Although Luke’s pulse raced enough to make his hands unsteady, he didn’t hesitate to do what Sinclair had asked. He recounted what had happened, the story punctuated by Quinn’s nods and the tap-tap-tap of Capelli’s keyboard as the guy recorded every detail on a big, digital board at the front of the office. The detectives listened without interrupting much, but Luke could sense the gravity of the situation from their still-stony expressions, and finally, he ended with, “Then Ice left us in the warehouse and took off. I’m sorry we didn’t say anything before now, but…”
Sinclair quelled the guilt in Luke’s gut with one shake of his head. “He has a lot of identifying information on you both, and he put you in a dangerous situation. But we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
Isabella and Maxwell both nodded from their desks, and Sinclair shifted back to look at the spot where Garza had been taking in the story with a shrewd, dark stare.
The detective asked, “This snake tattoo all of these guys had, was it exactly the same?”
Luke nodded, grateful that the whole attention-to-detail thing had been drilled into him from day one at the academy. “Yes. All four men had the same tattoo on their right forearms.”
“Would you be able to identify it from a photo?”
“Absolutely.” It was the first thing Quinn had said in a while, but her voice came out dead certain. “I remember it from when I started Jayden’s IV. And from…” Her sentence skidded to an awkward halt. “Yes. I’d be able to identify it.”
“Did it look like this?” Garza asked, flipping through his iPhone for a few seconds before handing it over to Quinn.
Her hand trembled, but only for a second before she and Luke said yes at the same time. Dark, coiled lines of ink, cold black spheres for eyes, mouth open to bare a set of menacing, pointed fangs—the tattoo in the photo was definitely a match.
“That’s what I thought,” Garza said, but funny, he looked none too thrilled at having made the ID on the ink. “The man who kidnapped you—Damien? Belongs to a gang called the Vipers.”
“Shit.” Hollister’s apologetic expression was almost instantaneous with the slip. “Sorry. They’re one of Remington’s nastier gangs.”
“Which means it’s good that you came to us,” Sinclair said, tipping his chin at the screen in the front of the room. “Garza, what can you tell me about this guy, Ice?”
“His legal name is Isaiah Howard, and he’s a ruthless son of a bitch, not to mention a bit of a legend. He’s been on our radar for at least a decade, but we barely even have verified photos of the guy, much less anything we can use to nail him.”
Although he didn’t say it, Sinclair’s expression was the living embodiment of fucking great. “And the Vipers?”
“Ice inherited the top spot from his old man when the guy was shot to death in a DEA raid eight years ago. The Vipers are known for the usual list of bad and nasty—running drugs, illegal weapons, drive-by shootings over turf wars. There’s been some chatter lately that they’re looking to break out into some bigger gun running, but so far, we haven’t been able to confirm that with anything concrete.” Garza shook his head. “CIs are real reluctant to give up anything on this guy, and he’s slippery. He covers his tracks better than most.”
Quinn stiffened against her chair. “So you don’t really know a whole lot about him, then.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t find proof of what he did to you two and arrest him for threatening your lives,” Maxwell said, and Hale nodded reassuringly as she leaned closer to Quinn.
“Or keep you two safe while we work the case.”
“But it’s going to be really hard to do,” Quinn said, and yeah, it sounded like she had one hell of a point.
“Yes.” Both Isabella and Hale winced at Garza’s reply, but the detective didn’t scale back. “Building a case against Ice is going to be an uphill climb. He’s as methodical as he is mean. If you two aren’t dead, it’s because he didn’t want you that way. Sorry,” he added, sending a sheepish shrug in Quinn’s direction when she visibly paled. “But that’s how he works. He was raised in that gang. Hell, he is that gang. Everything he does has a purpose.”
Luke tamped down the very sudden, very unexpected urge to introduce his fist to Garza’s face. He was all for the honesty, but for fuck’s sake, Quinn was already scared. The reminder that they both could be dead? Not really helping.
A fact that Sinclair seemed to catch on to pretty quickly. “Right,” he said quietly. “Now we just need to figure out what his purpose is here. Garza, I want you on this with the rest of my unit. I’ll call Sergeant Mills to get him in the loop. As long as you’re okay with working the case.”
