The Discarded

by Brett Battles

  “All right,” he said after the computer had booted up. “Let’s see if you’re here or not.”

  He hacked into the hospital administration’s wireless network and navigated his way into the patient database, where he searched for patients named Charles Young. He wasn’t surprised to find there was no one by that name.

  He contemplated searching again, this time using Eli’s real name, but decided it would be better not to have it noted by the system. He couldn’t chance activating a digital tripwire that would let someone know of his attempt.

  Minimizing the hospital’s interface, he opened a new window and used Tampa General’s network to connect to the Internet. From there, he made his way to the website for Azure Waves. As he had hoped, there was both a public section and an employee-only area. Though he’d been out of the business for seven years, he had done his best to keep up with the latest innovations in hardware and software, so breaking through the firewall into the private area was like walking through air.

  Once there, it took him less than thirty seconds to find the incident report for Eli’s “heart attack.” According to the night manager, Charles Young had been taken from the hotel at approximately 11:20 p.m.

  Abraham was about to close the window when he noticed that the manager had also entered the name of the ambulance company. An unexpected bonus. Abraham copied the name—Tobin Ambulance Services—and pasted it into a holding file, then returned to the hospital database.

  A trip to Tampa General in an emergency vehicle with siren and lights blazing would have taken no more than five minutes. To give himself a cushion in case the time in the hotel report wasn’t accurate, Abraham examined the emergency room admittance records from 10:40 p.m. until 12:30 a.m.

  Plenty of people had come in, but none were heart-attack victims matching Eli’s description. Though Abraham was pretty sure of what he’d find, he accessed the admittance records of other hospitals in Tampa and neighboring St. Petersburg. Eli was at none of them.

  Yesterday, when Eli had called, he’d seemed scared. Had someone come for him?

  Need to get a look through his hotel room, Abraham thought. See if there are signs of a struggle or worse.

  First, though, he copied the name of the ambulance company into Google’s search box and located the company’s website. Unfortunately, unlike the hotel’s, this company’s business records were not kept on the same server. He entered the company’s address into his GPS, and seventeen minutes later was parked at the curb right in front of the Tobin Ambulance Services facility.

  Sure enough, the company’s records were kept on an internal system Abraham was able to access through the company’s “secure” Wi-Fi network. Tobin’s schedule showed no mentions of any trips to Azure Waves Hotel, but there was an entry for a long-distance hire earlier that evening. Under the notes was a mention that the vehicle in question—ambulance 072—would be gone for up to twenty-four hours, and that it was a vehicle-only hire, with crew supplied by the client.

  That had to be it.

  He found the vehicle database and clicked on AMBULANCE 072. There were maintenance records, supply requests, and—as he’d hoped to find—a list of vehicle equipment. Like many companies these days, Tobin Ambulance Services had installed transponders in their ambulances to keep track of each vehicle’s whereabouts. An unintended benefit was that the transponder would also allow someone to track where a particular ambulance had gone within the last twenty-four hours.

  While Abraham could accomplish quite a bit on his laptop, this was not something for which he had the appropriate software. He would need help, and there was really only one person he could ask.

  The line rang a single time before being answered by a short message.

  As soon as the beep sounded, he said, “Orlando, it’s me.”

  __________

  GLORIA CLARK—KNOWN as Tina Dotson to the Azure Waves night manager—reached for her phone. A moment earlier, it had buzzed twice fast, once slow. A text, but not just any text. The message on the screen read:

  TG C.Y. fl trp 11:26 a

  It was the digital flag she’d buried in the Tampa General Hospital database to notify her if anyone performed a search for a Charles Young, the name Eli Becker had been using at the Azure Waves. Apparently, three minutes earlier, someone had done just that. Which meant the surveillance she’d set up outside the hotel had been a waste of time. Those interested in the CIA analyst had somehow learned about Becker’s supposed heart attack and were checking area hospitals remotely.

  She had thought that might happen, but had hoped it would take at least a couple of days, if not a week, before someone came looking for Becker. Instead, only twelve hours had passed. An uncomfortable cushion at best.

  She frowned, knowing they would have to move again soon, likely delaying their progress. The client wouldn’t be particularly happy, but she’d waited this long, so what was a few more hours?

  But leaving soon was not the same as leaving right away. Gloria retrieved the special bag and went into the other room, where King and Nolan were waiting.

  “Call Andres,” she said to King. “Tell him I don’t need him in Tampa anymore and to get his ass up here.” She looked at Nolan. “You’re with me.”

  Together they headed toward the back room where Becker was locked away. It was time to find out what the son of a bitch knew.

  CHAPTER 8

  ORLANDO’S SON, GARRETT, was still at school, so the only people home when she and Quinn entered were Mr. and Mrs. Vu, the Vietnamese couple who took care of the household and watched Garrett when Orlando was away.

  “Welcome home, Jonathan,” Mr. Vu said.

  “You look hungry,” the man’s wife noted. “I make pho special for you. Come, come.” She motioned for Quinn and Orlando to follow her to the kitchen.

  “Maybe later,” Orlando told her. “We have some work we need to do so we’ll be up in the office.”

