Chapter 3 #4
“I thought your instincts were better than that, baby Sinclair,” Grady drawled. “You should have steered clear the second you saw him.”
Peyton’s eyes met Quinn’s. “My instincts said he was hot, and he knows what to do with his mouth.”
Quinn coughed and looked away, a tinge of red spreading across his cheeks.
“It’s none of your business who we sleep with,” Peyton said. “He didn’t kill anyone. We didn’t kill anyone. Okay?”
Riley ran a hand through his hair. “All of you will need to come down to the station to give your statements. And we haven’t sorted out your accommodation issue.”
“I have to shower and get ready for work,” Parker said. “I have a classroom of small people that require my undivided attention. Am I allowed to shower here, or do I have to go elsewhere?”
Riley fished out a set of keys on a keyring and took one off it. “Use mine. I want everyone out of here when the techs get here—they’ll need to sweep the entire area.”
Parker rolled his eyes but snatched the keys. “Fine, whatever.”
“I need to get to work too,” Will said with a shrug. “I could come in, in an hour or two? We don’t have anything big planned today, but…” But they all knew how quickly Will’s day could change in a split second and frequently did.
“I don’t start my shift until this afternoon,” Peyton said.
It wasn’t a lifelong dream of his and was vastly different from working as a sniper in the Australian Army, but working as a bartender for Will’s brother, Aubrey, paid the bills.
It did mean a lot of late nights and weird sleeping patterns, though.
“And I don’t need to shower, so I can come down whenever.
” He, Will, and Sebastian had each showered—not together, since the shower unfortunately wasn’t big enough—before they’d all collapsed into bed and gone to sleep wrapped around each other.
If he could grab his toothbrush and toothpaste, he could do a dry brush in the car.
“Parker, Will, if either of you see anything, anything, out of the ordinary, you contact one of us immediately, do you understand me?” Riley said. “Pick someone appropriate to stay with for at least a few days. This isn’t a negotiation. You’re not staying here.” His voice brooked no argument.
“We’ll stay with Quinn,” Peyton blurted out.
Quinn’s lips parted in shock, and Peyton silently urged him to please agree. He couldn’t stay with his family. Couldn’t give them another reason to think that he couldn’t find his own way.
“Quinn?” Riley said.
“Do you even have room for three people?” Grady asked, raising an eyebrow.
“There are two spare rooms,” Quinn said, wariness edging into his voice.
Peyton furrowed his brows. There were three of them, though?
“Oh, not me,” Parker said. “I have some people I can stay with”—he held up a hand when Riley opened his mouth—“who are perfectly safe, I promise.”
Riley didn’t look like he believed him, but he let him get away with it. To be a fly on the wall when they had a private conversation later. It looked like Riley was building up a list of people he wanted to have a word with. Peyton was just glad he wasn’t on that list… yet, anyway.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Quinn said reluctantly. “I live out of town, and they’re less likely to try anything—if Peyton or Will are the target—at a detective’s house.”
Peyton mouthed “thank you,” and Quinn just nodded in response.
The cavalry finally arrived after that, and Peyton was saved from any more awkward conversations.
Sebastian threw his glasses on his desk and leaned back in his chair. He hadn’t been able to find out anything about what Mason Delgrade had been doing since Sebastian had defended him in court. It was like he’d disappeared off the radar the moment he’d gotten out of jail.
It didn’t make any sense.
Neither did someone he knew winding up dead in a hook-up’s apartment.
Mason had been a client of his eleven months ago.
Sebastian had been unsure about taking the case because it had looked bad.
Possession with intent to distribute, and sometimes that was harder to defend in court than murder was.
He’d sold another part of his soul to Hunter to get the information he needed to prove that Mason was actually innocent.
“Innocent” in this case had been a slippery slope.
Mason was far from innocent, but he had been innocent for the charges laid against him in that instance.
And that was all Sebastian had cared about.
The nuances had been tricky, and in the end, it had been a setup.
Old acquaintances were pissed off that their favourite distributor no longer worked in the business.
Mason had thanked Sebastian profusely when he’d gotten off and said he was going to do something good with his life now that he had the opportunity. What had that meant?
Where had he gone after that? What had caused him to end up dead and dumped in an apartment like meat?
