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They’re doing a job when the call comes.
The sun is bright overhead, and the wind is brisk at Barry’s back where he’s positioned high up on the roof. Wolfie is below, handing off packages and being overly friendly with the customers, as always. Further down the alley Barry can just hear Chain and Collin muttering quietly to each other, snickering about something or other.
There’s a slew of sirens in the distance and Barry freezes, waiting to see if they come closer. But they fade after a moment, and Wolfie calls up at him from down below.
“What’s the bet that was Freddy?” he says with an audible grin, and Barry groans internally.
“Oh god, let’s hope not. Now shut up, I’m meant to be hiding here Wolfie, not-” he’s interrupted by the loud trill of his phone. Wolfie laughs, says something about ‘so much for being stealthy Bawwy’ - but Barry can’t hear over the ringing in his ears, the sudden rush of adrenaline as he stares down at the name glowing on his phone screen.
Clown.
Barry stands up and answers the phone, ignoring Wolfie’s question from below. The voice that drifts through the speaker and into his ear makes unease twist his stomach, as it always does. But that’s fine, and it has good company; fear has pooled, heavy and tangible in Barry’s gut ever since the BBMC realised that Dundee was missing.
Barry has learned very quickly how to live with dread.
“Ah, Barry ,” the lilting tones of Chatterbox come through the phone. “It is good that you answered, my friend. Yes, it is very, very good.” Chatterbox’s voice is high pitched and inviting - like he has a secret, perhaps, or a joke that he very much wants to share.
“Uhhh hey, Chatterbox. What, um. What can I help you with?” Barry asks, turning at some movement at the corner of his eye - Collin, climbing up onto the roof, a silent question on his face. Barry nods his reassurance before turning away again, just as a low chuckle fills his ear.
It builds in pitch and volume, almost to the point of pain - but Barry doesn’t dare move the phone away. He waits, staring out over the rooftops, ear ringing with the gulping, manic laughter of someone who might very well kill him one day. Despite the danger Barry is almost certain he’s invited to his door, a fierce kind of triumph is beginning to grow inside him. He knows exactly what the insane fucking clown is going to say, even before he says it.
“Barry… I’ve got him .”
It’s all action from there. Collin speeds away with a holler of excitement to organise a boat to be taken to the jetty, and Barry explains to a concerned Chain and Wolfie why he and Collin are suddenly leaving, an onslaught of words spilling out of his mouth in a rush.
“We’ve got to go, you two need to stay here and finish the job cus we need some fucking money to pay off this bloody warehouse, if you need help call Kaz I think he said he was going to do jobs earlier? Uhhh or maybe that was Cici? I can’t remember, but anyway, it’s confirmed - the clown has Baas, we’ve got to go. We can’t have more people on this job it’ll get messy and Wolfie you barely like holding a gun so I’m not going to ask you to hammer someone’s shin in but uhhh yeah - finish up here, make us some money, I have to go and get my husband back okaybye! ”
Then he’s sprinting over to his car - glad he’d left the Sabre at the Billabong - and streaking out of the alleyway with a screech of the tyres.
The clown had done it. He had snatched Baas, off duty. Had him ready at the spot. No one would be looking for him. Now, finally, is their chance.
Barry drifts through a red light, heading towards the Vanilla Unicorn.
Time to get ready.
Barry’s still not entirely sure whether or not Chatterbox remembers the jetty - but he hopes to fucking god that the clown doesn’t. That would be awkward at best .
The sun is starting to dip below the mountain that overlooks the city, and it casts a long shadow over the secluded bay. The rundown houses. The boatshed.
He pulls up in a hurry, straight into the bush behind the main house - the branches screech and scratch at the paint of the sultan he had picked on the way up the coast. It had been a lucky find, for once. One more piece of good luck for the day, and Barry breathes deeply, praying it will last. They need a break, dammit. It’s been a shit show ever since they pulled up at the casino with Dundee, armed to the teeth and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Barry reaches up and flicks the voice modulator built into his halloween mask to On. He sits for a moment, taking a breath, trying to calm himself down - he can almost hear Collin’s voice in his head, abrasively honest. He’s gotta keep control of himself here. If he wants to get anything from Baas - if he wants Dee back, he’s got to be smart about this. Now is not the time for mistakes, or for mercy.
“Time to get hard,” Barry says under his breath and then pauses on a sigh, glad no one was around to hear it. He can almost hear the bark of his husband’s laughter echoing back at him, the heckling that would no doubt have followed such a comment even just two weeks before.