His tone made it sound like Garza would be crazy to decline, which was exactly how the detective answered.
“Yes, sir, I am. Although”—he paused for a breath—“respectfully, I have to say the gang unit may want jurisdiction. We’ve been dying to get decent intel on Ice for years.”
The intelligence unit’s detectives played a game of tag-team brow lifting, but Sinclair either didn’t notice (unlikely) or didn’t care (highly probable).
“And respectfully, my answer’s no. We’ve got a dead body to go with our kidnapping, and who knows what else beneath the surface, which means the case falls to intelligence. Not to mention that as far as I’m concerned, an assault on the first responders at Seventeen is like an assault on our own.” Sinclair’s features hardened, his shoulders forming an unyielding line as he crossed his arms over the front of his dark blue button-down shirt. “This case is ours, and we will get to the bottom of it.”
For the first time since they’d walked into the precinct, Quinn’s shoulders seemed to unknot, which in turn sent a shot of relief through Luke’s system. “Thank you,” she said.
Isabella looked at Quinn, her smile soft but her words as tough as an MMA cage fighter. “This is what we do, sweetheart. Don’t worry. We’ll catch this guy.”
Before his better judgment could remind him of the sharp edges Sinclair had just shown off, Luke asked, “And you plan to do that how, exactly?” It seemed like a monumental fucking job, even for an elite police unit.
“Very carefully,” Sinclair said. “First, we’re going to need any evidence we can get our hands on. Capelli, pull the transcripts of the nine-one-one call from dispatch. See if there’s anything we can use there.”
Capelli paused for a frown. “I doubt there will be. This kidnapping sounds like it was strategically planned, which means the odds are extremely high the call came from a burner phone,” he said.
Hollister coughed into his fist, the noise sounding suspiciously like the word dude, and Capelli’s eyes widened behind the thick black frames of his glasses as he caught sight of Sinclair’s impressive death glare.
“You know what, why don’t I just grab those transcripts anyway and see what turns up. I can also see if there are any street cams or security feeds from businesses near the warehouse. Just because it’s a longshot doesn’t mean it’s statistically impossible.”
“That’s more like it,” Sinclair said. “Hale, I want you and Maxwell on this body. Check all John Does with GSWs that have turned up in the last seventy-two hours. Check the department’s database, the morgue, everywhere you can think of.”
Maxwell gave up a dark and dangerous look that—whoa—actually rivaled Sinclair’s. “On it.”
The sergeant turned his attention back to him and Quinn and Captain Bridges. “Am I correct in assuming the ambulance taken on the call is at Seventeen right now?”
“Affirmative,” Bridges said. “Ambulance Twenty-Two is at the fire house. The official status of the vehicle is that it’s down for further repairs for some damage it sustained last week. Since that damage was already on the books, I thought it wouldn’t raise any red flags to anyone watching.”
“Smart thinking. Let’s have the vehicle towed to central. I’ll have a forensics team standing by to comb it for evidence. Slater, Copeland, wh
at did you two do with the equipment when you were done at the flophouse?”
Quinn’s expression went from realization to apology. “Ice made us sterilize everything before we left the house. We took the monitors and first-in bags back with us—obviously we’d never be able to explain losing such expensive equipment. But he made us leave everything disposable there with Jayden’s body.”
“Damn it,” Hollister muttered. “So much for DNA.”
“Not necessarily,” Isabella interjected, but Luke shook his head.
“That ambulance has been on two and a half tours since we went on that call. It’s been cleaned and sanitized by paramedics on all three shifts.” Christ, Quinn alone was meticulous enough that the health department would probably green-light a four-course meal off any surface in the freaking thing when she was done with it.
The hard press of Sinclair’s mouth said he likely agreed, but… “We’ll check it anyway to see if we can find any DNA or fingerprints that match anyone in the system. The RFD can replace the vehicle with one you can use in the meantime.”
“So we get to stay on-shift?” Quinn asked. Her voice was loaded with hope, and Luke had to admit, he shared every ounce of the sentiment.
