“How do you know his name?”
Orlando raised an eyebrow. “Really? You don’t think I could figure that out?”
“Then where is he?”
“Close to here.”
“You’re not lying, are you? This isn’t some trick to keep tabs on me?”
She fingered the collar of his jacket and removed the tracking chip. “I’ve already been keeping tabs on you,” she said, showing it to him. “But no, it’s not a trick.”
“Why don’t we all sit and we can fill you in,” Quinn suggested.
Begrudgingly, Abraham returned to his chair while Quinn and Orlando took the empty ones to his side.
Orlando explained how they had tracked the van and narrowed the possible destinations down to four. “It’s not a guarantee,” she said. “They might not be at any of these places, or they may have already moved on, but it’s better than nothing.”
Abraham was quiet for a moment, and then said, “You didn’t have to do this. You could have gone home.”
Orlando put a hand on his. “Of course we had to do this. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s what friends do, what family does.”
He hesitated, then clapped his other hand over hers.
__________
SINCE THE IDENTITIES of the people who’d taken Eli were still unknown, splitting up so they could check the houses faster was not an option Quinn would even entertain. They headed out together in the sedan Quinn and Orlando were using, leaving Winger’s and Marguerite’s cars at the truck stop.
The first two houses they visited were being used by families who looked like they’d been there more than a day or two. The third had clearly been occupied sometime in the last several days, but from the abundance of cigarette butts and the piles of empty beer cans, Quinn thought it likely the place was being used as a hangout for local teens.
That left them with one final option.
Like the others, it was a farmhouse, in this case set off the road several hundred feet, with a faded white barn in back and a few shade trees in the yard. They couldn’t see, however, any vehicles or signs of life from the main road.
They drove past the long driveway to the end of the field, where a ditch about four feet deep ran all the way back to a small, wild grove about fifty yards beyond the house. Quinn parked their car where it couldn’t be seen from the property, then they all piled out and began working their way down the trench.
Every fifty feet or so, Quinn would pause and check the house. There were still no signs of movement, no light coming from inside. He had hoped to spot the van parked behind the home, but as the back area came into view, all he could see were more grass and bushes and trees.
He gathered everyone together and said, “Orlando and I are going to go over and check.” He could see Abraham opening his mouth to protest so he pointed at him. “You are going to stay here. No argument. You come with us and we’d spend all our time worrying about you.”
Abraham looked none too happy.
“Permission to shoot him if he tries to follow you,” Marguerite said.
“Permission granted,” Orlando replied.
“I’ll stay, okay?” Abraham said.
Quinn and Orlando continued down the ditch until they reached the grove at the back of the field. They moved through the trees until the barn was between them and the house, and then sprinted across the open ground.
Quinn peered through the barn’s partially open door. It was a big, wide, open space holding nothing but dust. They moved to the east side, where the shadows were already deep and black, and headed to the front end. There they stopped and got their first good look at the house.
“Window, second from the right,” Orlando whispered.
Quinn looked where she indicated. It was curtained like the other windows along the back, but the rod holding the drape in place was askew, as if something had bumped it.
“See any movement?” he asked.
“No.”
Staying low, they traversed the ground between the barn and the house, crouched next to the back-door steps, and waited there for some kind of response. When none came, Quinn eased up the stairs and peered through the window in the door.
The room beyond was a kitchen with nothing on the countertops, and no table or chairs in the breakfast nook. The door was locked, so he pulled out his set of picks and remedied the situation in seconds.
He pushed the door open an inch and listened for sounds from inside. After hearing nothing, he opened the door wide enough for them to enter.
A fine layer of dust covered the counters and sink. Their information indicated the house had been rented in the last forty-eight hours, but the occupants had apparently not made use of the kitchen.
Odd.
There were two doors out of the room—one to the left leading into a small laundry area, and one straight ahead that accessed the rest of the house. They moved toward the latter, stopping again to listen.
Quiet came in many forms. The peaceful quiet of people sleeping. The tense quiet of someone lying in wait. The hollow quiet of empty space. Quinn was familiar with all. This quiet was the last. But while he was sure no one else was in the house, there had been those rare times when his senses were wrong, so he kept alert as he eased into the living room, scanning for danger.
Orlando touched his arm and pointed at several places on the floor in front of them. The hardwood planks had received their fair share of dust, too, but in a large section the dust had been disturbed. Someone had been here recently.
There was something else, a smell in the air Quinn recognized immediately. Tangy and metallic.
Blood. And not just a drop or two.
He looked at Orlando again and saw she’d also registered it.
They moved into the dining area and through an opening into a hallway that contained several open doors. The smell was considerably stronger here. Not only that, they could hear something now, low and constant. Almost a hum.
Like the smell, it was a sound Quinn knew.
Slowly, they moved down the darkened hall, checking the first room, then the second, before approaching the last door. As they neared, Quinn noticed something on the hallway wall opposite the room. A dark spot, runny, like someone had dribbled paint against it.
