Page 57 of Unmade

“You know who Watts reminds me of?” Reese mused. “A young Quinn.”

Danny huffed a laugh. “No fucking joke—I had that exact same thought the other day when he bitched out Jensen and Travers for talking too much.”

A young Quinn… I tilted my head. Reese had obviously referred to Darius—but the man was an acquired taste. My brother had liked him. I hadn’t spent enough time with him to get a proper impression, and it was best not to go by the first one.

Quinn.

Reese chuckled. “Kinda looks like him too.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“Yeah, maybe.” Danny smiled.

Hm.

Quinn, Quinn, Quinn…

“Round two!” Shay hollered.

I tilted my head toward Danny and spoke for only him to hear. And Reese, I supposed. “Isn’t Darius from Washington?”

Danny inclined his head, eyes on the recruits as they got ready with new sparring partners. “Yeah. Some podunk little town north of Seattle.”

Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it? Didn’t Leighton tell me his dad was from there? A big family of Quinns?

And Jake Quinn had left behind a business card with the Hillcroft logo… What were the odds of—actually, wait. I had to do the math here. Leighton was twenty-four. So, that would mean Jake had been here, for whatever reason, roughly twenty-five years ago. At which point—had Darius been here…well, yes. Of course he had.

There was Ryan too. Darius’s brother. A sniper with the Marines. Ryan had come in as a freelancer to help out countless times over the years.

“All right, I gotta get back upstairs,” Danny said. “If I don’t see you at lunch, have a good weekend, fellas.”

“You too, man,” I replied absently.

Reese and I stayed put and watched the sparring, and it wasn’t unlike the battle going on inside my head. I mean, now that the seed was planted, I couldn’t help but wonder about the possibility of Leighton’s family being much closer than he could’ve anticipated. Because he was under the impression that Jake had wanted to work here but eventually opted out for whatever reason. And it was a plausible theory. Six years ago, it’d seemed perfectly logical that Jake had come here, then ended up talking to my brother, who’d sent Jake to the Army instead. Considering my name had been on the business card. Only, my name had been my father’s name first.

Actually, two things could be true at once. But now I was wondering if Jake had come to Hillcroft because his brothers, at least Darius, had worked here. Or cousin, maybe? Who knew.

“Without stepping on any Quinn toes—and I know how private Darius is…” I cleared my throat. “Do you happen to know how many brothers he has?”

Reese furrowed his brow. “Uh…I’m not sure. A few, at least. You know Ryan.”

I nodded once.

He scratched his jaw, then folded his arms over his chest. “If I were to venture a guess, three or four. Squeezy would know better, obviously.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Oh. Uh…” The furrow between his eyebrows deepened, and he cleared his throat. “She works in Intel, but she does it remotely. She’s worked with the Quinns. I thought you knew her.”

I did not. I’d never heard of her. But that wasn’t weird. Operators and Intel staff rarely ran in the same circles—and even less so if she worked from another location.

Oh, fuck it. There was a better way to find clues, because I knew Reese sat on answers. He and his brother were close with Darius and Ryan.

I turned to face Reese fully. “Is it possible Darius had a relative who died in Afghanistan some twenty-five years ago?”

Reese lifted his brows a fraction. “That’s a specific question.”

I nodded. “Let’s say a recruit came to me six years ago and asked about a Jacob Quinn. This particular Quinn had left behind a Hillcroft business card as one of the few leads about his history. Let’s also say that this recruit claimed Jacob Quinn was his dad—but he never got to meet him before Quinn was killed overseas.”

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