Paragon - Chapter 16: Chapter 16

I took our unmarked police BMW and took the short drive to her law firm. I'd promised myself this would be quick. That I couldn't just cut away the afternoon with this mortal while I was meant to be tracking more leads on the East end case.
But when I pulled up between the many sleek business cars outside the glass tower she already waited. Her long brunette hair caught in the brisk wind and flapped the tail of her winter trench coat. I hoped she hadn't waited long outside the lobby in a business skirt in mid winter.
I rolled down a window and caught her eyes.
"Taxi for Adams!" I called ironically.
She didn't acknowledge the joke. Her face was etched in a worry that I knew would not be sated easily. She brushed her hair quickly aside and strode over to the passenger side quickly. She slipped in and her scent slapped me hard in the confined space. I hadn't entirely thought this through.
Her green eyes landed on me heavily and I resisted the urge to meet them. She took another breath seemingly to decide on what to say.
"You can't park here long." She said instead. "Let's go somewhere we can talk."
"Your suggestion?" I asked carefully. I certainly wouldn't reveal my own lavish flat overlooking Hyde Park without serious questions–
"My home. Have you got a sat nav?" She asked, glancing at the obvious flat screen between us on the dash. I nodded and touched it before it scanned my face and granted access. My fingers hovered over the search bar while she told me the postcode.
My fingers deftly brushed it in before a blue route lit the screen and I set my hand back on the wheel. As I pulled out she seemed to stare at me more intently. I leaned behind me exaggerating the need for vision and calculation of a pull out–one I could do blindfolded.
"Is there something on my face, Miss Adams?" I murmured, as the car found the road again.
She cleared her throat and moved her gaze ahead of the windshield.
"I have a lot to catch you up on... and not all of it will make sense." She clarified, with so much uncertainty in her voice.
"Why don't you start with what's bothering you the most?" I told her calmly as I watched the road.
"I called you before it all really happened." She murmured. "I was so... distraught and I'm sure I wasn't making sense but it was because my boss–my former boss returned to the office that day." I made sure to keep my eyes ahead and my fingers from tightening too much. "I don't remember what I said to you on the phone but I don't usually drink like that."
I chuckled briefly and glanced at her. Her forest green eyes were already tracing my face for emotions. For anything.
"Nothing you said was of great embarrassment, if that's what you're concerned about–"
She shook her head and pressed down on her pencil skirt to right it under the winter coat.
"That wasn't my concern. He didn't treat me well and I am not trying to pry into your investigation regarding him but... god I didn't expect it to end like this."
I caught her eyes again giving nothing away. Playing too dumb was in itself suspicious. But his death had been printed across every headline.
"Again. I made him believe that this city was no longer his best option. He did not heed that advice." I stated matter of factly.
Her brows pinched at my words and I turned back to the touch screen to see were now ten minutes from Quinn's residence. I still hadn't taken a breath inside the confines of the car.
"It still doesn't make sense." She muttered, dragging a hand through her hair.
"I'm sorry but you know I cannot disclose an open investigation–despite the fact that your former boss is now deceased."
"That's the other thing." She admitted with a deeper frown. "I saw him that night."
I made to appear slightly shocked. As I tore my eyes from the road. Damn it why did you need to keep pressing things so damn much Quinn...
"He approached me at a club I was in when I called you. I remember being terrified because he... he wasn't a good man. He abused his power a lot and I was afraid he sought revenge." She shook her head and looked out the window again. "But I can't remember anything after getting into a car with him."
I sighed long and loud. Causing her to turn in her seat and regard me.
"I know this means you'll need to interview me for–"
"No." I stated simply.
"But I just admitted to being with him before..."
"It was an accident not a murder." I responded in an empty voice. "His case is now closed."
"But you just told me you couldn't disclose an open investigation?" She fired back.
I froze in the seat. Calling on all of my resolve and quick thinking did nothing for me. She had just trapped me in my own lie and knew it. My hands tightened on the steering wheel and I saw her eyes narrow imperceptibly.
"Fletcher. What aren't you telling me?"
I ignored her final request as I pulled up outside her building. I glanced up at a beautiful white town house with entrance pillars and long windows. The black fence posts were lavish with flowers down the row of the street.
"We're here." I stated, without meeting her eyes and getting out the car.
