Page 167 of Carrick
The knock wasn’t loud.But it cut through the house like a scalpel, clean and exact. I was halfway through a mug of coffee gone tepid, standing just outside the kitchen in the narrow stretch of hallway, when the sound cracked through the stillness.
Three raps. Sharp. Controlled. Not casual enough to be a visitor, not urgent enough to be a crisis. Just patient enough to bleed.
My hand froze mid-sip. The ceramic pressed warm against my bottom lip, but the bitterness had already settled. I didn’t need to check. I didn’t need to ask. Only one person knocked like that.
I set the mug down on the entry table, spine slowly straightening as something coiled low in my stomach. It was instinct. Recognition. Quinn never announced himself when the news was bad. He didn’t have to. That knock carried everything—precision, restraint, a silence that filled the air like smoke. He didn’t barge or ring or shout. He knocked like a man who knew doors opened faster when you gave people the illusion of choice.
I opened the door without a word.
Quinn stood like a storm barely held inside the shape of a man. Rain clung to his jacket in thin rivulets, threading downthe collar of a shirt too soaked to carry warmth. His boots were dark with water, his jaw clenched tight. He didn’t just look tired. He looked emptied out. Like he’d been wrestling ghosts all night and hadn’t won by much. His eyes flicked past me and into the house, sharp and calculating, as if he were clearing corners out of habit, mentally charting the exits in case the place blew apart beneath his feet.
“Where is everyone?” he asked, voice low and steady, like he already knew the answer.
“Inside.” I stepped back and let the door swing open wider. “You come with a plan or a problem?”
He stepped inside, boots heavy on the hardwood. “Both.”
The word landed with the weight of too much meaning, and I didn’t ask him to clarify. Whatever he’d come to say would explain itself soon enough. He moved past me like a man with a deadline—shoulders set, breath tight, eyes scanning the living room like he was trying to prepare for a fallout he already saw coming.
Sully was the first to meet us.
He leaned against the edge of the kitchen island, the heel of his boot propped on the lower cupboard, fingers tapping out a jittery rhythm on a half-empty mug of coffee. His usual charm was absent—no smile, no lazy quip. Just tension wrapped in denim and tattoos.
Nikolai came out of his office looking equal parts stressed and in charge. Ever since Rayden had agreed to feed us information, he had spent most of his time pouring over every shred of data and intel we could find on current events happening within the Dom Krovi network, trying to find any evidence of suspicion or worse, betrayal.
Deacon came through the sliding door from the barn not long after, shedding the smell of leather, rain, and horses as he moved with quiet efficiency. His hair was damp from thedrizzle outside, and his eyes flicked from me to Quinn with the slow calculation of a man readying for something that required precision.
Jax didn’t look up from his spot on the couch, but he didn’t need to. The way his head tilted ever so slightly, the way his fingers stilled on the edge of his tablet, told me he was locked in. Processing. Listening. Ready to compute every variable before anyone else could form a complete sentence.
And then Bellamy. Last, as always. Silent as a breath drawn in too deep and held too long. She stepped into the room like she wasn’t entirely sure she belonged there, barefoot and bundled in one of Maddy’s sweatshirts that swallowed her narrow frame. Her arms crossed, chin tucked down, but it was her fingers that betrayed her. They picked at the cuff of her sleeve like her body couldn’t decide whether to fight or flee.
She was bracing.
She stood with the stillness of someone waiting for the train to hit—not chasing death, just too lost to move. Pressure gripped my chest. The truth was already there, settled in her bones long before Quinn ever opened his mouth.
She leaned against the archway, arms wrapped tightly around herself, but her eyes never wavered from the space between Quinn and me. And just like that, the temperature in the house dropped. The air got heavier. The next sentence would tip everything.
Quinn didn’t waste time. He never did. He stood squared off, jaw clenched, breath slow and deliberate—the kind of control that only comes after something’s already torn through you. Whatever he carried, it had wrecked him long before he brought it to us. His eyes swept the room once, flicking over each of us, but they lingered just a heartbeat longer on Bellamy.
“Rayden made contact outside of the arranged timeframes.” The words hit like the snap of a trigger being pulled.
Everything stopped. Sully set his mug down so slowly it didn’t even clink against the counter. Deacon froze mid-step, halfway between closing the sliding door and joining us. Even Jax—so often lost in a world of numbers and signals—lifted his head, attention razor-sharp, like the sound alone had recalibrated his entire focus. Niko’s eyes narrowed, like he was calculating a whole new set of mission parameters.
The air shifted. All at once, the room was made of glass. One wrong word and it would shatter.
But Bellamy didn’t flinch. She didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t move. Her shoulders were tight, locked into place, but it was her hands that betrayed her. Her fingers curled into the sleeves of her sweatshirt, knuckles going white from the pressure. Holding on. Holding in.
Quinn didn’t stop. “He called me on the burner,” he said, voice even but edged with something close to disbelief. “Said he needs to meet. Has something too big to risk even telling me about over the phone. Physical intel of some sort.”
No one spoke. The silence didn’t stretch—it pulsed. Thick with memory, heavy with consequence, sharp with the sound of something ancient cracking wide open. It held the weight of a storm gathering, the breath before an explosion, the moment just before blood hits pavement.
“He demanded a meetup,” Quinn added. “Not tonight. Soon. He picked the location—neutral, isolated. I’ll scout it first, run a sweep, but from what he described, it sounds usable. Minimal exposure. Contained angles.”
“You’re going alone?” Niko asked, voice soft but sharp.
Quinn hesitated, the first visible crack in his composure. “I was planning to.” His gaze shifted briefly to Bellamy. “But now… I’m not sure that’s smart anymore.”
The shift came like a ripple through still water. That’s when she moved.
