by Sam Sisavath
Chapter 22
Quinn
“What was it?” Sarah asked as she stepped out of the RV.
“A drone,” Quinn said. “It saw us.”
Sarah glanced up at the sky. “I don’t see it.”
“It’s gone.”
“Are you—”
“Yes,” Quinn said before she could finish. “It saw us. Where did Owen go?”
“He’s strapping everything down.”
Quinn turned back to Zoe, holding her arms across her chest next to the white sedan. The reporter looked like she had a few hundred questions racing through her mind but somehow was restraining herself from asking them.
She’s learning fast.
“I’ll take Zoe and Aaron. You guys follow us,” Quinn said to Sarah. “Once we’re out of the city, you can take the lead.”
“Quinn,” Sarah said.
“They’re coming, Sarah.”
Sarah nodded. “All right. We’ll follow you.” She banged her fist on the side of the recreational vehicle. “Assuming this thing even starts up again.”
“Owen said he fixed it.”
“Owen sometimes overestimates his ability with cars.”
Aaron burst out of the RV behind Sarah, his backpack already slung over his back. “We splittin’ this town or what?”
“You good?” Quinn asked.
“Ask me again when we’re on the road,” the teenager said. He hurried to the car and tossed his bag into the backseat before climbing in after it.
Quinn nodded at Zoe, who still looked as if she had a few hundred questions on her mind, but she again kept them to herself and climbed into the front passenger seat instead.
She’s definitely a fast learner.
Quinn looked back to Sarah. “If something happens along the way and we don’t both get there—”
“We’ll both get there,” Sarah said.
“In case—”
“We’ll both get there,” Sarah said before heading back into the RV.
Quinn looked after her. She wished she had as much faith as the other woman—hell, she wished she had a quarter of it—but after what had happened to Porter, then Xiao and Trevor, she couldn’t muster the lie even to herself.
We’re fighting an organization that has people everywhere, with the ability to do seemingly anything they want.
God, how did I ever think we could win?
She shook the thoughts away and climbed into the Ford.
“Where are we going, exactly?” Zoe asked.
“Sarah has a backup location down south,” Quinn said, turning the key in the ignition. “After we get settled, we can plot our next move from there.”
“I assume I’ll be a part of that next move?”
“Unless you’d rather stay here and take your chances.”
“Yeah, not so much.”
Next to them, the RV’s engine coughed and sputtered but stayed churning. Quinn glanced over at Owen in the driver’s seat, with Sarah settling down next to him. They both met her gaze and nodded. If Sarah was the least bit concerned, there was nothing on her face to show it.
She’s been doing this so long she probably doesn’t remember what fear feels like.
Quinn returned their nod, then put the car in gear and stepped on the gas.
“And I was starting to enjoy this spot, too,” Aaron said in the backseat. “It’s got a certain charm to it.”
“Yeah, if by ‘charm’ you mean ‘landfill vibe,’” Zoe said.
“That’s exactly what I meant.”
“You’re weird, kid.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Zoe on the Case.”
Zoe groaned. “I hate that tagline. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“You mean worse than being framed for murder?”
“Okay, maybe not the worst…”
Quinn maneuvered them out of the wide-open parking lot, aiming for the two-lane blacktop road on the other side. There was no immediate traffic that she could see or hear, and that did more to ease her mind than anything. The company next door was still gearing up for the day, but the trucks she had seen yesterday either delivering slabs of concrete to be crushed or loading them for use elsewhere had yet to arrive.
Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe it really was just someone’s drone out for a flyby.
What were the chances of that? Pretty good, these days. There were plenty of men with a need for a hobby and a lot of money to spend. Drones were commonplace and it was very possible she was overreacting, that somewhere in the area there was a guy with a beer gut wondering why they were hauling ass after he spotted them.
But Quinn decided to ignore the doubts. It didn’t matter if this was just paranoia working overtime; sooner or later they had to leave the city anyway, and whether that drone was the real thing or not didn’t matter.
Besides, it’s not paranoia if they’re really after you, right, Xiao?
She turned out of the parking lot and onto the road and drove past the concrete company. She glimpsed their sign as she did so: Mansfield Crushed Concretes hung off a placard in front of the main gate. The hurricane fencing that surrounded the business seemed endless, blurring by in a series of chain links to their right on the other side of a grass-covered ditch.
“Mansfield,” Zoe said absently in the front passenger seat.
“What’s that?” Quinn said.
“Mansfield,” Zoe repeated. “I know a guy whose last name is Mansfield. I wonder if he knows the guy who owns this place.”
“The detective,” Aaron said in the backseat. “The one who visited you the night they brought you in.”
“Yeah. I forget that you know everything.”
Aaron chuckled. “Not even close. I just know enough to be scared of what’s out there.”
Zoe turned around in her seat. “Speaking of the jail, what do you think happened to Henley? You think he’s okay—”
Pop! as the front passenger-side tire exploded, and the steering wheel jumped in Quinn’s hands.
“Hold on!” she shouted as the car spun, but instead of fighting it, she turned into it and allowed the spin to happen.
