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Hunter snorted. “Try it, old man.”
“You’re fifteen months younger than me,” Jericho said. “Those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
“Fifteen months, fifteen hours, fifteen minutes, it’s all relative and doesn’t change the fact that you’ll always be older than me.”
“Eat your donut and shut up. What else did you find out about Howell?”
“I can’t shut up and tell you,” Hunter said, though he did pull another piece off the donut and swipe some of the jam, sticking his finger into his mouth. “The only past connection that we can find on him is that he came from Melbourne. Appeared out of nowhere with a handful of cash, and then came here.”
“What about Derrick?”
“That’s where it gets interesting. The Errol Derrick that we found when doing our preliminary investigation was a front. Once we dug deeper, there is no Errol Derrick in any database that we can find. He quite literally appeared out of nowhere. Similar to Warren Boiler, in fact. Even Ethan couldn’t find anything from his end. Unless you count the man born in 1894 in Manchester.”
Damn. If neither of them could find something, that was sus as fuck. “He looked pretty good for his age,” Jericho remarked. “I bet the elixir of life would go for a pretty penny on the black market.”
“You need to get your hands on some,” Hunter said. “You’re getting some crow’s feet.”
Jericho rinsed his mug and his sticky fingers and then flicked them at Hunter. “Don’t be jealous of my good looks.”
“Is that how you managed to snag four men to sleep with?”
“Oh, yeah. These locks are good for so many things, including enticing sexy men out of their underwear.” Jericho absently ran his fingers through his short beard. “Chances are he’s not a ghost, and the name is fake.” Jericho wouldn’t rule out the paranormal, because who knew what existed out there. But the guy had bled red blood and had seemed pretty dead when he, Six, and Greer had delivered the bodies to Maverick.
“Either way, who he was before that is just gone. No traces of it anywhere, and we have access to enough backdoor information that it being so elusive isn’t a good sign.”
“Think he was federal police?” Jericho wondered. “Or worse. CIA, maybe?” Wouldn’t be the first time they’d operated on Australian soil. If he was, they were all in a shit ton of trouble. They could argue that they had no idea since in these situations task forces rarely talked to each other. It wouldn’t pull them completely out of the muck, though, and they’d have to do some fast talking.
“No, nothing like that,” Hunter said. “That was the first thing we checked. The FBI is currently sniffing around the twins, but it has nothing to do with this. We’ve confirmed that Howell wasn’t on their radar whatsoever and doesn’t belong to any of the alphabet agencies.”
One less thing to worry about.
“Someone hiding him?” Jericho asked, half to himself. The fuck was going on?
“Your guess is as good as mine. Let’s hope that Spence and Ken can find something to give us a lead because they’re drying up fast. For idiots, these guys are pretty fucking good at covering their tracks.”
Which was both frustrating and insulting. Their group was the elite, and some two-bit thugs that couldn’t string two good ideas together were outsmarting them even in death.
Jericho hated that. They would have been more useful alive—the dead cannot speak, after all—but he couldn’t fault Peyton and what he had chosen to do. Some threats were better in the ground, regardless of how useful they were. Not all risks were worth what they could get out of them.
They needed to find out what they’d known in life, who they really were, and what the fuck was going on before they ended up in the ground themselves. That wasn’t how Jericho planned to die. His fantasies had involved something more like whipped cream and chocolate.
Quinnheldhisforeheadin his palm, his head feeling too heavy to hold up, as he flicked through the case files. His phone sat beside them on the desk, screen lit up. Peyton and Will were messaging in their group chat—both of them were at work as well and should have had better things to do—and Quinn had been forced to silence his phone before Grady murdered him.
Peyton was relegated to light duties at Aubrey’s Bar, and he’d gone in to help with the prep for opening shift. He would be done by ten that night and would head back to the apartment he shared with Will and Parker. It would be the first time in over a week that they hadn’t spent the night together. In the grand scheme, it wasn’t a lot of time, and Quinn had spent literal years sleeping alone. Still felt foreign, somehow.
“—to me?”
Quinn looked up without moving his head. “What?”
“I said, are you listening to me,” Grady said. “Never mind. I don’t need you to answer; I can work it out.”
“Can you?” Quinn asked mildly. “You were on the phone,” he pointed out.
“Wason the phone,” Grady corrected. “And now I’m not.”
“Are you waiting for your congratulatory party? Gideon hasn’t gotten the balloons yet for it, sorry.”
“Don’t blame me!” Gideon spluttered from his desk. “You were daydreaming and being all lovesick.”
