Chapter 3 #2
He fingered the cut across Sebastian’s temple, surprised that he hadn’t been shoved away yet.
Instead, Sebastian’s eyes fluttered closed, and everything in Quinn quieted and settled, like the calm before a storm.
Quinn trailed up to the bruise forming just above the cut.
Sebastian had been lucky it hadn’t hit the eyebrow piercing and ripped the skin there.
An eyebrow piercing. Sebastian had never worn it in court.
At what point in their eight years apart had he gotten it?
Quinn couldn’t help himself as he brushed his knuckles across Sebastian’s cheek and traced the edge of his ear, the ends of Sebastian’s hair tickling his fingers. His heart ached as Sebastian stayed perfectly still for him.
Sebastian’s lips parted a fraction, and Quinn had an urge to run his thumb across them.
Peyton cleared his throat, and Quinn jerked his hand back like he’d been burned at the same time Sebastian’s eyes flew open. He turned his head away from Quinn, dislodging his hold.
“Something you two want to tell us?” Peyton asked.
Quinn searched Peyton’s face, but his poker expression was impenetrable. Quinn had learned the hard way not to play poker against him; he was an absolute shark, and Quinn didn’t want to know how much Peyton’s entire family would owe him if they played for real money.
“Ancient history,” Sebastian said. “Nothing worth talking about.”
Quinn flinched. “Go wash the blood off your face,” he said quietly, stepping back so Sebastian could stand.
“Can’t handle a little blood?” He was wearing a smug smirk that Quinn was too familiar with.
It was one the lawyer used in the courtroom when he knew he’d gotten them all right where he wanted them, when he’d had them chasing their tails for hours already and was now ready for the final strike that would leave them all with their pants down.
“I want to look at it properly, make sure it doesn’t need extra medical attention,” Quinn lied.
The cut was superficial. He just didn’t like how seeing blood on Sebastian’s face was making him feel.
And he needed to find his balance again, which wouldn’t happen with Sebastian and Peyton so close to him.
“How hard did you throw that phone, Parker?”
”I thought he’d just killed someone!” Parker said angrily. “I was trying to hurt him!”
“What were you going to do if he was the murderer?” Will asked, emerging from the hallway. “If he’d come at you?”
Will wasn’t wearing a shirt either. Quinn had never thought about what Will looked like under his tactical gear. He was significantly taller than Peyton but lankier, with a flat, toned stomach. He was also currently covered in similar bite marks as Peyton.
Quinn didn’t know if his sudden urge to touch those marks as well was a projection of his feelings for the other two, or whether he’d instantly gone certifiably insane the moment Peyton had opened his door. He was leaning towards insanity.
He eyed Sebastian’s shoulder, wondering if there were marks underneath his shirt. Images of what they might have looked like all tangled together forced their way into his mind, and he had to use every technique he had ever learned to focus and push them out.
“Run away screaming. Duh!”
“You need some self-defence lessons,” Peyton said, frowning at his twin.
“For the next time someone dumps a body in my apartment?” Parker said sarcastically. His face lost what was left of the colour in it. “I can’t believe I just said that.” He turned back around and emptied his stomach into the sink. Peyton rubbed his back in a soothing motion.
Sebastian brushed past him, headed towards the bathroom, and Quinn’s stomach clenched. He curled his fingers into his palms to stop himself from reaching out.
Riley and Grady arrived shortly after the bathroom door snicked closed in the tense quiet.
Riley’s black hair was swept to the side, his ice-blue eyes alert and looking like he was already sweeping and calculating the scene.
His suit looked too impeccable for five in the morning, but it always looked like that.
Grady, on the other hand, looked like he’d pulled an all-nighter, even though Quinn knew he hadn’t.
His dark-olive eyes were half lidded, and his dark-brown hair was sticking up in multiple directions like he’d been pulling on it.
His shirt was askew, and his tie was nowhere to be seen.
Quinn kept spares in his car because Grady always forgot them when they were called out early.
Riley went straight for his brothers, checking them over. “Were either of you hurt?”
“I’m traumatised,” Parker muttered.
“We’re fine,” Peyton said. “We didn’t—he was here when we got up.”
“Did anyone touch anything?” Grady asked as he crouched beside the corpse. He tilted his own head as he looked it over.
“Just me,” Peyton said. “Checked his pulse.”
