The Collected jq-6

by Brett Battles

  Once the whine of the hinges stopped, he was pushed forward across the threshold.

  Unlike moments before, their footsteps now echoed loudly. A corridor, he guessed-concrete, or possibly tiled, with unadorned walls.

  The hallway was surprisingly long. It wasn’t until they reached their seventy-sixth step that the man doing all the talking said, “Derecha.”

  Again there was the quick tug as their direction changed. This time they only went seventeen steps before Nate was stopped again.

  Another metallic door clanged. Once the sound stopped, Nate was shoved hard in the back and sent sprawling forward. With his arms secured behind his back, the only thing he could do was twist as he fell to the floor so that he didn’t land face first. Instead, it was his hip that took the brunt of the fall. Behind him, a door slammed shut, and a key turned in a lock. A moment later, he heard the muffled footsteps of his two escorts receding down the way they’d come.

  Slowly, he worked his way back to his feet, wincing for a second as the pain shooting out from his hip joined that of the ache in his back caused by a rifle butt that had whacked into him when he was captured.

  Using the toe of his shoe as a guide, he found one of the walls, placed his head against it, and tried to work the bag off. Unfortunately, the cord running through the open end around his neck wouldn’t loosen to allow the bag to slip over his chin.

  He gave up, and used his foot again to work out the boundaries of the room. Five paces wide and seven deep. Against one wall was a thin mattress on a steel cot secured to the ground. This was the extent of the furnishings. There wasn’t even a toilet, just a drain on the floor in the back corner.

  He half-lowered, half-dropped onto the bed, wondering where, exactly, he’d been taken. He’d initially assumed the police would hustle him off to a holding facility not far from where he’d been captured-Reynosa, most likely-but the helicopter ride lasted much too long for that. When they finally landed, Nate figured they’d been in the air almost two and a half hours, which was also confusing. That was way more time than necessary to fly him back to where the mess had started in Monterrey.

  It doesn’t matter, he told himself. You’re in jail. That’s all you need to know.

  This was the third time in his life he’d been put in a cell. The first was in college, with campus police breaking up a party that had grown out of hand, and Nate acting the tough guy and taking exception to their tactics. Looking back, their detention cell had been a joke. Even with just half of what he knew these days, he could have easily escaped.

  The second time had been in Berlin. That cell had been located in the US embassy, his temporary incarceration understandable since he’d driven up to the gate with several boxes of deadly, virus-tainted mints. But he’d known it was going to happen that time. It had been part of Quinn’s plan, and the next day Nate was out again.

  This time was nothing like the others. This time he had done the one thing no cleaner should ever do. Get caught.

  At the very least, the police would connect him to the badly burned body in the back of the van. That would probably be more than enough to get him put away forever. Thankfully, even if he got as far as being sentenced to life, it was unlikely he’d ever serve any of it. Once he was able to make his phone call, he’d get a hold of Pullman, and wheels would be set in motion that should end in his release. And if Pullman failed, Nate could always call Quinn. He was sure his old mentor would figure something out. Until then, though, he would have to deal with these jackasses and their fists and gun butts and whatever else they wanted to use on him to prove how tough they were.

  He lay back on the cot and closed his eyes, thinking he might as well get some rest. Though he couldn’t see his watch, he knew it had to be right around one p.m., and his last sleep was the hour-and-a-half nap he’d caught the previous evening before he and Burke headed out to the staging point. A little shut-eye now would not be a bad thing.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the same voice that had guided him down the hall earlier barked, “De pie.”

  Nate shook himself awake, and swung his legs off the cot. Before he could stand on his own, two men grabbed his arms and pulled him up.

  “Gee, thanks,” Nate said. “I couldn’t have done that without your-”

  He sensed motion a half second before a fist slammed into his gut. His body wrenched forward, trying to double over, but the men at his sides dug their fingers into this biceps, keeping him upright. They forced him across the room and slammed him back against the wall.

  Another punch, this one only a inch away from where the previous had landed. Again the men kept him from moving.

  A pair of slow and deliberate footsteps entered the room, stopping an arm’s length away. Nate could hear the person breathing-not labored, but distinctive. Breathe in, hold, breathe out, hold.

  “So this is him,” the man said in English. An American accent. New York, it sounded like.

  “Si,” someone responded.

  “About damn time.” The voice moved in so that it was only an inch from Nate’s ear. “You gave my Mexican friends quite a workout. You’re even better than advertised.” Pulling way, the man said, “Take the hood off.”

  One of the guards undid the bag’s knot. Once the opening was loosened, the cover was pulled up, taking a few strands of Nate’s hair with it.

  Standing in front of Nate was a tall, bald man in a dark suit. Like a lot of men with no hair, it was hard to tell his age. He could have been anywhere from forty-five to sixty. Neither fat nor skinny, he wore a scowl on his face that made it clear he was the one in charge.

  Behind him was a hard-looking, middle-aged Mexican man in a uniform. There were two others in the room, younger men in police uniforms.

