The Destroyed

by Brett Battles

  “Californian, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Hollywood High.”

  “You’re kidding.” Nate pointed at his chest. “Santa Monica High.”

  “Samo? Beach brat, huh?”

  Nate nodded. “When I could be. So you were born in the States?”

  Daeng took in a long breath. “No.” He paused before adding, “Moved there when I was young. Came back here after high school.”

  There was obviously more to the story, but Nate knew Daeng had shared all he wanted to for now.

  As they reentered the temple grounds, Daeng said, “Feel free to have a look around, or you can wait in the classroom. If you need me, I’ll be in that center building over there.” He pointed at a group of small buildings beyond the stupa near the river, then gave Nate a wai and walked off.

  With little else to do, Nate decided to do a little exploring.

  He was standing just inside the temple, his eyes fixed on the golden Buddha that dominated the room, when he heard someone enter behind him.

  “Peaceful around here, isn’t it?” Quinn said.

  “It is,” Nate agreed. “I can understand the appeal.”

  “Can you?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “And yet, you’re here to take it away from me.” Before Nate could respond, Quinn said, “This isn’t the place for us to talk.”

  Without further comment, he turned and walked outside.

  __________

  THEY ENDED UP back in the classroom. Quinn closed the door this time, and once they were both sitting at one of the student desks, he said, “Tell me.”

  “Four days ago, I got a call—” Nate stopped himself. “You got the call. I returned it.”

  “From who?”

  “Peter.”

  Quinn nodded as if he’d expected the answer.

  “He wanted to talk to you, of course,” Nate said, “but I told him you were unavailable, and if he had something to discuss, he should tell me.”

  “He must have liked that.”

  Nate smirked. “Oh, yeah. It definitely put him in a good mood. He said he needed to talk to you and only you. He had questions about an old case.”

  “Mila Voss.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t tell me that right away. Not until after I explained you were on a, um, sabbatical, and reaching you was not easy. That’s when he insisted I find you, and tell you he wants to know why Mila Voss is still alive.”

  Quinn looked over at the wall, his expression unreadable.

  “Since I didn’t know where you were, I contacted Orlando,” Nate said. Orlando was Quinn’s girlfriend and sometimes partner. “She was reluctant at first to say anything. When I told her what Peter wanted, she said almost the same thing you did—‘But Mila Voss is dead.’ Only when she said it, I could tell she thought it was true. You, not so much.”

  Quinn hesitated, then said, “How is she?”

  “Worried about you.”

  “She said that?”

  “She didn’t have to.”

  Quinn fell silent for a second. “Where was Mila seen?”

  “Peter didn’t say. Only that if I didn’t find you as soon as possible, things could get very uncomfortable very fast.”

  Quinn’s head drooped, and Nate thought he heard him whisper something. A curse, perhaps.

  “Who is she?” Nate asked. It was something he’d been wondering since he’d talked to Peter. He’d asked Orlando, too, but she wouldn’t tell him. She did finally say that Quinn was somewhere in Thailand, but she didn’t know where specifically. She only had the name of a woman in Bangkok—Christina—and a code phrase that would let the woman know it was all right for her to tell Nate where Quinn was staying.

  Instead of answering Nate’s question, Quinn said, “Do you have your phone?”

  “Of course.”

  “Get Peter on the line.”

  CHAPTER 6

  MOST MORNINGS WHEN Quinn had woken during the past few months, his only thoughts were of the classes he would be teaching that day. He wished it was the same this particular morning.

  The previous fall, his work as a cleaner had nearly caused the deaths of his mother and his sister. The safeguards he’d put in place, the firewalls he thought he’d built between himself and them, had all failed. If it weren’t for his quick action and that of some of his associates—most notably Nate acting as bodyguard for Quinn’s sister, Liz—his mother and sister would have died. Nate had been shot in the process, and nearly died himself.

  The realization that his work could so affect the ones he loved shattered the illusion of the life he imagined he’d created. He became mentally paralyzed, unsure if he could ever return to the dangerous life he was so good at, especially if it meant the innocents he cared about could be harmed.

  For two months he did nothing but hole up at his house in Los Angeles. He returned no calls, pursued no new jobs. The easy assignments he’d already committed to, he gave to Nate.

  It was a visit from Orlando that finally shook him loose.

  “You don’t have to do this anymore,” she told him. “But you also don’t have to make any decisions now. You have the luxury of time. Take as much as you want. I think you should go someplace unfamiliar, where you can clear your mind. If you want, I can suggest a few, and use some of my contacts to line something up.”

  He thought about it overnight, and when he woke the next morning with her in his arms, he said, “I want.”

  He wandered for a few weeks after that, first visiting his mother in Minnesota, then spending a week with his sister in Paris as they continued to try and rebuild a relationship that had been broken for so long. After that he headed to Thailand, where the mysterious Christina had sent him to Wat Doi Thong.

