The Discarded

by Brett Battles

  The woman glanced their way as she moved onto the sidewalk, but she appeared not to give their presence any importance. With her colleague in tow, she walked over to the building that lined the block and entered through an unmarked door.

  Quinn had hoped they’d stay out in the open a bit longer, giving him and Daeng more time to narrow the distance between them, but so much for that.

  Picking up his pace, he made a quick study of the building. While there were businesses here and there along the ground floor, the nine floors above them appeared to be occupied by either offices or condos. Plenty of places for the man and woman to get lost in before Quinn and Daeng could get eyes on them again.

  Daeng reached the door a half step ahead of Quinn and tried the knob.

  “Locked.”

  No keyhole in the door, only a security pad on the wall. Unfortunately, the device that could have circumvented the system was in Quinn’s bag in the SUV.

  He looked around. A dozen yards to his left was the main door to the building, probably with a receptionist or security guard waiting inside. To his right, a restaurant at the corner. More people, but…

  “Come on,” he said to Daeng and headed for the restaurant.

  A hostess greeted them with a pleasant smile as they entered. “Welcome to Nic’s. Just the two of you?”

  “Yes,” Quinn said.

  “This way.”

  She turned and walked into the dining area.

  “A table by the window okay for you?” she asked.

  “Fine,” Quinn told her. “Could you direct me to your restroom first?”

  She stopped. “Oh, of course. Back there and to the right.”

  “I could probably use a stop, too,” Daeng said. He smiled at the waitress. “Which table will be ours?”

  She pointed toward the windows. “That one there. I’ll have water waiting when you get back.”

  “Great.”

  The two men headed through the restaurant, bypassed the restroom entrance, and entered the kitchen.

  Eight people were present—five cooks and three in the cleanup crew. The only ones who had so far noticed Quinn and Daeng were the two men washing dishes near the door. But both went right back to what they were doing without saying anything.

  Along the back wall in the corner was a metal security door, clearly denoting where the restaurant ended and the rest of the building began. In other words, a rear exit.

  Quinn and Daeng walked quickly toward the door, and were halfway there when a member of the cook staff said, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to be back here.”

  “DC police,” Quinn barked.

  If the guy said anything in response, it was lost as Quinn and Daeng rushed through the rear exit into a long service corridor.

  A bundle of pipes ran along the ceiling in one corner, while evenly spaced fluorescent lights hung in a line down the center. Quinn immediately ran to the left, mentally working out the distance between the restaurant and the doorway the others had entered. Exactly where he expected it was a short corridor that ran all the way back to the outside wall. No one was there.

  He could feel the tick of every second as he scanned farther down the central hallway, trying to figure out where the man and woman might have gone. He spotted a door about fifty feet away to the right with a sign that read:

  COURTYARD ENTRANCE

  “This way,” Quinn said to Daeng, hoping he was right.

  He raced over and pushed the door open.

  Bare trees and bushes lined a short, windy path that led from the door to a walkway. On the other side of the walkway was a tan block wall, high enough to conceal the rest of the courtyard from view. They followed the path up a series of steps until they could see over the top of the obstruction. The brick wall turned out to be supporting a central section where a few trees and grass probably grew in the summer.

  To the left of this area, another set of stairs led up to a portion of the large courtyard that was raised even higher.

  “I think someone’s up there,” Daeng said.

  Quinn had heard the footsteps, too, clacking rhythmically on the stone path. He jogged up until he could just see over the top of the stairs, then stopped.

  The woman and the man from the sedan were nearing a set of glass doors that led back into the building, their backs to Quinn and Daeng. At first Quinn thought they were going inside, but instead a pudgy man with salt and pepper hair stepped out and greeted them.

  Crouching, Quinn moved up the steps as far as he could without being detected. He pulled out his phone again and reattached the telephoto lens. This time he was able to get much better pictures of the woman and her colleague, as they would occasionally turn enough for him to snap nearly three-quarter profile shots. He was also able to take several pictures of the man they were meeting.

  From their interaction, Quinn sensed that the older guy held rank over the woman, and that she held rank over the man who had come with her. At one point, the woman turned to her companion and said something. In response, he handed the older man the suitcase.

  Quinn was curious what it might contain, but unless they were going to open it, that would have to remain a mystery for the moment.

  The trio spoke for a few more minutes, then the woman and her partner began to turn back the way they’d come.

  Quinn dipped below the level of the stairs and looked over at Daeng.

  “The older guy—you saw him?” Quinn said.

  “I did,” Daeng replied.

  “See where he goes. Nate and I will keep on the other two.”

  Daeng nodded and moved down the stairs far enough that he could stand up without being seen. Then, as if he belonged on the premises, he headed back up again, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

  When Quinn reached the bottom, he hurried along the path they’d taken into the courtyard. If he was right, the other two’s business here was done and they were leaving. He needed to be back on the street when they appeared. He skipped the entrance to the hallway in favor of a door marked GARAGE. This led him down one level, where he quickly located the car ramp and reached the public sidewalk before the others reappeared.

