The Aggrieved

by Brett Battles

  He tried to sit up, but she shoved him back down and curled against him. “Just a few minutes,” she whispered. “Close your eyes and empty your mind.”

  To appease her, he did as she suggested. The first part, anyway. There was no way he’d be able to empty his mind. As proof, within seconds, scenes of all the different ways things could go wrong began swimming through his head.

  Dehler running faster than he could pursue.

  Dehler stealing a car and getting away.

  Dehler jumping onto a plane and being lifted into the air a moment before Quinn arrived.

  Boats and trains and motorcycles.

  Deadly shootouts in which Quinn’s friends were killed.

  And chases, so many chases, all ending in disaster.

  “Quinn.”

  Explosions.

  Hand-to-hand combat.

  Knives sailing through the—

  “Quinn, wake up.”

  He blinked, surprised to find the afternoon glow that had filled the room only a moment before had been replaced by darkness. Orlando was also no longer at his side, but standing next to the bed, her hand on his shoulder.

  “What…did I…what time is it?”

  “Eight thirty.”

  He sat up. “Eight thirty? Why did you let me sleep so long?”

  “Why? Really?” She grinned. “You need to get up now, though. You’re going to want to see this.”

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve had another hit.”

  He scrambled to his feet and followed her into the living room. Jar was sitting at the dining table in front of one of two open laptops, with Daeng standing behind her. Nate and Kiet were not present.

  “Arise the sleepyhead,” Daeng announced.

  Ignoring him, Quinn said, “What’s the facial recognition percentage?”

  “It is running now,” Jar said.

  “How do you know you have a hit, then?”

  “Because it’s just a formality,” Daeng said. “It’s her.”

  Quinn moved in next to Daeng so he could see Jar’s screen. On it was a camera feed featuring the interior of a train car—the Underground—all the seats and much of the standing room occupied.

  “Where is she?”

  “Show him the first image,” Orlando said.

  Jar hit a couple of keys. Away went the train, and in its place a sunset scene on a London street. Pedestrians frozen in mid-stride, most in business attire, carrying bags and briefcases. The road crowded with buses and taxis.

  “Who should I be looking at?” he asked.

  “You’ll know,” Daeng said.

  A taxi pulled to the curb and dislodged its passenger. Quinn thought for a moment that was the person everyone believed was Dehler. But that couldn’t be. Like the woman on Regent Street, the passenger was too short.

  Quinn’s gaze flicked from person to person, but no one stood out.

  “There,” Orlando said.

  She pointed toward the right side of the screen. At first, Quinn saw nothing different than what he’d seen already, but then a man appeared, walking down the sidewalk. A man he’d seen before. Or, rather, a woman dressed as a man he’d seen before.

  It wasn’t quite the same makeup job Dehler had used when she visited the Paskota Hotel, but it was similar, as if she was portraying the brother of that man. In this iteration, instead of a goatee, she wore only a mustache, and there was no gray in it. Nor was there any in her uncovered hairpiece. But the eyes were the same, and the height.

  And the ever so slight limp.

  Daeng was right. It was Dehler.

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Twenty-three minutes,” Jar said.

  Bracing himself for an answer he didn’t want to hear, he asked, “Do you know where she is now?”

  “Of course.” Jar tapped on her keyboard a few times, and the image of the train car interior reappeared.

  Now that he knew what he was looking for, he immediately picked out Dehler standing along the left side, a third of the way down.

  “This is live?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He started nodding. “Good. Really good. Nice job, Jar.”

  “Well, I was trying to find her. That was the task.”

  “Just say thank you,” Daeng whispered.

  She frowned. “Fine. Thank you.”

  Quinn couldn’t hold on to his suddenly buoyant mood for more than a few seconds before memories of what had happened last time returned. “What happens if she moves into another dark zone? We need someone within visual range.”

  “Nate and Kiet are already on their way,” Orlando said.

  “You sent them out before you woke me?” Quinn asked, incredulous.

