Page 146 of Carrick
He didn’t ask questions over the phone. Just said, “I’m on my way,” and hung up.
That alone told me how serious this had become.
When his car crunched over the gravel and the door slammed shut, the tension in the house turned to static. No one said a word. Niko and Deacon flanked the front door. Jax set up a secure loop across our network and silenced the exterior mics. Sully cleared the kitchen. Maddy took Bellamy upstairs—no argument this time.
She hadn’t said much since the conversation in her room. But the weight of it was still on her. Still on me.
Quinn stepped through the door with the same expression he always wore when things were about to get worse: detached, eyes scanning with clinical precision, jaw tight like he was already cataloging worst-case scenarios. His whole body radiated quiet irritation, the kind that said he hadn’t come out here for anything short of a damn emergency.
“You called me out here without context,” he said as he shrugged off his coat, his voice clipped and cold. “So I assume the information is sensitive. As late as it is, this had better be good.”
“It is,” I replied, meeting his gaze without hesitation. My voice was steady, but underneath, the pressure was already building. This was the moment it all stopped being hypothetical.
Quinn’s eyes moved, slowly sweeping the room, taking stock of every expression, every quiet posture. His attention caught on Bellamy’s absence, and for a second, something unreadable flickered behind his eyes.
“She okay?” he asked, softer now, but no less sharp.
“She’s shaken,” Deacon answered before I could, his voice quiet and even. He was leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, watching everything. “But not broken.”
There was weight in that statement. Because we all knew it wouldn’t take much to push her past the edge.
Quinn’s jaw shifted slightly, a flicker of tension under his cheekbone. “She knows about Rayden? About the security cam footage?”
“She does,” Niko replied, stepping forward slightly, as if to reinforce the point. “Carrick told her.”
And that was the moment.
That was when Quinn turned his full attention to me—no longer scanning, no longer just processing. He looked at me like he was seeing something new. Not surprise, not even judgment, exactly. But recognition. The kind that only comes when the pieces finally click into place.
“You’ve got something else,” he said, the words even but weighted.
I didn’t blink. “I gave him a burner phone when we met at the apartment.”
Everything in the room stilled.
Quinn stared at me, unmoving. His face was unreadable, but I could see the shift in his posture—the subtle recalibration, the slow pivot from irritation to something tighter. It was the kind of stillness that came before the storm.
For a long beat, he said nothing.
Then he exhaled hard through his nose and reached up to pinch the bridge of it, like the headache I’d just handed him might be something he could squeeze out of his skull.
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“Tell me it’s off-grid.”
“It is. Untraceable. Clean.”
“And he hasn’t contacted you?”
“Not yet.”
“But he could.”
“Yes.”
Quinn let the answer hang there between us, like he needed a second to let the full weight of it land. His eyes locked on mine, searching for something—regret, hesitation, recklessness—but I didn’t give it to him. I couldn’t. Because whatever mistakes I’d made, this wasn’t one of them.
