No Cap

Chapter 15

Wanted: a tiny dragon to incinerate assholes, shitty drivers, and dumbasses.

—Quincy’s secret thoughts

QUINCY

Igrinned at her. “If anyone wants to talk about stalking, it should be you.”

Hereyes narrowed. “I’ve yet to be caught, or charged, for stalking.”

“You are the only one with a restraining order in this room, though,” I said before thinking.

Shegasped.

“Quincy!” she cried out. “What the hell?”

“Sorry,” I replied sheepishly. “ButI’m not stalking you.”

“Then what would you call being there when I walk out of work, or out of my apartment, or out of the coffee shop?” she asked.

“That’s just him showing that he cares,” Quaid replied. “Hi, I’mQuaid.”

Heoffered his hand to her, and she took it. “Hollis.”

“I know,” he grinned. “I was the one to give him the paper in the beginning stating you had the restraining order.”

Herlips thinned, and I laughed, pulling her into my side. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”

“I’m still working on the bread,” Dad said as we entered the kitchen. “But you’re more than welcome to start on the salads.”

“Salad sucks,” Auden replied as he came into the room behind me. “And don’t worry, Hollis. Quincy isn’t as squeaky clean as he’d like you to believe. There was one time that he got arrested for public indecency when he got caught fucking MadilynMonroe in the middle of the soccer fields after the park was supposed to be closed.”

“Hey, ass hat!” I turned and punched him in the tit. “Don’t tell her that! I’m trying to get her to like me again.”

“There’s no reason to act like you’re this goody two shoes,” Mom agreed. “But none of my boys are. You would think being the children of two cops they’d be good kids. Since they know that we know everyone and everything. TheDFW metroplex may have seven and a half million people in it, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know every single cop in the area. We caught them doing things before they even knew they could be caught.”

Thewoman who was now leaning into me looked up at me and smiled. “Is that right?”

“More than right,” Dad said. “I think I caught at least all of them smoking weed a time or two. Right in the middle of our house, even. I think they thought they could get away with it since we weren’t home, but we were always running home to change, or eat, or catch a bit of sleep. And every time I’d catch them doing something stupid.”

“That was just life with teenage boys,” Quinn said as he took his usual seat at the table.

Itook mine, and pulled Hollis with me into the seat that Atlas usually took.

Atlastook the seat to her right, then everyone else filed in after that, including the kids.

Oneof which looked at the salad and curled her lip. “That stuff is too green.”

“That stuff will help you grow,” Ande countered. “Your body can’t live off of Mamasauce’s caramel candies.”

Ilooked at Addison, knowing damn well she was going to have a comeback, and she didn’t disappoint.

“Sure it can,” Addison said, sounding so much like my sister that it hurt a bit. “You ate a whole bag of those iced oatmeal cookies yesterday that you told me were for my lunch.”

Ande’sdaughter was named after our deceased sister, Addison, Ande’s twin.

Andshe looked and sounded just like her at times, too.

Likeright now, giving Ande shit, when she didn’t get her way.

“Salad’s gross all by itself, sure,” Hollis interjected. “ButI see you like ranch.”

Didshe ever.

Shehad a bowl full at every meal. Like right now. She was dipping her shredded cheese in a cup full of it, I was sure, courtesy of my mother.

“Everyone loves ranch,” Addison interjected.

“Not everyone,” Hollis mused. “But if you put ranch on it, and cheese, and eggs, and sometimes bacon crumbles, salads are fantastic.”

Ihad to agree. I didn’t eat salads bare, either. I wouldn’t be touching the salad my mom placed on the table.

Addisonlooked thoughtful for a long moment, then looked at my mother. “Do you have bacon to go on this salad?”

“Bacon bits!” Dad crowed as he came from the pantry.

Ihadn’t even seen him leave.

Somedetective I was.

Heplaced them down on the table, and Addison reached for them.

Thenshe dumped them straight into her ranch cup, grabbed three leaves of spinach and lettuce, and the cheese she’d been dipping into the ranch, and stirred it up with her finger.

Hollisducked her head and started giggling.

“It’s a start,” Keene, my brother-in-law, mused. “Thanks.”

Hollisgrinned. “No problem.”

Snorting, I reached for the bread, but was stopped when my mother said, “Everyone will have salad. Right?”

Therewere groans all around the table, mainly from the male members of my family.

Keenealready had a large plate of it, happily crunching away on the raw leaves like it was normal.

Forhim, it probably was, to be truthful.

Keeneran a circus. Literally. He was the ringleader, too, and had to do all kinds of fun things like lift his sisters up over his head as if they weighed a half a pound.

Notsaying that I couldn’t lift Ande up over my head or anything, but I certainly couldn’t do it with a rock solid, unshakeable stance like Keene.

