“Oh. My. God. We didn’t have the TV on at the store and we just now got home. Are you both all right?” She pulled them inside and began to give Quinn the once-over, like a mother hen.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry, Mom,” Quinn said as she stormed inside. “Even though it’s my fault.”
“We’ve been over that, Quinn,” Reese scoffed.
Dragging them into the spacious front room, Kit automatically ran her hands over Quinn’s shoulders. “Jake, get in here!”
Jake appeared in the doorway, followed by a still-limping Pepper, a result of injuries from the car accident Collin had caused. “What’s up? What took you guys so long? Did Quinn make you take her shopping?”
Reese shot Jake a withering stare. “No. Drive-by courtesy of Cade Boyd. I gave the cops a description of the SUV I saw speeding down the street, a black Yukon. I’m certain it was a rental, not the Escalade or Connor’s Hummer, either. But we all know it was them.”
“And the cops?”
“Need concrete evidence linking them. And I couldn’t provide it. Maybe I should’ve made something up. Anyway, I wouldn’t go putting any faith in finding this particular SUV any time soon. No doubt these guys have a string of vehicles at their disposal. A rental maybe, I don’t know. Besides, the cops put out an APB, even set up roadblocks in and around my neighborhood, got zip.”
“Reese thinks they’ll go underground after this,” Quinn proclaimed. “They do that and what chance will we have finding them?”
“We’ll come up with something,” Reese promised.
Stunned at the boldness of the daylight attack, Jake ran his hands through his hair. “They’re ramping up, taking things up a notch. After the attack on Quinn’s apartment building, I called Jordan. He’s posting guards here beginning tonight. That’s why we’re all holing up here under one roof until we can think of some place better. Six people are easier to contain if they’re in one spot.”
Reese cocked a brow. “Contain? It’s hard to believe these guys have gone this far off the deep end.”
Jake shot Reese a searing glance. “Don’t start that skeptic crap again.”
“No skeptic crap. But I’ve gone up against Cade in court. Never thought one day he’d be blowing up a building, shooting up my house, and going on the lam as a fugitive.”
“Killers,” Kit corrected. “They’re both killers now.”
“Okay, killers. At this point, I’m wondering where they’ll strike next. And it isn’t sitting well with me not knowing. Show me where to stow our stuff, okay?” The question got the desired reaction. Jake motioned for Reese to follow him upstairs so they could talk in private.
On the way up, Jake asked, “You and Quinn sharing a room yet?”
Reese sent him a sidelong glance. “I’m not rushing her. You should’ve seen her last night taking care of all the injured. The woman is a natural. Not just with the doctor stuff either, but with people. She actually cares.”
“And you’d like to sample that bedside manner, right?”
Reese grinned. “I’m working on it, but with people trying to kill her it’s a little tough to get her into that frame of mind and keep her there.”
Jake grinned back. “I know exactly how you feel. Baylee and Dylan will be here any minute. I say when they get here we all sit down and formulate a plan.”
“That talk doesn’t have to include the women, does it? I’ve already gotten into trouble, deep quicksand as a matter of fact, by putting my nose into Quinn’s business when I shouldn’t have. I tried to talk her into taking a trip to Ireland to see her estranged father.”
With that, Reese dumped the gear onto a bed in one of the recently finished guest rooms designated as his and went into a detailed account of the other mistake he’d made.
“Wait, you called Nick Tyler’s attorney without asking her first? Are you nuts?” Jake shook his head and slapped Reese on the back. “Quinn will kill you when she finds out. You should call this guy back on the QT and beg insanity.”
“I thought I could reason with her.”
“Not about that you can’t. Look, I’ve known Quinn quite a bit longer than you have; Baylee, too, for that matter. I’ve known these women since they were teenagers when all three hung out regularly at Morty’s law firm, ostensibly under the guise of lending a hand with the filing. At the time, I wondered why Morty would hire girls so young. Now I know. Had I paid more attention, I would have realized that, even then, they didn’t want to spend any time at home. The job was merely an excuse to get them out of the house. Of course, I didn’t put the pieces together until now, didn’t focus on the red flags right there in front of me.