He bit his thumbnail as he tried to work out what his next move needed to be. If it had been anyone else, his first suggestion would have been “lawyer up.” But no one had accused him of anything yet.
“Yet” being the operative word. Sebastian knew he was innocent. He also knew that being innocent meant less than nothing. His entire career was about trying to ensure that innocent people didn’t get put away for something they didn’t do.
He didn’t think that Quinn would just try to pin it on him for no reason even despite their rocky past. But Grady was an asshole, and he’d never made a secret of hating Sebastian and every other lawyer in existence. If he could nail Sebastian on any of this, he would do it.
Fuck, Sebastian needed a coffee. He looked at the empty mug beside his laptop.
Another coffee. He moved his fingers up and massaged his closed eyes.
There was an underlying tenderness to them that told him if he didn’t slow down for a moment, he was going to get a headache.
Not ideal when he had too many cases on his desk and two court appearances that day, one of them in just four hours.
It should be illegal to schedule court dates on a Thursday. It should be illegal to schedule anything on a Thursday. Thursday was Friday Eve and mimosa day. He needed those in preparation for dealing with Friday.
His office door was flung open, and he jerked into an upright position, trying to look like he wasn’t two seconds away from falling asleep at his desk. He relaxed back into his chair when he registered it was just Hunter. And he had come bearing coffee, thank fuck.
“I’m here for an update on my case.”
“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours,” Sebastian said dryly as he took the offered takeout coffee cup.
Hunter settled on the couch and leaned back, spreading his legs. “This is a priority. When is Warren getting out?”
Sebastian wanted to know why it was a priority, but he knew that Hunter wasn’t going to tell him.
“I have a meeting with the prosecutor at twelve to discuss a plea bargain. Chances are he’ll be out by this afternoon.”
“Chances?”
“You’re choosing now to question my abilities?”
Hunter arched an eyebrow and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “When you were reading the reports on the raid he was caught in, did you catch the name of the arresting officer?”
Sebastian suddenly didn’t want to respond. Hunter had that glint in his eyes that he knew he didn’t like. “Officer McMahon,” he said reluctantly. “Why?”
“William McMahon, to be more precise,” Hunter said.
Sebastian could feel the colour draining from his face. “Uh…” There was no way. William was a common name.
Hunter leaned back again, and Sebastian couldn’t miss the smug tilt of his mouth. “Why don’t you tell me about your adventure earlier today?”
Sebastian bit the inside of his cheek. Fuck. “How do you know about that?”
“You’re an important asset to me, Sebastian. When your name crosses a detective’s desk, I make it my business.”
“That’s… not creepy at all,” Sebastian said as he cradled his coffee cup. “Do I need to watch out for you peeking at me through my window while I’m showering?”
“I’d put up curtains just in case.”
“I could have used that heads-up years ago.” He took a sip of his coffee, letting the hot liquid scald his throat and spread the caffeine through him, warming him from the inside.
“What were you doing in that apartment, Sebastian?”
“The fact that you even know where I was makes me wonder how you don’t know why as well,” Sebastian said mildly.
“That mouth is going to get you in trouble one day. Did McMahon approach you in the club?”
“Why? You think he might have approached me on purpose?” He’d been accused of using cops that way before, sleeping with them for information—and that was a trip down memory lane he refused to ever travel—but never the other way around.
“He doesn’t seem the type. And I approached him anyway.
So that theory is out.” He’d had no fucking clue he’d walked right into a cop’s lap, but that was on him, not Will.
“What do you know about William?” Hunter questioned.
Sebastian had no idea why he was asking; it sounded like Hunter knew more than he did. “I only found out he was a cop when I tripped over Mason. And now, from you, I’ve just learned he’s Tactical Operations. Unless you want the size of his dick, I don’t know what you’re looking for.”
Caleb—Sebastian’s best friend, colleague, and the man who single-handedly kept him in line—burst into the office, halfway out of his jacket, files trapped under his arm, and two coffee mugs in a holder balanced precariously with his free hand.
Sebastian and Hunter watched with amusement as Caleb kept everything steady. He smoothly dropped the files onto Sebastian’s desk and threw his jacket over the back of the couch beside Hunter’s hand.
“Don’t help me, either of you,” Caleb said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
“I think you were doing just fine,” Hunter said.