Morgan walked back to the living room and examined Quinn’s computer rig. Three monitors were suspended above the desk, with a very sophisticated-looking keyboard and freestanding mouse pad. The chair was one of those expensive ergonomic things.
Morgan knelt to check the computer. It had been opened and the hard drive removed.
“Bust,” said Morgan. “There’s nothing here for us.”
Mick’s phone beeped. “We’re not out for the count yet,” he said. “We just got a hit on Quinn’s car at a traffic camera in a town called Dunboyne.”
“Our boy’s on the run,” said Morgan.
“I’m calling my guys and getting them to cross-reference Quinn with anything in connection to Dunboyne. See if I can get any hits on credit cards or anything like that.”
“Meanwhile—”
“We go to Dunboyne,” said Mick. “Let’s collect our man.”
Chapter 59
Alex spent the afternoon going over the final details of Francine’s story in a dingy room in Thoroughgood Hall, which housed the Inquirer’s headquarters. Between stacks of old copies of the newspapers Alex fact-checked the text, on a five-year-old Mac machine, and vouched for its veracity with the editor in chief. It was written, polished, and set to run on the front page of the next day’s Inquirer.
“Well, kid,” Francine said, giving her a pat on the back, “You’re about to make my goddamn career.”
Alex walked outside feeling victorious. This was going to work. She was going to nail the bastards.
Night had fallen, and Prather was all the way across campus, but Alex was beyond any annoyance or discomfort. Everything paled in comparison to the sense that she had won. She was so exhilarated that she decided to go the long way around, where a series of grassy knolls offered an unreal view of campus in the light of the waning moon.
That turned out to be a mistake.
She paid no heed to the approaching car. Everything was too beautiful. When it came to a stop, she figured the driver was going to ask for directions or offer a ride to the poor crippled girl out there on her own. She smiled, amused by the driver’s imagined condescension.
When she turned to look at the driver, she realized too late that the correct feeling at that moment was fear.
Assistant Coach Adam Groener.
She looked around. There was no one to call for help. Not a single person, not a car, not an evening jogger. People were inside, huddled against the bitter cold.
“Good evening, Alex.” His voice was friendly and jovial. “Not a very nice one for a stroll, though.” She didn’t stop, and so he drove alongside her, keeping pace with her halting walk.
“Good enough for me,” she responded.
“Where are you going? Why don’t you let me give you a lift?”
“I’m fine. It’s not far, and I’d rather walk.”
“There isn’t anything around here,” he said. “Wherever it is, it’s far.”
She didn’t answer.
“Hey, look. I think we got off to a bad start. I just wanted to talk to you, clear a couple of things up. Some things I think you might have misunderstood.”
“I’d really rather not.”
“Come on,” he insisted. “Hop in!”
“No thank you.”
“Get in the car.” He dropped his feigned friendliness, and his voice carried outright menace. “Get in the car or I’ll make you.”
Alex turned away from the car and hobbled onto the grass, going down a hill that was just too steep for comfort. She didn’t have a chance in hell of outrunning him even if he wasn’t in a car. But if the son of a bitch wanted her, he was going to have to work for it.
“Help!” She screamed, taking out her cell phone. “Help!” She dialed 911. She heard it ring once before a meaty paw snatched it away from her, ended the call, and threw it far away into the snowy slope. It disappeared into the darkness.
“Help! He—” This time he put one hand over her mouth and the other around her waist so that her arms were pinned against her body. Her crutches fell onto the snow as he dragged her back to the car.
She reached for the knife in her jacket pocket, switched it open, and slashed Groener’s arm as hard as she could with her pinned arms. He hollered in pain and released her, but without her crutches, she just fell into the snow, ice crystals biting her cheek. He grabbed her again, leaving her father’s knife in the snow.
“I’m gonna make you regret that,” he growled in her ear, and dragged her all the way back to the car.
He tossed her onto the backseat as if she were a bag of golf clubs. He bound her hands with zip ties and gagged her with a sock. She shifted so that she might at least see where they were going, but her cast made it impossible for her to move without the help of her hands, so instead she got to look at the tan pleather of the backseat, lit up yellow in the passing streetlamps.
“I told you to stay away,” he said. “I warned you this wasn’t your business. Now you’ve forced my hand and I have no choice.”
“Is that how you justify it to yourself?”
He didn’t answer. Alex’s mind raced for a way out. She pulled her hands apart, but the ties holding her hands together just bit into her skin and did not give way. Her mind raced for any way to cut them. She regretted pulling her knife on him now. She was hasty. She hadn’t thought it through.
“What are you going to do to me?”
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t have to. There was no going back from this for him.
He was going to kill her.
Chapter 60
The ride was long enough to make Alex’s hands numb from the constriction of the zip tie. She didn’t speak anymore, and neither did Groener. This suited her fine. She couldn’t do anything about the situation now, so she concentrated on keeping calm and honing her focus.
Groener pulled into what Alex assumed was a garage, and the car went dark. It came to a halt and the engine cut out. He opened the door to the backseat, pulled her by her legs, and lifted her to rest on his shoulders. Like she was an equipment bag, he brought her inside the house.
