Page 9

Chapter

Nine

“ Q uin? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, Hiram. What’s up?”

“I’m worried about Randy.”

Finn was a regular at the bar, and his friend Randy worked as a bar back on busy nights. But Quin hadn’t seen him in days.

“Why? What happened?”

“I think maybe he got beat up after his last shift here, but he won’t let me into his room. You know, we board at that place down in Five Points by the ball field.”

“Uh-huh.” Quin grabbed his jacket. It was a damn slow night, and Colt and Wilder could watch the bar. “Come on. We’ll go have a look at him.”

“Thanks, man. I’m worried. I mean, I’m seriously worried.”

Hiram was a sweetheart, and he wasn’t sure if he and Randy were lovers or not, but they were absolutely friends. Shit, even if they’d been enemies. Quin wasn’t gonna let Randy swing in the wind. “Why didn’t he tell me he was hurt? You know that I would have helped.”

“Pride, I guess. I don’t know. I mean, nobody wants to admit that they got beat up.” Finn blinked at him, nose twitching, and he could see the badger in him for a second. Badgers fought, and they fought hard, but they had to be provoked.

Randy on the other hand was a little potato. Groundhogs weren’t fighters at the best of times.

“Well, we’ll go talk to him. I won’t take no for an answer, and if we have to get him help, we get him help. Not only that, but you know how that place is, I mean, that’s some rough trade around there.”

“We don’t have much money. It’s…it’s no big deal. We’re looking for jobs that are full-time, but it’s hard. We don’t have a lot of skills. There’s not much call for diggers around here.”

And that was what both badgers and groundhogs were good at. Digging, huh? “Well, we could probably find you something in construction that’s pretty useful. I’ve got some contacts. You kids have to talk to me though.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“You’re kid enough. Hey, I don’t suppose you know any porcupines?”

“Pardon me?”

“I’ve never met a porcupine shifter. I’ve seen videos, though, so I’m desperate to.”

“Yeah, sure. I know a whole family of them. They run a kabob joint.”

Quin hopped on his bike. “Hop on.”

“How are we going to get all three of us on if there’s something wrong?” Hiram asked.

“Nothing’s going to be wrong.” Dammit. “I’ll call my brother, though, and he can meet us. Are you serious about the kabob thing?”

“Yeah, they use their discarded quills. So that’s one less thing they have to buy. They run them through the dishwasher first. The kabobs are really, really yummy.”

Quin rolled his eyes. “Are they the stick through tomatoes and peppers kind of kabobs or form around with ground meat kind of kabobs?”

“They do all kinds. Most of them are vegetarian, but they’ll do meat specials, and some of them are wild. Crickets. Rabbit. Eel.”

“Wow. Okay, so we have to go there after we get Randy. That way we can feed him.”

“Okay, cool.” Hiram climbed on the bike behind him, hugging his waist after he put on the one helmet. He’d rather keep Hiram safe and worry about himself.

Hiram tucked into the vee of his back to avoid the wind, and they got to the boarding house about twenty minutes later. He texted Rian as soon as he got there.

Be on call. Possible beaten omega

Where?

Five points. Hiram’s boarding house

got it

He walked in with Hiram, who took him to the second floor. “That’s his room.”

“Stay behind me, okay? Just in case.”

“If something happens, I’ll go low.”

Quin chuckled. “Badger. I understand.” He knocked on the door, but there was no sound from inside. “Randy? Honey, it’s Quin. Can you let me in? I just want to talk to you.”

“I’m okay, Quin. You need to leave now.”

“Randy.” He leaned closer to the door. “I can help.”

“No.” Poor kid, his voice shook like a leaf. “Quin, I don’t want to cause you trouble. You have to—” The sound of flesh hitting flesh sounded, and he growled. Someone was in there with Randy, and they were hurting him.

“Whoever you are, I’m coming in.” He studied the door for a few moments, looking for the weak spot. Hinges or latch. On this one, it was the latch plate. It had been repaired several times.

“Quin! No! He’ll hurt you!”

He probably should have listened, but dammit, the idea that someone would pound on that sweet little groundhog made him see red, so he backed off and hit the door like a ton of bricks right at the touch plate.

It burst open, and he grunted, rolling across the floor because of his momentum.

Which meant the guy who swung a ham-sized fist at him missed. At least the first time.

Holy fuck, the guy was big. What was he? Polar bear shifter? Looked like it with his white-blond hair and black eyes, but that was just an impression as he bent to grab Quin off the floor, lifting him up high.

“Oof. Run, guys!” he howled, kicking with both legs, trying to hit something sensitive.

