Worth It

Or maybe there were dozens.

I wondered if she had something with her name on it in her car. When I glanced at the glove compartment, I winced, not wanting to intrude on her privacy. But fuck, I needed to get the keys back to her somehow. So I reached over and pulled open the little door. After shuffling through the owner’s manual and a couple fast food restaurant napkins, I found her registration and pulled it out.

“Zoey Hamilton,” I murmured aloud, staring out the front windshield, before I returned her paperwork to the glove compartment.

Okay, so I needed to find Zoey Hamilton, or more likely, her husband Quinn Hamilton, since I was sure Zoey was currently occupied. The name Quinn Hamilton sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it before, so I shrugged and forgot about it.

Find Quinn.

I could do that.

I stepped out of the car and shut the door. As I was pocketing the keys and wondering where the hell the maternity ward was in this place, someone shouted, “Hey!”

Without giving the call any notice, I stepped toward the hospital but that voice yelled again, closer this time. “Hey, fucker! I’m talking to you.”

Finally, I glanced over to see some guy racing toward me, looking furious, with another man hot on his heels. The one in the lead had a head full of dark, messy hair and half his face was scarred, more scarred than the single slash mark bisecting my eyebrow and passing over my cheekbone. The one behind him was full of tattoos and face metal.

“What the fuck are you doing with this car?” Scarface demanded.

I glanced at the Lexus, and then back to him.

“Are you Quinn?”

A strange depression claimed me. I didn’t want him to be Quinn. I didn’t want to be done with my task yet. It was the only thing I had going for me. Besides, I’d kind of wanted to make sure Zoey and her baby made it through okay. Hanging around the waiting room with her keys seemed like the best excuse I had for sticking around.

“Do I look like Quinn?” the guy asked, scowling hard as he set his hands on his hips.

Since I’d never met Quinn, I had no idea what he looked like.

I frowned back. “Honestly, you look like a dick to me.”

His eyes narrowed as he took an intimidating step forward. “And you look like a fucking dead man.”

I sighed, not really into the idea of getting into a brawl when I hadn’t even been released from the pen a day.

The idiot was probably half a head shorter than me, too. But that didn’t seem to bother him. He cracked his knuckles, and I tensed, ready to throw down if he took a swing.

But the other guy caught hold of the back of Scarface’s shirt, halting him. “Whoa, hey,” he cajoled easily “Maybe we should, I don’t know, ask him why he has Zoey’s car before pounding his face in.”

“The fuck with that. He just called me a dick.”

“No, actually he said you looked like one, not that you were one.” Then tattoo guy grinned at me. “He really is a dick, though.”

“Hey, fuck you.” Scarface sent Tattoo a glare before shoving him away and spinning back to me. “What’re you doing with Blondie’s car?”

I blinked, confused. “Who?”

“Zoey,” he growled before his friend jostled him quiet and added to me, “The girl who owns it.”

I nodded. Zoey equaled Blondie. Got it. “She was...having some trouble,” I explained, not sure how much I could trust with these people. “I drove her to the hospital, but there was blood, so...I took her ride to the car wash to clean it.”

My answer seemed to take both men by surprise.

“Blood?” Scarface made a hoarse gasp. Then his face drained of color, which made his scars stand out starker. “There was blood? Like...a lot of blood?”

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