Captain Bridges? Not so much. “With all due respect, Sam, is that wise? Shouldn’t we be talking about protective custody, here?”
Luke’s heart went full-on Whack-a-Mole with his rib cage. “You think we need protective custody?” he asked, his question colliding with Quinn’s emphatic “no”.
“No. Not right now,” Sinclair added as a caveat. “Look, we have to assume that Ice has eyes on you both. Right now, if we pull you from rotation at Seventeen, he’ll know something’s up and he’ll either go below ground or he’ll come after you two. Maybe both. We need to keep this investigation way under wraps if we want to keep you safe, and if we want to get any intel on the guy. Which means…”
“We go business as usual,” Bridges said, although he seemed a mile and a half away from being convinced.
Sinclair shifted, angling his body toward Isabella, Hollister, and Garza to include them in the conversation. “It’s not ideal. And we’re going to have to take precautions. Talk to me about local family members. Boyfriends, girlfriends. Anyone you’re close with.”
Shit. Shit. Luke clammed up by default, letting Quinn take point on the question.
“I don’t have anybody other than the crew at Seventeen. But Ice has my phone. He’s got to know I’m really tight with everyone there, along with Isabella and Addison and Kennedy Matthews, from the Crooked Angel. Parker is at his brother’s cabin in the mountains in Virginia, so he’s probably far enough away to be safe. But everyone else…”
“Everyone else, we can keep an eye on. But you’re right. Parker’s far enough away to be out of Ice’s reach.” Sinclair swung his steely gaze at Luke, and fuck, suddenly it felt chock full of shrapnel. “How about you, Slater?”
“I, ah.” You don’t have a choice. You need a solution. They need to stay safe. “My grandmother is local. And so is my sister.”
“I see. And exactly where do they live and work?”
Of course, Sinclair had to ask. Because—of course—Luke was all about penny-pinching the personal details.
He swallowed in an effort to buy time he knew he couldn’t afford and wouldn’t come anyway. “They live together in the house where I was raised in Mission Park. My grandmother works for Remington Gas and Electric, and my sister Hayley is a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School, over on Grammercy.”
“Okay.” Sinclair lifted his chin at Hollister, who turned toward the laptop on his desk and began to type. “We’ll assign a detail to keep an eye on both of them, just to be on the safe side. Same goes for the fire house when you’re all on-shift, and for you two all the time.”
Luke took a breath, his first full one in at least ten minutes. Details were good. They meant there was a plan. A way to tackle the problem, step by step. “So everyone has cops looking out for them and we just go about everything like normal?”
“Essentially,” Sinclair said after a pause. “You’ll both have to be vigilant, and we’ll require a voice check-in by phone every twelve hours. You also won’t be able to discuss the case with anyone.”
Quinn’s chin lifted in surprise. “You’re not going to tell anyone at Seventeen about this? Or Luke’s family?”
“I know it sounds a little counter-intuitive and scary,” Isabella said. “But our security details will keep them safe, and we’ll keep you two safe.”
“But—”
“Quinn, hey, look at me.” Slipping from behind her desk, Isabella knelt down in front of Quinn, her lifted brows and soft expression proving in no uncertain terms that she not only understood the panic on Quinn’s face, but she took it freaking seriously. “Kellan works in that fire house with you, doesn’t he?”
Quinn blinked. “Yes.”
The word was all question, and Isabella answered it as such. “Exactly. I would never put him at risk, just like I would never put the rest of you at risk. We need everyone to act normally so nothing tips Ice off while we work on our investigation, and the best way to ensure that is not to tell any of them what’s going on. Captain Bridges is in the loop.” Isabella nodded up at the captain, but never broke eye contact with Quinn. “Capelli runs the best security and surveillance around. This unit has your backs. I wouldn’t bullshit you. I promise this is the best way to proceed. Okay?”
“Okay.” Quinn nodded, and Luke echoed the movement when Isabella shifted her gaze to his. He might not like not telling his grandmother or sister what was going on—for Chrissake, he hated all of this, from the threat to the secrecy to the unease still locked in Quinn’s dark blue stare. But he needed a solution, and involving the intelligence unit felt like the smartest, safest way to get one.
