Sloe Ride (21 page)

But nothing prepared him for the stone-cold hard stares of Damien, Miki, and Forest when he walked into the Sound’s rear studio carrying his bass and a cup of Starbucks.

“Okay, first rule—you drink coffee, you get it from next door,” Forest grumbled loud enough to be heard over the hiss of the air-conditioner vent pumping mildly cold air into the room. “We’ve got people to feed, and if you’re going to fork over four bucks for a latte, give it to them.”

“Got it.”

He saluted Forest with his cup and got a grin in return. There was a bit of Frank in Forest’s demeanor, an easygoing nature where very little ruffled his feathers. The coffee shop thing was pure Frank. It’d been a rule of sorts at the Sound, one he’d forgotten in his rush to get out the door that morning. Support the musicians, support the coffee-shop crew, and he’d blown it.

“Sorry. I knew that. I just was—”

“Brain dead?” Miki’s honeyed chuckle should have brought Rafe’s back up, but the singer was already on the move, heading to a guitar leaning against the studio’s long wall, and his tone had been more of a tease than a cut. “Shit, I can’t even remember my name without a shot in the morning.”

Miki’s limp caught Rafe by surprise. He’d not noticed it at the Morgans’ or even at the coffee shop, but in the stark, unforgiving studio lights, the singer’s slight hitch was apparent. He took a step, nearly offering Miki a hand with the equipment, but common sense and Damien’s warning glare brought him up short.

“Plug it in, Andrade. Show us what you’ve got,” Damien ordered. “See if you can keep up.”

R
AFE
WAS
flying. Hands down. Balls out. Flying.

An hour into the set, something deep inside all of them seemed to shift and click into place. After that moment—that wonderful, sweet pop of a bubble—the four of them simply became something else, something larger, and it was a feeling Rafe’d never quite had before, even during Rising Black’s heyday.

This, he thought, was pure playing. Flat out strings against his fingers, sliding into the groove of the music as Damien and Miki shifted them from blues to hard rock and over into a bit of funk. It was easy to find his place amid the rhythm, guiding the lower tones along and shoring up Damien when he meandered off into the upper ranges.

Miki growled, threatened, and crooned his way around the melody, dropping down into registers Rafe didn’t even know he had, and played a tight rhythm guitar, flirting with Damien and Rafe as they bracketed his singing. Forest thundered along behind him, pushing Rafe into harder streams, forcing them both to catch up with Damien in spots and reining him back in others.

He bled and sweated on his bass, the back of his hand caught by a snapped string and tearing the edge of a nail on his middle finger, but Rafe kept going. A towel and his jeans were enough to keep himself dry enough to play, and by the end of the third hour, he was hoarse from providing backup, but Damien pressed on.

Wrung dry, Rafe caught a second wind, drawing Miki out with a telltale thumping line from the Sinners’ first album. There was a hitch, something dark fluttering into Miki’s face. Then it was gone, burned away by Damien’s screaming lick, and Miki joined in, purring his way into a song about a blind man and shadowy rivers.

For Rafe, it was like coming home.

Damien came up for air about the time Rafe’s fingers were buzzing, numb from the vibrating steel strings. Catching a bottle of water Forest flung at him, Rafe heaved a sigh of relief when a shot of cold air blasted down at him from an overhead vent. Forest’d shed his T-shirt at some point during their drift into SRV, and Miki somehow came up with a few hand towels, offering Rafe one to wipe his face down with as they took time to breathe.

“Pretty decent,” Damien shouted from the mixing room as he extracted juices from a mini-fridge. Coming back into the studio, he handed one to Miki. “We should—”

Rafe’s phone sang at him from its spot in his open case, Quinn’s number flashing across the screen along with a photo he’d taken of him at the coffee shop when Q hadn’t been looking. The picture of the dreamy-eyed, angelic-faced Morgan made him smile. The panic in Quinn’s voice when Rafe answered wiped that smile clean off.

“Hey, hey. Hold on, Q. Slow down. What’s going on?” Damien was forgotten. So were Miki and Forest. The studio faded away around him, white walls and instruments becoming nothing but visual noise as he tuned in to Quinn’s heavy breathing and tightly wound nerves. “Babe, come on. Breathe, then talk. What’s going on?”

“I need you here.”

Quinn’s whisper was hot, needy, and scared. Rafe’s heart clenched in fear as Quinn continued.