Two weeks. It’s almost been two weeks. The thought drifts through his mind, unwelcome, and he pushes it away, ignoring the jolt of dread that had come with it. A distant sound pulls Barry from his morose thoughts, and he scrambles from the car all at once, heart pounding.
It had been two fucking weeks, and he is done waiting.
The shadow of Mount Chiliad has brought a sharpness to the late afternoon air. There are no locals around - the houses nearby are quiet, the only sign of life a small boat bobbing just off shore. But as Barry rounds the corner of the house and walks down the driveway, the muffled sound he’d heard in the car becomes clear, the scream growing louder as he nears the boatshed.
He doesn’t pause at the doorway, walking straight inside and looking around, eyes adjusting after a moment to the dim light.
Two familiar silhouettes stand close to the door, facing further into the shed. Collin’s wide shoulders, and the feminine outline of Riley. The both of them turn as he enters, and he nods his head in greeting.
“I thought you were gonna stay out of this, in case it goes bad?” Barry asks Riley, demonic voice soft as he moves to stand beside her. The acting Prime Minister of the BBMC turns to look at him and her shoulders lift in a shrug.
“M was busy helping F escape from the cops,” she explains, voice deep and distorted. “And I know P said it would be smarter for me to sit this one out, and he’s right - but I’m tired of playing things smart. I want some fucking answers.”
“We all do,” Collin interjects from her other side, voice grim even through the modulator. “And if our friend over there isn’t up to the task, well. I brought my tool bag.”
In his most despondent moments, Barry has wondered whether maybe he was the only one in the club who actually missed Dundee. He has wondered if he was the only one who felt the urgency, the desperate need to have their Prime Minister back with them.
He thought, perhaps, it was different for him. Pez had said it, even, that evening in the Billabong: everyone else had lost a Prime Minister. Barry had lost a Prime Minister and a husband.
He has lain awake for nights; staring numbly at the unused pillow on the empty side of the bed, the room around him too quiet to sleep in without Dee’s snores. He’s the one who has had to sit and eat breakfast by himself. That first day he had made Dee’s breakfast alongside his own, as he always did - vegemite scraped sparingly over buttered toast. It was only when Barry had gotten home that night and found it uneaten on the table that he’d realised what he’d done.
He refuses to call it grief. Fuck what Pez says, there’s no reason for them to mourn, or to hold a bloody memorial - they don’t have a body. They don’t know that Dundee is actually- whether or not he’s even-
So Barry refuses to call it grief.
But whatever unnamed thing it is that has gripped his stomach with an iron hold the past few weeks, that has him sleepless and nauseous in turns... Whatever this fucking feeling was that has him obsessing over every possibility, calling in every connection he has ever made… Whatever this feeling is - it is only recently that Barry has realised the others are feeling it too.
He stands beside Riley and Collin in the boatshed, and thinks briefly of the club meeting they’d had just last night, the ramshackle group crammed into the Billabong. He’d been slumped in Dee’s chair by the hot-tub. He had been exhausted, almost dozing after just a couple of beers. He had found himself glancing around the family he’d help make and wishing desperately that it was complete. Every so often a lull would happen where normally Dee would be yelling whatever nonsense he was on about that day, and they all noticed the silence.
Barry would be the first to admit; he’s not the most observant of people. But in those quiet moments of yesterday evening, moths fluttering helplessly towards the lights in the garage, Barry had noticed the changes wrought by the challenge they were facing together.
Since the investigation hit a standstill, Collin’s jokes had been sharper; hitting too close to frayed nerves, his comments harsher, his laugh over-loud and his grin violent. He can tell Collin wants to lash out, wants to claw retribution from thin air. Barry wants the same.
Shadows have been growing under Riley’s eyes and her shoulders are tense - Barry’s not the only one losing sleep, and he’s not the only one trying to hold the club together while simultaneously feeling like the world around them has fallen apart.
Malakai, who normally only has eyes for his Queen, had spent the week watching them all with growing concern. He’d been quieter than usual, waiting for the moments where a calm word or some reassurance was needed. It happened more and more as each day passed.
The prospects had seemed adrift without Barry’s guidance - they’ve been doing well on jobs, but Barry can’t help but feel like he’s left them a bit unmoored. If Riley and Barry feel like the world is falling apart then Freddy has clearly wanted to burn what remains of it to the ground. He has never been able to sit still, but now his manic energy - so like Dundee in some ways - had been pushing him to job after job, obsessively pursuing the kind of security that Barry knows they might never feel again. Wolfie and Chain have been trying to keep up, running jobs and doing their best to grasp for any kind of stability they can find.