Alex screamed. It was a split second before his hand was on her mouth. She closed her teeth around the flesh of his hand—enough to draw blood and a grunt of pain, but not enough for him to take his hand away.
He tossed her down on a couch. “You know what? Scream all you want. The nearest neighbor is half a mile away.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“You women, you really make it easy for me, even when you make it hard.” He opened his liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey. From a drawer, he pulled out a bottle of pills. “You’re already depressed. People already think you’re crazy. Who’s going to doubt that you drank too much one night, took some pills along with it, and ran off into the woods alone to die?”
Alex’s heart pounded as he came near, looming above her like he was the only thing in the room.
“Poor, depressed Alex Morgan. Facing the prospect of academic probation and eventual expulsion. It was too much for her.” He unscrewed the cap from the liquor bottle, and then from the pill bottle. “They’re really going to mourn you, you know. People who hated you are going to talk about what an inspiration you are. People who don’t even know your name are going to say you were a great friend. They’re going to publish stupid poems about you in the school newspaper. You’re really going to be loved for the next week or two. Too bad you won’t be around to enjoy it.”
“You can’t believe you’ll actually get away with this.” Everything about what he did was stupid. Taking her in his car. Bringing her here. Leaving ligature marks on her wrists. People would investigate this. Her father would. And Groener would go to prison.
And Alex would be dead.
“Nobody is going to look too closely at this. Nobody will care enough. Nobody will even be surprised.”
“My dad,” she said. “He’s gonna come after you.”
“Your dad is a medi
ocre car dealer living in a Boston suburb,” said Groener. “Yeah. I know how to use the Internet. Now drink.”
He poured the biting, sweet whiskey into her mouth, which she shut tight so that it dribbled down her chin onto her shirt.
“Open up,” he said, pushing a greasy, salty finger into her mouth and pouring the alcohol in. It burned her throat and sent her into a coughing fit. Next he picked up the pill bottle.
“It’s going to be a peaceful death,” he said. “You’re just going to doze off and never wake up.” She gritted her teeth against his finger. “Don’t resist. It’ll only make it worse.”
Alex bit down hard on his finger and he laid an open-palm slap against her cheek.
“Are you done? You ain’t getting away, young lady. So you cooperate, or I make this very, very unpleasant.”
He punched her in the stomach, and she bent double on the couch.
“I think I’ve got a few more of those before I leave anything on you for the coroner to find. What do you think?”
She spit on his shoe.
“Or maybe,” he said, “I throw you in the river, so that it looks like you jumped in. I don’t even have to weight you down, with that broken leg of yours. I think I could do a lot worse to you before you die when I’ve got the water covering my tracks.” He grabbed her face by the cheeks in his meaty paw. “What do you say?”
This was it. This was her death. Alex felt like she had been preparing for it forever. Now that it had come, a sense of serenity and acceptance washed over her. She had lived. She had tried. She had strived. That was all she could have asked for.
A bottle hit Groener’s head with a dull thunk, and the muscle-bound body fell to the wooden floor.
Alex looked up at her savior.
Simon.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said. “The police are on their way. I’m going to get you out of here.”
Chapter 61
Mick came back into the car with two shopping bags hanging from his wrist and two medium paper coffee cups. He handed Morgan his and tossed the bags on his lap.
“Tayto Crisps and USA Biscuits,” he said. “Something to keep the ol’ blood sugar up.”
Morgan held the red rectangular tin of USA Biscuits, which were, of course, actually cookies. Separated by a common language indeed.
“How exotic,” Morgan said. He examined his beverage cup. “I thought you said you were getting the large coffees.”
“These are the large coffees,” he said. “Anyway, I talked to my guy back in Dublin. He cast a wider net on our man Quinn. Turns out his uncle owns a cottage here in Dunboyne.”
“You know how to get there?” Morgan asked.
“Ever heard of Google Maps?”
Morgan moved his coffee along with the movement of the car to keep from spilling as Mick made the tires sing on tight corners, half-looking at the map on his phone. The directions took them to a narrow country road outside the town, bordered on either side by hedges that were laid bare by the winter, and then into a cul-de-sac lined with identical two-story brick houses.
“Heck of a place for a stakeout,” Morgan said. “Which one is it?”
“Second to last on the left.”
Morgan drew the infrared viewer. Mick slowed the car down as they passed.
“Someone’s in there,” Morgan said, looking at the red-orange blob on the screen, large and close, right behind the window. “And he’s looking at us.”
“Paranoid bugger,” said Mick.
“He’s got reason to be.”
Mick made a three-point turn and they drove back the way they came.
“What now?” he said.
“We come back at night. He has to sleep sometime.”
Chapter 62
The police let Alex go in the late morning, after going over every detail of the story with her. They went pretty easy on her, all things considered. They’d caught the coach red-handed, thanks to an anonymous tip. Simon had left as the police sirens approached, at her insistence—it would have been inconvenient for him to explain that he had found her thanks to a phone call from a member of the secret society of vigilantes that they were trying to join. The official story was that she managed to grab hold of the bottle and knock Groener out while he was turned away.
