“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
Letting her get back to work, he helped Liz unpack the food. He then took a tentative bite of a torta, but set the sandwich back down.
Once more he was waiting, and once more he didn’t like it.
He pulled out his phone, needing to do something, and moved toward the window. Misty’s line rang five times, and he was kicked again into her voice mail.
“It’s Quinn. Really hoping you found something. Call me back.”
CHAPTER 39
WASHINGTON DC
THE EVER-PARANOID Peter had chosen his hiding spot for the Office’s archives well, storing them digitally in servers belonging to the Library of Congress. Each file was encrypted within an existing text, meaning that if anyone accessed the file, they would only see a book or collection of documents that had nothing to do with the world of secrets.
To actually view the Office’s information, one had to know where in the document to click. This would take the user to a command program that looked like a computer error. But if the correct twelve-character password were input, the hidden information would appear.
For extra security, there were two additional steps needed if one were trying to access the files remotely. Unfortunately, Peter had kept those steps to himself, so Misty was forced to visit the John Adams Building of the library in person.
There, she had to wait until one of the public workstations freed up. When one finally did, she located the manuscript that hid the Office’s main index and began her search. Cross-referencing and matching up the names Quinn had given her with particular assignments was slow going. If the Office had still been in business, with all its data living on its own servers, she could have finished the search in no time. The method she had to use now meant going back and forth between dozens of documents, opening the secret information, and, more times than not, closing the file again when she realized the job she was looking at was unrelated to what Quinn requested.
So far she had amassed a list of twenty-three projects that met at least part of his criteria. None, however, was a homerun. She returned to the index, found the next potential match, and opened the appropriate file.
As she read through it, she unconsciously leaned closer to the monitor, the skin on her arms beginning to tingle. The ops crew was nearly a complete match. It wasn’t until she read the second page, where the cleaner was mentioned, that she leaned back, disappointed.
Close, but not close enough.
Still, she jotted down the project number and list of participants, then read through the summary in case Quinn asked her any questions about it.
That’s when the tingle returned.
She remembered this job. How could she forget? Jobs that went well were soon distant memories, but the ones that went badly stuck in her mind for a long, long time. This was one of those jobs.
There was something else about it, she remembered. Something unusual. What was it?
She looked beyond the summary pages to the meat of the report, and found her answer on page seventeen.
After first making sure no one was watching her, she used her phone’s camera to photograph each page of the report. She then closed out of all the Office-related documents, packed away her things, and left.
There was no reason to look for anything else.
She had Quinn’s answer.
CHAPTER 40
SLUNG BETWEEN THE guards’ arms, the prisoners were returned to their cells one by one and dumped on their mattresses.
As the third one shocked, Nate was the third to be brought back. His body didn’t know if it should scream from the welts on his back, or the near electrocution the rest of his system had just received.
He lay on his side, wanting nothing more than for sleep to overtake him, but there was something he had to check first, something he was afraid he already knew the answer to.
He worked the pant leg over his right calf, and opened the seam so he could get into his prosthetic. He slipped his finger into the empty storage space, and immediately knew he’d been right to be concerned. The walls of the container, usually smooth, felt gritty. He pulled his hand out and examined his fingertip.
Black.
Dammit.
He stuck his finger into the compartment again, and hooked it up toward the previously damaged emergency beacon button. Not only was there more grit, but what was left of the button was now deformed, melted. He tried pushing it, but the button was frozen in place.
No! Dammit!
Though most of his carbon-fiber prosthetic was purely mechanical and undamaged by the electroshock, the excess electricity had gotten to the emergency beacon and destroyed it.
For the first time, Nate began to despair. Though he’d known there was a chance the beacon had already stopped working because of the bolt, he’d still been hopeful. Now he knew whatever help it might have brought wasn’t coming, and if he was going to get out of his situation alive, it would be up to him alone.
Given his current physical condition, he wasn’t a big fan of his odds.
CHAPTER 41
QUINN STOOD ON the balcony at the back of their room and looked out at the city. While the sun was still hovering above the western horizon, lights had begun to flicker on here and there. He heard the sound of a jet engine not far away as a plane roared down the airport runway, and from below the sound of cars moving toward home or work or who knew where.
The sliding door opened behind him, and Orlando stepped out.
“Anything?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “Some of the storage systems the radar data’s on leave a lot to be desired, so that’s slowed things down.”
He nodded, returning his gaze to the city.
“What did you say to Liz?” Orlando asked, coming up beside him.
He looked at her, concerned. “Why?”
“It’s just, well, she said something nice about you.”
“Oh, she did, did she? And what was that?”
Before Orlando could answer, Quinn’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the display. It was a video call.
“It’s Misty,” he said.
As they headed back inside, he pushed ACCEPT. Misty appeared on the screen.
“Hi,” he said. “Was beginning to worry about you.”
