Broken (27 page)

Only this time it was worse, because she was also leaving Quinn behind. And the part of her she was leaving with him wasn’t something that she’d ever be able to replace.

“IT’S your lucky day,” Martin said as Quinn came in and dropped into the seat across from his desk.

The chair, like the desk, was worn and well used, but comfortable. Quinn slumped low in it and crossed his arms over his chest. “If it was my lucky day, I’d still be in bed.”

Making love to her again. Then maybe having that talk. Or maybe talking first, then making love to her.

Unaware of Quinn’s wandering attention span, Martin laughed.

“Oh, you’ll change your mind. It really is your lucky day . . . I’d planned on turning this over to Connie—she’s a little more experienced in straight missing persons’ cases, but apparently her daughter has gone into early labor and she needed to be with her. She won’t be in for a few days and this isn’t going to wait.”

“I don’t do missing persons,” Quinn said, frowning.

“You do now. Think of it as a promotion. You’re hell on wheels when it comes to bond enforcement, but when I was trying to figure out who to give this job to since Connie is out, my gut said to go with you. So that’s what I’m doing.” He pushed a manila folder closer to Quinn. “Our client here apparently has a lot of money to spend. He’s selected some of the top detective agencies in the country to help locate his missing wife, and my agency is one of the ones selected. He’s offered me a very nice chunk of money up front, regardless of whether we find her or not, to cover expenses while we search for her. If we’re the ones to locate his wife, we get an even nicer chunk of change.”

Lifting a brow, Quinn asked, “How nice?”

“Nice enough to make the money you get for bringing in skips look like chump change.”

Since he made pretty decent money bringing the skips in, something that made those jobs look like chump change sounded rather nice. Still, he wasn’t much for the missing persons bit.

“Any idea what the wife’s story is? Did she leave him?”

Martin shrugged. “No. I didn’t ask, and I don’t care. My job is finding the wife—that’s all I care about. That’s all you can care about if you take the job.” He paused for a second and then asked, “Do you want the job?”

Still not looking at the file, he tapped it against his knee and studied Gearing. His gut was telling him to pass. Finding skips was one thing—these were people on the run from the law, and regardless of guilt or not, somebody had plunked down a chunk of change to ensure they’d hang around for their hearing. Skipping out on bail, in Quinn’s mind, was just plain shitty. It violated a trust, it cost somebody money, and most of the guys he’d brought in had been the kind of scum that really did need to be off the street. He could even view it as a community service.

But missing persons . . . he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. He thought about his mom, wondered what his life would have been like if his dad had been able to find him early on—different. Better. But still, not everybody who disappeared was anything like his mother.

Some people disappeared because they had to.

“Martin, I’ve got to be honest with you. I’m not real comfortable going on the hunt for a woman who may have perfectly good reasons for disappearing. What if I find her and it turns out the husband was beating on her or something?”

“Then she can file for divorce. He’s already seen the contracts—he’s well aware that he can’t use our services if he has any sort of malicious intent.” Martin replied.

Quinn snorted. “Words on paper, man. They sound all nice and legal and yeah, it covers your ass should somebody get hurt, but they are still just words and they won’t do a damn thing to stop a man who’s determined to hurt somebody.”

“Rafferty, you never struck me as the Boy Scout type.” Martin rolled his eyes. “You also never struck me as the dramatic type. This is a job—all you have to do is find the woman for him and we get paid.”

“So just find her and tell him where to find her?”

A cagey smile appeared on Martin’s face. “Well, there
is
a bonus for delivering her to him, although the wife isn’t on the run from the law, so you can’t exactly apprehend her. But a clever man could figure out a way to work things out.”

Quinn’s gut continued to churn. The file in his hand felt like it weighed a ton, even though it was just a few sheets of paper. Paper . . . words and pictures on paper that would give him the info he’d need if he was going to try locating a woman who probably didn’t want to be found. Maybe a woman who shouldn’t be found.

He glanced down at it and then back at Martin. Shaking his head, he tossed it onto Martin’s desk. “I don’t think I want any part of this, Martin.”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious how much money this could get you?”

Martin leaned back in his seat, smiling.

Rising to his feet, Quinn shook his head. “Money’s not everything.” Even as he said it, though, he found himself thinking about the discussion he wanted to have with Sara.

What if she really wasn’t big on him doing the bond enforcement bit? He didn’t see her as the kind of woman who’d expect him to change for her, or a woman who’d even ask, but he wanted her to be happy.

It would give him options. A lot of options. Maybe he could even find something a little more normal. Normal—hell, he wasn’t certain he even
wanted
normal.