He moved up to the door, checked to make sure Orlando was ready behind him, and then swung into the opening, moving his gun back and forth as he looked for targets.
If dealing with the dead hadn’t been his profession, the smell would have overwhelmed him. The body was crumpled across a gurney that took up the majority of the room. The smell was more blood than rot, which meant the victim hadn’t been dead that long. By the growing swarm of buzzing flies, though, he knew it had been at least a few hours.
He moved to the side so Orlando could take a look.
The dead man couldn’t have been more than forty years old. He was clothed only in a pair of underwear, and while his hands were free, his ankles were strapped to the gurney with leather restraints. He had bruises on his face, shoulders, and legs, all of which looked no more than a day or two old. What had killed him, though, was a gunshot to the forehead.
“Fits the description,” he said.
“Yeah,” Orlando agreed. “Dammit.”
She moved in for a closer look.
“Needle marks,” she said, nodding at the man’s upper arm.
They saw at least four insertion points. Quinn had no doubt something had been pumped into the guy’s system to get him to talk.
“Abraham?” he asked.
Orlando was quiet for a second before she sighed and said, “I’ll get him.”
__________
QUINN HEARD THE back door slam open, and then hurried steps moving through the kitchen and living room.
“Where?” Abraham said outside the hallway.
“Down there,” Orlando replied. “Last door on the left.”
A moment later, Abraham appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
As he moved over to the gurney, Orlando entered the room behind him.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Quinn asked.
Abraham dipped his head, covering his eyes with his hand. “Yes,” he whispered. “It’s Eli.”
Quinn put a hand on Abraham’s back. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s my fault. It’s my fucking fault.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Orlando said. “You couldn’t have stopped them.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.
“If it helps at all,” Quinn said, “I think he went down fighting.”
Abraham looked at him, brow furrowed.
Quinn gently lifted Eli Becker’s left forearm. “Look at his wrist. It’s all cut up and some of the skin is missing right where the cuff would be.” He set the arm down and lifted the cuff as far as it would go. “See, it’s still closed, but it looks stretched. The other cuff is open. I think he worked the first one free and then undid the buckle on the other.”
“A lot of good it did him,” Abraham said.
“True, but I have a feeling he did a little damage. There’s a large bloodstain on the hallway wall. Fresh. Too far away to be his.”
Abraham glanced back at the hallway before returning his gaze to his dead friend.
“Don’t you see?” Orlando asked. “The way he was killed was reactionary. If it had been planned out, they would have gone with a considerably less messy method and dumped his body someplace it would never be found. If you ask me, they weren’t ready to get rid of him yet. Which means they probably didn’t get out of him whatever it was they were trying to learn.”
“He’s still dead, though,” Abraham said.
No one had a response for that.
Abraham took a deep breath. “We can’t leave him here.”
“No,” Quinn said. “I’ll take care of it.”
DALLAS, TEXAS
DAENG HAD CHOSEN well.
Instead of finding a building that was part of a new construction project, he’d located a secluded tavern outside the city that was in the process of being totally refurbished. In addition to the interior being gutted, the renovations seemingly included replacing all plumbing and sewer lines, necessitating the removal of large chunks of concrete from the basement floor. The kicker was that the place sat in the center of three acres of tree-filled land, giving Nate and Daeng more than adequate privacy.
As soon as the construction crew had cleared out that afternoon, Nate and Daeng had moved in. Nate selected the largest of the temporary basement trenches, and they began by digging sideways under the remaining concrete floor. After that was braced with two-by-four supports, they started digging a grave that would be at a lower level than the new plumbing.
They had been digging only a few minutes when Nate’s phone rang. While he hopped out to take the call, Daeng continued digging.
“Hello?” Daeng heard Nate say. “Oh, hey….Good. Just doing some prep work. Termination’s scheduled for eleven p.m. We should be done and on our way back by morning….What?.…Um, had to improvise a little….Ground and chemical—why?….Excuse me?….Well, I guess. That’s kind of….No, no. It’s okay….I’ll text you the address.”
A few moments later, Nate hopped down into the trench again.
“That was Quinn,” he said. “We’ll have to dig a little deeper.”
Daeng dumped a shovelful of dirt on the pile. “Why?”
“Apparently we’re going to have an extra body.”
CHAPTER 14
LOUISIANA
TAKING WINGER WITH him, Quinn returned to Baton Rouge, where he ditched the car he and Orlando had arrived in and procured a crew-cab pickup, complete with a cover over the back. After stopping at a Home Depot for supplies, they swung by the Love’s Truck Stop so Winger could pick up his sedan and then returned to the farm.
Abraham insisted on helping wrap Eli in the newly purchased plastic. After they were done, Quinn secured it with duct tape, and with Winger and Marguerite’s help, carried Eli to the truck and placed him in the bed.
