Nate cut a flap in the fence, held it out of the way so Quinn could pass through, and then he followed. Moving the Dumpster was tricky. It had a bad wheel that wanted to squeak with every turn. Quinn had to lift the corner off the ground while Nate pushed.
“Why don’t you stay down here,” Quinn suggested when he noticed Nate rubbing his bruised ribs. “I’ll go up and scout around.”
“No way,” Nate said.
He pulled himself onto the Dumpster and started up the skinny pipes to the roof. Quinn waited until Nate was finished before making his own way to the top.
The roof was massive. Scattered across it were several old air-con units, dozens of pipe vents, and several other items that made up the building’s systems. Quinn had hoped to find a stairwell entrance but didn’t see any.
“Are those hatches?” Nate asked a few moments later, nodding toward the far end.
It was hard to tell from where they were. To get a better look, they stuck to the edges, where their steps had less chance of being heard, and headed over. One of the metal plates was indeed a hatch, while the other was some kind of vent.
They knelt beside the former. Quinn ran his fingers underneath the lip until he found a release lever. He had to push hard to get it to move, and when it finally slid to the open position, it did so with a much louder click than he would have liked. He and Nate froze. When no one came to check out the noise, Quinn grabbed the lip again and lifted.
The hatch moved up four inches before it was stopped by something inside. Leaning down, he discovered a rod, one end attached to the hatch and the other running down below the frame, out of sight. He moved his hand through the opening and felt around. The problem was a hook on the bottom, and the only way to dislodge it was to lower the hatch.
“I need something thin but strong,” he whispered to Nate. “At least a foot long.”
With a nod, Nate crept back to the edge of the roof and soon returned with several twigs, none more than an eighth of an inch in diameter.
Quinn chose one, notched a V into the end, and slipped it through the opening, placing it so that the cut cradled the rod. He then lowered the hatch until there was just enough space for the twig. With a push of the stick, the hook swung out of its mooring point, allowing him to open the hatch all the way.
He leaned through the hole. An empty hallway, the only illumination coming from the sunlight streaming past Quinn.
He lowered Nate in first, and then slipped into the opening. Nate grabbed on to him as Quinn hung from the frame and helped him down without making any noise.
Nate winced as he straightened up, but Quinn acted like he hadn’t noticed.
There were several more doors along the corridor, but the one at the very end interested Quinn the most. He was sure it would lead them farther into the building.
It opened with a slight squeak. Again, they paused.
Though they heard no one heading their way, they did hear a voice.
PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA
WINSTON’S TOWNHOUSE WAS an end unit, designed so that the master suite didn’t share a wall with anyone else. Perfect for their needs.
Daeng and Ananke brought two dining room chairs up to the master bathroom. One they placed in the large Jacuzzi tub, then dumped Winston onto it and tied him up. The other was placed just outside the tub for Orlando.
“Daeng, if you will,” Orlando said, when everything was ready.
Daeng picked up a bucket of ice water they’d prepared downstairs and began pouring it over Winston’s head. The man woke with a jolt, gasping for breath.
Orlando let Daeng douse him for a few more seconds before saying, “Enough, I think.”
Daeng tipped the bucket back.
“What the hell, man?” Winston said between pants. “Who are you?”
“We have a few questions for you, Mr. Winston, and would appreciate your cooperation,” Orlando said.
“Fuck you!”
Orlando glanced at Daeng and tilted her head ever so slightly. He stepped forward again and dumped the remaining water over the man’s head.
Winston sputtered and started panting again. With a shiver in his voice, he said, “You think that’s going to make me talk?”
“Of course not,” Orlando said.
This time her nod was to Ananke.
The smiling assassin approached Winston slowly and leaned forward until her mouth was only a few inches from his ear. “She doesn’t like it when you don’t cooperate,” Ananke whispered. As the last word left her lips, she stabbed a syringe into his arm and shoved down the plunger.
Winston yelled out and tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go.
As Ananke stepped back, Orlando said, “In about an hour you’ll start to feel the sweats. Nothing too drastic. Under normal conditions you might not even notice. Another hour after that, your gut will begin to clench, and soon you’ll be vomiting up everything that’s in your stomach. But the spasms won’t stop. As you continue to dry heave, your temperature will spike. It’ll probably be a good five or six hours before you start bleeding from your nose and your eyes, but it will come. And the pain—” She sucked in a breath and shook her head. “I’m not going to lie to you. It’s going to be bad. Every nerve ending is going to feel like it’s being smashed under a hammer. You’re going to die, Mr. Winston, but not until morning. Unless, of course, you take your own life. Most in your position do.”
Throughout her speech, he stared at her, his eyes growing wider and wider.
She reached over to the sink counter and picked up a hand towel. Unfolding it, she revealed another syringe. She held it in the air and admired it.
“This,” she said, “will stop all that from happening.”
It was a lie, of course. Her syringe contained the same harmless saline solution that had just been injected into him. This part of the plan had been Ananke’s idea, a riff, she told them, on the method she’d used on Edmondson.