“Sorry. It, uh, took me a bit longer than I’d thought it would,” she said.
“Did you find anything?”
“Yes.”
Not maybe. Not even I think so. But yes.
The others crowded around him as he said, “Tell me.”
“First I checked on jobs you and Berkeley shared. There were six.”
Exactly the number Quinn remembered.
“You and Curson were on seven,” she went on. “And Curson and Berkeley had ten in common.”
Twenty-three jobs. That was a lot to sift through, but better than it could have been. “Maybe if we go through them one at a time, something will stand out.”
“Wait. I’m not through. At first there didn’t seem to be any jobs the three of you were on together.”
“That’s because there weren’t any jobs the three of us worked on together.”
“You wouldn’t have known.”
He hesitated a moment. “A blind job?” Blind jobs were the kind where most of the players didn’t come in contact with each other. Quinn had tried to avoid those as much as possible.
“Not a blind job.”
“Then I’m not following you, because we were never on the same job. I would remember that.”
“You don’t remember because you didn’t actually work the job.”
He frowned. “Now you’ve lost me completely.”
“This particular job, you were originally assigned to it, but the date was pushed and ended up conflicting with something else Peter needed you for.”
That made more sense. Though it didn’t happen often, Peter had moved his schedule around sometimes. “So what job are
we talking about?”
“Does Isla de Cervantes ring a bell?”
He thought for a moment, then nodded.
Four years earlier, Peter had called him with an assignment. The only thing he told Quinn at the time was the location: Isla de Cervantes. “Straightforward,” Peter had said. “You’ll get the details next week.” Only the details never came. A few days later, Peter called back, reassigning him to a job in Oslo.
But the memory wasn’t why the nape of Quinn’s neck was tingling. It was because Isla de Cervantes was in the same zone Nate’s beacon was in.
“I remember,” he said. “So if I hadn’t been removed, all three of us would have been on this job?”
“Yes. It’s the only time your names overlap on anything Peter was running.”
“Who else was on it?”
“Three others. Four, if you count the man who replaced you. Geoffrey Saban was team leader, and Oren Karper and Zach Lanier were ops.”
“And the new me?”
“Michael Stallard.”
A competent cleaner, not quite Quinn’s level, but…
He looked over at Orlando. While Stallard and the first two names Misty had mentioned weren’t on their potential-missing list, Lanier’s was.
Orlando immediately understood what he wanted her to do. She walked several feet away, pulling out her phone.
“What was the job?” Quinn asked Misty.
“Termination of a man named Javier Romero.”
Romero? Quinn ran the name through his mind a few times, but came up blank.
“Any mention of why he was important?”
“No. The file only contains what was necessary for the job. There are a few notes at the end in Peter’s personal code. They indicate that there was some kind of problem. No mention of what that might have been, though.”
“Do you think it’s somewhere else in the files? Was there a photo of this Romero?”
“I, um, took pictures of the entire file.”
“You did? Can you send them to me?”
Her face tensed. “I probably shouldn’t.”
“Misty, all I care about is finding out what’s going on, and bringing our friends home. Once I’m done with the file, I’ll trash it. No one will ever see it.”
Looking unsure, she said, “You promise?”
“Of course I do. You know me. You know you can trust me.”
She turned to the side in thought, then looked back and nodded. “Okay, but you have to destroy it later. And don’t say anything to Peter. I’ll tell him I gave it to you.”
“Whatever you want to do,” he said. “Thanks. I’ll call you if we need anything else.”
“And when you find him, too.”
“Yeah. When we find him, too.”
As soon as he hung up, he looked over at Orlando. She had moved into the bathroom entrance and was talking into her phone in a low tone.
“Could that be where Nate is?” Liz asked.
He turned to her. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Isla de Cervantes. Could that be where he is?”
“No way to know yet.”
“But…but…” She stepped over to the desk and turned the screen on Orlando’s laptop so Quinn could see it. “Look. Isla de Cervantes is right along this track.” She pointed at a spot between Cuba and Puerto Rico, a bit south of the red line representing the possible flight path of the cargo plane. “It’s right here.”
“I know. But—” He stopped as his phone vibrated multiple times. Not a call, but messages. He watched them come in. There were twenty-nine when they finally stopped, all from Misty, the images of pages from the report.
Across the room, Orlando ended her call and made another. Quinn held up his hands, silently asking her what was going on.
She covered her phone and mouthed, “One minute.”
While he waited, Quinn brought up the first image from the report, scanned quickly through it, and opened the second. When he neared the bottom of the page, he stopped on a photograph and enlarged it. The picture was of a vigorous man who looked to be in his early sixties, speaking to an unseen crowd. His body language oozed determination and conviction. Someone had written in pen just above the man: ROMERO.
So this was the target.