“You two are officially released,” Orlando told the two freelancers after everything was closed up. “I’ll wire your payments to your accounts.”
“Not necessary,” Marguerite said. “We take care of our own, you know?”
“Yeah,” Winger agreed. “No charge.”
“That wasn’t our deal.”
“Keep it. We’ll just send it back,” Marguerite said. She looked at Abraham. “Think twice next time you try to run away from a pretty woman.”
Abraham could barely manage a smile. “Thank you for your help.”
“You all take care,” Winger said.
He and Marguerite walked over to his car and left.
“Let’s get going,” Quinn said. “It’s already going to be late by the time we get there.”
He climbed behind the wheel while the other two entered the passenger side, Orlando insisting her old mentor ride up front. No one said a word as they made their way through the parish roads back to the interstate.
After they’d been cruising along the highway for several minutes, Orlando said, “Why did they kill him, Abraham?”
Abraham stared out the window before saying, “Quinn’s probably right. He was trying to get away.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” She waited, but he said nothing. “Why did you say it was your fault?”
“Because it is.”
Quinn could have felt the tension between them from a mile away.
“Need I remind you that we’re transporting a body for you across state lines?” Orlando said. “Perhaps it was none of our business at first, but now we are in this. Thick. So, what is going on?”
More silence. Quinn shot a quick glance at Abraham, thinking the old tech was going to stonewall again, but the look on the man’s face told a different story, one of pain and confusion and need.
“Seven years ago,” Abraham finally began, “I was hired for a job. My last one, though I didn’t realize it until the end.”
A pause.
“What was the job?” Orlando prodded him.
“I…I was to pick up a package in Osaka and take it to Amsterdam.”
“You were a courier?” Orlando said.
“There comes a point as you get older when the jobs you were once offered don’t come your way nearly as often. Sometimes you end up having to take something…less.”
Quinn heard not only sadness in the words but a loss of self-respect. It was so seldom anyone ever lasted in the business as long as Abraham had that it’d never occurred to Quinn what the older man had gone through at the end of his career.
This time Orlando waited out Abraham’s silence.
When he spoke again, he said, “I expected the package to be something I could put in my pocket, or at the very worst, in my bag. What I didn’t expect was a four-year-old girl.”
“A child?” Orlando asked.
“Tessa,” Abraham said. “That’s her name.”
Quinn said, “Maybe you should tell us about this mission.”
Abraham told them what he knew about Operation Overtake and the days he spent escorting Tessa from Japan to a team in Amsterdam.
“And you have no idea where they took her?” Orlando asked when he finished.
“My job was done. I wasn’t supposed to know.” He turned his head away, facing the side window. “I should have insisted on going with them. At least then it would have been easier for her.”
“You know they would’ve never let that happen,” Quinn said. “That’s not how these things work.”
“I know, but…I didn’t even try.”
“I still don’t understand how Eli Becker works into this,” Orlando said.
“Eli was a contact of mine, a friend.” He paused. “I just wanted to make sure Tessa was all right. Since Eli worked for the CIA, I thought there might be a chance he could get access to info
rmation about her that I never could. He came up dry, but I asked him if he could keep checking now and then for me, in case something surfaced. Every time I called him, he’d tell me the same thing—sorry, no news. I know he was annoyed with me, but he never shut me down. Just said he’d continue looking. The last time I called to check was a few days ago. Like usual, he had no news. But then he called me the day before yesterday. Said he found something, but didn’t want to tell me over the phone. Asked me to meet him at the Azure Waves Hotel in Tampa. When I got there, they told me he’d had a heart attack the night before and was at the hospital. Well, you basically know the rest. So you see, it is my fault this happened to him. If he hadn’t been looking into Tessa for me, no one would have come after him.”
“Who do you think these people are?” Quinn asked.
Abraham shook his head. “I’ve been trying to figure that out since I realized Eli had been taken. My best guess is that they’re connected to whoever has Tessa now. Maybe Eli was getting too close to the truth and they wanted to shut him down.”
While Quinn knew it wasn’t the only possibility, it was a good guess given what little they knew.
“You have no idea who Tessa is?” Orlando asked.
“No, but not from lack of trying. After leaving her like I did, it seemed as good a time as any to retire, so I ended up with a lot of time on my hands. For the first several months, I was on the Internet for hours, researching missing kids, looking for a death I might be able to connect to the murder of her mother, just trying to find anything that would hint at who she was or where she’d come from.” He grimaced. “I don’t search as much as I used to. Just a couple hours.”
“A couple hours what?” she asked.
He hesitated. “A day.”
Seven years on and Abraham was still looking for the girl every single day. Quinn didn’t know what to think about that. His own mentor, Durrie, had always stressed that one should never become personally involved in a job. Quinn couldn’t claim to have always lived up to that rule, but a job had never turned into an obsession for him like this one had for Abraham.
The Discarded Page 10