“Those three have been living under dark clouds their entire lives. The threat of constant instability must have been hell. I think that’s what makes all three of them so incredibly independent. But Kit’s stubborn streak pales in comparison to Quinn’s. I’ve never met a woman more obstinate than Quinn Tyler.”
Reese rubbed his chin. “Gee thanks for the heads up. You might have mentioned this before I stepped off the cliff.”
“Who knew you’d take it upon yourself to contact Tyler, a man who’s shown absolutely no interest in his own daughter for over a quarter of a century now? If it hadn’t happened at this late date…”
“In that case, what am I worried about? The son of a bitch will probably ignore the call and the fact that she’s in trouble like he has her entire life. By the way, you say you know Quinn. Did you know Ella Canyon was a hooker? Were you aware Quinn lived a hand-to-mouth existence before ever getting to Beverly Hills?”
“Hand-to-mouth, as in going hungry and stuff? No way. I had no idea. Kit never mentioned that.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know.”
“Trust me. She knows. There isn’t anything that happens between those three that they don’t share in minute detail.”
“I might agree with you if it wasn’t for one thing. Baylee kept what happened with Connor Boyd from both of them. She didn’t share the fact she’d been raped or that she was even pregnant. When there’s trauma involved, when something hurts that badly, maybe they aren’t as close as you think.”
“Okay, there is that. Maybe Quinn did hold something back about her early years. But trust me, anything that happened to those three once they became a unit, every morsel got dissected.”
But Reese wasn’t so sure. He’d seen Quinn’s eyes last night when she’d hinted at how rough those early years had really been. He could only wonder if she’d kept certain things to herself to keep from reliving it or for some other reason.
By the time they got downstairs, Dylan was in the process of unloading his boxy G500 crammed full of all Sarah’s baby stuff.
“Well, don’t just stand there, follow me and grab some gear. Believe me, there’s enough to go around,” Dylan admitted as he disappeared out the front door, going back for a second load.
Dutifully, Reese and Jake followed him out to the car.
In the kitchen Quinn helped herself to a can of soda out of the fridge. She leaned against the counter and tried to explain to her friends why she hadn’t told them about the suspension. “Baylee had a lot going on last night…I...”
“Don’t push this onto me,” Baylee screeched through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare use me as your excuse. As soon as the cops took off, you had plenty of time to mention that Cade was the cause of your getting suspended. It would have taken what…four little words? But no, not Quinn Tyler, Quinn has to keep that to herself.”
“She’s right, Quinn. You do that martyr thing better than anyone I know. You’ve shut us down before.”
“And you have the gall to get all bent out of shape knowing I kept stuff to myself about Connor,” Baylee pointed out. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s completely different and you know it.”
“No, it isn’t. The night I went to that charity benefit, you were focused on starting the last year of med school. And Kit here had just gotten the Boo
k & Bean out of the red into black for the first time. You guys didn’t need my problems taking away from your efforts.”
“Fine,” Quinn threw out. “Okay, I should have said something. Happy now? But really, what was the point? By the time I got upstairs, I was sick of Cade Boyd and this whole damned thing. All I wanted was a soak in the tub and a good night’s sleep. And look how that turned out. Eight of my neighbors are dead because of me. You should see Reese’s neighborhood, talk about swanky. But not now, not after Quinn Tyler checks in for the night. Now, Reese’s house is an eyesore. His neighbors didn’t look too happy about that either.”
“Oh, Quinn,” Kit sighed as she put her arms around her friend’s shoulders. “See, that martyr thing you’ve got down to a fine art. You had no way of knowing Cade’s madness would touch Reese in such a dramatic way. The brothers are nuts. They’ve always been nuts. You know that. You shouldn’t blame yourself for something you couldn’t have predicted they’d do. And that includes them shooting up Reese’s house.”