“What do we do in the meantime?”
“What you normally would,” Isabella said. She stood back up and returned to her desk. “Work. Go to the grocery store. Have a couple of beers at the Crooked Angel. But be smart about it—stick to really public places and use the buddy system if you leave home after dark. That last one’s not negotiable.”
Not that it would be a problem for Luke. He didn’t ever go anywhere to speak of other than work or Momma Billie’s, although he’d have to skip post-sundown visits for now unless he stayed overnight because no fucking way was he taking anyone there. His personal life, scant as it was, was still personal. He wasn’t about to share so much as an ounce of it if he didn’t need to. “Copy that, detective.”
“Got it,” Quinn said. Although Luke’s gut did a knot-and-drop at the thought of Ice watching Quinn—or worse yet, trying to hurt her if she was out in public—the buddy system certainly wouldn’t be an issue for her. Her network of friends, close friends, had to be big enough to fill a baseball stadium.
Sinclair reclaimed the conversation with one quick clearing of his throat. “Good. Moreno and Hollister will arrange a check-in schedule for you both. In the meantime, I’d like to get you set up with some photo arrays, see if we can’t put a solid ID to Damien, Jayden, and anyone else we have in the system. Then we’ll get you back to Seventeen in time to finish your shift.”
“One more thing, if I could, Sergeant.” Captain Bridges’s tone carried enough non-request to send Luke’s red flags flapping in the wind. “I’m going to have to insist that you two get cleared by Dr. Garrity over at HQ before you’re put back in the active service rotation.”
Quinn’s ponytail snapped over the shoulder of her dark gray uniform top. “The head shrinker? Come on, Cap. No way.”
“Dallas Garrity is one of the best psychologists in the city, and he just happens to be on the department’s payroll,” Bridges said, and yep, he wasn’t backing down. “I’m sure I can arrange the appointments to look like routine mental health check-ins. But you were kidnapped at gunpoint and your lives have been threatened. I take your emotional well-being as seriously as your physical health, and
as such…”
“Okay, okay,” Quinn mumbled, but the frown tugging at the edges of her mouth broadcasted her disdain like a billboard. In truth, Luke wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of going, either. But resisting would only draw attention to the fact that he didn’t want to do it, and anyway, pushing back was futile. If a session with the department shrink would get him a step closer to a solution, he’d suck it up for the greater good.
After all, he’d spent a damned decade keeping people at arm’s length. Keeping his emotions on the down-low from yet one more person? Not gonna be that hard.
“Okay, then.” Sinclair lifted his chin at Captain Bridges, then at Detective Garza. “Let’s get everything in motion.”
Nodding, Luke pushed up from his chair. Quinn stood up to follow Garza, who was clearly on the whole photo array thing, but then she turned back to look at Sinclair, her eyes brimming with something Luke couldn’t quite identify even though he knew on sight that he hated it.
“Sergeant, I’m sorry we”—she broke off. Bit her lip. Tried again—“I’m sorry I didn’t come forward sooner. Luke wanted to.” Her emotion-filled gaze landed directly in his sternum. “But I didn’t. So I apologize. We should have told you right after the, um…whole thing happened.”
Sinclair regarded her carefully for a second while Luke fought twin urges to build a stronger defense against the look on Quinn’s face and hold her until said look disappeared.
“I can’t lie,” Sinclair finally said. “We’d have made better headway if we’d had the jump on this. But it was a tough thing you did, coming forward. We’re going to do everything we can to keep you and your families safe while we nail Damien for the kidnapping and Ice for threatening your lives.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Luke put one boot in front of the other as the group dispersed, his body following the commands from his neurons even though that deep-down visceral part of him that had wanted to hold Quinn was still screaming full-bore. As bat-shit as the idea was, though, he was her partner. He didn’t have to let her in to have her back. He could still do the decent thing; hell, the right thing, and help the cops find Ice and his gang while still keeping Quinn at arm’s length.
In Too Deep: Station Seventeen Book 3 Page 14