They went from driving down the road to facing the fencing around Mansfield Crushed Concretes to staring at the front grill of the beat-up RV as it came up behind them. The recreational vehicle was still a good fifty yards away when the tire popped, but Quinn thought she could see the whites of Sarah’s eyes across the distance. Owen, in the driver’s seat, was struggling to control his own steering wheel after he had slammed on the brakes.
The car spun a full 360 degrees before it came out of its spin, putting them back where they had been just seconds ago. But unlike before, when there were just empty spaces in front of her, there were now men in the open.
She didn’t know where they had come from—maybe they had been hiding in the ditch that separated the road from the dirt company this entire time. But that was impossible, because for them to even be there, waiting for her, they would have had to arrive a while ago. An hour? Half an hour? And it had only been five (six? seven?) minutes since the drone disappeared. Unless the drone they had spotted wasn’t the one that had located them.
It was doing recon. It didn’t find us; it was just reconning us.
The reality of the situation (It’s an ambush; it’s a goddamn ambush!) struck her almost as hard as the seat belt that constricted against her body when she hit the brakes and the car went still.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
“Jesus Christ!” Aaron shouted from the backseat. He had somehow ended up on the floor and was picking himself up. “What the hell was that?”
Zoe had been smarter and put on her seat belt before the drive, but like Quinn, the ex-reporter was grimacing painfully from the seat belt biting into her body. And also like Quinn, Zoe was too busy looking out the front windshield at the black-clad figures as they assembled on the road to do or say anything beyond stare.
There was at least a d
ozen of them, sun glinting off matted black ballistic helmets and dark visors that would have hidden their eyes even if there wasn’t a hundred yards or so of country road between them. They carried rifles and wore what appeared to be heavy urban assault gear, and were already moving in their direction as soon as they climbed up onto the blacktop.
“Oh,” Aaron said when he had finished picking himself up and could see through the two front seats.
“Hold on,” Quinn said, and put the gear into reverse. She was about to smash down on the gas pedal when there was an echoing ping! from the hood of the car.
She knew what the sound was but didn’t let it stop her. She finished slamming down on the gas instead and the sedan began reversing. She glanced at her side mirror, praying that Owen would understand what she was doing—the only thing she could do at the moment—and began backing up to give her room to escape.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the RV began retreating as soon as she did.
“What was that?” Zoe was shouting next to her. “What was that sound?”
As if in response, there were two more—ping! ping!—from outside the car, just before the hood flipped open on a third ping!, completely blocking Quinn’s view of the encroaching commandos.
Dammit!
If she had the time, Quinn would have told the reporter that the pings were bullets punching into the grill of the sedan and hitting the engine block. But there was no point in relaying that information once the hood snapped loose and, seconds later, smoke poured out of the now-exposed hood.
Shit, shit, shit! Quinn wanted to scream, when on cue the car began to slow down even though she had the accelerator pressed all the way to the floor.
“We’re slowing down!” Zoe shouted.
Ya think? she wanted to shout back, but was too busy glancing at her side mirror as the RV stopped moving behind them.
“Aaron, Zoe, get out!” Quinn shouted.
“What?” Aaron said from the backseat. She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the terror in his voice just fine.
“Get to the RV!”
“But—”
“Now, Aaron, do it now!”
She didn’t wait to see if either one of them obeyed her command and unsnapped her seat belt, left the now-useless key dangling in the ignition, and pushed open her driver-side door. Her Glock was already in her hand even before the sole of her left shoe touched the smooth pavement.
With the car’s hood pointing straight up at the sky, she wasn’t able to see how far the gunmen had advanced from inside the vehicle, but now that she was out and leaning against her open door, she cursed under her breath.
It seemed as if the helmeted figures had doubled in number and had somehow crossed half the distance to them in the seconds it had taken them to immobilize the car and for her to climb out of it. How was that even possible? How did men burdened with what was clearly such heavy gear move so fast?
They saw her pointing her handgun and scrambled out of the road like roaches after the lights turned on. Half of them slid into the ditch next to the concrete company, while the rest sought cover in the tall grass to her left. She fired a quick volley, aiming for the ones in the grass because she could still see them, even though she knew she wasn’t going to hit anyone with a handgun from what, fifty yards? Sixty?
She braced herself for return fire, except no one fired back.
What the hell?
They could clearly see her, and they were armed with rifles that would be equipped with optics that would make shooting her, with nothing more than a door as cover, almost child’s play.
So why weren’t they returning fire?
She decided she didn’t care about the answer and fired off a couple more shots before looking across the front seat at Zoe, slightly crouched behind her own opened door.
“The RV! Go!” Quinn snapped.
Zoe nodded and turned, and with Aaron in tow, the two of them raced down the road.
Quinn looked back at the small army of men hiding in front of her, the barrels of their rifles aimed in her direction, but no one was pulling their triggers.
They want us alive. That has to be it.
It was the best news she could ask for, and Quinn spun away from the door and ran down the road after Zoe and Aaron, reloading as she went. Even though she didn’t think they would shoot her down like a dog (God, let me be right about that one!), she still made herself bend slightly at the waist as she sprinted.