“That’s not exactly accurate, predicting what they’d do. When he lost it in the ER, he said he was coming for me; in fact he said he was coming for all of us. There were cops there who heard him.”
“See? They didn’t do a thing to prevent them from blowing up your building or shooting up Reese’s house,” Baylee pointed out. Black and bruised, Baylee jutted out her chin. “Yeah well, we’re smarter than these guys. And we’ve got this mysterious stranger on our side, the one who keeps helping us. Between the seven of us we should be able to take down what’s left of The Unholy Three.”
Kit stretched her free arm out to include Baylee and little Sarah. They drew closer together like they were football players huddling on a field. Just as they had done this ritual a thousand times before, or at least since they were eight years old, Kit held out a curved pinky on each hand, the gesture, a symbol of their unity. Baylee held out hers and the baby’s. Then on cue, Quinn did the same.
In a circle, in unison, the three women repeated the chant. “Together we let no one hurt us. We are most powerful when we are one. We draw strength from each other. One.”
They fist-bumped each other as they always did before suddenly separating and breaking apart.
All at once they turned to see three pairs of male eyes gaping at them from the kitchen doorway. The three men stood still as statues watching the women go through the brief but touching ceremony.
Suddenly it all became clear.
Reese spoke first. Staring straight into Quinn’s chocolate eyes, he stated, “This is what you were trying to tell me last night. This is your true family right here. For so many years, that’s all the three of you had—each other. You were each other’s sounding boards, each other’s support system, each other’s anchor through what had to be the most difficult of times growing up the way you did.”
Quinn swallowed, overcome with emotion she’d never felt for another man. She stared into Reese’s face and saw not ridicule but rather genuine admiration.
She went over where he stood. Without prelude, she kissed him deeply on the mouth. “You are the first man on the planet who has ever gotten that about me.”
Dylan went to Baylee, even as Jake reached for Kit. “I think we all get it now.”
There in the middle of the kitchen, arms stretched out resting on each other’s shoulders, all six of them drew together in another impromptu huddle.
Dylan joked, “I’ve always wanted to do a pinky swear.”
Baylee elbowed him in the ribs. “Then you’re lucky we let you in to our very exclusive club, Surfer Boy.”
It was Reese who took up the chant while the women stood a little stunned at having the men included in something they’d shared with no one else since childhood. But under the circumstances it seemed fitting. Soon they too repeated the words. “Together we let no one hurt us. We are most powerful when we are one. We draw strength from each other. One.”
When Reese looked down at Quinn, she was smearing away the tears on her face. She laid her head on his chest. “For what it’s worth, I think I just got you.”
He leaned down and placed a kiss on the top of her head. “It’s worth more than you could possibly know.”
Dylan broke the somber mood. “Look, I’m starving. I just lugged around enough baby stuff to stock an ‘R us’ store. Got anything to eat? I could’ve sworn when I opened the door I smelled Italian.”
Baylee took his face between the fingers of her free hand, kissed him gently on the mouth. “Better feed this one before he has to set up the Pack ’N Play again and gets grumpy.”
“Hey, that Pack ’N Play is a piece of cake. I’ve taken it down and put it back up so often now I could do it blindfolded.”
He reached over and took the baby out of Baylee’s arms. “Besides, Sarah’s worth every minute of it, aren’t you, Gidget?”
The baby cooed, “Daaaaaa,” and grabbed Dylan’s nose.
Quinn turned completely around from the fridge. “Did she just say Da? My God, she’s only six months old.”
“Exceptional, huh? I know, talking already. That’s daddy’s girl, aren’t you, Sarah?”
The others eyed Dylan with disbelief. It was Reese who asked, “Is this the same guy who boasted three girls in one…”
Holding the baby, Dylan couldn’t very well retaliate in the normal physical way by beating Reese into the ground, so he chose a verbal response instead, sure to shut up Reese’s ribbing. “Five words, Brennan.” He ticked them off with one hand. “Cancun. Jennifer. And. Janie. Dinkins.”
The mention of Cancun and what had happened during a wild college week of spring break had Reese stopping in mid-sentence.
