QUINTON

He was being foolish.

Quin knew it. He had always known it. He had been told, more than once, that he was going to get himself killed. That his thrill-seeking had its limits, and sooner than later, those limits would leave him bloody and broken at the bottom of some ditch just far enough outside of town to jump jurisdictions.

Those stupid decisions were the only thing that got him any attention at all. He was self-aware enough to know that was why he did it.

He did it anyway.

His family had spent his college years keeping careful watch of police scanner pages and newspaper obituary sections. They claimed it was for his sake, that it was because they cared, but Quin knew better. He knew that his brothers, at the very least, were hoping to find him there.

One less head to share the inheritance with, after all.

That was what it had always come down to in the Reid family. Who got what, and when. They weren’t siblings so much as competitors, all claws and teeth and underhanded schemes to sabotage. His uncles certainly hadn’t left the county because they wanted to, so much as because Quin’s father had chased them out with superior wealth and prestige. 

They all lived quiet, solitary lives now. Lives that no one cared about. Alone, and unimportant. Quin hadn’t seen them in years. He hadn’t even really thought to.

He didn’t want that for himself. He didn’t see what other option he had.

Quin had never been good enough to fight, not even for the scraps. He’d been beaten down too early. Invisible to everyone except the fragile nanny who was too old and infirm to be trusted with the more promising heirs. He was smart, but not like his eldest brother. He was strong, but nowhere near as athletic as his youngest brother.

For a time, he had settled for that mediocrity. He had tried to make space for himself in the empty part of that cavernous house. It had nearly worked, until it hadn’t. That was when the bad decisions had started.

But even Quin could admit that his latest foray into thrill seeking was…

Well.

He didn’t get kidnapped every day, that was for sure.

In fact, he had never been kidnapped, ever, at all, and he would be safer and wiser to remember that.

He logged into his computer without even remembering typing in the password. It flashed up one auto-opening window at a time. Outside his sleek office window, the sun was shining, and the clouds were thick and fluffy and inviting. There was a team of gardeners culling the uneven edges of the shrubs that split the ATM lanes. It was a perfectly nice day. A normal person would consider going to dinner on one of the downtown terraces. Maybe eat with a friend. Maybe with a partner.

Quin wanted to go back to that warehouse.

He wanted to tell Ryan about it. All of it. About coming into the bank in a way that was just this side of breaking-and-entering. About meeting the men who intended to bug his office. About staring down the femme fatale who had declined coffee in favor of threatening him into giving her a favorable mortgage. 

He wanted to watch the scandalized, terrified twist of Ryan’s mouth when he processed exactly what Quin was admitting.

He wanted, he wanted, he wanted.

Some smarter part of him, the part that hadn’t been drowned beneath adrenaline and anticipation in that ugly warehouse chair, kept his mouth shut. That part of him had also sent an approval letter to Marika Cervena and her scary bodyguard after a perfectly legal and legitimate inquiry to the higher decision makers at the bank.

That part of him was running the show right now. The part he had fought hard to forge when he moved out here, promising himself a normal life filled with normal people.

But God, he didn’t want it to be.

If he didn’t crush the urge behind his teeth, he would be back at the building before he could recall turning the keys in his car. He still remembered every turn, even after being blindfolded. He could get there if he tried.

In a vague, distant way that felt dreamlike, Quin knew that he had been terrified. He remembered the sick pool of dread in his gut when he had been discovered beneath his desk. He recalled the vacancy of Marika Cervena’s hooded eyes, dark enough to reflect the curved shape of the warehouse lightbulb back at him.

He also knew that he wanted that feeling back.

He had felt alive there. Like a butterfly pinned beneath the iron-honed gaze of the most interesting woman he would probably ever meet. She had looked at him like she knew exactly how he ticked. Like he mattered. He wanted that back.

Getting it back would probably kill him.

Quin clicked the top of his pen. Once. Twice. Outside, the morning was still beautiful. It had only been twenty minutes since he’d gotten here for the day. The rest of the department heads were still stumbling in, one pair of dragging footsteps at a time. They all walked the same. He could still tell them apart.

No one cared about him here. No one cared about him anywhere.

That shouldn’t have mattered. He should have been grateful. He had not heard heads or tails from anyone since he returned to his clinical high-rise three days back. He still hadn’t washed the pants he changed out for pajamas that night. They smelled like gasoline and gunpowder.

No, Ryan cared.

But Ryan wasn’t enough.

Click, click, click. His inbox was empty. No new applications to review. He had already cleared the backlog out in several days of riotous reviewing to distract himself. Most of the staff was winding down for a long weekend. Quin couldn’t think of a worse time for him to have nothing to do. His skin itched.

It was only a thirteen minute drive. 

His car had a full tank of gas. It was nondescript. He had a sheer modification to his license plate that made it impossible to photograph. He’d ordered the first month here, and pretended he was doing it to save money on parking tickets. Never mind that he didn’t need to save money. Even being the least favorite heir was a lucrative position.

He shouldn’t do this. Quin had promised his mother he wouldn’t do this. He had promised himself.

He had twelve vacation days before the end of the quarter, and nothing to do.

Click, click, click.

Click

Cli— 

His pen abruptly broke into three beneath his thumb. The spring bounced behind his desk.

“Can’t do work without a pen,” Quin said to no one, like he didn’t have a cup full of pens just on the edge of his wooden worktop. He stood abruptly and shoved this arms through his jacket sleeves.

Quin sent an short message to Ryan and closed his laptop. 

It had barely been half an hour.