She easily caught up to Zoe and Aaron because the teenager was burdened by the contents of his backpack, while Zoe had clearly slowed down on purpose so she didn’t outrun him. Up ahead, the RV had stopped about fifty yards away, and Owen and Rick were already outside with M4 rifles. Rick was down on one knee, watching the other side of the road while Owen waved them over.
Quinn slowed down and allowed Zoe and Aaron to get more of a lead on her before she twisted; still backpedaling, she looked up the road, past her stalled car and at the black-clad figures approaching it from the other side. They saw her, and though some of them had their weapons raised, no one fired.
That’s it, boys. Follow orders. The Rhim wants us alive. So keep those fingers off those triggers!
Now that she had more time to concentrate on them without having to hurry about being shot dead, Quinn didn’t think there was any chance they were local cops or even the FBI’s HRT. There were no decals on the fronts of their assault vests and nothing to indicate they were part of any law-enforcement organization. Everything about that screamed paramilitary.
She turned back around just as Sarah, rifle in hand, was coming out of the RV and waving at Aaron and Zoe. “Come on! Faster!”
Quinn started jogging toward the parked RV when she felt it in the air, batting against her exposed skin. It came from the other side of Mansfield Crushed Concretes, appearing between two of the three piles of rubble like a bullet out of a gun, except bigger and slower, but even more ominous.
Sarah stopped in her tracks and looked over just as a trail of smoke appeared in the sky.
“Oh no,” Quinn whispered breathlessly. “Oh God, no.”
There was no time to shout out a warning, because as soon as she finished the second no the rocket was already impacting the parked RV from the side. Something that might have been a body (two?) was flung into the air while on fire, even as the vehicle seemed to launch and flip multiple times, before landing back to earth in the nearby grass.
The concussive force of the explosion hit Quinn like a tidal wave and she slid to a stop, turning her head in a vain attempt to keep from being drowned by the heat blast. When she finally managed to look back, Zoe was trying to help Aaron up from the road, but they were both badly dazed and having trouble.
Sarah. Where’s Sarah?
Quinn ran up the road toward Zoe, who was struggling with Aaron. The teenager kept slipping on wobbly legs, and it was taking everything Zoe had to keep them both upright.
The whup-whup-whup of rotor blades echoed in her ears, and Quinn look up just as the aircraft swooped by over her head. Its black frame reflected back the sun’s rays, while a man in commando fatigues leaned out the open hatch with a machine gun. She thought she could actually see her shocked face reflected off the man’s dark visor as the helicopter passed them by before circling the grass on the other side of the road, looking for a place to set down.
Quinn kept running and was almost on top of Aaron and Zoe when she saw a body lying on the road farther up ahead.
Sarah!
Zoe heard her coming and glanced back. Her face was frozen in shock, but she somehow managed to say, “Go, go!” anyway.
Quinn ran past her and Aaron and toward Sarah’s prone body.
Smoke was rising from Sarah’s clothes, the unmistakable smell of burnt fabric and flesh assaulting Quinn’s senses immediately. She kneeled next to Sarah and reached for her body but stopped herself in time because it was difficult finding a part of Sarah that wasn’t blackened by fire. She ga
gged at the smell, but managed to somehow push through it, and looked for a place on Sarah’s body where she could grab and drag, because they had to get out of there.
“Is she dead?” Zoe asked as she crouched down on the other side of Sarah. “Oh God, she got caught in the blast.”
Aaron stood next to them, alternating between catching his breath and looking down at Sarah’s charred body. Heat from the fires still raging from the destroyed RV in the field nearby brushed against her skin, but Quinn didn’t have time to acknowledge it. She was too busy trying to decide what was stronger—the smell coming from Sarah’s wardrobe, Sarah herself, or the still-lingering stench of explosive residue in the air.
“Quinn,” Sarah whispered, even as her eyes slowly opened. “Go. You have to go.”
Go? Quinn thought. Go where? There’s nowhere to go.
She could hear the commandos coming up the road behind them, moving with a more deliberate pace now that it was clear there wasn’t any place for them to flee. The whup-whup-whup of the helicopter had also ceased, which meant it had found a place to land and dispatched its own commandos. Quinn didn’t have to look up from Sarah’s half-burnt face to know that they were being swarmed on every side this very second—she could hear it in Aaron and Zoe’s suddenly frantic breathing.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Quinn said. “It’s over.”
Sarah gave Quinn a pained smile. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Letting you down.”
“You didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. Your father would be so mad at me right now.”
“My father?” Quinn said. “How do you know my father?”
Quinn didn’t care about the heavy boots that were circling around her, Aaron, and Zoe. She didn’t pay any attention when someone snatched up the gun she’d laid down on the road (When did I do that?), or noticed Aaron struggling as a large man in a black mask grabbed him and pulled him away. She was, though, vaguely aware of Zoe letting out a wild scream like some banshee and punching someone in the gut before two men restrained her from behind and dragged her away, kicking and fighting the entire time.
Quinn remained on her knees, staring at Sarah as the other woman faded before her eyes. “Sarah. What about my father? How do you know him? Sarah?”