But the lack of choices really ate at him sometimes. He grimaced and shoved a hand through his hair.

Martin, sensing Quinn’s sudden wavering, named a figure.

Quinn’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. One million dollars to the agency that finds her. You’d get 25 percent.”

“You’re shitting me.”
A million dollars?

“Oh, I’m dead serious. I don’t joke about money, my friend. If we find her, you’ll get two hundred and fifty grand.” Martin grinned and shook his head. “I’m not kidding, Quinn. This isn’t the kind of job that comes our way very often, and Connie may well kick my ass for not offering it to her, but I’m not wasting time on this. We’ve already received the up-front money—one hundred thousand, to be exact—and I’ll give you 10 percent if you agree to the job. Hell, I’ll have Juanita cut the check for you now—all you have to do is say yes. And if you find her, we get the million. Plus, if you deliver her, the bonus is yours. One hundred percent yours, since you’ll be the one doing the work.”

Quinn looked back at the file and swallowed. Acid churned in his gut. Indecision, something he was unfamiliar with, weighed on him. He wanted to say no . . . but he wanted that money. Hell, if he had that kind of money, he could take some time, maybe really think about going back to school and figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

“Look, Quinn. I think I understand why you’re so leery of saying yes. Let’s assume that the woman
is
running away from him because he’s dangerous. Sooner or later, he’s bound to find her. Since you’re already concerned about that, maybe you’d be the better man to find her anyway, because you
are
concerned. You can make sure she knows she has options. I’ll even have Juanita do some research, see if we can’t figure out some options a battered wife might have.”

Quinn knew when he was being conned. Despite how much he could use that money, he still had the inclination to say no. There were two things that kept him from walking out—he did need that money, needed the options it could give him. And, assuming he was the one to find her, he damn well would make sure he wasn’t turning a woman over to a man who had hurt her. Options. Yeah, he could make damn sure she knew she had options.

Blowing out a breath, he lifted his gaze and focused on Martin’s face. “You’re a conniving bastard, you know that?”

“It’s what makes me a good businessman.” Martin didn’t look the least bit offended

“Yeah, well, you can shove your businessman tendencies up your ass. I’ll take the job.”

Martin grinned, but before he could respond, Quinn held up a hand and said, “
But
I’m doing it on my terms. All the way on my terms.”

“Meaning . . . ?”

“Meaning I’m not doing any kind of progress reports with the husband, or with you. Assuming I’m able to find her—and you realize that’s one big fucking
if
—I’ll talk to her and make my own call on whether or not I need to inform the husband of her whereabouts.”

“That’s not how this works, Rafferty.”

“If you want me to try and find her, and obviously you do, then that’s how it is going to have to work,” Quinn replied with a shrug. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Hypothetically, let’s say I
do
find her. Let’s say I tell the husband where to find her, and let’s say he was abusing her and that’s why she ran. What’s it going to do to you if he kills her? If you put her in his hands, or even if you just give him the means to find her and he kills her?”

A muscle jerked in Martin’s cheek and his eyes fell away from Quinn’s.

“I don’t know about you, man, but I’ve got enough things keeping me awake at night,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “I don’t need to add to it. So, again, if I do this, I do it my way.”

Martin’s cheeks puffed up and then he blew out a hard, heavy sigh. “Fine. But you had better be very, very certain there are legit reasons—it’s not just money on the line here. It’s my business, my reputation. I won’t have you getting suckered by a pair of tits and big brown eyes. You got it?”

Quinn smirked and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like I’m going to be that easy to get suckered.”

He shook his head and then flipped open the file.

For a few seconds, his eyes didn’t make sense of what he saw.

They just couldn’t.

Martin started to talk and Quinn tore his eyes away from the picture in the file, certain that he’d been imagining things. He listened to Martin ramble, although none of that made much sense either, and then after a few more seconds passed, he rubbed his eyes and looked back down.

This time, it made sense.

Big brown eyes. Pretty breasts, framed enticingly by the lace of her wedding dress. Her hair, swept up and back in some complicated female style.

Sara Davis.

No . . . not Sara Davis.

According to the info listed just above the picture, her name was Sarah Elizabeth Morgan.

She was thirty years old, nice Ivy League college education.

And she was married.

“It may well be. If you have other suggestions, I’m all ears. Hey . . .
I
know. We could try going to the police. I mean, I realize it’s a radical idea, but why not give it a shot?”

Maybe she should have thought a little longer, a little harder, tried to come up with other suggestions. Now it was too fucking late, and on top of everything else, she had to deal with a broken heart that seemed to ache more and more with every beat.