“Something’s happened. One of my students… she’s dead, Rafe. Someone killed her. And—fuck—he left her on the car… my car.”

“Okay, did you call the cops?” A towel seemed to be clogging up his other hand, and Rafe tossed it aside so he could sling his bass off his neck. “Where are you?”

“I called Kane and then 911.” Quinn cursed in Gaelic. “I shouldn’t have called you. You’re playing still? Shit.
Shit
.”

“Q, you’re a fuck more important than anything else, okay? Stop that. Tell me where you are.” Rafe sighed when Quinn rattled off the college hall he was standing outside of. “Okay, I know where that is. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Are you going to be okay until then?”

“Yeah, one of the security guards is here. Nice guy. Got me some water. Kane’s on his way, and the cops got here a bit ago. They want to talk to me.” Quinn’s voice broke. “Suppose they think I killed her? Do you think they’ll think that?”

“Honey, anyone who knows you can vouch you’d never do that. Hang tight. I’m probably closer to the bridge than Kane is. Might beat him over. Hang tight, okay?” Rafe reassured Quinn. “And just breathe.”

“Thanks. For coming. For… everything.”

Quinn sighed, and Rafe could almost hear him card his fingers through his black mane.

“I just… need you. Is that okay?”

“More than okay, Q. Stay someplace safe and wait for me. I’ll be right there.” He turned and found the band staring at him.

It was an uncomfortable stare and one Rafe couldn’t read, but Quinn’s fear reverberated through him, and he tucked his phone into his back pocket.

“What’s up?” Miki perched himself on a low stool. “What’s with Kane?”

“Nothing. I don’t know the full story yet. Look, I’ve got to go. Sorry.” Rafe spared Damien a glance, long enough to catch the flat look in his eyes. Turning his back on the band, he said, “Quinn needs me.”

Walking out the door… that door… at that time probably meant losing his chance with the guys. He was literally turning his back on the band for what? Quinn Morgan. But nothing in his gut, soul, or heart screamed at him to do anything other than pack up his bass and head over to the university where a green-eyed Irishman needed him.

In that moment, Rafe realized he needed Quinn a hell of a lot more than he needed Damien, Miki, and Forest.

“Call me when you’re done, and tell Kane to call Sinjun, or he’s going to go insane about it.”

Damien’s words stopped Rafe in mid-cable-pull, and his stomach jumped up into his throat in shock.

“We can do this again at Miki’s place. The sound’s better over there, and the studio’s cooler.”

Forest’s protest came in hot and fast. “Hey, fuck you. The sound here’s fine.”

“Air-conditioning sucks.” Miki stood to grab another bottle of water. “Gotta admit that.”

“Yeah, well the maintenance guy said he had to replace a compressor or something, but not like we’re cooking in here,” the drummer scoffed.

“Dude, I’m drenched down my back,” Damien grumbled. “If you can’t do tomorrow, Rafe, we can do the day after.”

Fortune always favored the bold, or so Sister Terese Mary’d always told him, so Rafe asked as calmly as he could, hoping to keep the jitters out of his voice when he spoke. “So what’s this mean? I’m in?”

Damien was quick to answer, “No, we’ve got to—”

“Yeah, you’re in.” Miki shoved his best friend back a step, nudging his shoulder with the flat of his hand. “We’ve got to play more. Play live. But yeah, don’t let this asshole fuck with you. It fits. You fit. Everything else? That’s got to shake out.”

“Fucker.” Damien shoved back lightly, barely rocking Miki’s slender torso. “I’m supposed to say—”

“Don’t be an asshole, D. Okay, don’t be
more
of an asshole,” Miki muttered, crowding his brother in until Damien took a step back. “You know he works. Let him go. He needs to go.”

“Yeah, you work. Go head out.”

Damien agreed, and Forest murmured a good luck as he took the cables out of Rafe’s hands.

“We’ll clean up. Call. Let us know what’s going on, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.” Rafe stumbled, nearly tripping on the strap on his bass. Packing it into its case, he tried to shove away all of the emotions bombarding him—worry, gratitude, and under it all, a severe need to wrap his arms around the man who’d called Rafe to his side. “Fuck, thank you. I’ll talk to you later. Promise. Right now, Quinn. He’s all that matters, but… fucking thanks.”

