The Collected jq-6

by Brett Battles

  He squirted some of the sticky liquid into her hair, and let it drip down onto her forehead. He gave his work a critical eye. It wouldn’t pass a close examination, but would be more than adequate for a quick look.

  “You’re good,” he said.

  She hopped onto her toes and kissed him.

  He melted into her for a moment before he suddenly pulled back. “Hey, I don’t want to get that stuff on me.”

  She pursed her lips. “Where’s the trust?”

  “Go,” Quinn said. “They should be here any second.”

  She tapped the tip of her finger against the moist area in her hair, and wiped it off on Quinn’s cheek. “Be right back.” She headed quickly out of the room.

  Quinn grabbed a discarded piece of paper off the ground and rid himself of the mark she’d given him. He followed after her, taking his position halfway between the boarded-up window, where Orlando was now waiting, and the workroom.

  He heard a car drive by outside, and in the distance, a motorcycle in dire need of a tune-up. Then things quieted down. It was four minutes before he heard the footsteps-two pairs-hurrying along the street toward the building.

  As they neared, he could make out Daeng’s voice in the halting Spanish he’d picked up when he was a teenager in Los Angeles. It seemed their plan A had worked, and Daeng had been able to lure the man away on his own. If he hadn’t been able to make it happen, they would have moved to plan B-isolation and forced relocation.

  “Ahi, ahi,” Daeng said. “Mas cerca.” A pause. “Aqui, aqui, aqui.”

  There was a bang on the board covering the window. Peeking around the pillar, Quinn could see Orlando standing next to the window, unmoving. The moment Daeng knocked again, she started panting as if she’d been running, and pushed the board to the side.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said, her voice panicked. “Back here. He’s back here. We knocked him out and locked him in a storage room. Oh, oh, wait. You speak English, right?”

  The cop, Eduardo Moreno, moved into the opening. “Tell me what happened.”

  Quinn leaned back out of sight as Orlando pushed the board further open so Moreno and Daeng could enter.

  “It was horrible,” she said, leading them through the room. “He seemed so nice, you know? Shared some beers. Said he knew a place we could spend the night that wouldn’t cost us anything.”

  As they passed by Quinn’s position, he circled around the pillar so that Moreno wouldn’t see him.

  “He brought us back here, and, you know, it seemed okay.”

  “You should have never come inside,” Moreno said.

  “I know, I know. It’s just, well…”

  Quinn stepped out from behind the pillar and followed, catching up to them just as they stopped a few feet shy of the workroom.

  “He’s in here,” she said, sounding scared.

  “It’s okay. I’ll take care of it,” Moreno told her.

  “Do…do you have a gun or something? I think he’s dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt anyone.”

  Moreno moved his hand down toward his belt. At first Quinn thought the Federal was going for his gun, but instead, he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.

  “What are you doing?” Orlando asked.

  “Don’t worry. I am just calling for some of my men to come help me.”

  “Good idea,” she said, sounding relieved. “Maybe…maybe you should check him first, though. I’m not sure how hard we hit him. You might, um, need to call an ambulance, too.”

  Moreno lowered the phone. “Show me.”

  Orlando opened the door and grabbed Moreno’s arm, guiding him into the room. As soon as they passed inside, Quinn and Daeng followed, closing the door quietly behind them.

  “Where is he?” Moreno asked. He froze as he noticed the chair sitting in the middle of the room. He turned back around, suspicion creeping onto his face. “What is-”

  Quinn smiled as the man’s gaze fell on him. “Captain Moreno, please have a seat.”

  Moreno’s right hand shot toward the GLOCK 17 in the holster at his waist. Only it didn’t get very far. The guiding hand Orlando had on his arm clamped down and yanked the man backward. Before Moreno could react, Daeng had a hold of his other arm, and Quinn took possession of the gun.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Moreno demanded. “Do you understand the trouble you’re in? I’m a federal police officer. Let me go right now!”

