re just aiming below the belt,” McCree said resentfully.
“No, I’m laying it out for you: You’re a cream puff,” Gabriel said. “How do you plan on surviving the rest of your sentence?”
“This ain’t my first rodeo. I know the drill and how to take care of myself. Just got a little too famous these last few years, is all.” McCree shrugged, and then winced when he moved his right shoulder too much. “‘Fraid I’ll have to decline your offer like last time.”
It was nothing that Gabriel hadn’t heard during the arrest and before the trial and after the conviction. It would be nice if McCree’s little lesson yesterday had broken him enough to give Gabriel the answer he wanted to hear, but it looked like Gabriel would have to do this the long way. “You like rotting in supermax this much, huh?”
McCree scratched his bare chin and the chains on his wrists clinked over the phone line. “You ever been in prison before?”
Gabriel snorted. “Never have the occasion. I was too busy fighting tin cans and being shot at by punks like you.”
“That’s what I thought.” McCree chuckled. “Not many people know this, but a prison is kinda like a school. You get to meet people who are the best at what they do, and learn from them. If you’re not a total bastard, some of them know people on the outside and are happy to put in a good word. As a matter of fact, that’s how I got into gunrunning after my last stint.”
“Except you won’t have a chance of getting out of this school for another twenty five years.”
“I knew what I was getting into when I joined the Deadlock Gang. I ain’t ratting on them to get myself out of this jam.” McCree stuck up his middle finger and laid it against the window. “You can take your deal and shove it up where the sun don’t shine.”
Gabriel smiled thinly and crossed his arms. “You’re a tough sell, McCree.”
“That’s ‘cause I ain’t looking to buy,” McCree said, putting down his finger. He was grinning so widely that the cut on his lip had split. He looked like a damn kid that thought he had been a rebel because he dared to say a rude word in front of his class and his middle school teacher. If he were a dog, he would be flattening his ears and wagging his tail and asking for the stick to be thrown again. It was pathetically easy to let McCree thought he had won. “C’mon now, I’ve heard your pitches before. You gotta try harder than that.”
Gabriel leaned forward, and put his elbows on the countertop that jutted out from under the glass window. “There’s something I’ve been wondering about you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “Tell me, are you a gambling man?”
McCree levelled him with a measuring gaze, and Gabriel returned it with more to spare. He was trying to see where the tracks were leading him and poking in the sand for traps that Gabriel had known better than to lay right next to the bait. “I’m surprised you have to ask. I did business with outlaws and got into shootouts with sonsuvbitches meaner than me. Gambling with my life is all I’ve been doing for the last couple of years now.”
“Good, then you know what I mean when I say you’ve been playing with a shit hand since the day you were born.” Gabriel lounged back in his seat. “Some people can beat the odds and climb up in the world, but you aren’t one of them. I’m calling it: When you die, what you see won’t look any better than the inside of this prison.”
McCree’s smile didn’t widen but it didn’t wane. It was frozen on his face, and matched the lack of warmth in his eyes. McCree looked less like he was smiling and more like a cornered dog with its teeth bared. “You’re trying, but I’ve heard worse insults than that.”
“I don’t care your mom is a two-dime whore that gets fucked in the ass six times a night and twice in the morning, McCree. Shut up and listen,” Gabriel said evenly. “I’m offering you a job on my goddamn team.”
McCree had turned an ugly shade of pink. He opened his mouth, and then snapped it shut without a word. He repeated the motion several times but not a peep made it out of his gob. Either McCree couldn’t make up his mind on which profanities to throw back at Gabriel, or Gabriel had done the impossible and rendered him speechless. McCree settled on a strained “What’s that?”
“You heard me,” Gabriel said. “I’m offering you a position on my team. You’ll be bound to serve for a year, but after that, you can leave anytime you want. Your sentence will be wiped clean, and you’ll be a free man for as long as you keep your nose clean. How does that sound?”
“You’re out of your mind.” McCree stared at him.
“Did I mention you’ll be paid the same rate as the other agents? It’ll be more money than you’ll earn sewing jeans for the next twenty five years in here,” Gabriel said.
McCree clasped his hands and rested his mouth behind them. He searched Gabriel’s face with eyes that were sharp enough to cut a lesser man open. “One thing I learnt from dealing with crooks, is if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. What’s the catch?”
“I’m glad you ask. Maybe you aren’t so stupid after all,” Gabriel drawled. “The catch is, kid, you’ll answer to me. You won’t take orders from the U.N. or anyone in the Overwatch chain-of-command. You go where I tell you to go. When I tell you to jump, you better ask how high, otherwise I’ll drop you right back into this hole.”
“No can do.” McCree dropped his clasped hands. “This is just a roundabout way to make me talk, ain’t it? I ain’t selling out my gang for you.”
“Do I look like I care? I don’t need a line on the Deadlock Gang anymore,” Gabriel said shortly. “My team confiscated their last stash of firearms. Two gangs have put a hit on them. One want their guns back and the other one want their money back. Your buddies will be dead if they so much as try to sell Girl Scout cookies.”
“Hell’s bells.” McCree let out a long sigh. His head drooped forward and his shoulders slackened like the air had been let out of them. “Those stupid assholes.”
Gabriel let him process that information and mentally counted to ten. His pocket was heavy with a pack of cigarettes that he had bought from the news agency yesterday, and Gabriel was itching to light up a cigarette to fill the seconds.
“I don’t have a hidden agenda, McCree. I want you on Blackwatch because you have potential,” Gabriel said, tapped a finger on the glass. “You don’t need jail time; what you need is a chance to ride in and save the day and be a big damn hero.”
McCree laughed shortly, like a bark. “I don’t know who’s been telling you tales, but I’ve killed more than a handful of folks. Men that were someone’s fathers and sons and brothers.”
“I didn’t say you’re Mother Theresa,” Gabriel scoffed. “But you’re the only man from Deadlock Gang I’ve offered this job to. Do you know why?”
This time, McCree’s smile reached his eyes. “At this point, I figure I’m a special snowflake.”
“One in a dozen, if you’re lucky,” Gabriel said. “But you stuck around for the bitter end when my team raided your gang’s hideout. That counted for something. You’re a cowboy who actually acts like the ones in the movies.”
McCree shook his head and laughed to himself, but the tips of his ears were flushed red. “Now you’re just buttering me up.”
“Glad to know you’ve finally noticed.” Gabriel stood to leave. “I like you, McCree, but I don’t like you that much. The offer won’t be on the table forever. In fact, I’m getting tired of needling you.”
Gabriel drove back to the motel where he was staying. He spent the day in his room to read through the reports that were coming in about a cargo of black market human organs that would be crossing into international waters later that night. He told the team to go ahead with the operation without him.
The next morning, Gabriel was eating a piece of dry toast in the kitchenette in his room when his phone rang.
“‘Morning, Commander,” Warden Sanderson said stiffly. “Come on down to my office. The convict is yours.”