“H
ERE
YOU
go, Doctor Morgan.” The security guard handed Quinn a cup of hot chocolate. His thick red hair was blown back from his craggy round face as if he’d been caught in a wind tunnel, and he reached up to smooth it down, fighting to get the unruly strands to cover his high forehead. “Cocoa always makes you feel better. I even got Sally to get you some of those tiny marshmallows. Never go wrong with marshmallows.”

“Thanks, Sam.” Quinn took the cup gratefully. His fingers were as cold as his belly, although his chest burned with worry and stress. “And no, you can never go wrong with marshmallows.”

Sam’s broad smile was an uneven stairstep of teeth and gums, and he patted Quinn’s shoulder awkwardly, then trundled off to chase away curious students lingering a few feet away.

The man lived with his sister, or at least in a converted garage behind his sister’s house somewhere in Mission, and his nephew’d just gotten a turtle, naming it Donatello despite the fact it was a girl, but his name was easy enough to remember, mostly because the first time Quinn saw the security guard, the resemblance to the Warner Brothers’ sheepdog was uncanny. Jowly and pale with a belly built on cafeteria burritos and Hostess cupcakes, Sam had been a fixture since Quinn entered graduate school, a steady barrel-chested figure in cadet blue and gray cotton who often stopped by when Quinn was working late to check on him.

He didn’t want to wait at the parking garage, so he’d found a nearby bench and sat down to wait for the cops to arrive. And arrive they had. From the sheer glut of squad cars, unmarked sedans, and a pair of ambulances, it looked like a cop-mad three-year-old had emptied her entire toy box onto the lawn to reenact Jake and Elwood Blues playing in a ballroom. Kane’s thick-bodied SUV perched on a curb near the parking structure’s entrance, and his Irish-washed voice could definitely be heard over the low murmuring din behind the cement wall blocking Quinn’s view of the Audi and LeAnne’s remains.

The structure’s shadowy entrance disgorged a gangly limbed man, his brown suit a bit too short for his long arms and legs, a pair of navy blue socks playing peekaboo over his dark sienna loafers with every step he took. A gold badge hung from the man’s maroon belt, a choice he’d obviously made to match the tie he wore with his beige shirt. The color combination tickled an annoying spot in Quinn’s brain, and he forced himself to look up from the mismatched suit, socks, and shoes before he went mad from the irritation.

Taking a good look at the man’s scowling, pockmarked face, Quinn decided the shoes were a much better thing to stare at than the nuclear-hot glare he was getting from the detective. When the shoes appeared nearly beneath his nose, Quinn clutched his cocoa a little bit tighter and looked up at the man standing in front of him.

“Doctor Morgan?”

The detective made a slight show of flashing his credentials, and Quinn nodded absently, having seen more than enough badges in his lifetime.

“I’m Detective Ziortza. I want to talk to you about what happened here.”

“I gave my statement to… that other detective… um, Kelley. And to the responding officers.” His fingers were still cold, and Quinn debated plunging them straight into the cocoa to warm them up.

“I want to clarify a few things.”

Ziortza removed a small notebook from his jacket’s inner pocket, then clicked open a pen. Running over the pertinent details, Ziortza made little scratches on the paper as Quinn reaffirmed the answers he’d already given three or four times before.

“Now, care to tell me why you called Detective Morgan prior to dialing 911?”

“He’s my
brother
?” Quinn frowned, matching Ziortza’s darkening expression.

“How long did you wait between calling your brother and dialing for emergency services?”

“Not that long. I think as soon as I hung up. I don’t know. I can check the logs.” Quinn fumbled for his phone, then realized he’d given it to Kane. “Um, my brother has my phone. I think he was going to check on something—probably times. I don’t know. He said something about… timing.”

“Great.” Ziortza sounded less than happy about Quinn’s answer. “Make any calls besides your brother and 911?”

“Yes, um…. Rafe Andrade. I called him to….” Quinn couldn’t remember why he’d called Rafe other than needing him to be there beside him. At the time, it’d seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and in the cold of Ziortza’s shadow, asking for Rafe to stop what he was doing to hold Quinn’s hand seemed a bit silly—still necessary but silly. “He’s a… friend.”

“A friend,” Ziortza repeated flatly.

There was something edgy in his voice, a familiar cant beaten in around the edges, and Quinn chased down the accent, turning it over in his head.

“This friend—”

“Ziortza. You’re Basque. Second generation here?” Quinn cocked his head, studying the detective’s flat-planed face and hooked nose. “You’ve still got the edges of it in your words. Just a little bit. Do you speak it?”