Anyway, that all boiled down to him eating good, trying to be healthy, and not eating a shit ton of lasagna like I was about to do.

Iwas in great shape, to be honest. I worked out regularly, ran when I didn’t have time to get to the gym, and generally tried to eat as healthy as a guy on the go like me could.

Butthere were lines.

Likeeating raw salads.

“Today’s my cheat day,” I lied. “No salad for me.”

“Liar,” Hollis coughed into her hand, eyes sparkling.

Ireached under the table and pinched her ass, causing her to squeak and lean to the side.

Rightinto my brother, who chuckled and put his arm around her.

“All you had to do was say you want me, you know.” Atlas chuckled.

Shelaughed, and I threw Atlas’s arm off of her and said, “Find your own girl.”

Atlaswinked at her and allowed her to pull away, back to her seat.

“Boys,” Mom said, eyeing Atlas who’d raised his hand to retaliate. “I swear to God. Y’all are grown-ass adults. Act like it.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Hollis said as she got her own salad. “Can you tell me how you managed to have all these multiples, and arrive sane at the other end?”

“Sane?” Dad said as he arrived with the lasagna and placed it in the middle of the table. “You think she’s sane?”

Momrolled her eyes. “I’m sane… now.”

Thatwas the truth.

Momwas a nut job when she’d been raising us. She was much nicer now that she wasn’t running us ragged and making us do what she wanted, when she wanted.

Imoved out at the age of eighteen for a reason.

“Well, I was nineteen when I got pregnant with the triplets,” she said. “And it wasn’t too bad. My parents were still very young. AndGermaine’s family moved down from Michigan to help. Auden and Atlas came a year later, totally out of the blue. I was on birth control and breastfeeding. Then it happened again another year later with Ande and Addison. We managed to actually plan out our fourth pregnancy, but again, we had multiples—Garrett and Gable. We’d always wanted a large family, but after realizing that multiples were just going to be my thing… we decided to stop. And we both got promoted, which meant more work, and from there we decided that nine kids were enough.”

“Nine.” Hollis shook her head. “Was enough? You are a superhero.”

“I’m just a mom who came from a family of fourteen siblings and thought… as long as I don’t have fourteen, I’m good.” She smiled.

“Did twins—or triplets—run in the family?” Hollis asked right before taking a bite.

“No,” Garrett answered for them. “Not a single twin or triplet birth in any of the sides of the family tree. Mom is just a mutant.”

“Hey,” Mom cried. “Be nice!”

“Yeah, be nice. Mutant spawn.” Auden threw a roll.

“Boys,” Mom pinched her nose. “I swear to God. All of you are over thirty yet act like you’re twelve when you get around each other.”

Dinnerwent well after that.

Mygirl talked a lot.

Mybrothers included her in the conversation as much as they could.

EvenKeene was there, inviting her to his next show tomorrow night.

“All of my sisters are going to be there, so it’s going to be a good show,” he was saying. “Not saying that they’re not usually good without them, because they are. But my sisters have just been doing it for so long, and we all work really well together. Theatrically, it’s just more seamless. More fun and exciting because they’re a little more free with their stunts than the others are allowed due to insurance reasons.”

I’dseen plenty of shows in the five or so years that Keene and Ande had been married. They were way more exciting when the sisters were all in attendance.

“I’ll take you,” I said around a mouthful of bread. “As long as I don’t catch a murder.”

“Hey, speaking of murder,” Dad said.

Dadwas the assistant chief.

Heknew all that went on at DPD.

Meaning, he probably knew that I caught a lead on an unsolved case as of three days ago.

ThoughI hadn’t seen him in that time.

“You had a breakthrough in the unsolvable case.” Dad grinned. “Great job.”

“I think the crime scene techs were…” I searched for the correct word.

“Complete bullshit?” Auden offered up.

“Fucking around when they should be doing their job?” Gable offered.

“Thinking about lunch when they should be combing a crime scene to help solve a murder?” Quaid offered up.

“Boys,” Mom interjected.

“What case is this?” Hollis asked curiously.

Normally, I wouldn’t be able to talk about a case that was ongoing. But since this case was so high profile, and the media got wind of it yesterday, there was no hiding it now.

“The biggest case of Quincy’s career,” Atlas answered. “He’s close, I can feel it.”

“A few years back,” Dad said as he reached for another slice of lasagna. “There was this case with a girl that committed suicide. Parents said that she had a fight with her friends. They accused her of stealing—using her credit card without permission. So, the girl storms off in a pair of shorts and flip flops. Walks down their quarter-mile-long driveway. The parents were down the driveway—the family have a sort of compound where the parents live at the top of the property, and the kids live at the back. All in their own houses. So, like seven houses total.”