  “Sorry. No can do,” Quinn said. “Have a seat.”

  “Let me go!”

  Daeng and Orlando dragged the cop backward to the chair and shoved him down.

  “I believe he said, have a seat,” Orlando told him.

  Daeng moved behind the chair so he could take hold of both the man’s arms and free up Orlando. She, in turn, went over to the half-demolished cabinet they’d set their supplies on, and grabbed the rope they’d purchased on their supply run.

  When Moreno saw what she was carrying, he tried to free his arms and jump up. That was a mistake. Daeng jerked the man’s arms back and up, so the cop was forced to hunch his shoulders forward and remain in the chair.

  Orlando looped a portion of the rope around one of the back chair legs and secured the man’s wrists together. Once this was done, Daeng lowered the man’s arms and Orlando removed the slack around the chair leg, pulling Moreno’s hands tight against the back of the chair. After that, it was a quick job of securing his torso and tying his feet, one against each of the chair’s front legs.

  Finished, she stepped back and joined Quinn, while Daeng remained behind the cop.

  “You all are in very deep trouble,” Moreno said. “You will never get away with this.”

  Quinn, looking unimpressed, said, “Three days ago you were involved in a manhunt, correct?”

  A flicker in the man’s eyes. “You will let me go now.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Answer the question.”

  “I’m not answering any questions.”

  “All right, that’s a choice. Now let me give you another. Answer the question. If you don’t, I’m going to blow out your joints one by one, starting with your right ankle.” He pointed the captain’s GLOCK at the man’s foot. “So, were you or were you not part of the manhunt?”

  His eyes smoldering with anger, the cop said, “Sure, yes. I was. Many people were.”

  “You’re the one who organized and ran it, though.”

  “Someone had to. It was just my turn.”

  “Kind of out of your range, wasn’t it? You’re based down here, not Reynosa.”

  “I go where the investigation leads. Now let me go.”

  “Tell me, Captain Moreno. Do your Federal bosses know about your account in the Caymans? The one you just made a substantial deposit to?” He glanced at Orlando. “How much was it?”

  “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, US,” she said, not missing a beat.

  Moreno stared at them for a second, then forced out a laugh. “Is that what this is about? Money? You want my money?”

  “Oh, we’ve already taken your money. The one hundred fifty thousand, plus the other one point seven million.”

  Now the captain was starting to look nervous. “You’re lying.”

  Quinn shrugged. “Could be. I’m sure you’ll check later. I mean, if there is a later. But you’re wrong. This has nothing to do with your money.”

  “So you didn’t take it?”

  “Oh, we took it. We’re just not going to keep it. That’s dirty money. Bad karma. None of us wanted any part of that. We’ve already spread it around to a half dozen charities that will make your old cash feel better about itself. Your money’s gone, and it’s not coming back.”

  Moreno’s jaw tensed. Through clenched teeth, he said, “If this isn’t about money, then what is it about?”

  “Are you dense? The manhunt. What happened to the man you apprehended in Reynosa?”

  “We didn’t catch anyone. The manhunt failed.”r />
  Quinn shook his head. “Try again.”

  “I’m telling you, we didn’t catch anyone.”

  Quinn pulled the GLOCK’s trigger. The cop screamed in pain as the bullet tore into his ankle.

  “Go ahead. Yell as loud as you want,” Quinn said. “No one can hear you.”

  “?Puta madre, hijo de la chingada!”

  “Now, about that man you captured,” Quinn said, his voice calm.

  Moreno grimaced with pain. “I…I don’t know who he was.”

  “But there was a man?”

  A hesitation. “Yes.”

  Quinn pulled out his phone and showed the man a picture of Nate. “Is this him?”

  Moreno squinted at the image, then nodded. “Yes.”

  Not that Quinn expected any other answer, but actually hearing it made him pause for a second. “Where did you fly him to?”

  “Outside…outside Tampico. Please, you have to get me to the hospital.”

