The Damaged

by Brett Battles

  She didn’t answer.

  In his mind, Quinn could see her sitting at her kitchen table, staring out the back window, oblivious to the ringing of the bell. Or maybe she was curled up on her bed, a pillow over her head, trying to block out the sounds of whoever was at the door.

  He didn’t want to ring again, but that wasn’t an option. She was his best friend. He’d already missed being there for her when she found out. He wasn’t about to abandon her as she tried to recover.

  He pushed the bell again, but the house remained hushed.

  He took a few steps back and tried to peek around the slats in the shutters covering the front window. But all he could see were shadows. He checked the other set of windows along the front, but what he could see was also dark.

  He considered going into the backyard, but that would be a violation of her personal space. If she didn’t want visitors, forcing himself on her was not the right move.

  He took a room in a Marriott Courtyard Hotel about a mile away, and spent the afternoon sitting on the bed, staring at the cardboard box with the urn.

  Once darkness had fallen, he trekked back to the house, parking in the same spot as before.

  He knew before he exited the car that he should have stayed at the hotel. The shutters were still closed, and behind them not a single light glowed. The house just felt as if no one was home.

  Still, he tried again, this time knocking instead of ringing the bell.

  Dead silence from inside. The kind of silence that seemed to scream, “Go away!”

  He made a third attempt at ten a.m. the next morning, and left the hotel for a fourth try at five p.m. As he turned onto her street, a chill ran up his arms. In the time between his morning visit and now, a FOR SALE sign had been planted in Orlando’s front yard.

  Leaving the urn in the car, he jogged up to the front door and knocked hard. “Orlando? Orlando, it’s me. Quinn.”

  He knocked again and again, not realizing at first that the sound was creating an odd echo inside. An echo that he recognized, when it finally registered, as one that could have only been created by a room devoid of furniture.

  He checked the street to make sure no one was watching him. Then, against the voice in his head saying he was making a mistake, he used his lockpicks to open the door. As he had guessed, there was nothing in the living room. He walked through the place. Every room was empty and had been cleaned.

  Back in his car, he called the number on the real estate sign.

  A woman answered in a cheery voice. “Becca Cox, Townside Realty.”

  “Yes, I’m calling about one of your listings,” Quinn said, forcing himself to sound upbeat.

  “Of course. Which one are you interested in?”

  Quinn gave her Orlando’s address.

  “You’re quick. That just went up on the MLS about an hour ago.” She gave him the home’s particulars. “We’ll be holding an open house on both Saturday and Sunday if you’d like to come by.”

  “I’ll make sure to do that.” He paused. “I am curious, though. The people who lived there—I used to know them a little. Friends of friends. I know they were looking for a bigger place. I’m guessing they finally found it?”

  Cox hesitated. “Actually, the boyfriend recently passed away.”

  “Oh, my God. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s very sad.”

  He almost asked where Orlando had gone but was stopped by the fact he had no idea what name she had used to buy the house. Besides, the agent probably wouldn’t have told him anyway.

  “I appreciate your time,” he said. “I’ll see you this weekend.”

  Back at his hotel room, he tried to break into Townside Realty’s computer system but failed to get through its firewall. While he could handle hacking into a basic system—and on occasion even ones a bit more advanced—cyberespionage was not his forte. Usually when he came up against something like this, he’d call Orlando for help. Obviously, she was not an option now.

  He made a few inquiries and was finally put in touch with a hacker named Jones. It took the man exactly seventy-five seconds to breach the company’s security measures and provide Quinn with direct access to Townside’s records. All done for the low, low price of one thousand dollars.

  Quinn hunted through the system, collecting everything he could find related to Orlando’s house. All of the official documents would have been done on paper. A few of these had been scanned into the computer, but as far as he was able to discover, most had not been. There were, however, over two dozen emails that gave him most of the information he was looking for.

  The names she and Durrie had owned the house under were Charlotte Cullen and Edward Spanner. In an email sent three days earlier by “Charlotte” was the following:

  I realize I am rushing things, listing the house so quickly, but as I’m sure you can understand, I can’t stay here any longer. The movers are coming tomorrow morning, and I will have the house cleaned and ready for you by the evening. It will be best if we communicate via email, as I will be visiting friends where cell service is spotty. If you need to talk to me, send me a message and I will call you.

  One day.

  Quinn had missed her by one day.

  He debated for nearly an hour on whether or not to send an email to the address she’d used with the realtor. Messages he’d sent to her regular email—as well as texts and calls to her phone—had gone unanswered.

  It was unlikely he’d hear back from her, but he decided to try.

  Orlando—

  I am so sorry that I was unable to get ahold of you sooner. I know you’re going through a lot. I just want you to know I’m here for you. Please, when you have a moment, contact me.

  Quinn

  He hit SEND.

  He was right. He didn’t hear back.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  TEN MONTHS LATER

  PARIS, FRANCE

  “Had a little issue with someone who was working later than she was supposed to,” Quinn told Peter over the phone. “But Julien was able to distract her while I moved the body.”

