Page 136 of Carrick
Quinn.
His name lit up the dark like a warning flare—cold, clinical, blue. The room was quiet, the lights low, monitors humming steadily. The fans purred like breath in a hospital room. Code scrolled on one screen. The air smelled faintly of old tea. Jax sat nearby, silent and focused, his presence a steady pulse in the background.
My stomach turned.
Quinn didn’t call me unless it mattered. Niko was always his first. And at six in the morning, it meant only one thing—something was about to break.
I didn’t hesitate. Didn’t let it ring out or wait for a second wind and a full stomach. I just picked up.
“Quinn.”
His voice came through without delay. No greeting. No preamble.
“I’ve got something.”
Just three words, but they landed like a body dropping at my feet.
There was tension in his tone—thin and tight, like stretched wire. The kind that lived in your bloodstream, that settled behind your teeth and left a taste like copper when you were about to throw a punch or take one.
“What kind of something?” I asked, already straightening in the chair, spine pulling upright as my system started to recalibrate. Breath slowing. Focus narrowing. That instinctive shift fromawaretoengaged.
Quinn didn’t make me wait.
“Surveillance footage. East lot of Central Blue Valley. Time-stamped two nights ago.”
Central Blue Valley.
My jaw flexed.
Central Blue Valley was one of the city’s quieter danger zones. Not a hotbed like East 55th, not flashy like the industrial stacks near the river. But important. Strategic. A staging area for things no one wanted traced. If the Dom Krovi were using it, they were doing so for a reason.
“Camera feed?”
“Private security,” he said. “But the system piggybacks into the traffic grid. We flagged a license plate that had pinged near a known Dom Krovi safe house. Tracked it to the lot. SUV—unmarked, tinted. One of those generic, government-issue models they like for quiet grabs.”
I exhaled. “You checking the plate?”
“Already ran it. Registered to a dead company out of New Jersey. Used before in two other flagged events, but never enough to stick.”
“Facial recognition?”
He hesitated, just for a beat. “Pulled a match off one of the passengers getting in. Carrick, it’s… it’s Rayden.”
My fist clenched around the phone, every muscle in my hand going tight.
Fuck.
The name hit harder than it should’ve. Not just because of what it meant tactically—but because of who it would destroy. Rayden. Bellamy’s brother. The reason she was here in the first place. The reason she was hunted. The reason she’d begged me, tears in her eyes and rage in her voice, to keep him safe—whatever it took.
And now, not only did he not flee the city like we’d ordered, he was on surveillance footage, getting into a vehicle with the very people he was supposed to have escaped.
“Niko briefed me on what happened at the apartment the other night, so I am aware that you advised him to leave the city, but apparently, he changed his mind.” Quinn continued, his voice low and precise. “We ran plates off nearby traffic cams—got lucky with a cross-reference at a gas station five blocks out. SUV’s been flagged in connection with multiple Dom Krovi locations. Confirmed sightings at two stash spots. One safe house. And a secure meeting site in the warehouse district last month.”
My stomach knotted tighter. He wasn’t just back in their clutches. He was moving with them.
Quinn didn’t stop. “The two men he got in with—both confirmed. Not low-level runners, either. We’re talking elite. Inner-circle. One of them’s new, goes by Sergei Kerchoff. Might be former Spetsnaz. But the second?—”
He paused, obviously not looking forward to relating this information. “Oleg Karsin.”
