“Jesus.” Ryan punched him in the arm. “Do you ever not think about getting laid?”
“Do you ever think of getting laid?” he asked, his brow rising.
Their bantering back and forth continued on, but now all I could think about was a baby shower. When Moira was pregnant with Cade, she’d had her mom throw her one, and all her friends came and celebrated with her. But when I thought about Lola, I could count the number of people on two hands who would attend, and ninety percent of them would be male.
My stomach sank, sadness washing over me. I plucked my cell out of my pocket and found Sal’s number. It rang several times, and then he answered, “Hello?”
“Sal.”
“Brody,” he grunted down the line. “What do you want?”
“Jan’s number.” I was straight to the point. There wasn’t any use in making small talk because neither of us was good at it.
“The hell you want that for?” he asked.
“I need to see if she’ll help with a baby shower, I—”
“Already in motion,” he answered, and then the line went dead.
“The fuck.” I stared down at my cell, blinking several times.
“He hang up on you?” Jord asked. I looked up at him and frowned. “Probably thought you were after his woman.”
“Him and Jan?” I asked. Sal hadn’t said anything to me about them, but then, I hadn’t really spent any time with him lately.
Jord shrugged. “I get that kinda vibe.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Anyway, looking forward to your last day of not being the big, bad boss?” He grinned over at Ryan and Kyle. “I say we put super glue on Aaron’s chair and—”
“And I think you all need to get your asses down to Cresthill,” Aaron growled as he walked into my office. It was just after lunch, and his tie was already skewed to the side, his top button undone, and his hair a mess from running his hands through it.
“What?” I frowned and stepped from around my desk. “Why?”
“Quinn Baltera was found this morning.” His chest expanded on a breath. “With a single bullet wound to the head.”
I planted my hands on my hips. “Fuck.” We hadn’t heard anything from Cresthill since Hut’s funeral, and Quinn had made sure to stay away from both Lola and me that day. What the hell had happened? I nodded and stepped toward Aaron. “We’ll go check it out.”
“Should have known my last day wouldn’t go by without something happening,” he groaned. “Keep me informed.”
“Will do.” We filed out of my office, all the jokes and baby talk pushed to the side. We were in work mode, and when something like this happened, it was all you focused on. If Quinn was dead, then we had to get to the bottom of it.
We silently made our way out of the building and split into two cars—Jord with me, and Ryan and Kyle together. We didn’t know what had happened, and we never came up with any conclusions, not until we knew what we were faced with. What I didn’t expect was for Quinn to be laid out in the middle of the road outside Hut’s house. Aaron had said a single shot to the head, but he’d left out the fact that he was naked with “traitor” carved into his chest.
“Jesus Christ,” I snapped, looking away from his body as they covered him back up. “Do we have any witnesses?” I asked one of the detectives on the scene.
He sneered at me. “Don’t know what the DEA is doing here. This ain’t your juris—”
“You wanna start that game?” I asked, already fed up with how they were treating the crime scene. They hadn’t even cornered off the area. “I trump you every day of the week. Now, witnesses.”
He huffed out a breath, his eyes narrowed on me. “We don’t have any, but my officers are looking at surveillance in the surrounding area back at the precinct.”
“Good. I’ll head there now.” I pointed at Ryan and Kyle. “Those two are staying here, keep them informed.”
I walked away from the crime scene, my gaze batting over to Hut’s house. There was a time when that was the main place to be, but it looked sad and empty now, much like the people who used to live there. We’d been successful in our operation, but I couldn’t help thinking of the number of people who had been hurt in the process.
“This ain’t good,” Jord said when we were back in my car and heading to the local precinct. “Traitor? That could only mean Hut, right? But Hut is gone so—”
“Let’s just wait and see what we find here,” I told him, pulling into the precinct and double parking. I didn’t have time to find a space, and I didn’t give a flying fuck if they bitched about it. We were here to do a job.
We headed inside, and after some back-and-forth, finally got into the room where a detective was going over surveillance. “You found anything?” I asked.