She did the same and closed the door. I flicked the lock on the key pad and turned before the steps. Quinn walked past me briskly and unlocked the large black door.
I hesitated on the threshold, watching her take off her business heels easily at the mat. She turned to me with an eyebrow raised.
"Are we refrigerating my entire house or are you going to come in?" She asked curtly.
I smiled slightly and nodded, closing the heavy door behind me. The brass knocker clacked on the other side and darkness fell around us. She moved for the switch and lit the hallway before moving to the next room.
"Don't bother with your shoes detective. I won't keep you long!" She called around the corner.
I followed her inside the living room that had plush sofas, winged chairs and long curtains. Lawyers of course.
I also noted the bookshelves packed with dense hardbacks and various paper weights from different countries. Even a bronze airplane from the war I didn't fail to miss... I had flown a Spitfire after all–
"How do you drink your tea?" She asked from the arch in the wall to the kitchen.
"None for me thank you, I have enough coffee in me already." I lied, turning to a picture frame that sat on her fireplace mantle.
It was of a younger Quinn, not by much and grinning with a graduation cap on her head. Another of what I could only assume were her parents but they held no similarities in appearance. The bridges of the noses were wrong and the eyes... they didn't match at all–
"Stop stalking my past." I heard her utter much closer.
Though her heart rate was still quite high in her chest as she crossed the room with a mug in her hand. I watched her take a seat on a winged chair that seemed to have the most use. A good reading chair I must admit.
"Why am I here?" I asked bluntly, making her pulse spike again.
She swallowed some tea before setting it down and nodding to a chair.
"I feel like I'm being interrogated." She admitted.
I broke my firm stance and smiled slightly making her heart skip again. Curious.
I sat down slowly to try and put her at ease and set my hands on the arms of the opposite winged chair.
"This is going to sound really strange."
I waited patiently while my blood froze inside my body. Her eyes stole back to the floor before finding mine again and her nerve.
"I saw you that night too. But–I know I couldn't have. I know you weren't with me and that I just drunk called you..." She got out, reaching for the mug again and I noticed her hand shook.
I drunk in a sip of air and it tasted like her sweet blood. The endlessly tempting and potent burn ripped up my throat and I gripped the chair arm.
"You're right that does sound strange. It's probably why you shouldn't drink so much." I deadpanned.
"It's like the snippet of a dream." She explained. "Like I was underwater and you were there... carrying me." I made to look confused and slightly amused. "I woke up in a cab I hadn't even called and he told me that I asked to be driven to my office... which made no sense."
I leant forward on my knees and eyed her intently. "It seems like the rest of the evening follows the same pattern."
She sighed and leant back into the chair. "I know you think I'm crazy at this point but I–"
"I don't think you're crazy, Quinn." I told her honestly.
It only made her cast me a doubtful look.
"You were under huge amounts of stress and not to mention the alcohol... You now wake up and see that the bane to your life died in a building fire. You're right to be second guessing." I said calmly. It even slowly down the frantic beat of her heart beneath her shirt to my satisfaction.
She leant forward in the chair too, setting her elbows on her pressed knees.
"I'm sorry I keep dragging you into the mess that is my life." She sighed.
I chuckled and tilted my head. "Trust me, Adams. I have seen much worse." I finished with a darker edge. It made her pulse jitter and her pupils enlarge so slightly. Evidently picking up on that ever curious mind of hers.
"I've really got to stop being so interested in your words." She muttered, leaning back into the seat.
I raised an eyebrow at her in shock. So blunt.
"That wasn't sarcasm." I noted.
"No it wasn't." She smirked. "But I keep reading too much into everything you say for some reason."
A very dangerous thing to do.
"I think your occupation is to blame." I tried.
"You're a damn detective. Isn't it your job to pry?" She smirked.
Without warning I stood from the chair and tucked my hands behind me as I scanned the room again. She watched me with growing amusement as I noted more objects, book titles, photographs and other give aways.
"I know enough now."
"Oh?" She quipped, propping her chin under her hand.
"You can tell everything you need to know about a person by simply spending a few seconds in their home."
"Come on detective. Impress me." She stated flatly. In her defence she wasn't the easiest read to the untrained eye. But I had a few years of experience on mortals.