  His phone vibrated only seconds after he got there.

  “The sedan’s heading back to the drop-off point,” Nate said.

  “Figured. Looks like they’ve wrapped up here. Meet me same place as before.”

  Quinn headed down the sidewalk to be in position as soon as Nate arrived. Before he got there, however, he heard the door the man and woman had used earlier open behind him. He turned on his phone’s front-facing camera and angled it so he could see behind him. As expected, the woman and man had exited the building.

  The moment Nate pulled to the curb, Quinn jumped into the front passenger seat.

  “Where’s Daeng?” Nate asked.

  “We’ll pick him up later. Right now, let’s see where these guys go.”

  __________

  DAENG DIDN’T EVEN receive a passing glance from the woman and man as he walked by them in the courtyard. A goateed Asian guy with hair down to his shoulders, he’d probably been pegged as a service-industry employee at one of the local hotels. The joys of racial profiling—an ugly practice he had taken advantage of on more than one occasion.

  By the time he reached the door at the end of the walkway, the older man who’d met the two people had gone inside. Daeng wasn’t worried, though. He had seen the guy turn to the right, but being overweight, the man wouldn’t get far.

  When Daeng stepped through the doorway, he found himself in a lounge area set up with seating and tables. It had a path curving through the lounge in a way that some architect must have thought was a flash of brilliance. The fat man was waddling down the thruway, so it took almost no effort at all for Daeng to close the distance between them to a mere ten feet.

  Up close now, he could see the man wore an expensive overcoat, and though Daeng couldn’t see the man’s suit from behind, he was willing to bet th
at it, too, was made from the finest of materials.

  Because of the raised area in the courtyard, this section of the building was on the second floor. Ahead was a marble stairway leading down, and to its right, a set of elevators. The target skipped the former and headed straight for the lifts. Daeng thought this meant the guy had been intending to go up, but the man waited for and then entered a car heading down. Daeng and a few others shuffled on with him.

  Before the doors closed, several buttons were pushed for the lower levels of a parking garage. That had to be it, Daeng decided. Taking the down elevator made sense to him now. Until the target reached out and pushed the button for level 1.

  You lazy son of a bitch, Daeng thought. No wonder the guy was overweight.

  A short ride down, the doors opened again and the target exited. Daeng tried to keep the disapproval off his face as he followed the man.

  They were in a main lobby area, with dozens of people moving about and several more waiting in line at a coffee shop along the west wall. A podium was set up near the front door, and behind it stood a middle-aged man in a sharp black uniform, white shirt, purple tie, and black doorman hat.

  As the target approached the podium, Daeng moved in as close as he dared.

  “Mr. Boyer,” the man behind the podium said. “Leaving us already?”

  “I’m in a bit of a hurry,” the target—Boyer—said, handing the man a ticket.

  “I’ll have your car brought up right way.”

  As the man picked up a phone, Boyer started to turn back to the lobby.

  There was no time for Daeng to get out of his way, so he smiled and said, “Excuse me, is this where we arrange for a taxi?”

  Boyer couldn’t have looked less interested if he tried. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, barely even looking at Daeng.

  Daeng watched him move near the doors to wait.

  The man at the podium returned his phone to its cradle and said to Daeng, “How may I help you, sir?”

  “Taxi?”

  “Of course. I can signal one. If you’ll head outside, it should be there in a moment.”

  “Thank you,” Daeng said, handing the man a tip.

  The promised taxi pulled to the curb a moment after Daeng stepped outside. As he got into the back, the driver said, “Where to?”

  “Hold on a moment,” Daeng said, pulling out his cell phone. “I need to check something.”

  “Hey, I can’t just sit—”

  Daeng dropped a twenty-dollar bill into the front seat. “Let’s not be in too much of a hurry, shall we?”

  The cabbie grabbed the bill. “This isn’t part of the fare.”

  “Of course not.”

  The bill disappeared into the driver’s pocket.

  Daeng switched his phone to camera mode and looked out the window. Less than a minute passed before a dark blue Maserati Ghibli pulled to the curb in front of the taxi. A few seconds later, the door to the building opened and Boyer walked out.

  Daeng shot a picture of the car and zoomed in on the license plate.

  Expensive clothes. Expensive car. Whoever this Boyer was, he had access to cash—a lot of it.

  Daeng texted the pictures to Orlando and Quinn, and then leaned forward and said to the cabbie, “A hundred-dollar tip if you do this right.”

  “Do what right?” the driver asked, more than a bit wary.

  “Follow that car.”

  __________

  THOUGH ORLANDO HAD started to think the photo of Tessa would be the only thing of interest on Eli’s computer, she wouldn’t know for sure until she could finish a complete examination of the drive, a process being hindered by the pictures Quinn kept sending her.

  The first set had been nearly useless—photos shot from a moving car, at angles far from desirable. The only one she could get enough data points on to feed through the facial recognition database was of the man sitting in the backseat. So far, an alarm hadn’t gone off to tell her she had a match.