“I didn’t think so,” Dylan declared as he jostled Sarah in his arms.
Kit giggled at their banter. “This guy knows his food. I made lasagna and strawberry pasta salad.”
“With that pesto stuff?” Dylan asked.
“With the pesto stuff,” Kit repeated.
As they set out the food on the table, they tried to keep the conversation light and centered on upcoming events, like the anticipated arrival of Ben Griffin.
“When exactly does he get here?” Quinn asked Kit.
“Four days, seven hours, and…” Kit held up her right hand and looked at her watch. “Twenty-five minutes. Jake and I decided to send a car for him.”
“More like, I’m not taking Kit and standing on a curb at LAX waiting for Collin and Cade to show up. Sending a car to pick him up makes the most sense,” Jake explained.
“Did you talk to him yet on the phone, Kit?” Quinn asked.
Kit sighed, shooting a look of disdain at Jake. “No. Funny thing about that though. After Jordan Donovan found him, after that initial phone call, so far our only communication has been via e-mails.”
“You don’t find that a tad odd?”
Jake looked skeptical. “I find that a lot strange, but he did agree to make the trip. At this point, as long as it took to locate the guy, we have to be grateful for that.”
“It’s a step closer to getting him to meet his birth mother. At least Gloria will finally meet the son she’s never seen. And I want all of you here to meet the brother I’ve never met, especially since I’ll need your backup in case it gets weird.”
Quinn put her arms around Kit. “Oh, honey, weird? This entire thing moved past weird a long time ago and sailed straight into the world of bizarro, that which we laughingly recognize as our lives.”
Baylee laughed. “You know you’ve got our support without having to ask, Kit. You and Gloria deserve this.”
“Okay, so now that we have that out of the way, any chance we could talk about where I’m going to live during my forced leave of absence? Hello? Reese offered his place but now it’s all shot up.”
Quinn looked around the table, all eyes on her. “Do I have to remind anyone here that my condo blew up? Plus, I have to spend some of this time going shopping and replacing everything I owned, especially every
stitch of clothing I’d had since college.”
Baylee picked up her glass of wine, toasted the air. “Which is the very reason you seriously needed to replace most of your wardrobe, some of it was so out of style… No one wears acid-washed jeans any more, Quinn. No one.”
“Jeans never go out of style,” Quinn reasoned, slightly insulted. “I read that somewhere.”
Baylee shook her head. “They do, Quinn, and if you ever went anywhere other than the hospital you’d see it for yourself.”
Kit placed a hand over Quinn’s. “You’ll stay here, of course. I thought you knew that. You both will until Reese gets his house back in working order. We were trying to dance around the topic, didn’t think you were ready to talk about losing all your stuff yet.”
“I guess there’s no point in mentioning I could stay in Gloria’s empty guest house then?”
In answer to that, in unison, five unanimous voices yelled out, “No!”
Quinn snickered. “Okay, okay. Just checking to make sure everyone’s on the same page. As long as the Nutty Brothers are on the loose I guess it’s all for one and sticking close together. We’ll probably get sick of each other.”
“This is a big house with plenty of room for everyone. If we start getting on each other’s last nerve, we send whoever it is to their room for a timeout,” Kit proposed.
Baylee chimed in, “Who wants to bet me Dylan will be the first one who ends up in time out?”
“Me? I’m laidback. I’m the good one, the peacemaker, the surfer dude who’s full of witty repartee and all kinds of wise...”
“More like full of crap,” Jake pointed out, tempering his words with Sarah not two feet away.
But Reese didn’t get the attempt at humor. “Is anyone going to bring up the question, first and foremost on our minds? Or are we just planning to sit here and make jokes and wait for Cade and Collin to drive up and start opening fire on us again? I’m done with that. These guys aren’t gonna stop until somebody’s dead.”
As they dug into the hearty pan of lasagna, Jake answered, “We’re all ears. By all means enlighten us on what you have in mind to get the assholes out of our lives for good.”
Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set Page 81