  “Are you going to be a problem?” the bald man asked Nate.

  Nate didn’t respond.

  The bald man looked back at the suited Mexican. “Captain Moreno, I’d like a couple minutes alone with our friend here, if you don’t mind.”

  There was a hint of relief in Moreno’s eyes. He looked at the two officers and nodded. “We’ll be right outside if you need us,” he said, and the three of them left, closing the door behind them.

  The bald man stared at Nate, his eyes narrowing. “You’re younger than I expected.”

  Nate kept his mouth shut.

  “Or is it just that you have a young face?”

  Alarms were starting to clang in Nate’s head, as he began to realize this was not what he’d thought it was.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” the man said. “I’m just finally glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Quinn.”

  No, Nate realized. This was much, much worse.

  CHAPTER 5

  Los Angeles, California

  As soon as the tone bonged and the seat belt light went out, Liz Oliver stood up and retrieved her bag from the overhead compartment.

  For the first time in her life, she had flown business class. That had been Nate’s doing. She had told him it was an unnecessary expense, but after the nearly twelve-hour flight from Paris to Los Angeles, she was glad he’d paid the money. Usually when she arrived back in the States, she’d be totally worthless for a couple days. But here it was, just after one p.m. in California, and she felt fresh and awake and ready to go.

  Another perk of business class was that she was one of the first ones off, and able to beat the crowd to passport control. Once her booklet was stamped, and the officer said, “Welcome home,” she headed straight for the nothing-to-declare exit, her carry-on the only bag she’d brought.

  A ramp led out of Customs to an area where dozens of people were jammed off to the left side, craning their necks every time someone new came out like fans watching movie stars walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Liz knew Nate wouldn’t be sandwiched among them, though. He’d told her specifically to continue on through the door to the outside, opposite the ramp, and he’d be right there.

  Knowing she
was going to see him in a matter of seconds sent a spike of anticipation up her spine as she weaved through the crowd and walked out the door. To say she was excited to see him would have been an understatement. It had been nearly a month and a half since he was able to visit her in Paris, and it had started to seem like forever. She’d had her share of boyfriends before, but it had never been like this. Despite the fact they had met each other under false pretense, she felt an intense connection to Nate, and it was obvious he felt it with her, too.

  A few feet beyond the door, she paused. While there were several people around, Nate wasn’t one of them. Maybe he was at the sidewalk, or waiting at the curb with his car. She headed over. Nate wasn’t there either, and neither was his car.

  She checked her watch. One fifteen. Her flight was a bit early, but Nate would have surely been tracking her flight online, and would have left home in plenty of time to meet her. He was thorough that way.

  Parking. That had to be it. LAX was a crazy, congested airport. No doubt he was having a hard time finding a space.

  She moved out of the flow of foot traffic, and kept her gaze fixed on the crosswalk that led from the parking structure. When five minutes passed without him joining her, she brushed it off as nothing. When fifteen more went by, her brows began to slide together, and a frown appeared on her face.

  She pulled out her phone. No missed calls. No texts. She dialed his number but was sent instantly to voice mail. Instead of leaving a message, she decided to check inside the terminal again in case they’d mixed up where they were supposed to meet. There was no sign of him.

  She called him again. This time when the beep sounded, she said, “Hey, it’s me. Where are you? I’m at the airport. Just waiting. Kinda boring here. So, um, yeah, where are you?”

  Liz gave it another hour, then decided Nate had either forgotten today was the day she was coming, or something had delayed him. She didn’t want to put too much thought into that last possibility, as, given the nature of Nate’s work, it would inevitably have taken her to scenarios she didn’t want to consider.

  She called him again, and left another message, the fourth. This time she told him she was going to catch a cab and she’d see him at the house.

  Fifty minutes later, a taxi dropped her off in front of the gate to the Hollywood Hills home owned by her brother Jake and lived in by Nate.

  Quinn, she corrected herself. He goes by Quinn, not Jake. She was still having a problem with that. Her childhood was full of wonderful memories of Jake. Until he left, at which point anger and confusion and resentment set in after he basically disappeared from the face of the earth, only to show up again when she was an adult.

  Those abandoned years had been painful, a wound that never seemed able to close completely. Intellectually, she now understood why he’d done what he did, not that she would have made the same choices. But he’d played his hand as best he could, and it was what it was. She got that. She even knew now how much he’d always cared about her, but she was still having a hell of time separating the past from the present.

  One thing she couldn’t ignore, though, was that if he hadn’t come back into her life, she would have never met Nate.

  She walked over to the pedestrian door in the wall that surrounded her brother’s property, and pressed the intercom buzzer.

  No response.

  She pressed again, and received the same non-answer.

  There was a numbered security pad next to the buzzer. She punched in the code Nate had created for her, waited for the click, and entered.

  A driveway took up most of the area in front of the house. There were no cars present, and the door to the garage was shut.

  Though the house was two stories high, the level she was standing in front of was the top, while the lower level, the one where the bedrooms and the gym were located, followed the slope of the hill down.

