Sloe Ride (35 page)

Its death was glorious. From the carnage of its corpse, Rafe figured it’d given its life up valiantly for the service of their mugs, or perhaps, feeling overworked now that Quinn was around, decided to burst into flames in one final protest.

Either way, the brewer’s body was a melted slag of plastic and parts. The carafe appeared unharmed and sat smugly by the sink, its glass scrubbed to a sparkle.

But no Quinn.

Rafe’s stomach curdled into a ball, spiked and sharp with worry. Hurrying to the living room, he found it empty. Again—no Quinn.

“Shit, no. Did we not talk about not leaving the house?” Rafe hurried from the balcony off of the living room and then to a room the designer called a study, where Quinn’d made cooing noises over the comfortable sling chairs and good lighting. He churned back around the kitchen corner, hoping he could find Quinn in one of the spare rooms, when he noticed writing on the chalkboard wall next to the fridge.

Killed coffeemaker. Be back soon. I’ll bring some home. Left at 10 a.m. Don’t feed the cat.

As notes went, it was succinct. A to-the-point missive about where Quinn’d gone and, more importantly, how long ago he’d broken loose of his restraints and was out wandering the city, open for a crazy’s attack.

“Son of a fucking bitch.” Rafe had other words, harder words, but they would have to wait. Putting his keys on a table next to the front door so he could find them later, Rafe stopped himself and took a breath. “Phone. Try the phone first. Text him. See where he is. Use your brain, Andrade.”

A few short keystrokes, a couple of panicked words Rafe backspaced over, and the text was sent.

Seconds later, he was still standing in the foyer looking at his damned phone with no answering text.

“God damn it, Quinn. What part of stay the fuck inside didn’t you understand? I can’t… fuck, don’t end up like Brigid. Please.” Pacing across the foyer, he debated the wisdom of hunting Quinn down.

He flashed to Brigid’s lifeless body sliding across her sedan’s backseat, Rafe helplessly trying to press down on the gaping hole in her chest as Quinn drove like a madman through red lights and around slowing cars. They’d picked up a cop car, sirens blaring, then two, loudspeakers ordering them to pull over and get out of the car, and all the while, Quinn sat stern-faced and pale, a cold block of stone putting the car through the ringer to get to the hospital.

The smell of Brigid’s blood was still in his nose, and he’d scrubbed his nails until they were raw, needing to get them clean. Quinn’d finally pulled him out of the shower, muttering something about Macbeth and damned spots.

“Couldn’t have gone far.” Rafe’s hand closed on the door handle, and he jerked his shoulders up, Quinn’s note sinking in further. “Home. He called here
home
. Well, shit yeah.”

His mind must have been on Quinn… all of his mind, because Rafe didn’t see the shadow looming in the hall outside his door. Not until it was too late. A second after stepping out to take the elevator down, the shadow struck, and Rafe toppled forward onto the hall floor, the penthouse’s locked front door closing behind him.

W
HYBORNE
’
S
WAS
only a few blocks away. At the most, it should have taken Quinn about half an hour to go to the shop and back with two cups of coffee. Maybe add in another three or four minutes for a scone or three, but just a hair over half an hour.

Plenty of time to get back to Rafe. Probably before he even woke up.

And considering Quinn’d done everything he could to make sure Rafe was still sound asleep when he snuck out of the penthouse to get a moment of freedom, coming back before Rafe woke up was optimal.

What he hadn’t planned for was a pregnant woman in a minidress who’d been five steps ahead of him when her water broke as she tottered down Nob Hill.

And Quinn would have thought it was funny that there didn’t seem to be a cop car within five hundred miles of a pregnant woman huffing and puffing in the vestibule of an Italian restaurant with a Peruvian cook screaming at him from the kitchen about needing more ice.

What the fuck ice had to do with helping a woman get a baby out of her womb, Quinn didn’t know, but the Peruvian was insistent they needed more.

Luckily for his nerves, the ambulance arrived before the infant, the now relieved Peruvian cook was packing up a travel jug of coffee for Quinn, and he’d gone to the restaurant’s employee bathroom to wash up.

Where he found the ice, lurking in wait for the moment Quinn turned on the faucet and stuck his face into the stream.

By the time he got the feeling back in his cheeks, the cook had the coffee ready to go and threw in a few biscotti for good measure. It was only then Quinn checked his phone and saw Rafe’s text.

