Chapter 6 #2
“Was it good?” Will asked curiously.
“I thought I was going to have to apologise. I didn't expect you to want details,” Quinn said, glancing between them.
“Nothing about this situation is normal. We absolutely want details,” Peyton said.
Maybe it was weird that the idea of Quinn with Sebastian, or with Will, didn't bother him and just made him want to take his clothes off.
But so what? Were there rules they were supposed to follow?
Peyton had spent more than enough time following orders he didn't agree with.
He wouldn't do it in his personal life as well.
“Persephone, seriously, if you want to pee, you're gonna have to cooperate. Do you have worms or something?”
“I certainly hope not,” Quinn said, frowning.
“It was a joke, Q,” Will said. “Dante will look after her, don't worry.”
Quinn didn't look convinced, but he didn't push it. “There's another thing.”
“So the pants did come off!”
“Do you need an orgasm, Peyton? Do we need to take you into the bedroom?” Quinn asked.
Will cackled.
“Fuck off, both of you.”
“I think you're the one that needs a fuck.”
“Anyway,” Quinn said. “There's a better-than-good chance the body in your apartment had something to do with him.”
Will glanced up from his wriggling companion. “Why do you think that?”
“He was in a drive-by shooting. He's fine,” Quinn added hastily as Peyton opened his mouth. “Bullet grazed him, but he wasn't shot. There were two critically wounded taken to the nearest hospital, but it looks like they'll make a full recovery.”
“But that's one hell of a coincidence,” Will concluded, standing with the end of the lead in his hand. “Does he know who it might have been?”
Quinn shook his head. “I think he's lying to me, but I can't work out why. When you met him at the club, did he speak to anyone or do anything suspicious?”
Peyton started to say “no,” and then paused. “Wait, he did take a phone call. He said he had to take it?”
“It seemed pretty urgent,” Will agreed.
Quinn bit his lip. “He has two younger siblings,” he said. “And a demanding mother, unless by some miracle she's changed in the last decade. And he works a lot. A single phone call isn't all that suspicious.”
“Do you see him a lot?” Will asked.
Quinn cleared his throat. “For work. A couple of times a year. He tends to get the high-profile cases more often than not. So we cross paths, yes.”
“Does it hurt?” Peyton asked. “Seeing him?” It was a personal question, but something in Peyton needed to know.
“I don't know what you want me to say to that,” Quinn said. He opened the door so that Will could walk Persephone out the door. “I regret a lot of things that happened between Sebastian and me. A lot of things that I wish I could take back. Kissing him won't ever be a regret for me.”
“Well, it's making Peyton horny,” Will said. Persephone waddled out behind him, her round butt wiggling happily as she bounced down the front steps and almost took him with her.
“Like it's not doing anything for you,” Peyton muttered, following them outside. If Will tried to say that his dick wasn't taking an interest, Peyton called bullshit. “Wait a second. I hope you didn't do this in front of Persephone. Young minds are so easily corrupted.”
Quinn chuckled. “I do believe that you two were closer to corrupting her than Sebastian and I were. I got her afterwards anyway.”
“We didn't ask for that intrusion. Haven't you ever heard of knocking?” Peyton said primly.
“Knocking at the entrance to my own home?”
“Exactly. Knocking is knocking.”
Quinn carded his fingers through Peyton's hair and gave him a slow, lingering kiss that made Peyton's toes curl. “I'll try to remember.”
“Okay, thanks,” Peyton said breathlessly. He blinked, trying to remember what they were talking about.
Quinn joined Will on the grass, and whatever he said had Will throwing his head back and laughing. A small smile appeared on Quinn's lips in response.
Peyton watched them for a long minute before going down to join them.
Quinn flipped his phone absently in his hand. He had Sebastian's number now. He could call him. He could... they could… something. Sebastian was waiting for his call.
He leaned back in his chair and dropped his head backwards.
What the fuck was he doing?
Peyton, Will, Sebastian.
Four days. That's all it had taken to turn his entire life on its head. He'd never imagined that Sebastian would let him close enough again to try to fix the wrongs he'd inflicted. Or that Peyton would suddenly be within reach.
And Will.
Will hadn't even been a thought, and now it was all he could think about.
“Hey, Q, you got a second?”
Quinn jerked upright and dropped his phone on his desk as he turned to Ange. “Yeah, what's up?”