“Quin!”

“Go!” He made it as command-y as he could, mimicking his brothers, who were alphas, dammit. “Find Rian!”

They ran, Hiram grunting, his badger noises so frustrated. But this guy could really hurt them.

He tried to memorize every detail about this guy so if he needed to report him to the cops, he could. And he focused all his mental energy into calling his brothers.

So what came out, of course, was Mate!

One huge hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing the air out of him and cutting off the flow of blood to his brain.

Thiago’s mental voice blasted through him. Quin! What’s wrong?

He whacked at the guy with his hand, then realized he still held his phone. Whatever this guy wanted, he would never let Quin keep it, so as he kicked the guy in the nuts and then fell to the floor, he flung it under the bed.

Find my phone, Thiago! Find it! He knew Thiago should be able to track his phone with his PI magic, dammit. Between that and?—

The bear was back, and his hands came down, clenched together, on Quin’s neck, and everything went dark.

Thiago ran right into a wasps’ nest and he didn’t care.

His mate needed him.

There were police and crime scene tape up, and he refused to let it get to him, to freeze him and make him less effective.

No.

No, Quin needed him, and he’d be damned if he didn’t do his job.

Graham was in his earpiece, and Thiago could hear the tick-tacking of his keys. “Tell me what you see.”

“Shitty apartment building. Cops. Evidence of drug users on site. No evidence of Quin.”

“Why was he there? Any idea?”

“Assuming extraction?” He dug through his bag of tricks, coming up with a badge in a wallet. He didn’t have time to mess with these beat cops, and he would just bite their heads off if they interfered with him.

“You have credentials? You need to get me data. Photos.”

“I’m on it.” He pulled on a sportscoat that he kept in the back of his car and headed across the street. He flashed his badge at the cop who tried to stop him from slipping under the yellow tape, growled a little at the kid guarding the door, and suddenly he was in the bedroom where his mate had lost consciousness.

He knew Quin wasn’t dead. His mate was silent in his head, but he knew Quin was still kicking.

“I’m in.”

“Start taking pics. What do you see?”

The police were milling around the living area, not too terribly concerned about what had happened. This was obviously a tough part of town, and he heard snippets of conversations regarding the renters, neither of which could possibly be Quin.

“I have some cast-off. The place has been tossed. Smells like wolf, but that could be Quin. It’s confusing.”

He smelled Quin, but then there was something close to Quin, but not quite Quin. The scent of blood and fear was kind of sunk into the place, which didn’t help either.

“Keep talking.”

“I’ve got some white hair, here. Totally smells of…bear?”

“White hair? Bear? That’s not happy making.”

“No.” Polar bears could be fucking violent, and the bastards were huge. “Someone’s going to die, and it isn’t going to be me, Graham.”

It wasn’t going to be Quin, either. Someone was going to die, but they were going to suffer first.

Something on the floor glinted, and he frowned, leaning down to look. The gold wolf’s paw necklace that Quin wore was shining there, broken on the floor.

“I have his necklace.” He scooped that up, rumbling softly. “Someone tore it off him.”

“Focus,” Graham snapped. “Just focus on the facts.”

“So what the hell happened here?”

He heard those words from the tiny little front room, and he knew that he was going to have to get a move on. “We have detectives,” he whispered.

“Get out of there.”

He couldn’t. Not yet.

“Looks like a fight. Neighbors say that there was a tussle, a commotion, then somebody roared out of here. But the door was off the hinges. There’s couple of blood drops.”

There was a soft chuckle, then, “They should just shut this place down, set it on fire or something.”

“I mean it, Thiago. Move.”

“Uh-huh.” Thiago kept one ear open, but he started searching. Someone had been in here and had just torn this place to hell. But he didn’t think it was the person who was living here. The clothes and bedding smelled of soil and dust, weirdly enough.

The blood was fresh.

“Thiago!”

“I hear you, Graham.” He just didn’t listen. He bent down to check a piece of paper that had fluttered to the floor when he saw it underneath the bed—Quin’s leather jacket phone case. The cover was silly but adorable, and it made Quin laugh. Thiago recognized it immediately, and he pulled it out and pocketed it. That was what he needed right there. That was his clue. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge. “I have his phone.”

“Excellent. Move your ass, pussy cat. Now.”

“—the other detective’s in there already.”

“What other detective?”

“Uh-oh.” He slipped out the window about the time that the bedroom door opened.

“What did I tell you about lingering at crime scenes, Thiago?”

“That it’s a bad idea, and I’m too reckless?”

“Bingo.”