“
Mierda!
” He must have cursed in Spanish, because the cook looked alarmed at the outburst. He’d been speaking it for nearly an hour since he’d first begged the cook for help through the restaurant’s front door, but then after the panic of water, blood, and screaming woman, Quinn didn’t blame the man for being a little bit jumpy. “Lo siento. No era mi intención asustarte
.
”

“You’re welcome,” the cook replied slowly. “Now, you go. Got to clean the front of the house. Owner’s not going to like this shit.”

The coffee was a little hard to handle, a thick-bodied cardboard-and-plastic construct built like a square milk jug, but Quinn was glad for it. Even if the cook brewed up the crappiest coffee in existence, he was running late—way too late to expect Rafe to still be asleep.

“A blow job. That would have done it.” Oddly enough he got a strange look from a passing woman, and Quinn smiled broadly as he edged around her. “No, really. A blow job. That would have made him sleepy. It always makes me sleepy.”

Quinn got another five steps when his phone sang out at him. He set the coffee down on a café table outside of a boba shop and dug his cell out of his jeans.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, I’m only a block away. Promise—” A tingle in his brain told Quinn to shut up. The ringtone wasn’t the one he’d chosen for Rafe. No, there was no rolling hips slither song about drips this time. The music he’d heard was the telltale jingle he’d assigned to Kane, not the person he’d ever want to tell he’d fled the penthouse in search of coffee. “Hey, Kane. What’s up?”

“Where are you?” his brother snapped. His Irish was up, slapping Quinn in the face.

He was going to lie. Quinn fully intended to lie, but the lack of emergency vehicles in the area became a thing of the past as a pair of fire trucks screamed down the hill past him. Quinn waited a second for the ringing in his ear to stop, then another few moments for Kane to stop yelling at him through the phone.

“Are you done?” Quinn moved out of the way of a jogger, tucking himself in closer to the wall. The coffee sloshed about in its container, and he briefly gave a thought as to how hot it would still be by the time he got home.

“No! I am not fucking…. Kel, bus. The bus!” Kane swore again, this time at his partner. “What the fuck am I thinking letting you drive.”

“Hanging up now,” Quinn threatened. “Look, I went out for coffee. I kind of cooked the machine Rafe has at home.”

“Get inside. I’ll have a unit come pick you up,” Kane ordered. “They can be there in ten minutes.”

“Bullshit. They still haven’t shown up yet for the pregnant lady.” To be fair, Quinn reasoned out, any cops coming in probably veered and went off to do other things since the ambulance showed up. “I’m close to the building. I’ll go through the garage to use that elevator. You need a pass code to get under there, and there’s a security guard at the gate. I’ll be fine.”

“Fucking Rafe should have done his job and kept you inside.” It was a faint mutter but one Quinn caught anyway. “Q, listen—”

“Did you just say Rafe was supposed to keep me inside? Like I’m some fucking dog to be kenneled when everyone leaves?” The coffee wouldn’t get a chance to be cold. His anger would be enough to boil it back to molten once he picked it up. “Look, I get that Mum was hurt. And yeah, I understand it’s not safe to be out in the open, but I spent a damned good amount of time keeping my ass covered—”

“We lost Graham Merris, Quinn.” Kane cut through Quinn’s rant. “I just left Merris’s house, where there’s blood on the floor and shit tossed to hell and back. So while I don’t know if your friend’s alive or dead—considering what this fuck bastard’s done in the past, things aren’t looking good. So, little brother mine, you get your fucking skinny ass someplace safe and let me call someone to pick you up.”

Not
Graham.

As exacting and sniffy as Graham could be, Quinn was fond of him, even loved him a bit, because no matter what oddness Quinn expressed, Graham let it roll off of him. No teasing. No sarcastic remarks about his behavior. Instead, Graham Merris merely accepted Quinn at pure face value, enjoyed contemplating silly theories about books and events starring people long turned to dust.

For all his prim, tight ways, Graham Merris definitely counted Quinn as his friend, and Quinn’d always been thankful for it.

Then the thought of Rafe lying in a pool of his own blood, his life smashed out of him, chilled Quinn so deep his balls pulled up in fear.