  “But he just fly a long trip,” Mrs. Vu said.

  “No problem,” Mr. Vu told his wife. “You can bring to them.”

  While Mrs. Vu looked annoyed, she made no further argument and headed toward the back of the house, her husband following.

  Quinn and Orlando went upstairs to the room Orlando used as an office at the front of the shotgun house. Where one desk had once been, there were now two. Quinn pulled his chair close to Orlando’s as she set down her phone and played the message through the speaker.

  “Orlando, it’s me,” Abraham said. Though he was trying to sound calm, there was an urgency in his voice. “I need your help. Just a little research so it should be easy. It’s time sensitive, though. I really need you to call me back as soon as you get this. Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Quinn frowned. “He didn’t come out of retirement, did he?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  She tapped CALL BACK. The first ring didn’t even finish before Abraham answered. “Hello?”

  “You called?” she said.

  “Thank God. I was starting to think that maybe you didn’t get my message.”

  “I’ve got Quinn here with me.”

  A beat. “Johnny?”

  Only two people had ever called Quinn that. The other was dead. But while his mentor Durrie usually had a sneer in his voice when he’d said it, Abraham had always used the name with respect.

  “Hello, Abraham,” Quinn said.

  “What’s this about needing some help?” Orlando asked.

  “I, um, well, I’m not sure if, um…” Abraham’s voice trailed off.

  “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “I was kind of thinking I could talk to you alone.”

  “Alone?” she said. “You know I’ll tell Quinn whatever you tell me.”

  “Even if I ask that you keep it to yourself?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitating.

  “It’s okay,” Quinn said, rising from his chair. “I don’t want to make you uncomfor
table. I’ll step out for a minute.”

  “If she’s going to tell you anyway, don’t bother,” Abraham grumbled.

  Quinn exchanged a look with Orlando. Abraham didn’t usually get upset easily.

  “Seriously,” Quinn said, “if it’s going to be a problem, then we can—”

  “No, no, it’s fine.” Abraham paused and took a deep breath. “Really, it’s fine. I just…” He fell silent again.

  “Abraham?” Orlando said.

  Nothing for a moment, then, “I need a little help tracking a vehicle.”

  “Please tell me you haven’t taken on a job,” she said.

  “Of course not.”

  “So you want me to track this car down for fun?”

  “I want you to track it down because I need to know where it went.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Okay,” she said. “I guess I could look it up. Do you have a plate number?”

  “I could look up a plate number myself. What I need to figure out is what route it took last night.”

  “Took, as in past tense?”

  “Yes.”

  Looking more confused than ever, she said, “I’m not sure how you’re expecting me to do that. If you’re thinking satellite footage, that’s going to be time consuming and possibly fruitless.”

  “No, I don’t mean satellite footage,” Abraham said, his exasperation leaking through again. “The vehicle I’m interested in has a transponder.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Sure, if it has a transponder, that’s different. Are we talking a big rig?”

  “It is not a big rig.”

  “Then what?”

  “A vehicle I’m trying to find.”

  Orlando glanced at Quinn, silently asking, “What the hell?” Since he was thinking the same thing, all he could do was shrug.

  “Do you at least have the transponder ID?” she asked.

  “Of course I do.” He read off a number. “Can you track it?”

  “It would help if I knew where I’m supposed to be looking, and, if possible, a more precise time frame than just last night.”

  “Tampa, Florida, eleven twenty p.m. onward.”

  “Is that where you are? Tampa?”

  No response.

  She frowned. “Abraham, what’s going on?

  “Nothing. This is a small matter, that’s all. Something for a friend.”

  “So you are working a job.”

  “A favor only. Listen, if you don’t want—”

  “Relax,” she said. “Why don’t you let me look into this and call you back, okay?”

  “You won’t be long, will you?” he asked. “I need to know right away.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  Orlando hung up and stared out the window, lost in thought.

  Quinn was considering breaking the silence when a knock on the door did it for him.

  Orlando made no indication she’d respond, so he said, “Yes?”

  “May we come in?” Mr. Vu asked.

  “Please.”

  Mrs. Vu came first, carrying a tray holding two steaming bowls of pho, and her husband was right behind her with glasses of her homemade lemonade.

  “Thank you,” Quinn told them as they set the meal on the desk.

  “If you want more, let us know. We bring up,” Mrs. Vu said.

  With that, the couple left and pulled the door closed behind them.

  Whether it was the click of the lock or the aroma of the pho, Orlando finally pulled herself from her trance. Without a word, she woke up her computer and began working. Knowing it was best not to disturb her, Quinn started in on his soup. It was as delicious as ever. Mrs. Vu had even added the exact amount of Sriracha sauce he liked.

  “Well, this is not what I expected,” she said several moments later. “Turns out Abraham’s mysterious vehicle is an ambulance.”

  Being in mid-bite, Quinn could only respond with a grunt.

  She opened another program and plugged in the transponder number. The computer took nearly fifteen seconds to gather the data and display it in list form. After studying the results, Orlando clicked on one of the addresses and a map opened. She nodded to herself, then performed the task again with a different address.

