The Collected

by Brett Battles

“What if she doesn’t?”

  Orlando looked at him, her eyes softening. “I ask you again, what choice do we have?”

  Quinn stared down at the ground and closed his eyes. “Dammit.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “It’s not a yes.”

  “But it’s not a no, either.”

  Quinn’s eyelids parted, but he said nothing.

  Daeng clapped him on the back. “See, I told you you’d find the path.”

  CHAPTER 37

  HARRIS TOOK HIS normal position by the window as the final prisoner was brought into his employer’s office. Like him, the man was bald, but that’s where the similarities ended. The prisoner was several inches shorter than Harris, and stocky. The prototypical human bulldog.

  Janus shoved the man at the chair.

  “I can walk,” the prisoner growled.

  Even though he was older than the others they had collected, he showed no signs of being more affected by the whipping.

  The man took his seat.

  As before, Harris’s employer was watching a replay of the morning’s whipping session on his tablet computer. A few minutes passed before he turned it off and looked at his guest.

  “I think you know who I am,” Romero said.

  “Sure,” the prisoner said. “A discarded piece of shit.”

  Harris could almost feel the temperature of the room increase.

  “If there is anything discarded here, it’s you! You see, I know who you are, too. I know what you did.”

  “Congratulations. Can I go back to my suite now? I have a massage scheduled in a few minutes.”

  Romero began to shake with anger. As he tried to speak, he suddenly began to cough.

  Moving quickly to his side, Harris could see that Romero’s face was turning red as he continued to hack. Harris ran over to the water pitcher on the credenza, filled one of the glasses, and hurried back. “Drink this,” he said, holding it to the old man’s lips. “Janus!”

  The big Ukrainian threw open the door and rushed into the room.

  Harris shot a glance at the prisoner. “Take him back to his—”

  “No,” Romero croaked. He coughed again, and took another drink. “No. I’m not finished.”

  Janus looked at Harris, unsure of what to do.

  “Maybe you can continue this later,” Harris suggested.

  Romero shook his head, no longer coughing. “No. Now.”

  “At least allow me to get your nurse.”

  “No!”

  Through it all, the prisoner had watched the old man, his only movement a growing wry smile. “How much longer do you have?” he asked.

  “Longer than you,” the old man shot back.

  The prisoner snickered, his smile unwavering.

  Harris studied Romero for a moment longer, then took a step back and nodded at Janus. With a shrug, Janus walked back into the hallway and shut the door.

  The old man locked eyes with the prisoner.

  “I assume you also know why you are here,” Romero said.

  “A petty act of revenge?”

  Harris eyed his boss, worried the old man was going to lose it again, but Romero seemed to be in control now.

  “Petty is a matter of perspective. If you wish to think of it that way, be my guest. As long as you know why you’re here, that is all that is important to me.”

  Romero paused, as if expecting some kind of retort, but the prisoner merely stared at him.

  “One more thing before you return to your cell, something I want you to know and live with in the short time you have left. Since you were the one in charge and organized the…what do they call it?”

  That was Harris’s cue. “Termination,” he said.

  “Right. The one who organized the termination, you will be the last to die. That way, you can watch each of the men from the team you put together take their last breath, and know that you are the one who brought this on. You are the one killing them.”

  If the smile faltered on the prisoner’s face, Harris didn’t see it.

  The old man leaned back. “Okay. Now I’m done.”

  “Janus!” Harris said.

  As Janus reentered the room, the prisoner stood up. He gave the old man a slight nod, and did the same with Harris. As he rounded his chair, Janus latched on to his arm and guided him forcefully toward the door.

  Before they could exit, the prisoner stopped and looked back. “One thing you should probably know.”

  Both Harris and the old man looked at him.

  “You’re wrong about which one of us is going to die first.”

  “Get him out of here!” Harris yelled at Janus.

  Janus all but threw the prisoner into the hallway. Once the door was shut, Harris looked at Romero. The old man’s head was bowed, his hands tightly clutching the edge of the desk.

  “He’s just trying to—”

  Romero cut him off. “I want you to move up the start time of the next round.”

  “Of course. When would you like to begin?”

  “Right now.”

  __________

  “WHAT NOW?” ONE of Nate’s fellow prisoners whispered.

  They had once again been hooded and led from their cells into the courtyard, but instead of being guided onto pedestals, they had been lined up next to each other and told not to move.

  The cooling breeze bespoke the onset of evening, and would have felt good if not for the fact it kept blowing the new shirt Nate had been given against the untreated wounds on his back. But that was more of an annoyance. The true pain that continued radiating through his body at a steady, unrelenting pace needed no wind to aid it.

  Thirty minutes passed with no new instructions. Nate knew it was meant to weaken their minds, by allowing them to speculate what might be coming and letting their worst fears rise from their unconsciousness. But Nate—and the others, he was sure—had been too well trained for such a simple trick to work.