  “Where outside Tampico?”

  “Please!”

  Quinn pointed the gun at the man’s other ankle.

  “Okay, okay,” Moreno said. “There’s…a facility there, north of the city…maybe twenty miles.” A pause as a wave of pain rushed across the cop’s face.

  “That’s where you took him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why there?”

  “It has a private…runway.”

  That wasn’t good news. “What happened when you got there?”

  “We took the prisoner into one of the buildings and locked him in a room. Then…then…oh, God.” His eyes shut again and his face pulled taut. There was a hiss as he sucked in air through his teeth, and his head began to wobble.

  Quinn, careful to avoid the growing puddle of blood on the floor, stepped closer and slapped Moreno’s cheek. “Stay with us.”

  He glanced at Orlando and motioned down at the man’s wounded foot.

  Orlando nodded, cut off a piece of the cord, and tied it around Moreno’s leg a few inches above the shattered ankle, stemming the flow of blood.

  Quinn grabbed the cop’s chin and gave it a little shake. “Hey, what happened after you put him in the room?”

  A few seconds passed before Moreno’s eyelids parted. “We…waited.”

  “For what?”

  “A plane.”

  Exactly the possibility Quinn had been concerned about.

  “And then?”

  “The man who…hired me was on it. He had us help his people load the prisoner…on board.”

  Again, Quinn held his phone up in front of the cop again, this time showing him the picture of the bald man.

  “Yes, that’s…that’s Mr. Cameron.”

  “Then they left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. My job…was done.”

  “Which direction did the plane go when it flew off?”

  Moreno looked at Quinn as if he didn’t understand.

  “Which direction did it go?”

  “East. After it took off, it turned and…flew east.”

  The only thing east of Tampico was the Gulf of Mexico.

  Moreno’s head started to loll forward. Quinn put a palm on the cop’s forehead and pushed back. “Tell me about the plane. Everything you remember.”

  For the next few minutes, he extracted as much information out of Moreno as he could. The aircraft was a prop-driven cargo plane, not too large. When pressed, Moreno was able to recall part of the number on the tailfin, and the color scheme: white with two stripes-one blue, one black. There was also some kind of logo near the door. A black bird sitting on a blue branch. That was all Quinn could get before Moreno passed out.

  They field-dressed the man’s ankle, then pulled off his shirt and wrote with a black marker across his chest CORRUPTO-corrupt-and below that, the number of Moreno’s Cayman account with the name of the bank. While they had removed a good portion of Moreno’s money, they’d left enough in it so that there would be no mistaking that the cop had been on the take.

  Fifteen minutes later, as they neared the airport to catch the first available flight to Tampico, Orlando called the personal cell phone number of a Federal she had previously identified as on the up and up.

  “Who is this?” the man asked as he answered.

  “Unimportant,” she said. She gave him Moreno’s name and the address of the building they’d left him in. “You should probably hurry. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing he didn’t deserve.”

  “What?” the man asked, surprised.

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  She hung up.

  CHAPTER 30

  Liz was sure that at some point she would be discovered. If her brother had just stuck to the city, it probably would have been easier for her to stay hidden. But instead, he, Orlando, and Daeng had driven out into the countryside, stopping at some sort of industrial building before heading farther out on the highway, and turning off the road and driving into the wilderness.

  Liz had motioned for her driver to follow them, but he refused.

  “No hay camino ahi. Yo no voy alla abajo,” he said.

  She got the gist of what he meant, so she had him continue down the highway for a quarter mile then pull off to the side.

  He’d been shooting her suspicious looks in his rearview mirror since not long after they’d left the airport. In an effort to placate him, she’d handed him a thousand pesos-about seventy-five dollars. It helped for a while, but now the look was back.

  Liz tried to ignore it while she kept her attention focused on the place where her brother had left the road. When the other car finally showed up again, it turned back toward the city.

  “Okay, go, go. Um, vamonos,” Liz said.

