Page 147 of Carrick
He let out a sound then—short, low, and bitter. Not quite a laugh. More like the ghost of one. The kind of reaction you give when you realize the fuse is already lit and someone told you about it an hour too late.
The silence after was thick.
And I knew without a doubt—we’d just crossed a line we couldn’t come back from.
“So let me see if I have this straight. You gave a burner phone to the brother of a federal witness in the middle of an open investigation targeting a trans-national crime syndicate, and you didn’t think to loop in the rest of your team untilaftersurveillance footage tied him to Oleg fucking Karsin. Does that sound about right?”
I didn’t flinch. “It wasn’t tactical. It was personal.”
“That’s worse,” Quinn growled. “Because now it’s both.”
“Look, I know it was off-book,” I said. “But it might be the only leverage we’ve got. If Rayden’s inside the organization—if he’s not just collateral—then he’s access. He knows names. Routes. Structure.”
“Or he’s a walking time bomb,” Quinn snapped. “For all we know, they got ahold of the phone and are tracing it as we speak. All because you handed him a fucking lifeline andhopedhe wouldn’t pull the pin.”
“I was only with him for five minutes and could still tell—he knows how to survive. He’s not an idiot,” I said.
“No,” Jax cut in, “but he could still be a liability.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said, louder now. “That security cam footage proves that he still has their trust, at least for now.”
Quinn paced away, muttering something under his breath, then turned back to us with eyes sharp as broken glass.
“I assume you gave him a number to contact you on, and I have to believe you’re smart enough that it’s another burner?”
I nodded affirmation.
“Bring me the phone.”
“I’ll get it,” I said.
I left the room, heading to my quarters where the phone was stashed in a locked case beneath my bed. When I returned, Quinn was already seated at the table with Niko beside him, the others circling like vultures around fresh intel.
I handed it over.
Quinn turned it over in his hands. Checked the casing. Scrolled through the settings. I had only taken it out of airplane mode once every 24 hours to check if Rayden had tried to make contact. No pings. No signals.
Yet.
“Okay,” he said. “We keep it off until we have a plan. No contact until we’re ready to control the conversation.”
“What kind of control?” Deacon asked.
“We record everything. We location trace if possible. If he answers, we listen. If he doesn’t, we wait. We don’t chase him. We don’t tip our hand.”
“And Bellamy?” Maddy asked, stepping back into the room with arms crossed. “What are you planning to tellher?”
“She already knows about the phone,” I said.
“Does she know what happens if Rayden’s not alone when we call?” Maddy’s voice was low and even. “If he gets caught?”
“I don’t think she’s ready to hear it,” Quinn said. “But she’s going to have to be.”
No one spoke. Because we all knew what that meant. If Rayden was caught in contact with law enforcement… there would be no extraction plan. Only fallout. And Bellamy wouldn’t walk away from that unscathed.
We stood around the table like we were back in the field, like this wasn’t a safe house in the middle of nowhere, but a forward operations post, with war pressing in from all sides. Niko pulled up a map on the main monitor—one Jax had already layered with surveillance points, Dom Krovi property holdings, and suspected drop zones across the city. A red dot blinked over the east lot of Blackmoor. Where Rayden was last seen.
Quinn tapped the burner phone twice before setting it beside the laptop. “Two options,” he said. “We activate the phone and make contact. See if he bites. Or we hold it. Wait for him to come to us.”