“Uh, huh.” Hollis was listening raptly, her fork still loaded down with a bite of lasagna.

Iplaced my arm over the back of her chair and waited.

Mydad knew the case. Hell, all of my brothers and my mom knew the case. My sister had heard her fair share of it, but she didn’t get into the sessions with me as we brainstormed.

“So, this girl starts walking and walking. She’s caught on a deer cam about halfway through their property,” Dad continues. “The parents get a call from the friend, telling her that they fought, and that Tessa stormed off. The family all starts looking for her. A few of the uncles search the property with the parents. And then one uncle starts driving down the road looking for her. Well, about seven miles away, an hour later, the uncle spots a ton of cop cars and lights. So, he drives up and asks the cop blocking the road what’s going on. Apparently, a girl had committed suicide by jumping in front of a train. The uncle was asked to come down to the tracks and identify the body, and sure enough, it was her.”

Hollisgasped. “She did?”

“She didn’t,” Dad says, then jerks his chin at me.

“There were a lot of inconsistencies,” I admitted. “For instance, the young conductor who was on the train said she ‘jumped onto the tracks’ and killed herself. Only, where he went around the track has this huge tunnel. It’s barely wide enough to fit the train, let alone wide enough for her to ‘jump’ onto the tracks. And he says that he saw her from a mile or so away. Yet, again, there was this huge curve in the tracks, so there’s no way he saw her from a mile away.” I paused. “Then there was the fact that no shoes were found with the body parts.”

“Body parts,” Hollis whispered.

“Body parts,” I confirmed.

“Why were her body parts not attached?” Addison asked innocently.

“She was a zombie,” Keene said, listening avidly.

“Oh, that’s cool. Zombies are bad.” Addison got up and headed for the kitchen, threw her stuff into the sink, then kept right on going until she was in the living room.

“She would’ve had to walk a fair way to where we found her shoes,” I said.

“Which was where?” Hollis asked.

“At the end of the property’s driveway,” he said. “Right on the side of the road. I was a rookie cop around the time that this case rolled through… and something just struck me as odd. She wouldn’t have walked all that way without her shoes. It’s seven miles away. Not to mention, the terrain down by the train tracks were downright treacherous. It’s a homeless playground. Needles. Trash. Glass. You name it, it’s all over the ground there. And other than the trauma to the feet from the train hitting her, her feet were perfectly smooth.”

“Indicating foul play,” Hollis guessed. “Why’d it take so long to solve?”

“Because for the first two years, everyone agreed with the railroad’s finding. They said it was a suicide,” I answered.

“But not you?” she guessed.

“Not me, and not the family,” I agreed. “They hired private investigators, and I never really stopped looking into it. I helped them where I could. They kept me up to date. And over the last ten years, we’ve just been in limbo. Then one day, we get this message from a dive team that they found a phone and a finger bone at the bottom of the creek that they were dragging with magnets.”

“And it was her phone and finger,” Hollis guessed correctly.

“It was,” I confirmed. “At the scene, Tessa was dismembered. But that doesn’t mean that the crime scene shouldn’t have found that a finger was missing.”

“No,” Mom agreed as she started gathering dishes. “You are right. They should have.”

“Who ran this investigation?” Hollis wondered. “Which crime scene?”

“The federal railroad administration was the one who investigated the accident,” I explained. “It was a ‘cut and dry’ case to them. They said it was a suicide. They had an eyewitness report, and that was that. But from the beginning, it struck me as hastily done. I didn’t like the way any of the investigation was done, mostly because, though I was a very green rookie cop, I had a cop for a dad. One who just so happened to be a detective. When we were younger, he pretty much explained his every single step to us through the years, why he did what he did… so I started looking into it.”

“Which probably helped steer him toward a career as a detective,” Mom said as she came back for more plates. “Like father, like son.”

Noone got up to help her, but that was because she didn’t like anyone in her kitchen but her.

We’dtried before, multiple times.

Hollisdidn’t know that, though, and got up to help.

Surprisingly, Mom allowed it.

Whichshocked us all.

“Okay,” Hollis said as she started to scrape food off of plates into the trashcan. “Tell me the rest.”

“Well, like I said, the parents and I never really stopped looking into it. We had a few of her friends who were interviewed that night. None of them agree that she would’ve committed suicide. They say she was happy and healthy.” I shook my head, thinking that ten years ago, that testimony from the friends would’ve been a ‘well it couldn’t happen then’ kind of viewpoint. But now, after everything that happened to my sister, I didn’t quite have the same mindset.

“Well, we can take that with a grain of salt,” Hollis said as she viciously scraped food off of a plate. “What happened with the finger?”