“Don't let us interrupt your navel-gazing, though,” Gideon said, grinning.
“I was looking up, not down,” Quinn felt obliged to point out.
“Come and take a look at this,” Ange said, waving him over. Gideon stood from his desk at the same time, and they crowded behind her. “You guys were talking about creepy dolls the other day, right?”
“Yeah. A case a while ago had one in the apartment of the deceased, and we didn’t think much of it, but now a number of them have popped up again.
” Quinn shuddered at the reminder. They were creepy enough to haunt dreams. “Can’t be a coincidence.
” It rarely ever was. He shifted his stance and braced himself with a hand on the back of her chair. “Why?”
Ange clicked on an email and opened the attachment. “A bit like this?”
The focal point of the picture should have been the body, eyes wide and looking up at the sky from what looked like some sort of jogging trail, a single shot in his forehead, with dried blood around it. But it wasn’t. It was the doll that was being held tightly in his left hand.
Quinn grimaced. Fucking hell, those dolls were haunting him. Where the fuck were they coming from, and why had they suddenly resurfaced with three seemingly separate murders?
“I bet they use these as horror-movie props,” Ange said. “It even has a scar across its cheek. That level of detail should be illegal. All that’s missing is a butcher’s knife.”
“You’re not wrong,” Quinn said wryly. “Who is this?”
“Richard Burrows. Name isn't familiar to us,” Gideon said. “He was killed in the middle of Bicentennial Park at about three this morning.”
The name triggered something for Quinn, but he wasn't sure why. He wanted to ask Grady, but he was still on the phone, his face bright red as he tried not to explode at whoever he was talking to.
“He was found around five thirty, and Gid and I were called out,” Ange said. “And that's basically all she wrote.”
Quinn bent down, looking over the photo more closely. “Was he found with anything else?”
“Just his wallet and this thing. Not even a phone,” Ange said. “But guess what?”
Quinn knew that smile. He knew whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.
“Since it’s connected, Riley, in his infinite wisdom, has decided that this case is now yours.” Her smile widened. “So I’ll send all the files over to you.”
Of course, it was. “Thanks,” Quinn said dryly.
They didn’t have enough piling on. He massaged his temples as he took the physical files she gave him.
He would need to get the rest of the items printed once she forwarded the emails.
Because paperwork was his favourite beast. The webs were growing in the case, but it only brought more questions, no answers.
And he didn’t like it. Someone was targeting Sebastian, and others were getting caught in the crossfire, and he and Grady needed to solve this before anyone close to him got permanently hurt.
“Has the doll been looked at, at all?” Quinn asked.
“I put it in an evidence bag, and we checked it in downstairs with your other ones,” Gideon said. “I don’t know if it’s gone further than that. The less we have to look at it, the better. Why?”
“The ones we found in the apartment were empty but they all had traces of some kind of drug inside. There wasn’t enough of it to get a match, but maybe we’ll have luck with this one?
” He bit his lip as he looked over the crime-scene photos.
“Why walk around carrying a creepy doll but no phone? It doesn’t make sense. ”
“Maybe it was his security blanket?”
Quinn gave her a look that told her exactly what he thought of that suggestion. ”If you were doing a drug run, you'd need a phone.”
“Unless they had a different way to communicate?” Gideon suggested.
Possibly.
Grady hung up his phone with a scowl. “If this woman calls me one more time, I’m going to quit,” he declared loudly.
Gideon snickered, and Quinn went back to his desk.
“Is that the woman that came in the other week who’d had a name carved into the side of her car?
” Quinn asked as he sat down and rolled his chair closer to his desk.
It was easy to earn Grady’s ire since he wasn’t known for being particularly tolerant or empathetic, but some people made an impression that served as a form of entertainment for everyone else in the bullpen.
This had been the latest one, so it was a solid guess.
“She keeps calling me. It’s driving me insane.”
“Why did you even give her your number? You that hard up, man?” Gideon asked.
“Because that’s what you do, you fucking idiot. You give them your card with the generic ‘call if you hear anything else.’ Did you forget basic procedure, again ?”
“Who’s forgetting procedure?” Riley asked, entering the chaos. He wasn’t even looking at them, his head buried in a folder he was holding in his hands.
“Gideon.”
“Is there a time he isn’t? Without me, he’d be a lost cause,” Ange said. She shared a look of commiseration with Riley, who then cut a severe glance at Gideon that could have melted glaciers.