Though Romero was the main focus, there were others in the picture, gathered in a group behind the man, watching him. Some had names written above their heads, too. He scanned each face, stopped suddenly, and used his fingers to zoom in.
Well, well, well.
Not wanting to completely believe his eyes just yet, Quinn went to his saved photos and retrieved the one of the bald man in Bangkok. He switched back and forth between it and the group shot.
Neither image was perfect, but they didn’t need to be. There was no doubt that the bald guy was also the man in the other shot, with the name HARRIS written over his head.
“I appreciate it,” Orlando said.
Quinn turned around in time to see her hang up her phone.
“The reason Saban and Karper weren’t on our list is because they’re both dead,” she said. Quinn raised an eyebrow, but before he could ask the obvious question, she added, “Job-related. Eighteen months apart. No apparent connection.”
“Lanier?” he asked.
“While no one’s reported him missing, he hasn’t been seen in a couple weeks.”
“That sounds like missing to me,” Daeng said.
“Me, too,” Quinn agreed. “What about Stallard?”
“He’s sitting at home. Has an assignment starting next Tuesday, but says if we need him for anything before then, he’s available.”
“Replace Stallard’s name with yours,” Daeng said, “and that accounts for everyone.”
Yes. It did. Nice and neat.
“Here’s something else you’re going to like,” Quinn said. He showed them the photo he found.
“That cinches it,” Orlando said. “No question.”
“None at all.”
“So does that mean Nate is on this Isla de Cervantes?” Daeng asked.
With a quick look to his sister, acknowledging she’d been right, Quinn said, “He’s in that direction somewhere, so that’s where we need to go.”
“I’ll get us some tickets out of here,” Orlando said.
She took a step toward her computer, but Quinn stopped her.
“Liz can do that.” He looked over at his sister. “You can, right?”
“Sure,” she said, surprised. “Of course.”
His eyes back on Orlando, he said, “You and I need to find out what we can about this Harris guy.”
They sent out copies of the new picture of the man to several of their trusted contacts, this time with the name David Harris attached.
“There’s a flight to Mexico City leaving in an hour and a half,” Liz announced after a few minutes. “It’ll arrive in time to connect with a flight to Puerto Rico. There are dozens of ways from there to get to Isla de Cervantes.”
“Book it,” Quinn told her.
She glanced nervously at him. “Three tickets? Or four?”
A pause. “Four.”
CHAPTER 42
NATE WOKE WITH a start.
At first, he thought someone had come for him again, and he was about to be dragged away to some other round of torture. Waterboarding this time, or maybe something even more medieval, like the rack.
But it had only been the nightmares playing in his head. His cell was empty, the door firmly shut.
He lay on his stomach, letting the adrenaline coursing though his body dissipate. Once his heart rate had come back to normal, he sat up. The roar of the pain along his back had dropped a notch from cataclysmic supernova to titanic molten lava eruption. The spasms caused by the electricity, though, seemed to have stopped altogether.
Gingerly, he rose to his feet, felt his way across the dark room to the toilet, and relieved himself.
Time was a problem. His internal clock was misfiring, one moment telling
him it was ten p.m., and the next, time for breakfast. He knew, though, that it was late, or, rather, early, because no light seeped in through the vent. The corridor lights so far had only been off at night.
The vent. There was something about the vent. A dream he had…no, no. An idea, as he’d been falling asleep.
A potential way out.
With growing excitement, he retrieved the bolt from where he’d stuck it in the mattress after using it last time, ran his fingers along the wall until he reached the door, and sat on the floor.
Given that no one had come after him the last time he removed the vent cover, he decided it was unlikely there was a camera in the room, night vision-equipped or otherwise, so he didn’t even bother concealing his actions as he removed his prosthetic leg. As soon as his stub eased out of the cup, he sighed with relief. He had worn the leg far too long without taking a break. Even toughened with calluses as his stub had become, it felt raw and worn. He allowed himself just a few seconds to rub his hand over it and massage the tissue.
Using the bolt, he removed the back frame of the vent again. This time he didn’t tie any strings to the front. Without any light, it would have been a struggle at best to run them over the slats and snag them back so he could tie them off, but he wasn’t worried. His previous experience had shown him the front wouldn’t fall out.
Once the back frame was free, he set it on the floor, out of the way. He felt along the slats embedded in the front half until he found a loose spot. Taking extra care, he worked his fingers into the space until he was able to wrap them around the corridor side of the slat.
Next, he used his free hand to push forward on each corner in succession until the frame popped out of the hole. He laid it quietly on the corridor floor.
With the hole now unblocked, he shoved his arm as far through it as possible, and reached across the front of the door until his hand came in contact with the locking bar that ran up and down the outside. He moved his hand upward, already knowing the door handle was too high for him to reach, but giving it a try anyway. After confirming his limitations, he pulled all the way back inside the cell and grabbed his prosthetic.
The Collected Page 20