  Once more she and her driver took up pursuit.

  It wasn’t long before Jake turned off the road again, this time driving behind several cinderblock buildings. Liz had her driver turn down the road between the buildings and a gas station, and drive slowly past the road Jake had turned on.

  She spotted her brother’s car parked along the back of the buildings.

  “Stop,” she told her cabbie. She glanced back at the Pemex station. “?Necesitas gas? I’ll pay.” She mimed giving him money.

  “Si. Gracias.”

  He drove back to the gas station and pulled up to the pumps. While he filled the tank, she climbed out of the car and walked to the back of the lot so she could see behind the other buildings. The rental car was still parked at the side of the road, but unlike before, Jake and his friends were standing outside.

  She wished she could hear what they were talking about, or, at the very least, knew the reasons for all these stops. They had to have something to do with Nate, but what?

  After a few minutes, her brother, Orlando, and Daeng turned back to their car and climbed in. Liz ran back to the taxi. While the pump hose was no longer sticking into the gas tank, her driver was nowhere to be seen. She whipped around, looking everywhere for him, but she had no idea where he was.

  She was going to lose her brother. She’d made it this far, but now she was going to lose him and that would be that.

  Dammit!

  Somewhere off to her right, a door swung open. She looked over and saw her driver exiting the toilet.

  “Hurry,” she said, waving at him. “Hurry, please. ?Vamonos!”

  He began walking more quickly.

  She pointed back at the highway. “Come on, come on. They’re going.” She climbed into the cab.

  It was a full five minutes before they caught sight of Jake’s rental again.

  It’s okay, she told herself, trying to relax. It’s all right.

  Deep in the city, Jake parked his car, then he and his friends got out and started walking away. Liz decided to chance that they wouldn’t turn right back around and drive off, so she gave her driver another five hundred pesos, got out of the cab, and let h
im go, sure the man was happy to be rid of her.

  Following on foot was nearly as tricky as it had been in the car, but she used her smarts and erred on the side of caution whenever necessary. Twice she lost them, but each time she caught sight of them again within a few blocks. They became very interested in an abandoned building, moving in and out several times alone or in pairs, sometimes bringing bags from stores back with them. Finally all three left so she followed again.

  Several minutes later, they entered another building, this one not empty. As much as she wanted to follow inside, she didn’t, and instead waited in front of a small grocery shop just down the street. They were there for nearly twenty minutes. When they came back out, Daeng split off on his own, while Jake and Orlando headed in her direction.

  Liz stepped quickly into the store, moving down one of the aisles to avoid being seen from the doorway. Pretending to browse, she kept flicking her gaze toward the entrance. It wasn’t long before she saw Jake and Orlando walk into view and then right back out again as they kept going.

  Liz counted to ten, then headed out to the sidewalk. She was just in time to see her brother and his girlfriend turn down the next street. Judging by the direction they were going, she was almost positive they were headed back to the abandoned building.

  Playing the hunch, she took a different route, running part of the way, and was able to get into the same hiding place she’d previously used half a minute before Jake and Orlando came into view.

  They moved the loose board away from the window and entered. The street fell silent.

  Liz figured Daeng would show up shortly, and she was right. What she hadn’t expected was that he’d bring a police officer with him.

  Daeng was acting strangely, too, like he was in a hurry. When he reached the window, instead of moving the board to the side, he banged on it. When he hit it a second time, it slid out of the way. Orlando was standing just on the other side, something dark on part of her face and in her hair. Like Daeng, she seemed panicky. Soon she moved out of the way so the other two could enter, and the wood fell back into place.

  What the hell is going on?

  Liz hesitated for a moment, unsure what to do. Finally, she decided she had to take the chance, and moved quietly over to the board-covered window. She put her ear against the wood, heard distant footsteps, then nothing. Again, she hesitated. She could go back to where she’d been hiding and guess at what was going on, or actually find out.