Last night Barry had looked around at his friends - his family - and he had finally seen the changes in the people around him for what they were: the undeniable evidence that he was not alone in missing Dundee.
And now, standing in the boatshed, Barry looks down at the one person who might be able to explain what it was all for - if they can only get him to talk.
Samuel Baas is sitting slumped against the far wall - hands and feet bound and mouth gagged. There’s blood trickling steadily from a clearly broken nose, and a purple-black bruise is blooming around his left eye. Chatterbox looms over the cop, and it takes Barry a second to realise that the clown is watching the steady stream of blood from Baas’ nose with almost childlike wonder, zeroed in on the crimson dribbling over the gag. He’s chuckling softly to himself and Barry once again feels that shiver of unease that he gets when dealing with the clown - but he pushes past it.
They’ve got work to do.
It takes longer than Barry expected.
Even with Collin cracking out his toolbag - much to Chatterbox’s delight - it takes a long time for them to break Baas. And, really, he doesn’t break, so much as he does slip up.
But it’s an opening, and one they fixate on, pushing and pushing, until they finally get another piece of information, and then another. Eventually Baas seems to give up, the truth spilling out of him in pain induced trickles, until finally - they have it.
Riley puts away the camera she’d been holding, the whole sordid plan filmed and recorded. The four of them stand there in the silence, listening to Baas’ laboured breathing.
He’s dead.
The thought doesn’t make sense. Barry can’t understand it. He knows the words, had heard Baas say ‘I killed him.’ But comprehension is sluggish, and it is a handful of long, dazed seconds before he understands their meaning.
Dee’s gone.
Dead.
Actually, truly dead.
Shot in the head by someone meant to help people, on the orders of another who had sworn to protect.
It would be one thing if it had been another gang. Or even a random shooting, or an accident. But it’s the fucking hypocrisy of it. The police of Los Santos swore to protect her people from criminals - and here they were. Dumping bodies into the ocean.
Oaths don’t mean anything to some people. Vows and agreements, discarded.
He and Dee had never gotten the chance to make their vows. Because fuck the law, they were husbands and they didn’t need a piece of paper and a smug cunt in court to tell them that.
But it would have been nice, maybe. To make that promise to each other in front of other people - so they knew. So they could see that dedication. It could have happened on the beach, maybe, with drinks at the Billabong after.
Barry had thought about it, sometimes. Actually getting married to Dundee. But he’d never said anything - for one, he wasn’t sure it needed to be said. But, mostly, he just didn’t want to invite more teasing. Didn’t want to look soft. He thinks that maybe one day he would have grown some fucking balls and said something.
But now he’ll never get that chance.
Barry looks down at the man before him. He’s not really aware of his body anymore; his fingers are tingling and there’s a rushing in his ears. He wonders calmly whether he’s about to pass out, here in the boatshed. But he stands still and the moment passes into the next, leaving him numb as he stares down into the face of the man who killed Dundee.
It pisses him off, Barry realises. The lack of appreciation for what that confession means. As though it was nothing. As though Dundee was nothing. It pisses him off.
He’s removing his mask before he realises he’s made the decision to do it, Collin and Riley both making aborted movements to stop him - both too late. Chatterbox watches from the side, enthralled. They’ll have to deal with the clown later, because Barry’s about to break a promise.
Face revealed, Barry drops the mask at Baas’ bloodied feet and looks down at the cop once again. For the first time, there’s a flicker of something over Baas’ face; recognition perhaps, or maybe resignation.
Vindication settles gently in Barry’s chest. He’s wondered sometimes, if he would be able to do this in cold blood. He’s killed before, of course. In self defence, usually. He thought this would be different. That maybe he would hesitate, if he ever got to this moment.
“Why bother taking it off?” Baas asks. His voice is barely above a whisper, and blood stains his teeth as he grins mockingly. “I’m not stupid. You’re the only idiots in this fucking city who give a shit about Dundee. Had to be you.”
The choice is easier than Barry thought it would be. He’s resolved to it, like it’s no choice at all - like it’s a forgone conclusion.
“I took it off because I’m not a coward. When I kill someone, I look them in the eye.” Barry’s voice sounds cold and foreign even to himself - like he’s hearing a stranger talk through him.
But they’re his words and it’s his anger all the same, choking past the tightness in his throat.
“I want you to know it’s me. I- uhhh. I want you to think, Think about the choices you made that led to this moment,” Barry continues, and the gun is solid in his hand as he pulls it free. “And I want you to know that as soon as you fucked with Dee - with my club, my family… Uhh. Well.”
Barry lifts the gun, points it straight at Baas’ head.
“It was gonna end like this.”
He pulls the trigger.