“It doesn’t look like he was killed here,” Grady said. “No blood spatter, and no signs of a scuffle. A drop and run wouldn’t have caused much of a disturbance, but how did they get inside? None of you noticed any weird noises?”
“I wasn’t here,” Parker said. “Chances were these three were—”
“We were asleep,” Peyton interrupted, but Quinn knew what Parker was going to say. There was a high chance they’d been having sex at the time.
“Three?” Riley looked sharply at Quinn, and Quinn could feel his cheeks heating despite the fact he had nothing to do with this.
“Our guest is in the bathroom,” Will said. “Parker hit him with his phone because he thinks that’s an effective tactic against murderers.”
“It made him bleed, didn’t it?” Parker sputtered.
“He didn’t do anything, and if you could not injure people we bring home, we’d appreciate it,” Peyton said.
Riley pinched the bridge of his nose.
Quinn bit his tongue to stop his question from coming out. Whether they frequently added someone to their bed wasn’t any of Quinn’s business. He had no right to the knowledge, and it had no bearing on the investigation that had just fallen into their laps.
“Do you have any gloves on you?” Quinn asked.
“Forensics will be here in five,” Grady said, pulling out a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and handing them over.
Quinn snapped them on and was careful not to jostle the body too much as he patted him down, feeling for a wallet or something that could help identify him.
He glanced up as Will crouched down beside him.
His face was suddenly too close to the marks on Will’s chest, his dusky nipples enticing in a way that Quinn hadn’t expected.
It had to be the supercharged energy in the room.
That was the only explanation. Will was flirty but never serious, and Quinn had never thought about him that way, even when he knew that he was dating Peyton.
Quinn had always steered clear of any thoughts of the two of them together.
He looked away, trying to get his mind on track. He was a professional and usually far better at controlling wayward thoughts than this.
“What do you think?” he asked. It was a diversionary tactic, but he didn’t normally have a TOU officer with him when he was going over a scene, and it would be stupid not to use his expertise.
Will slid his fingers around Quinn’s wrist, causing goosebumps to rise up his arm. He hooked them into the glove and pulled it clean off.
Quinn stared at Will, but Will had already put the glove on himself and was poking at the guy’s head around some of the wounds.
“I have more,” Grady muttered.
“These look nasty, but I don’t think it’s what killed him,” Will said.
“There’s a dent in his head,” Grady said in disbelief. “You think he died of natural causes?”
Quinn found a wallet in the front pocket of the jeans.
He pulled it out and flipped it open. Something fell out and landed on the tiled floor with a clink.
A pocket watch. Quinn picked it up and studied it, flipping it back and forth.
“Looks like an heirloom, maybe?” He squinted, trying to read whatever was etched on the side, but there was too much blood on it to make it out.
The blood was interesting, however, because the rest of the man’s clothing was clean.
They’d need forensics to go over it but also analyse the blood to see if it belonged to the victim or to someone else. Or both, potentially.
“Do you have—” He turned, and Grady was already handing over an evidence bag. Quinn had left his house too hastily to grab anything, and he hadn’t even thought about the gear he had stashed in the boot of his car. All he’d been thinking about was getting to Peyton.
He dropped the pocket watch into the bag and handed it back. He flicked through the wallet and pulled out the ID. He read the name aloud. “Mason Delgrade.” Shit. He hadn’t recognised the face since he wasn’t one of theirs, but he knew the name.
“Who is he?” Grady asked.
“He’s an informant,” Riley said. “One of Gideon and Angela’s.”
“Should we call them?”
“No. Once the body has been removed and the scene released, you can give them the information. There’s nothing they’ll glean here that we can’t,” Riley said. “He isn’t connected to Peyton, Parker, or Will, and he was killed somewhere else; I doubt we’re going to find any useful information here.”
Yeah, Quinn had been thinking the same thing.
But if Sebastian was a random one-night stand, then it didn’t make any sense for it to be connected to him either.
Which meant they needed to work out why the body was left here, to determine who it had been left for, and their environment wasn’t going to tell them that.
They were on the fourth floor, and it was the apartment of an ex-spec ops soldier and a Tactical Operations Unit officer.
There was no way this was coincidental or random.
The tension in the air went up tenfold when Sebastian came out of the bathroom. He froze upon seeing Grady and Riley.