By the time the big bulldog-faced man stuck his head out the window, Thiago was lounging, or pretending to, on the other side of the crime scene tape.

He got into his car and pulled out Quin’s phone. All right, mate. You left this for me for a reason. What is it you needed for me to know?

“I need to get into his phone.”

“Well, we can work on it, but it will be way faster if you just call it yourself and see if you can’t open it that way.”

“Right on…”

Of course, it started ringing before he could call it, and he damn near dropped it.

“Someone’s calling.” The face on the screen was very familiar to him, a little different—shorter hair, less attractive, a little bit more geek and less stud, but not everyone could be perfect. Best of all, the name that came up was Symon. “It’s one of his brothers.”

“Put it on speaker.”

He swiped and said hello.

“Who the fuck are you and what have you done with my brother?”

“I’m Thiago. I found his phone. I’m trying to find him. Do you know anything?”

“I don’t know you.”

“No, and I don’t know you, but we have to find Quin. Do you know what was going on? Why he was here?” There was this silence, and he could tell that he was being put on mute, so he just kept talking, both to Symon and Graham. “I’m serious. I’m just trying to find him. I just want him back. He called for me. I found his phone. You called, I answered. We’re running out of time here.”

“We are.” Symon sighed when he came back. “Okay, we need to meet. The kids that Rian pulled out of that boarding house said that they’d headed out toward the industrial area. We have some information, and my mate, Adrian, is following up on it electronically.”

“I’ll patch him through to my business partner, if I may. He’s good at the dark web stuff.”

“Adrian will be so pleased.” Symon’s voice was dry as dust. “You know where the dog food plant is?”

Didn’t everyone? The thing was huge and right off the highway.

“Yes.”

“Meet us there. North lot. We’ll be in an Escalade.”

“Got it.” He memorized Symon’s number, just in case he couldn’t keep the phone open. Then he went in to change the sleep settings to try to keep Quin’s phone usable.

“You get all that, Graham?” he asked.

“Yeah. Be careful. I mean, by all accounts, this Symon is an upstanding guy, but we still don’t know him.”

“He’s Quin’s brother, so I have to trust him.”

“Right now, at least.” He could hear Graham’s grin. “I’ll get the computer geek’s number for you.”

“Good deal. I’ll get with him.”

“Thanks, Graham. Keep a line open for me.”

“I will.” They disconnected, and he raced out to the interstate to find the dog food plant. He needed to get there and reconnoiter, and he had a feeling he was closer.

He was right.

The Escalade he was probably looking for pulled in about five minutes later, and he stepped out of his own vehicle, sunglasses still on. He needed to keep himself calm and keep any advantage he could.

“You’re Thiago?” The man from the phone, Symon, stepped up to shake his hand.

“I am.”

Another man, this one looking really expensive, shook too. “Rian. The other brother.”

“I would be pleased, but this is shitty timing.”

“Yeah. We’ll chat later.” Rian studied him. “Jaguar?”

“That’s me.” He grinned, more a baring of teeth. “We’re wasting time.”

Symon nodded. “The boys told Rian that whoever did this had targeted Randy deliberately, knowing Quin had been trying to get him to go to the safe house.”

“So it was a setup. What have you got on the guy?”

“The muscle was a polar bear shifter. Randy pretended to be unconscious after the fucker hit him, and he overheard a one-sided phone call and a few raised voices shout from the other end. Says the bear is named Larry.”

“So Larry comes to the boarding house. Beats up Randy. Lets one of the other kids escape to go get Quin.”

“Hiram,” Symon agreed.

“Then grabs Quin. Why?” Thiago took off his glasses then, so he could stare them in the eyes, one at a time.

“We broke up a ring of omega kidnappers not too long ago, and since then, Quin has been rainbow railroading the kids out of town. Cuts into profits for a lot of people.”

“Yeah, so I don’t suppose Larry had a name for his boss.”

“No, but the kids got a partial plate. My mate is working on it.”

“I need him to call my guy,” he growled. “Now.”

“He’s already on it. They’re already hooked up and doing whatever it is they do that I’m not knowing anything about because that’s probably not very legal.” Symon glanced at him, then his brother. “And I would hate to have to get into trouble.”

Rian arched one eyebrow, lips tight. “I’m assuming that they’re going to have a ransom note or a call, and I’m guessing that it’s going to either come to Quin’s to the bar. So I suggest we get to the Hogg.”

Thiago could already tell that he was going to like Rian. He seemed way more straightforward and a little less woo-woo. “Then let’s go.”

He wasn’t going to waste any more time on this nonsense.

He needed to get his damn mate back.