“Give it to me,” he said. “Please. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
Orlando frowned. “You’ll answer our questions first, and then you get it.”
“No way, man. You give it to me first. If I die, whatever it is you want to know goes with me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ll admit it would be easier to get the information from you, but there are other ways to obtain it. So, if you’re refusing to cooperate, I guess we’re done here.” She stood up. “Have a good life, Mr. Winston. What little of it that’s left.”
She started for the door. Daeng and Ananke turned to leave with her.
“No!” Winston yelled. “All right, all right. I’ll talk first. I’ll talk!”
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
BEYOND THE DOOR, Quinn and Nate found stairs leading down to the first floor. Walls lined both sides, the one on the right stopping near the bottom, while the one on the left continued on for another dozen feet until it met the front corner of the building.
Quinn went first, stopping four steps from the bottom.
The voice was a bit louder, but still too distant to make out the words. He could tell the speaker was a man.
He peeked around the end of the wall. A huge room extended all the way to the far side of the building and back nearly to the center point. To his left, at the front of the structure, was a walled-off room, probably a lobby.
If he had to guess, machinery had once filled the space. Now, the only machine in the room was an ambulance parked near the closed roll-up door. The room appeared otherwise deserted.
He heard the voice again, and realized it was coming from an open doorway along the back. After letting Nate take a look, he pointed at the walled-off room up front. It would provide a considerably better vantage point than the stairs. Staying low, they crept over to it and worked their way down the wall until they came to a door. All was quiet on the other side, so Quinn inched it open. Taking the darkness within as a good sign, they slipped inside.
Quinn did a quick scan with h
is penlight to make sure they were alone, and then said, “Head for the ambulance. While you disable it, I’ll check out that back door to see if I can figure out what’s going on.”
“Got it.”
Quinn eased the door open, and immediately stopped.
Someone was walking across the big room. Make that two people. When they stopped, Quinn heard one of the ambulance doors open. A third set of steps, farther away.
Quinn mimed for Nate to switch places with him and hold the door. He then slipped his phone through the narrow opening until the camera lens cleared the jamb.
On the screen was a view of the other room. He changed the angle until the ambulance was the focus, and zoomed in. The rear door was open wide. One man was standing in front of the opening, pulling out a gurney. Another was walking toward the man from the back of the room.
As the back end of the gurney came out of the vehicle, the rear legs and wheels automatically deployed. The third man climbed out of the ambulance a moment later, set something on top of the rolling bed, and grabbed the end.
The two with the gurney rolled it toward the back door, while the other man continued to the ambulance and circled to the driver’s side.
“Are they going somewhere?” Nate asked.
Quinn had been wondering the same thing, but remained silent as he tried to figure out what to do.
Their choices were few, and none of them good.
PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA
ORLANDO, DAENG, AND Ananke left Winston a huddling mess under a steady stream of cold water in his shower. That had been Ananke’s doing, a little ad-libbed addition to what Orlando had told the guy.
“You may feel clammy for the next twenty-four hours,” Orlando had said as she administered the “antidote.” “There’s a chance you’ll have a headache, too.”
His fear ticked up another notch. “I-I already have one.”
She nodded. “If you’re lucky it won’t get too bad. Sometimes…” She shrugged. “Let’s just say, to lessen the side effects of the antidote, you’ll want to do nothing for at least the next twenty-four hours. Forty-eight would be even better. Can you do that?”
Lips shaking, he said, “Yes.”
“I would stay in bed and sleep. Wouldn’t even turn on the TV. But that’s just me.”
Though he said nothing, Orlando knew he would do exactly that.
When she signaled Daeng, he cut Winston loose from his chair. The man immediately threw the ropes off.
“Slowly,” Orlando warned. “If you increase your heart rate, you’ll speed up the spread of the poison, making it all that much harder to rid it from your system.”
The man’s movements switched from high speed to slow motion in an instant.
“We’ll be off now, Mr. Winston. We thank you for your cooperation.”
“There is one other thing he can do,” Ananke said as Orlando and Daeng were turning for the door. “I heard one’s chances are greatly improved by soaking in cold water for thirty minutes every three hours.” She looked directly at Winston. “I don’t know if it’s true, but you might want to give it a try.”
He pushed the last of the rope away, stumbled out of the tub into the shower.
As he turned on the water, Ananke said, “Cold, remember. Only cold.”
“Cold. Right.” He moved the dial all the way to C and slipped down the wall to the tiled floor.
When they were outside, Daeng said, “The water was a nice touch.”
Ananke smiled. “Thank you very much, Daeng. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things.”
Orlando had to admit it had been a good addition, but she kept the thought to herself.
Once they were in the car, Daeng said, “Where to now?”
“You heard him,” Orlando replied. “L.A.”
“We’re not done, then?” Ananke asked.
“No.”
“Oh, goody.” She sounded genuinely excited.
Daeng looked less enthusiastic. “Maybe we should pass the information on to Helen’s organization. They’d probably want to deal with it.”