  “Huh,” she said.

  “What?” Quinn asked.

  “Looks like this ambulance only went on one trip last night, starting at a place called the Azure Waves Hotel.”

  “Where did it go?” he asked.

  She motioned for him to be quiet, so he dipped his chopsticks back into the pho, this time coming up with a tasty-looking piece of beef.

  Finally, Orlando leaned back. “Well, they didn’t stay in town.”

  “Where did they go?” he asked between chews.

  “Mississippi.”

  Quinn raised an eyebrow. “That’s a long way from Tampa.”

  “It is,” she agreed. “Looks like they stopped at a private home in a town called Moss Point.”

  Quinn leaned over so he could see the map. There were only four states in the US he had never been to. Mississippi was one of them. According to the map, Moss Point was in the narrow tab of land that touched the Gulf of Mexico at the southern end of the state, only a few miles from Alabama.

  Orlando switched from the overhead satellite shot to a street-level angle of the house in question. It was a brick one-story, with a gray roof and wide lawn. Nothing special about the place. Just an average house on an average street.

  She opened another window and entered the address into a search engine.

  “Oh,” she said in surprise. “Says here the house is currently on the market. And…it looks like it’s been for sale for nearly a year.” She clicked through the photos. “If these shots are accurate, then no one’s currently living there.”

  “Are you sure it was the ambulance’s final destination?” Quinn asked. “Maybe they just made a stop there for some reason.”

  “This is as far as they went.” She checked the screen again. “The vehicle sat there for thirty-four minutes, then headed back to Florida. Enough time to unload someone and stretch their legs.”

  “Maybe the listing’s out of date,” he suggested. “Could be the place was recently purchased and someone who needed an ambulance to get there is moving in.”

  She picked up her phone. “One way to know for sure.” She pulled up the real estate agencies information and dialed the number. “Yes, good afternoon. How y’all doin’?” she said, affecting a very passable Southern accent. “Thank you. I’m fine, too. The reason I’m calling is because my husband and I are moving to the area soon. We’ve been looking at different houses on the Internet—….Oh, sorry, yes, I’m Mary, Mary Hanson….Good to meet you, Debbie. See, we saw a place online that I believe you are the agent for.” Orlando gave the woman the address of the house the ambulance had visited, then listened for several seconds. “I see….Now that’s interesting….How large are the bedrooms?...Oh, is that right? Well, to be honest, I’m not sure that would work for us, then. Guess we’ll have to keep looking….I’ll check out what else you have to offer. We’ll be sure to stop by your office when we get to town….Yes, yes. Thank you again.” She hung up.

  “I’d like it very much if you’d use that accent from now on,” Quinn said. “Will that be a problem?”

  “Troll,” she scoffed, her voice back to normal. “The house is still for sale, but it’s under a short-term rental.”

  “How short?”

  “A week.”

  “So an ambulance takes someone to a house that until a day ago was empty, and will be again in a few more days,” he said. “Why would they do that?”

  Orlando stared at Quinn’s half-empty bowl of pho before twisting back to her computer and tapping on the keyboard again. He leaned in behind her so he could see what she was doing. She had the website to Azure Waves Hotel on the screen and was using it to work her way into the company’s system.

  “Ther
e’s an incident report here,” she said. “One of the guests apparently had a heart attack last night. A guy by the name of Charles Young. Sound familiar?”

  Quinn shook his head. “Sounds generic, if you ask me.”

  Though she didn’t say it, he knew she was thinking the same thing.

  “There was a woman with him when it happened,” she said, still looking at the screen. “Tina Dotson.”

  That didn’t sound quite so generic, but he’d still never heard the name before.

  “According to the report, she’s the one who called for the ambulance,” Orlando went on. “Get this—at eleven twenty p.m. It came from a place called Tobin Ambulance Services, which happens to own the vehicle the transponder number belongs to.”

  “So instead of taking this Mr. Young to a hospital,” Quinn said, “they took a man who’d just had a heart attack to…Mississippi? I don’t think I like where this is going.”

  Orlando frowned, her eyes staring once more out the window. “Neither do I.”

  CHAPTER 9

  MOSS POINT, MISSISSIPPI

  THE MOMENT ELI heard the doorknob turn he closed his eyes, hoping his captors would leave him alone if they thought he was asleep.

  The slap to his face told him otherwise.

  “Mr. Becker. Your attention, please.”

  He recognized the voice as belonging to the woman who had called herself Tina, though he now doubted that was her real name. She’d followed him off the elevator at the Azure Waves Hotel when he was returning from his errand. She’d acted drunk at first, but once the doors had closed after the other riders got off, she had sobered up in a hurry and shoved a gun into his side, telling him to take her to his room.

  Once inside, he’d felt the sting of a needle, and the next thing he knew, he was here—wherever here was—strapped to a gurney and wearing only his underwear.

  The woman slapped him again. “Mr. Becker, I know you’re not asleep.”

  As he reluctantly opened his eyes, she grabbed his chin and tilted his head up so she could lock her gaze onto his. “Are you listening?”