  Julien De Coster was a French freelancer and a giant of a man. Taking advantage of the maintenance uniform he was wearing for the job, he’d removed a vacuum cleaner from a supply closet and run it in the hallway outside the woman’s office. Within moments, she had shut her door. He’d continued running the machine back and forth until after Quinn had disappeared through the exit at the other end of the hall, with the bagged body over his shoulder.

  “Did she see his face?” Peter asked.

  “His back was to her door when she closed it, so we don’t think so.”

  “Okay. Good. Thank you.” Typically, Peter would have given Quinn a we’ll talk later and hung up, but instead he said, “I have some information for you.”

  “Sure. Go ahead,” Quinn said, assuming it concerned the next job.

  “I know where Orlando is.”

  For a moment, the whole world stopped. Outside of Peter’s words echoing in his head, Quinn could hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing.

  “You still there?” Peter asked.

  “Uh, yes. Yeah, I’m here. Where is she?”

  “San Francisco.”

  San Francisco? That was just an hour-and-a-half flight away from his place in L.A.

  “I have an address if you want it,” Peter said.

  “Can you text it to me?”

  “Are you sure? Maybe it would be better if—”

  “I’m sure.”

  A pause. “Okay.”

  Quinn caught a nonstop ten a.m. Delta flight to L.A. the next day. Because of the time difference from Paris, he arrived at 12:30 p.m. that same afternoon. An hour and a half later, he reached his townhouse in Studio City.

  He took a quick shower, repacked his duffel bag, and grabbed the cardboard box containing Durrie’s urn before returning to his car. It took him twenty minutes to reach the much closer Burbank airport. Before leaving France, he had booked ticket
s on two different flights to San Francisco, the second in case he missed the 3:48 p.m. flight. He did not, though he was the last to board.

  The sun was low in the sky by the time he reached the street of the address Peter had given him. The neighborhood was lined with two- and three-story row houses. Several had been refurbished, but most were in need of a little TLC.

  Open parking spots were scarce, and Quinn was forced to leave his rental two blocks away and one street over.

  Cardboard box under his arm, he hiked back to the address. The two-story building was one of the places that could have used, at the very least, a new coat of paint. He walked up the steps to the porch, and knocked before he lost his nerve.

  He heard a shout inside. A few seconds later, steps approached the door. When it opened, an elderly Asian woman looked out. She was small with a kindly face, and hair more gray than black.

  “Can I help you?” she said. Her accent sounded Korean, which would make sense, given that Orlando was half.

  “I’m looking for—” Orlando? That was the only name he knew her by, just like Jonathan Quinn was the only name she knew for him. But neither was the name they’d been born with. He hesitated before an idea hit him. “For Charlotte.”

  “And who you?”

  “Quinn.”

  She looked him up and down, said, “You wait,” and shut the door.

  Barely half a minute passed before he heard steps heading back his way. When the door opened, however, it was the old woman again, not Orlando.

  “She not want to see you.”

  The woman started to close the door.

  “Wait,” Quinn said.

  She paused and stared at him.

  “I, um, I have something for her.” He glanced at the box in his hands.

  “Give to me. I give to her.”

  “No. I…I need to give it to her personally.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed.

  “It’s important.”

  Frowning, she closed the door. As her steps once more retreated into the house, he wondered if no one would come back. After five minutes of silence, he was no longer wondering.

  If he left, he’d have to come back tomorrow, and if necessary the day after that, and so on. He rapped on the door again.

  For several moments, there was no response. Then, just as he lifted his hand for another try, he heard footsteps heading toward him.

  They stopped a mere meter away, but the door remained closed.

  “Go away, Quinn,” Orlando said from the other side. “I don’t want to see you.”

  “Please,” Quinn said. “I just want to talk for a few minutes. That’s all.”

  “I-I can’t.”

  “I have something for you.”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  Out of desperation, he said, “I promise, after we talk I’ll go away and won’t come back.”

  Silence.

  “Please,” he said. “Just a few minutes.”

  After a beat, the door creaked open. Instead of inviting him in, Orlando stepped outside and shut the door behind her.

  “What do you want?” she said. She glared at him, no trace of friendship in her expression.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t even express how much. I should have been the one who told you.”

  She sneered. “You think that’s why I’m angry? That you didn’t tell me?” A shake of her head. “How I learned about…what happened doesn’t matter. It’s that it happened at all. That’s what pisses me off.”

  “I swear, I’d give anything to change what happened.”

  “You were there. You should have protected him. Now my son will never know his father.”

  Quinn blinked. “Did you-did you say…son? I didn’t even know you were pregnant.”

  “Yeah? Well, neither did I.”

  A son. With Durrie.

  Jesus.

  Quinn hadn’t thought he could feel even worse about Durrie’s death, but he’d been wrong.