The police gave her a ride back to her dorm after she assured them that there really wasn’t anyone she wanted them to call, thank you. On arrival, she went straight for Simon’s door and knocked. The door swung open. Alex opened her mouth to speak and found that there was both too much and nothing to say. Simon stepped forward and hugged her.
“Thank you,” she said. It would do.
“Did you see?” he asked when he finally let go, holding a newspaper out for her. She thought it might be Francine’s story, but it was a copy of the Boston Herald. The arrest had happened too late for it to make the campus newspaper—it would, she had no doubt, although the police agreed to keep her name a secret—but still, the headline on the front page read:
COACH IMPLICATED IN SEXUAL ASSAULT COVERUP
“You heard it here first,” she said. She frowned, patting her stomach. “Are you as ravenous as I am?”
They walked together to breakfast to the dining hall, where she passed a table of glowering football players. She recognized among them Matt Klingensmith, the one who’d tried to herd a doped-up Katie up to his room.
Alex puffed up her chest in a silent gloat. There was nothing they could do now. Any move against her and the police would be on them like linebackers on a running quarterback.
She wondered whether she had gotten that simile right.
She found Katie sitting at their usual table, a copy of the Inquirer next to her cereal. She was reading Francine’s front-page story. Alex sat down across from her.
“Simon told me,” Katie said. “About everything. About last night, too.”
Alex rubbed the nape of her neck. She really hated this mushy emotional part. But she really missed Katie, too. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I should have been there as a friend and nothing more.”
“Pshaw.” Katie held up the newspaper. “Look at what you did! And you almost got yourself killed, dude!”
“I couldn’t let it go.”
“You are a total badass.”
“Are we good?” Alex asked.
Katie beamed.
Afterward, Simon came by the room, saying he had something else to show her. He opened the deep web messenger program, through which they had contacted the Ekklesia. There was a new message there for them.
You show promise. Stand by to receive your first assignment.
Chapter 63
Mick led the way in the darkness through a barren field, occupied only by a transmission tower. To their right was the row of houses in Quinn’s cul-de-sac. It was past midnight and all the interior lights in the homes were off.
They jumped over the wall at the far end of the street, keeping to the shadows, away from the pools of light cast by the lampposts.
Quinn’s was the second house from the end. Having talked it over, Morgan and Mick decided it wasn’t safe to be out in the open where he might see, even in the dark—Quinn was the kind of paranoid who might very well have night-vision goggles. Instead, they used the neighbor’s house for cover. Morgan used the thermal imager to check that everyone in that house was asleep, or at least lying in bed.
They found cover in the bushes bordering a low wall between the two houses. Morgan trained the imager on Quinn’s signature. He was sitting up, flush against the back wall.
“What’s this?” Mick asked, pointing at a smudge on the imager.
“That,” Morgan said, “is a pot of coffee. See the mug here, close to Quinn?” Morgan panned the viewer to scan the house and yard.
“Hold on,” said Mick. “Point that thing back over there.”
Morgan turned the lens toward Quinn’s backyard, farther to the right than before. He made out three distinct figures at the wa
ll, one jumping over, two already in the backyard.
Three, moving in unison. Morgan had seen this before.
“Looks like we’re too late,” said Mick.
“Looks to me like we’re right on time.” Morgan ran his hand over the PPK and then the six-inch grooved combat knife that was strapped to his right ankle. Mick had his SIG Sauer P226 semiautomatic and a knife of his own.
“What’s the play?”
“We enter through the front,” said Morgan. The men were already covering the distance between the wall and the back door. “We engage inside the house. And Mick? Let’s try to be quiet about it. The last thing we need is to attract the attention of the Garda Síochána.”
Morgan led the way across the yard. They stopped at the front door and Morgan drew his lock picks. This was now a race against the other guy—who could open the door faster. Morgan applied the tension wrench and in fluid haste caught the first, second, third, fourth pin. The lock loosened and he pulled the tension wrench. Click. Success.
This wasn’t Mick and Morgan’s first walk around the park. Morgan signaled for Mick to move through the living room while Morgan took the kitchen route. The back door swung open.
The men hadn’t been expecting them, which gave Morgan and Mick the clear advantage.
Mick distracted their attention by shattering a vase in the living room. In the kitchen, Morgan grabbed the biggest knife from a knife block, an eight-inch chef’s knife and, pivoting into sight of the three men—all in matching black pants and turtlenecks—Morgan hurled it at the nearest one. It plunged into the man’s neck with a spray of blood.
Without waiting for him to fall, Morgan drew his own combat knife and advanced on the other two. As the closer one raised his hands in defense, the other trained his gun on Morgan. Big mistake. This left his flank wide open for Mick, who appeared out of the shadows behind him and slit his neck.
The third never got a chance to unholster the Glock 19 he was carrying. Morgan grabbed him by the gun arm and thrust the knife into his belly, upward, pushing until it hit the heart. He was the last to collapse.
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