"Take your bookshelf for example." I narrated as I flicked a hand to it. "One glance and you see nothing of significance. Only if you really looked would you note the worn bindings, lack of dust and weathered pages in the top and middle section. The non-fiction. The factual works. The lower section with the building supply of dust under titles like Jane Eyre are just another indication of an inheritance you don't plan on using. Your mind works in the present not the realm of fiction so you use books as such and not as forms of escape–but forms of power."
She watched me with a growing smile but I didn't stop there.
"That's the very chair you use to peruse the shelf until god knows what time judging by the low wicked candle to your right." She didn't even bother to glance at it as I detailed her life back to her. "Which brings me to the objects you casually display on the shelf. Cheap artefacts from a tourist shop you would never dare to enter. Because the paper weights are not really yours but your parents–who I must say share no similarity that you shared the same genes at all."
I took this moment to pause as I had now dipped into the dangerous waters of family and that was important to mortals. But to my utter surprise Quinn's smirk remained in place and she even made to take a longer sip of tea.
"Consider me impressed detective. Very close to perfect on all accounts so far but for the obvious."
"And that is?" I probed.
"They are not my parents by blood."
Of course not. Adopted then. It still made the question of the fate of her true parents linger in my mind. Death? Abandonment? She didn't have the ghostly traits of that lingering on her. Maybe she was simply a very resilient mortal.
She rolled her eyes at my internal questioning.
"I never knew them–my real parents. I like to keep in touch with my adoptive parents but at more of an arms length." She explained.
Curious indeed.
"So they send you endless glass paperweights by way of affection?" I scoffed, realising too late that it was a rude comment.
But Quinn saw the irony of it and chuckled. "They keep the law and order of my book shelf."
"You know you're not the only one that needs to stop finding your words so interesting." I murmured matter of factly.
It caused her cheeks to heat and the blood to move faster. I focused on the paperweight I had picked up instead. It read: Cape Town
I was studying the little bubbled image of Table mountain so intently that I hadn't noticed the heat of her body beside me until I flinched when she spoke.
"They like to travel to a new country once a year and send me the most cliché thing they can find." Her voice was low but velvet in a way that invited you closer far more than I would like. She picked up another with the Eiffel tower inside the glass.
"Then they'll tell me about a lucky room swap or flight upgrade because of availability." She chuckled as I watched her face soften curiously. "Little do they know I'm making these arrangements each year just to make it all more exciting."
"That's... wow." I said strangely lost for proper response. I wasn't sure if her parents were well off or not but she seemed implored to make their lives better without even letting them know. It sounded so... familiar. Some deep feeling that gained satisfaction from acting with their interests at heart and not demanding anything. Not even recognition. Selfless was the word.
"Why not just tell them? Book the trip for them and surprise them?" I pressed, for some reason intent on figuring out her reasoning.
She shook her head and shrugged. Not giving me my answer was endlessly frustrating.
She tried to set the weight down at the same moment I did when she brushed my hand and flinched from the sudden cold. The weight fell quickly from her and I didn't think before I plucked it out the air and set both back down in place.
She stared at me openly.
"You're... always so cold." She got out between a frown and touching her own hand. I internally cursed myself to every hell. I had moved faster than a mortal should have too. They don't react like that. She moved her hand again to reach out and touch my hand but I quickly buried it inside my pocket.
I didn't have an answer for her. She stole the lies or ideas right from my mind and left me wordless and exposed. So I changed the topic entirely.
"You're quite frustrating you know."
My words startled her but the questions still didn't leave her eyes and I could tell she was keeping them for another time. Things about me were starting to not add up and I was not even masking it anymore. Like I should. She was becoming dangerous.
She broke my thoughts and frowned at me. "Why?"
"Because you're like a damn puzzle with missing pieces that taunts you when you finally realise they're missing."
She paused at this with no small amount of shock on her finely cut features.
"You've got more pieces than most, detective." She said quietly, averting her eyes and glancing at her shining watch. They widened slightly and she rose briskly.
"Don't tell me. I know I've already stayed longer than I intended." I told her before she could open her mouth.
"It's not too much to ask for a lift back?" She asked hesitantly catching her lower lip on her teeth and making me lose my train of thought all together. She frowned after a second and raised an eyebrow.
"Fletcher?"
Honestly. You're an immortal not a god damned puppy.
"Let's go." I said a bit too quickly turning on my heel for the door. But not before catching a bit of a knowing smile across that wretched, beautiful face of hers.