  In the first few months at the temple, he’d continued to have the same dream every night—though dream was probably not the right term. It was more like a sleeping memory. A hospital room in London. Nate asleep on the bed, recovering from his wound. Liz sitting beside him, holding his hand, then turning to look at Quinn who had entered a few moments earlier.

  “What?” she said in the dream, and in the memory.

  He took a step forward. “How…how’s he doing?”

  Liz held his gaze for a second. “He was awake for thirty minutes. The doctors said that’s a good sign.”

  In the memory, they talked about Nate—a neutral topic, less painful. But in the dream they would skip ahead, and he would find himself standing beside his sister as she asked, “Who are you?”

  The question hurt more than she could have possibly realized. His fault, not hers. He’d hidden his true life from his family. Hell, he’d barely talked to Liz since she was a kid. He’d thought it was the right thing to do. He’d thought it would be best for her. But now it seemed so pointless, years wasted, the bond they once had destroyed. He wished there was a way to return to the relationship they’d had before, but as good as he was at visualizing all the scenarios in his work, he couldn’t see the way back to that. “I…I just wanted to…I thought…I thought I was doing…” He fell silent, knowing no words would ever be adequate.

  That was the moment Liz could have pounced, and rightly ripped him apart. But her face had softened, and she looked at Nate. “When he woke he asked about you and Orlando. He said you were the two people he respected most in the world.” She turned to her brother again. “He said you always try to do the right thing.”

  Quinn didn’t know how to respond.

  Silence filled the room for a while, then she said, “I don’t know how to feel. About you, I mean. I hated you for so long. I don’t think I hate you anymore, but I don’t know how I feel.” A long pause. “That’s the best I can do.”

  “It’s more than I can ask,” he said.

  As he started to turn away, she put a hand on his wrist. He looked at her, and she at him. Then she fell against his chest, wrapped her arms around him, and cried.

  He knew it didn’t ch
ange what she had said. The ordeal she had just gone through had been intense, and the man she’d started to have feelings for was lying in the hospital bed beside her, a bullet wound in his chest.

  Yet for those minutes he held her, it was like none of the mistakes he’d made mattered. “I love you, Liz,” he wanted to say, but knew it would be too much.

  He always wished the dream would end there, but it didn’t. After they’d pulled apart, Liz had donned her coat of armor again.

  “I’ll need time,” she said as he turned for the door. “Maybe forever.”

  That was where the dream ended.

  But as the hot Thai months moved on, the dream came less and less, until he’d stopped having it at all. But the previous night, after Christina sent word that a man would be arriving to see him, the dream had come to him again, more vivid than ever. When he woke before dawn, his usual thoughts of English lessons and working in fields were replaced with memories of violence and death.

  From the description Christina gave him, he knew his visitor was Nate. Yet when he saw his former apprentice, he was surprised. There was something older about Nate, his edges sharper and more defined. There was a confidence, too. While Nate undoubtedly had more to learn, he was now a professional who could stand on his own.

  What Quinn also saw was a window into the world he was not yet ready to return to, a world he was unsure he would ever be ready for again. His assumption had been that Nate was there to lure him back. Nearly nine months was a long time to be away, so the attempt would not be unreasonable, but that didn’t mean he had to agree to it. His plan had been to make it clear to Nate he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Then Nate had yelled out Mila Voss’s name.

  Mila Voss. Seen alive.

  Dear God, what was she thinking?

  Quinn could hear the call ringing on the other end as Nate handed him the phone. There was a click, and a familiar female voice said, “Yes?”

  “Misty?” Quinn said, surprised.

  A pause. “Quinn.” He heard a smile in her voice before her tone turned serious. “I heard your father passed away last year. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I understand Peter wants to talk to me.”

  “Let me see if I can find him.”

  He was on hold for nearly three minutes before Misty came back on.

  “Sorry for the wait. Connecting you now.”

  A double beep, then, “Jesus, Quinn. Where the hell are you?”

  “Hello, Peter.”

  “Are you going to answer my question?”

  “No.”

  “Haven’t changed, have you?”

  Quinn let that one pass without comment, wanting to get this over with. “I’ve been told we have a ghost.”

  “Would be nice if that were the case. Afraid this one’s very much flesh and bone.”

  “Mila Voss.”

  “So it appears.”

  “Where was she seen?”

  Peter briefed Quinn on the incident in Tanzania, and the discovery of a disguised Mila Voss hovering over a body on the sidewalk.

  “Security detection software picked it up first, then matched it to a known photo. Ninety-nine-point-five-percent sure it was either her or her twin sister. But as far as we know, she doesn’t have a twin.”

  “Who was the dead guy?”

  “Not important.”

  Quinn knew that probably wasn’t true, but he didn’t push. “I’d like to see the footage.”

  “It’s already uploaded. I put it on one of the servers you and I have used in the past. ADR-3.”

  “All right, I’ll check it.”

  “Hold on,” Peter said, sensing that Quinn was about to hang up. “You’re not getting off that easy.”

  Quinn waited.

  “You were the one who was supposed to have disposed of her body,” Peter said.

  “I was.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The body I was given, I got rid of.”