  In the distance, he heard the whine of the same electric motor he’d heard that morning before the whippings occurred, and now knew it must be a wheelchair bearing the old man from the office.

  This was obviously his show.

  The noise grew until it was somewhere in front of them, and then stopped, silence filling the courtyard.

  Nate expected either Harris or the man in the chair to lecture them on what was about to happen, but instead a sudden hum filled the air. Before he could even figure out what it might be, there was a loud, unmistakably electric crackle.

  There was a pause, then another crackle, this time only a dozen feet in front of him, the air nearby tingling with the charge.

  And yet another, a little farther away.

  “Who would like to go first?” Harris asked.

  No one said a word.

  “No volunteers?”

  Silence for several seconds, then the old man said, “Him.”

  The sound of bodies moving. Nate was jostled to the side, and the man who’d been standing next to him was grabbed and pulled forward.

  “Hey!” the prisoner called out. It was Berkeley. “What are you doing?”

  “On the table,” Harris said. “Strap him down and remove his shoes.”

  Nate tensed. Shoes?

  “What…what are you doing?” Berkeley asked again.

  “Remove the hood.”

  A pause, then Berkeley said, “Oh, God. No! Please, no!”

  “It’s going to happen one way or another, so there’s no use struggling,” Harris told him.

  For the next few minutes, there was only the sound of movement.

  “We’re ready,” Harris finally announced.

  “Proceed,” the old man told him.

  The hum started up again.

  “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” Berkeley repeated.

  Without warning, the volume of the hum increased, and Berkeley’s pleading became a guttural, stuttering groan. This lasted several seconds before the hum decreased. Berkeley sounded like
a balloon giving up its last bit of air.

  Electroshock. There was no question. And from what Harris said earlier, at least one of the electrodes must have been attached to a foot. That was a big, big problem. While the synthetic material around Nate’s faux foot was good, it wasn’t skin. Even if they didn’t notice it, which he was sure they would, the material would melt as the massive amount of electricity shot through it.

  “Again,” the old man said.

  The hum increased, sending another shock through Berkeley’s system.

  Next up was Lanier. He made no struggle or pleas for divine intervention. The only thing he said after he was strapped in was, “What are you waiting for?”

  “Next?” Harris asked.

  “Him,” the old man said.

  This time the hands seized Nate. He let them maneuver him to a table.

  “Here. Let me help,” he said. He kicked off his left shoe before the hands moved to his feet.

  What he didn’t know was if they needed both or just one.

  As the bag was removed from his head, he looked down to see a man remove his left sock and place an electrode against the sole of his foot. His right shoe, the one on his artificial leg, was left untouched.

  He was so relieved that he barely noticed as they placed the secured electrodes to his body.

  “Ready,” Harris said.

  “Proceed.”

  All thoughts vanished from Nate’s mind as every nerve in his body caught fire. There was no time, no place, no nothing. Just a brilliant spike of white, searing pain.

  He suddenly found himself lying on the table, panting. Throughout his body, muscles contracted and stretched on their own. He could still feel the electric current under his skin like it was a living thing, randomly jumping from one part of his body to another.

  “Again,” the old man said.

  Before Nate could even register the word, oblivion descended again.

  CHAPTER 38

  THEY TOOK A room in a hotel near the center of Tampico that Orlando deemed to have adequate Wi-Fi coverage.

  While she buried herself in her laptop, Quinn tried calling Misty, but only got through to her voice mail. He left a message, then called Steve Howard.

  “She wanted me to stay here at her place,” Howard said. “Said she’d be back within a few hours.”

  “Where did she go?” Quinn asked.

  “To get something for you, I gathered, but she wouldn’t say where that was.”

  “You should have gone with her.”

  “Oh, I know. I actually did try to follow her, but damn if that woman didn’t give me the slip. Are we sure she was only Peter’s assistant?”

  Quinn told him to call back as soon as she returned, and hung up.

  Waiting was a prominent part of a cleaner’s job. If you weren’t good at it, you might as well find some other profession. But this wasn’t waiting for someone to give him the signal to remove a body. This was waiting for information other people were gathering for him, and it made him feel restless.

  “Anyone else hungry?” he asked, needing to do something. “I’ll go out and see what I can find.”

  “I’ll join you,” Daeng said, pushing himself off one of the beds.

  “No, I’ll go.” Liz jumped up.

  Even Orlando looked up in surprise.

  Quinn headed for the door. “All right. Come on.”

  There was no need to use the car. There were plenty of places within walking distance to pick up a meal.

  For the first few minutes, neither of them spoke as they headed down the street.

  As they neared a few restaurants, Quinn said, “Any preference?”

  “Mexican?” she said.

  “Very funny.”

  Quinn flipped a coin in his head, and the second restaurant won. They ordered four tortas de la barda, a half dozen empanadas de camaron, and some freshly made tortillas, then took the empty table near the window to wait.

  Quinn stared outside, watching the cars and checking the people on the street out of habit.