  There was no doorbell button next to the entrance. If anyone made it that far, it would be only because someone inside had buzzed them through the front gate. There was, however, another security keypad hidden behind a moveable flap of siding directly below the porch light.

  Though Nate had shown it to her and given her a code-different from the one for the gate-she had never used it before. She hunted around for several seconds before she found the right spot, then closed her eyes and tried to remember exactly how he’d said the panel opened.

  In, to the left, and up, she thought.

  She did as she remembered and was pleased when the lower edge of the flap popped out. Moving it all the way up, she exposed the panel. The new code was one she wasn’t likely to forget-the room numbers of the first two hotels they’d stayed in together, starting with the hotel in Paris where everything between them had begun.

  Twenty seconds later she was standing inside.

  “Nate?” she called out.

  The silence was total, and she knew she was alone.

  Just to be sure, though, she left her bag in the foyer, checked the top floor, and headed down the stairs to the lower level.

  “Nate?” she said again.

  The bedrooms and the room that served as the gym were all empty. She entered Nate’s room. Everything was neat and in its place.

  Too neat.

  Liz felt fingers slowly squeezing her heart. She walked over to his en suite bathroom. Counters clean and empty, sink and shower bone dry. She grabbed the shower towel and ran a hand up and down it. No moisture at all.

  He’s not here. He hasn’t been here for at least a day or more.

  She could no longer ignore the possibility she’d avoided earlier. She knew, despite his assurances to the contrary, that his job often put him in danger. It still might not be that, but…

  Please, let him be all right.

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror, worried, unfocused eyes locked on worried, unfocused eyes.

  She pulled out her phone.

  CHAPTER 6

  San Francisco, California

  Jonathan Quinn flipped over in the water, pushed off the wall, and started a new lap. So far he’d gone up and back forty-eight times. Five more and he’d reach a mile and a half, his goal for the day.

  He kept a steady pace, his smooth strokes cutting a path through the pool that instantly sealed up behind him. He tended to be more of a runner, but in the past couple of months he’d worked swimming into his routine, mainly to help strengthen his shoulder and neck after they’d been injured in an unfortunate meeting of flesh and bullet.

  It was Orlando who had suggested he try it when they were still in Thailand, mentioning how it would help improve his mobility.

  “Plus, you’re not getting any younger,” she’d added. “The less stress you put on your body, the longer it’ll last.”

  “Thanks,” he said sarcastically. He wasn’t even forty yet, but truth be told, he could see the birthday in the not-too-distant future.

  “Seriously, you’ve got to think about these things,” she told him. “I do.”

  “You do? For me or for you?”

  She gave him one of her patented blank stares. “Me? No. I’m not as old as you are.”

  While they were staying at the temple in Thailand, Quinn had taken a boat up the Chao Phraya River every day to a hotel that allowed him to use its pool. Upon returning to the States three weeks earlier, he’d joined a gym with a lap pool not too far from Orlando’s house.

  Enrolling there had been a strange step for him. The last time he’d belonged to a public gym was during his time as a rookie cop back in Phoenix. Since then, the only time he shared his workout space with people he didn’t know was at the occasional hotel while he was on a project. Going back to the same place nearly every day, seeing the same people on the treadmills and weight machines and in the pool made him feel exposed, like he was creating a habit that could be a problem later.

  In his business, habits could be dangerous, but the draw of the water was enough to keep him coming back. That, and the fact he wasn’t e
ven sure he was in the business anymore.

  He reached the end of the length, executed another flip turn, and headed back for the second half of the lap.

  Forty-nine, forty-nine, forty-nine, he told himself, so he wouldn’t forget which one he was on, then let his mind return to what he’d been thinking about-the business and his place in it. It was the same topic he’d considered the day before, and the day before that, and the weeks before that.

  For years he’d been one of the best cleaners in the espionage world, the person in-the-know clients would go to when a body needed to disappear. Quinn was efficient, discreet, and reliable, with a highly developed ability to see details where others would see nothing. Using him on a job was as close as possible to a guarantee that there would be no blowback.

  A year ago, he’d occasionally wondered how long he’d be able to keep doing the job, but hadn’t given it any serious thought. A lot had happened since then, most notably his mother and sister being targeted because of the man he’d become. He’d been able to keep them from harm, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been severely shaken by the events, or ashamed of his own arrogance at thinking he’d built adequate barriers to keep them safe.

  The months in Thailand-despite the interruption of having to deal with an old job that had flared back to life, and getting shot in the process-had helped him work through those feelings, and learn how to live with them.

  That was all fine and good, and a necessary step, but what they hadn’t done was help him decide what was next. Should he leave the business completely? He had more than enough money to retire on and live the rest of his life with Orlando and her son Garrett without worry. Or should he jump back in? Do what he had been good at? What he knew he was still good at? Was he ready to just stop? And if he wasn’t, what about his family? Would they ever be in danger again?

  He knew it should be easy to walk away, but it wasn’t.