The building’s security had been tightened, but Quinn knew better. There were always cracks, always places someone determined to get in could do just that, work themselves through a gap by any means necessary and no one would be the wiser—not until it was too late, and by then Rafe would be dead.

Quinn didn’t think he could survive another loss… not like Rafe. Fear tightened the spit in his mouth, and a heavy pressure formed over his breastbone, punching down into his lungs and spreading over his ribs.

He wasn’t going to
not
wake up next to the man he’d had in his heart since they’d shared a stolen pudding cup under their school’s bleachers as a thunderstorm tore the skies apart. His mouth still tingled from their first kiss, his body holding in the hum of Rafe’s touch invading him. He wasn’t going to lose the sunsets they’d watched over the phone nor the sparse few they’d had on the penthouse balcony.

And Quinn sure as hell wasn’t going to lose the man who’d given his bidet over to a cat with less sense than a damp loaf of bread.

Not Graham.
Not Rafe
.

His heart couldn’t take the emptiness, and his soul ached at the thought of a life without Rafe’s calloused fingers stroking his lower lip or the insides of his thighs, Rafe’s playful, oh-so-skilled mouth teasing out one last kiss before they wrapped around one another and slept.

Fear, Quinn discovered, tasted as wickedly rotten as bile and as cloying as drying blood.

“Find Graham, Kane.” Quinn left the coffee jug, hurrying down the hill. He’d cut through an alley, knowing it would lead him right back to the building’s underground garage where he’d come from. “Don’t let him be dead, Kane. Please.”

“Q, just stay—you’re not staying, are you?” Kane sighed, more resigned than surprised.

“Just find Graham. Save him, Kane,” Quinn replied, turning down the alley. “I’m going to Rafe and make sure he’s safe.”

H
IS
HEAD
hurt. Hell, his eyelashes hurt, especially when Rafe blinked to filter out the bright light shining down on him. The white glow flickered, stuttering between a light and dark that had nothing to do with his lashes, lids, or any other part of his eyes he had any control over. Someone was whimpering nearby, and Rafe hoped it wasn’t him.

Feeling around in his bloodied mouth with the tip of his tongue, he deduced it couldn’t be him whimpering, because his jaw felt too swollen to move.

“God damn it. Shit,” a man swore. Nearby, a thump on the floor sent shock waves through Rafe’s aching head. “I hit him too hard. Who the hell is going to believe this pussy could hit this guy like that?
Damn it
!”

The sniveling grew louder, then another thump, the sound of bone hitting flesh, and whimpering faded to small hiccups. Rafe bit the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from groaning, then risked peeking out from under his lashes. He couldn’t see a damned thing but the hall’s marbled floor and a single black boot.

Pain ratcheted up his spine when Rafe tried to move his hips, a slight roll and hopefully not enough to alert the boot’s owner. He needn’t have worried. Apparently Boots was off in his own little world, ranting on about how he had everything planned but now things were ruined—he was ruined—because he’d hit Rafe too hard.

Rafe definitely didn’t see the need to argue that particular point.

Not since it felt like Boots’d dislocated every single bone in Rafe’s body.

The thumping continued, stomping off a few feet away, and Rafe risked opening his eyes another half inch, hoping to get a good idea of what was going on. What he saw did nothing to calm his nerves.

As front halls went, it was a fairly simple design, a rectangle of marble, wood, and a couple of waxy-leafed plants Rafe’d assumed were fake until he’d come across someone from maintenance watering them one day. One of the rectangle’s long sides was taken up by the two elevators keyed to reach the penthouse, with his front door on the other wall. Much longer than wide, the hall served its purpose for the most part, giving visitors someplace to stand until Rafe could open the door or providing a floor for him to dump his grocery bags on while he tried to find his keys.

And sadly without a hidden machine-gun turret. Once he got his shit together and Boots taken care of, he’d talk to the building about its lack of foresight in case of a hostage situation.

How long before he’d stop being a hostage and move on to being a murder victim, Rafe couldn’t say, but judging by how the skinny ’50s crooner looked as he lay slumped against one of the plasticky plants, things were going to escalate quickly.

It took Rafe a second to recognize Graham Merris, Quinn’s colleague from the photo he’d seen of them on Quinn’s phone. The name’d escaped him for a second but Rafe never forgot a nose, especially not one that looked as if it should have sat square in the middle of a Dark Arts instructor.