  “Yeah, but was it dead when you made it disappear?”

  “I don’t typically dispose of people who are alive.”

  “And it was Mila?”

  “You can read my report, Peter. It’s all in there.”

  “I did read it. You were the one who ended up having to ID her. So, was it Mila?”

  “I disposed of the body of a woman that was Mila’s height, had her hair, wearing the clothes she had last been seen in, and dropped off at the hospital by the driver who’d picked her up at the airport. It sure as hell looked like Mila to me.”

  “So as far as you know, the body you got rid of was Mila’s.”

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Then how the hell is she walking around alive?”

  “I was relying on the assassin for information. If I recall correctly, he had a spotter following her from the airport. Why don’t you ask him if they fingered the wrong person?”

  “Not a bad idea, except Kovacs was killed several months after that assignment. So that’s not an option.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what else you want me to say, Peter.”

  Peter let out a defeated breath. “If it really is her, this is a total fuckup.”

  “The best I can do is look at the footage and tell you what I think. Other than that, I’m as much in the dark as you are.”

  “Honestly, I’m looking for anything that will help at this point. If you find something, call me right back.”

  Quinn hesitated. “There’s no computer where I am, so it could be a day or so before you hear from me.”

  “The sooner the better,” Peter said, then hung up.

  As Quinn handed the phone back to Nate, he tried not to think about how many lies he’d just told. What happened on this job in Las Vegas had gone against all his training, but he was the one who caused the job to go off the rails. He was the one who’d made the conscious decision to ignore the professional detachment he was usually so good at maintaining. He had hoped it would never come to this, but even then he’d known the secret of that night—that Mila Voss was still alive—would come to light one day.

  That day had finally arrived.

  Nate pocketed his cell. “Okay. I’ve done what I promised. I’ll leave you alone now and head back to Bangkok.” He held out his hand. “If you need me, you know how to reach me.”

  I’m not ready to go back, Quinn thought. In a few more months, maybe. Not now.

  But he could no longer suppress the words whispering in the back of his mind. “I’ll make sure she stays safe,” his old friend Julien had said. “But if there comes a day that I can’t, then it will be up to you.”

  A pact, one that Quinn couldn’t ignore.

  He finally looked up, but didn’t take Nate’s hand. “It’s too late to leave now. We’ll get some sleep and head out in the morning.”

  “You’re coming, too?”

  “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 7

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  LUCERNE, SWITZERLAND

  “HE’S IN THE room,” Henrik whispered over the comm in Quinn’s ear.

  Quinn touched the bag sitting on the floor beside him. It contained the tools he had predetermined would be needed on the job ahead. His current location was a little-used storage room in the basement of the Chateau Gallant Hotel in Lucerne, where he could remain out of the way until his specialized services were needed.

  After consultations with Henrik, the team leader, when he’d first arrived, Quinn had been pleased to find out that the method chosen for the elimination of the subject would be mess-free. A powerful, quick-acting anesthetic would be released from a metal canister hidden behind the headboard as soon as the subject lay down for the night. Once he was under, Henrik would enter the room and administer the fatal dose of Beta-Somnol. Henrik and his team would then have five minutes to locate the documents the subject was supposed to be carrying before Quinn took over. If things went according to his plan, and they usually did, the body would be out
of the hotel and on its way to its final resting place no more than seven minutes after that.

  He glanced over at Julien. The larger Frenchman looked somewhat ridiculous in his coveralls, but it was better than dressing him as a bellhop. At his size—several inches over six feet and broad in both shoulders and chest—he would have instantly stood out to the hotel staff. It was less likely, though, that anyone would know all the maintenance personnel who might service the facility.

  “Won’t be long now,” Quinn said.

  “Good. I’m starving. Maybe on the way out of town we can stop for something to eat, oui?”

  “How about we get rid of the body first and eat later.”

  Julien shrugged. “I do not think he will mind.”

  Quinn rolled his eyes, but gave no other response.

  Over the comm, Henrik was giving the play-by-play of what was happening in the room. Apparently the subject was trying to get some work done before going to sleep.

  Julien pulled out a deck of cards. “Some more poker while we wait?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I was lucky earlier. Don’t you want a chance to win back what you lost?”

  “I have a feeling you’ll still be lucky.”

  “Luck, who knows where it lands? Sometimes good for me, sometimes good for you. You know this.” He smiled. “Okay. This time we play just for fun, huh?”

  Quinn was saved from declining again by Henrik announcing that the subject had finally decided to crawl into bed.

  “All right. Looks like his eyes are closed,” Henrik said. “I’m activating the gas.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “He should be breathing it in right about…now.” Another pause, this one for half a minute. “All right, we’re going in.”

  There was the sound of movement over the radio, then the click of a door opening. That would be the room Henrik was using just down the hall from the subject. More movement, then another click.

  “Okay, we’re inside,” Henrik whispered.

  Quinn grabbed his bag and stood up. That was their cue.

  “You’re sure about not stopping for food,” Julien said as they left the room.

  “I’m sure,” Quinn replied.