Page 91 of Cohesion

“No,” Kendrick answered. “When they hit me, I passed out. And then I couldn’t move—I couldn’t—” His nostrils flared. “I doubt they’ll be using it for long. It was a black Mazda sedan, nothing noteworthy about it. You can look for it; you won’t find it.”

Will’s familiar Jeep came screeching around the corner.Thank God.Now he just needed Jericho to appear, and then at least three quarters of his heart was safe. That wasn’t good enough, but it was a start.

New, pulsating anger rushed through him when Will hopped out of the Jeep and came into view properly.Blood. Quinn was by his side in an instant, gently tugging him down and turning his head, studying the wound. Peyton had said, but Quinn hadn’t thought about what thatmeant. Someone had hit Will, tried to hurt him. Had taken Sebastian. He wanted those responsible to be the ones bleeding. “Did you get this looked at?”

“I’m okay,” Will said. “Got cleared and everything. They just didn’t—” He rubbed his sleeve across his cheek where drying blood lingered, but it didn’t make a difference. “Need a shower,” he finished helplessly. “Did they really… is Seb really…?”

Quinn closed his eyes briefly and pressed their foreheads together, soaking in his warmth. “Yes, him and Spencer both.”

“Fucking hell,” Peyton said beside him. “Ballsy doing it right in his goddamn office building. Where did they go? What were they driving?”

“We have a description, but it’s not going to be enough.” Truth or not, the words tasted like ash. They would look, but it’s not the avenue they needed to waste time going down to find Sebastian. What the right avenue was, he didn’t know. They needed more information. “The man they left behind; he didn’t have any information. Grady will take him into custody once he’s been seen to, but he’s a dead end. Kendrick didn’t see enough, and there’s nothing we can follow.”

Will tugged Quinn into his arms, and Quinn went eagerly, resting his head on Will’s wildly beating heart. He was warm and cradled Quinn just the way that he needed. He settled into the hold only long enough for it to steady him and then put distance between them. He wished he could stay there forever, pretend that none of this was happening, that it was just a nightmare he would wake from, but he couldn’t.

“We can’t put out an official search for him, not unless we have a good description of them,” Will said. At Quinn’s shake of his head, he continued, “They’ll be keeping themselves on the downlow while they’re in transit. Then they’ll take them somewhere quiet. Dark. Somewhere they can get information out of them.”

Quinn swallowed down the bile threatening to rise. Will hadn’t seen what they did to people to “get information out of them,” and Quinn was thankful for that. He would never see it. And they would find Sebastian long before it got to that point.

“There are a lot of places like that in Sydney,” Peyton said. “We can’t just go kicking in the door of every building that’s dark and quiet.”

Will slid a hand down Quinn’s side and then put his hand in Quinn’s pocket, feeling around.

“What are you doing?” Quinn asked, blinking.

Will pulled out a latex glove. “You always carry these. It’s a detective thing, right?” He slipped it on and then crouched next to the dead body. He searched it thoroughly, his touch expert and quick. “Nothing,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “Not even a wallet. That’s weird.”

“It’s smart,” Peyton said. “All of them are too fucking clever.”

That was half the problem. Smart criminals were always harder to track and not as rare as they’d like. This particular mess seemed to have an abundance of them.

“Where were they going?” Will asked abruptly, standing and pulling the glove off inside out. “It’s the middle of the day. They weren’t leaving work, and they wouldn’t take him out for a joyride. What were they doing? He didn’t have a court date today, did he?”

“No, he would have spent the whole day at the courthouse if he did,” Quinn said.

“So where were they going?”

“Jericho said on the phone that they were going to the prison?” Peyton said. “I don’t know why.”

A memory sparked in Quinn.“I know someone inside. I could get a meeting with him, see if he knows anything.”

“Rohan Harris,” he said. “He’s the man on the inside. He must have been going to talk to Harris, see if he knew anything.”

Will shared a look with Peyton. “Then that’s where we need to go.”

The ambulance finally arrived, sirens echoing in the enclosed space. Jericho pulled in right behind them, moving around to find a spot out of the way.

Jericho’s single-minded focus as he got out and moved across the lot to them was comforting. One more piece slotting intoplace inside Quinn and calming the terror that was taking over. Even as the paramedics poured out and went straight to where Henry and Kendrick were, Jericho didn’t look away from them.

“Talk to me,” Jericho said.

It didn’t take long to tell him what they knew since they knew almost nothing. Who and what—evenwhy—was a mystery. They’d taken Sebastian and Spencer for something, and maybe Quinn wouldn’t feel so off-kilter if they just knewwhy. What they were fighting against and how much time they had before the assailants got what they wanted. Before Sebastian and Spencer ended up looking like Alan Randall. What information were they looking for?

Jericho’s face darkened when he spotted the blood on Will’s face. “Did you get a look at their faces?” he asked, lips flattening.

“No, they jumped me from behind,” Will said. “Hit me, cuffed me, and left. It wasn’t about me.”

That’s where he was wrong. This was about all of them. These assholes had come for all of them, and Quinn was done playing their game.

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