“The finger gave us what we needed to start doing our own investigation,” Dad said as he leaned back into his chair. “We opened one, and the first thing we did was challenge the RRA—RailRoadAuthority—and their policing on the matter. We got all reports, recalled the eyewitness, and went from there.”

“I heard the witness recanted his statement,” Auden said as he shifted his feet out from under the table, kicking Gable on the other side.

Gableflipped him off but didn’t otherwise react.

Dadgot up and started gathering up dessert, a simple cobbler that was the easiest thing in the world to make but tasted like you’d spent eight hours slaving over it.

Igot up to grab plates, making sure to brush the back of my hand over Hollis’s ample ass as I moved.

Shestilled, her eyes tracking my every move.

“Let me,” Mom said as she took the last few plates from Hollis. “I usually don’t like anyone in here helping, and you’re good at scraping the food off, but darlin’, I’m particular in how I load the dishwasher. No offense to you, I’m sure you’re fantastic at it and all, but I have OCD. It’s just easier.”

Hollisreturned to her seat with a snicker, but not before brushing her breasts against my arm as she moved past.

Iwas the one to still this time, my eyes heated, finding hers.

Shesmirked at me, a look so full of mischief that I wanted to pull her into my arms and whisper about what happened to naughty girls.

Sheretook her seat, her legs crossing, left over right, and crossed her arms over her chest. Her chest that very clearly had erect nipples before being covered up.

Adjustingmy dick before I pulled down the plates, I waited until it was semi-under control before grabbing the plates and a whole stack of forks that I didn’t bother to count before returning to the table.

Dadarrived with the crockpot and a wooden spoon, but we waited, continuing to talk about the case, until Mom was back.

“Okay, so was there anything on this finger bone? AnyDNA under the nail? How did you know it was hers? What about the phone?” Hollis asked.

Quinnlooked at her curiously. “Why do you know so much about this?”

“I listen to podcasts,” she said. “AndI watch every single murder mystery that comes out on Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu.”

Quinnrolled his eyes. “You’re one of those girls.”

“Those girls?” Hollis asked.

“Yeah, those girls.” He nodded. “The ones who spell trouble.”

“You didn’t get that with her stalking habit?” I teased.

“Hey!” Hollis cried out. “Don’t mention that again.”

“Or else?” I raised a brow at her.

“Or else.” She pointed at me, then narrowed her eyes.

Igrinned, but wisely chose to stay silent.

Mydad didn’t raise no dummy.

“Back to the finger,” I said, choosing nonviolence today. “There was no fingernail left. It was only bone. But the weird thing is, it was stuck in one of those metal loops that you have on the back of your phone. You know the type?”

Hereyes widened, and then she pulled out her phone to show me the metal loop on hers.

“Like this?” she said, showing it to me.

Inodded. “It was like she had her finger in her phone, holding it, just like that.” I nodded as she stuck her finger through it. “And the phone was ripped away from her, or someone tried to. There must’ve been some struggle. Either by hand, or by object that did the ripping. We don’t know yet. But her finger stayed with the phone.”

“And you did DNA on it to make sure it was hers?” Hollis asked.

“Sure did,” I said, “but that wasn’t the only indication that it was hers. Her phone had her name stamped into the iPhone. Laser engraved likely when she bought it from Apple.”

“Wow,” she shook her head. “So that allowed you to reopen the murder case. Or maybe not reopen is the right word.”

“It’s a fine word,” Mom said as she sat down. “Let’s dig in.”

Wedid, me scooping out food for her and for me onto the small dessert plates before handing the wooden spoon off to the next brother.

Onlywhen we were all done did I take a bite.

Holliswas halfway through hers.

I’dhave to tell her later that we didn’t eat until everyone had their food.

Butseeing her enthusiasm as she ate made me want to never tell her. She’d be embarrassed.

“Oh my God.” Hollis groaned. “This is divine! And also, I can’t feel the roof of my mouth because it’s so hot. But it’s too good to wait for it to cool off.”

“It’s easy as heck to make,” Mom smiled. “Dump a can of peaches, a box of Krusteez cinnamon cake mix, another can of peaches, another box of cake mix, and three sliced up sticks of butter into a crockpot and cook it on low for four hours.”

“Wow, that is easy.” Hollis lifted her spoon and licked it clean.

Itmade my dick harden completely in my pants—it’d been half-mast since she’d sat down next to me at dinner.

“It’s the best thing ever,” Mom agreed, eyes sparkling. “ButI can’t take credit for it. We saw the Don’tMixIt lady make it on a video, and ever since then we’ve just been making easy desserts.”

Anhour later, we were the second group to leave.

Myphone rang, and everyone at the table groaned but one.

PoorHollis had no clue what a ringing phone meant in the Carter household.