  Something touched his hand. He jerked it back before he realized it had been Liz.

  “I know that you’re upset I’m here,” she told him. She put her hand on his again. “If I were you, I would be, too.”

  The corner of his mouth ticked up.

  “But if you were me,” she went on, “you would do what I’ve done also.”

  “But I have the experience,” he countered.

  “Even if you didn’t.”

  There was no need for him to respond. She was right. They both knew it.

  “I won’t get in your way. But I need to be close.”

  “It’s dangerous, Liz. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I know it’s dangerous. Don’t forget I’ve seen how crazy things can get in your world. But, Jake, I love him. I’ll do anything for him, just like I know he’d do anything for me. Just like you’d do anything for Orlando.”

  “Or you.”

  She smiled. “Or me.”

  “So what am I supposed to say? ‘Sure, you can tag along anytime you want, just duck if anyone shoots’?”

  She laughed, natural and light, something he hadn’t made her do in forever. Though he tried to suppress it, a smile cracked on his face.

  “There are certain situations when you should probably tell me no,” she said. “But you can’t shut me out of everything. I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m not someone who needs her big brother to decide everything for her.”

  Quinn tensed, knowing he hadn’t been there when she was that girl who needed him. But instead of going down that road, she said, “I know how much you care about me. I know the things you’ve done to help me. I may not always agree with your choices, but I do know your heart has always been in the right place. And…” She paused. “I love you for that. You’re my big brother. I love you. Period.”

  It was something he hadn’t allowed himself to hope to hear from her lips again. He turned his hand so they were palm in palm.

  “Everything I’ve done is only because I love you,” he whispered.

  “I know.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  He had told himself that his hope for Liz and Nate’s relationship to eventually fade away was for her protection, to keep her from getting emotionally—and maybe even physically—hurt. And while that was true, he now saw that desire for what it really was—his own selfish need to control the world around his sister and keep her from harm.

  “If I tell you that you can’t do something or come with us somewhere, you have to listen to me,” he said.

  “I can’t guarantee I’m always going to be happy about it.”

  “And I can’t guarantee I’ll always be nice about it.”

  She pulled her hand from his, turned it sideways, and held it across the table. “Deal.”

  He took her hand and they shook.

  __________

  QUINN PUT AN arm around Liz as they walked back to the hotel. She returned the gesture, even resting her head on his shoulder for a moment.

  The smell of the food they were carrying preceded them through the doorway as they reentered the hotel room. It’d been a while since their last meal, so Quinn was sure Orlando and Daeng would hurry over to grab what they wanted. But they both remained by Orlando’s computer, looking at the screen.

  “You’ll want to see this,” Orlando said.

  Quinn immediately set the bags down and joined them, Liz only a step behind him.

  “What’ve you got?” he asked.

  “Nate’s beacon went active again for a few seconds.”

  “What?” Liz said. “You know where he is?”

  Orlando shook her head. “No. There seems to be some sort of interference. Only bits and pieces got through. There was enough, though, for me to narrow it down some more.”

  “How much more?” Quinn asked.

  Orlando didn’t look as hopeful as he would have liked. “P
retty much the whole Caribbean, with the tip of Florida and a bit of Colombia thrown in.”

  “You said you only had it for a few seconds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like last time,” Quinn said, disappointed.

  “Actually, not quite like last time. Before, it kind of faded out. This time it was just there, then gone. No fade. Like he turned it off.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Could be anything.”

  As Quinn straightened up, a whiff of the empanadas drifted by, but the hunger he’d been feeling moments before was gone.

  “There’s more,” Orlando said. “Before Nate’s signal went active again, I dug into the radar database for this area. Given the time our security guard friend told us the plane took off, I was able to isolate the cargo plane’s flight path. The database only saves snapshot readings once a minute, and it’s from only the first thirty minutes of the flight before the plane moved out of range, but it gives us direction.”

  She brought up a map showing Tampico and the rest of eastern Mexico. A line of unconnected blue circles started at approximately the location of the private airstrip, then headed almost due east over the Gulf of Mexico. After eleven circles—or minutes—the plane adjusted its path into a more southeasterly direction. After nineteen more, it was gone.

  “I did a projection,” she said, and hit a few more keys. The map zoomed out to include the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Where the blue circles stopped, a straight, red line took over. “If they didn’t make any other course corrections, their flight path would have taken them over the northern tip of the Yucatan, between Cuba and Jamaica, over part of Haiti, south of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and finally over Dominica before moving out into the Atlantic.”

  “If they didn’t change their flight path,” Quinn said. “If they did, they could be on any of those islands.”

  “I didn’t say the info was perfect, but I think there’s better than an even chance that I’m right.”

  Even if she were right, the area Nate might be in was still huge.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  She scowled at him. “You weren’t gone that long. I was just finishing up programming a worm that I’ll send out to search for radar data along that path. Hopefully, we’ll pick up the plane again. It’s a long shot, but it’s automated so worth trying.”