“You have more confidence in them than I do,” Orlando said.
“Okay,” he said, “but shouldn’t we at least let Quinn know what we’re doing?”
Quinn would shut her plan down before they even pulled away from the curb.
“Just drive,” she said.
CHAPTER 30
BROADVIEW, ILLINOIS
“HIGHER,” ORBITS SAID, his voice echoing through the otherwise empty room.
Branson, one of his new team members, tilted the girl’s head back.
“That’s good,” Orbits told him.
He snapped off three more photos.
“All right, give me a moment.”
Branson let the captive’s chin fall back to her chest.
Orbits scrolled through the shots he’d taken. Of the last three, two were fine, but in the third he’d captured part of an eye, showing it was closed. He couldn’t have that. Someone might get the idea she was dead. He trashed it, and then looked through all the others to see what else he might need. The problem was, he didn’t know exactly what would identify the girl to someone, and if his plan were to work, others had to know for sure he had her.
He’d already shot pics of the pads of her fingers, and the small butterfly tattoo on her waist. There were other torso photos, lower-face photos, back photos. He’d even shot a full range of her nearly bald head. What else could there be?
He was about to tell Branson they were done when the picture of her face gave him one last idea.
“Pull her lips back,” he said. “I want to take a few of her teeth.”
“You got it,” Branson said. He tilted her head up and peeled back her lips.
Orbits took a shot. “Now open her mouth.”
When Branson pried the woman’s jaw apart, she stirred slightly, moaning. Apparently it was almost time for Orbits to force some more of the sedative down her throat.
He moved in really close, took several shots of her upper teeth, and then switched his angle to do the same with her lower. Her tongue had lolled to the side, though, and partially blocked the shot. He grabbed it to move it out of the way, but as his thumb touched the underside, she flinched.
It couldn’t have been from pain. He had barely touched her. Curious, he bent her tongue back and spotted several black marks. They were small and the angle made them hard to see clearly. He took a picture and brought the photo up on the display.
Not random marks—a tattoo of numbers.
“Is that it, or do you want to take some more?” Branson asked, still holding the girl’s mouth open.
Orbits looked up in surprise, having momentarily forgotten anyone else was there. “Yeah, yeah. I got what I need.”
He walked way, staring at his phone. Could this be the reason everyone wanted the girl?
He zoomed in on the tattoo a bit more. Two sets of eight digits, with a period after the first two numbers in each set, and, in front of the second set—the one beginning with 95—a minus sign.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.
He knew what this was. GPS coordinates.
When he entered them in his phone, up popped a map of northeastern Kansas, an arrow dropping into the countryside not too far from a town called Meriden. He clicked on the satellite view but it didn’t make things any clearer. The surrounding area was mostly farmland, while the exact spot was a small, grass-covered clearing encircled by a thick grove of trees. After zooming in as far as he could, he saw a few spots of white within the grass—rocks, probably—but nothing else.
This had to be what was so important about the girl.
He thought for a moment.
Though this put a whole new spin on things, there was no reason to scrap his original plan. He could still reap its benefits and snag an even bigger score. It would not be without risks, but hell, he was Ricky Orbits. If anyone could pull it off, he could.
He e-mailed the girl’s pictures to Don
nie, with a note telling him to move up the start time to immediately, and then turned back to Branson.
“Pack everything up,” he ordered. “We’re moving out.”
__________
AFTER THE AMBULANCE’S engine rumbled to life, the driver headed back into the rear of the building, leaving the vehicle unattended.
“Do you have a tracking chip?” Quinn asked Nate.
“No.”
Quinn didn’t have one, either. They’d brought several on the flight east, but they were in a bag in the back of their car.
“Your phone,” Quinn said, holding out his hand.
“What?”
“Your phone. Quick.”
Nate pulled out his cell.
“Call me,” Quinn said.
When Quinn’s phone vibrated, he answered, and then switched devices with Nate.
“What are you doing?” Nate asked.
“Just stay here,” Quinn said.
He moved into the large room and hurried over to the ambulance. He would have liked to put Nate’s phone in the back portion of the vehicle, but if the others returned while he was doing it, he’d be seen right away. He settled for the front cab. Making sure the cell was on silent mode, he jammed it under the driver’s seat, the microphone end as close to the edge of the cushion as possible without revealing itself.
Before he could make his retreat, he heard footsteps enter the room. Sneaking around the front of the ambulance, he crouched beside the grill and peeked under the vehicle. He could see the legs of two men approaching the back. When they arrived, they stopped and seemed content to just hang out.
Quinn heard the clatter of wheels coming from the back of the building. Knowing there was only one way he would be able to remain unobserved, he snaked under the ambulance until he was completely beneath the rear section. Across the room, the gurney appeared in the doorway, escorted by two more men. No, three, he realized, the last mostly hidden from view by his companions. Though his was a low angle, Quinn could see Dani on the bed, unconscious. As the group moved across the room, one of the guys waiting at the back of the ambulance climbed inside.
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