  “I’m so sorry. I…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what happened. I keep running the mission through my mind, trying to figure out what I could have done differently. Believe me, I know how devastating this is. How you feel, and—”

  “You what? You think you know how I feel? There’s no way you can understand what it’s like to be lying there at night, your baby crying, and no one else but you to comfort him. Forever. Tell me, can you feel what that’s like?”

  “No, of course not. I-I-I didn’t mean—”

  “Just stop talking. I don’t want to hear anything else. Go back to Los Angeles.”

  His mouth bone dry, he said, “I brought this for you.”

  He opened the top of the box and started to tilt it so she could see what was inside. But she turned back to the house and pushed the door open without looking. “Leave me alone. I don’t ever want to talk to you again.”

  One of the hardest things for Quinn to ever do was tell Orlando no, and seeing her as hurt as she was, he wasn’t going to start doing so today. “Okay,” he said.

  She stepped inside and closed the door, emphasizing the end of their conversation—their relationship?—with the clack of the dead bolt.

  He stared at the door, shaken unlike he’d ever been before. His last ounce of hope tried to convince him she’d come back out. That she would see, despite everything, he cared deeply about her and only wanted to help. But after several minutes, the door remained closed and his hope drained away completely.

  He placed the box on the porch, where it wouldn’t be seen from the street, and left.

  Orlando sat on the floor, her back to the door of Aunt Jeong’s house, tears flooding down her face.

  She could sense Quinn was still on the porch, in the same spot he’d been. She knew she should go back out there. That she should tell him she was sorry.

  Yes, she was angrier with him than she’d been with almost anyone ever. He’d been with Durrie. He’d known Durrie wasn’t operating at a hundred percent. But Quinn wasn’t the only target of her ire.

  The person she was angriest with was herself.

  She was the one who’d pushed Durrie to take the job, when she could see he wasn’t ready. She was the one who had told Quinn everything would be all right, when she’d known that wasn’t true.

  She had been avoiding Quinn for months, because it allowed her to focus more on the fact that Durrie was gone than the reasons why, and kept at bay the guilt buried deep inside her. Perhaps, after another few months had gone by, after Durrie had been gone for a full year, she might’ve been able to come to terms with her own culpability. Which then would have allowed her to forgive and reconnect with her closest friend.

  But Quinn had surprised her by showing up like this. Her anger at everything flared uncontrollably, and she had done the one thing she should have never done—focused all her ire on him.

  What am I going to do?

  A noise out on the porch, then the sound of Quinn finally walking away.

  She stayed where she was for another minute or two, then pushed to her feet and looked out the peephole. Quinn was gone, but he’d left the box behind.

  She opened the door and approached the package. He’d closed the top again, so she crouched beside it and pulled the flaps open.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  Oh, God.

  An urn.

  Quinn had broken protocol and brought Durrie back to her.

  Tears welled again, but before they could stream down her cheeks, she heard the cry of her son, Garrett, waking from his nap.

  She wiped her eyes, picked up the box, and headed back inside.

  “It’s okay, sweetie. Mommy’s coming.”

  From his window seat on the night flight back to L.A., Quinn stared out at the vast darkness of the Pacific Ocean.

  He had failed Durrie. He had failed himself. But most of all, he had failed Orlando and her newborn son. He brooded on this for nearly half the trip, before he recalled the
conversation he and Durrie had had in the parking lot at Leonetti’s. He remembered something that—ironically—Durrie had once said.

  Quinn had done something wrong on a job, and in the days after, had continued to beat himself up over it.

  “Look, Johnny,” Durrie had finally said one afternoon. “You can learn from the past, but you can’t do anything to change it. The only thing you can affect is what happens next. Get me?”

  If she needs anything, and I’m not there to help, you make sure she gets it.

  There was nothing Quinn could do about the past. He could only affect the future. So what if Orlando didn’t want to see him ever again? That didn’t mean he couldn’t help her and her son from afar, and in doing so, not only honor the promise he had made Durrie, but also the years of close friendship between him and Orlando.

  While his mood wasn’t anywhere near good, by the time he reached Los Angeles, at least he didn’t feel quite as lost anymore.

  Epilogue

  Durrie stood in the living room of his sixth-floor apartment, looking through his telescope. It was aimed not at the stars above San Francisco, but at the house four blocks away, in which Orlando had been hiding for the last five months.

  He had known she would turn up at her aunt’s home. It was the most logical place for her to go. So, he’d been waiting here for her to show up since two weeks after he had “died.”

  When she did, and he saw she was pregnant, he had been tempted to sneak into the house and rip Quinn’s child from her belly. But that would’ve revealed his death was a lie. Too bad he’d had to eliminate Ortega. If the guy had still been around instead of buried in a grave outside Rio, Durrie probably would have sent him to do it.

  Durrie leaned away from the telescope, wincing, and rubbed his forehead. Another one of his migraines was coming on. He walked into the kitchen and poured out four aspirin from the giant bottle he’d picked up, then downed them with a sip of whiskey.

  Before Rio, the migraines had occurred once or twice a month at most, making it easy for him to hide them from Orlando. Afterward, he was getting them at least once a week, sometimes more.