  The next group was better. The woman and two men, neither of whom was the guy she was already checking out. The pictures of the woman and the younger man were also profile shots, but much clearer and showing more of their features. The pic of the older man was full face. With graying hair and more weight than he needed, he looked to be in his late fifties to early sixties. None of the three were familiar to her. Since she was almost done with Eli’s computer, she decided to hold off on putting the photos through the recognition process until she finished. Fifteen minutes, tops.

  Before she even got halfway to that point, her phone dinged again.

  She cursed under her breath as she grabbed it.

  She was expecting to see more photos from Quinn, but the two new pictures were from Daeng. These were different from the others, not pictures of people but a Maserati—one a wide shot of its back, and one a close-up of its license plate.

  Curious, she ran the license number through the DC motor vehicles database. The car was not registered to an individual, but to a corporation called McCrillis International.

  The name was vaguely familiar, which annoyed her.

  Her memory had always been something she could count on, but lately it had begun to fail her on occasion.

  “What’s wrong?” Abraham asked.

  She blinked and looked at him. She hadn’t realized her frustration was noticeable. “Nothing,” she said. “Sorry.”

  She returned her attention to the computer and searched for information about McCrillis International.

  The first link that came up cleared the fog from her mind.

  __________

  QUINN AND NATE followed the sedan through heavy traffic east to Connecticut Avenue NW. There the others traveled only half a block north before pulling up in front of the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel. Bags were removed from the back and keys were given to a valet. Apparently the Renaissance was where they would stay.

  Quinn had just told Nate to find a place to park when Orlando called.

  “You get a hit on one of my pictures?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “But I did on Daeng’s.”

  He had seen the pictures of the Maserati a few minutes earlier. “The license plate.”

  “Yeah. It’s registered to, get this, McCrillis International.”

  “McCrillis?” he said, surprised.

  McCrillis’s public front was that of an international law firm that specialized in business partnerships and joint ventures. It did generate quite a bit of business in that area, but its lesser known private side was what brought in the bulk of the company’s income. In effect, it was to the business world what the Office had been to the intelligence community, an agency that specialized in doing the things businesses themselves couldn’t—industrial espionage, undercover smear campaigns, sabotage, and even the occasional target elimination. Since the skill sets needed for most of the company’s projects were similar to those used in the secret world, some freelancers dabbled in both arenas, but the majority tended to keep to one sphere or the other.

  And while it was true that intelligence agencies would often find it necessary to make incursions into the corporate world, it was nearly unheard of for industrial intelligence organizations to make a move in the other direction. When the latter did, they usually received more than a hand slap. So, having a company like McCrillis even tangentially connected to the death of a CIA analyst was highly unusual. And yet Quinn had witnessed a meeting that apparently connected McCrillis to the people who had been searching Eli’s home less than twenty-four hours after the man’s death.

  “Do we know who the old guy is yet?” he asked.

  “Just a second, I’m…” Her voice trailed off, and he could hear her working on her computer. After a moment she said softly, “Ah. There you are.”

  “There who is?”

  “I’m on McCrillis’s website. It has pictures and biographies of all their top executives. Our friend in the Maserati is one Ethan Boyer, Executive Vice President, Special P
rojects.”

  “Ethan Boyer,” Quinn said, letting the name hang in the air for a moment. “Never heard of him.”

  “Me, neither,” she said. “But how much you want to bet your other friends work for McCrillis, too?”

  __________

  FINDING A CAB driver who was skilled at the art of following another car was a hit–or-miss proposition. Unfortunately for Daeng, his driver fell into the latter category.

  While the cabbie was able to keep the Maserati in view, that was more due to the heavy evening traffic and some erratic driving than any talent on his part.

  “Careful,” Daeng said. “If he sees us, the hundred is off the table.”

  “I’m doing everything I can,” the cabbie said angrily. “Do you want me to stop and just let you out here?”

  Daeng was tempted to say yes, but a call from Quinn put it on hold.

  “The guy in the Maserati’s name is Boyer,” Quinn said. “Give you the details later. Right now, go ahead and break off.” Quinn told him where the SUV was parked. “We’ll wait for you here.”

  As Daeng pushed his phone back into his pocket, he said, “Change of plans.” He repeated the address Quinn had given him. “Quick as you can.”

  The cabbie looked at Daeng through his mirror, concerned. “What about the tip?”

  __________

  ETHAN BOYER DID not take security lightly, especially his own. While he hadn’t noticed the cab following him, the men who always monitored his position from a trail car had.

  Whitmore, the driver of his shadow car, said, “They’re turning off. What do you want us to do?”

  “Has backup arrived yet?” Boyer asked.

  “One minute out.”

  Crap. The idea of driving around without his security detail for sixty seconds was unappealing to say the least, but if it was the only way to find out who had been following him, he didn’t see a choice.

  “Go,” he said.

  __________

  “PULL OVER ANYWHERE in the next block,” Daeng said.

  As if he’d been waiting to hear those words, the cabbie immediately pulled to the curb and turned off the meter. “Forty-seven twenty,” he announced.