  “Calm down there, sweetheart,” Orlando said, in a tone she usually reserved for her son Garrett when he was in full teenager mode. “The moment we realized it was her, they left and I came and got you,” she said. “Would you have rather we wasted time waiting to bring you up to speed first?”

  “Sorry, sorry. You’re right.”

  “No kidding.”

  He looked at the screen again. “What train is this?”

  “The eastbound Circle Line,” Jar said. “It is currently between Sloane Square and South Kensington.”

  “And Nate and Kiet?”

  Jar brought up a map of the city in a new window, on which a red dot moved west, about half a kilometer from the apartment. “Looks like they’re almost to Oxford Circus station.”

  Having years ago memorized the London Underground, Quinn said, “Tell them to take the Central Line west. If we’re lucky and Dehler stays on the Circle, they’ll get to Notting Hill Gate before she does.”

  Jar tapped her earpiece and relayed the information to Nate.

  As she did, Quinn looked over his shoulder. “Where’s the rest of the comm gear?”

  “The duffel’s over there,” Daeng said, nodding toward the couch.

  Quinn hurried over, opened the bag, and rummaged until he came up with what he was looking for. After removing three comm sets, he tossed one each to Orlando and Daeng and donned the third.

  “You’re with me,” he said to Daeng as he pulled on his shoes.

  “Where are you going?” Orlando asked.

  “The more people we have out there, the less chance Dehler has of disappearing again.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  He glanced over at Jar, not sure he was comfortable leaving her alone to handle coordination.

  “She’ll be fine,” Orlando said, reading his mind.

  Quinn hesitated a second before saying, “Okay.”

  “Guns?” Daeng asked.

  “No guns.”

  Their current goal was only to find out where Dehler was staying, not to get into an altercation. There was no need to risk the chance of having a civilian spot one of their weapons and reporting it to the police.

  When they were ready to go, Quinn said to Jar, “Any move she makes, I want to know about it.”

  “Obviously,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  NATE AND KIET reached Notting Hill Gate seventeen minutes after they left the apartment, and two minutes after the train Dehler had been on passed through the station. According to Jar, however, Dehler had exited at High Street Kensington, one stop prior to Notting Hill, and proceeded south to the Copthorne Tara Hotel.

  Nate’s first instinct was to grab the next southbound Circle Line, but according to the overhead sign, the next train wasn’t due in for seven minutes. He checked his Uber app. There was a car two minutes from the station. He booked the ride, then he and Kiet ran through the station and up the stairs to street level.

  The car arrived right on time. “Are you Brian?” the driver asked after rolling down the passenger window. He was a young guy, mid-twenties at most, with a black and white Tottenham Hotspurs scarf draped over his shoulders, and the earnest look of someone who would probably want to talk too much.

&nbs
p; “That’s me,” Nate said, as he opened the back door.

  After he and Kiet were inside, the driver said, “My name’s Michael. Taking you to the Copthorne, right?”

  “Yes, please.”

  As the car pulled from the curb, Nate turned to the side window and said into his mic in a very low voice, “Status.”

  “You’re American, aren’t you?” Michael asked. “Tourist?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jar’s voice cracked in Nate’s ear. “Still in the hotel’s business center.”

  The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “Staying at the Copthorne?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “Nice place, I hear.”

  “Yep. Nice.”

  Jar again. “Quinn and Orlando just left Victoria station so are about ten minutes behind you.”

  Nate clicked his mic to acknowledge.

  “Picked up a couple from Finland there a few weeks ago,” Michael said. “They seemed to like it.”

  Nate said nothing this time, hoping the guy would cut down on the small talk.

  It didn’t work.

  LEE CHILD’S NOVEL had a new review. This one from FeistyRouge35. Four stars, because according to Feisty, no one deserved five.

  Again, Esa’s message was coded within the review. While the inquiries about her continued to drop, he had discovered one interesting tidbit. A team of trackers had arrived in London on Saturday. Word was they were hunting for a couple, and Esa had been unable to learn more prior to writing the message.

  Something to worry about? Maybe, maybe not. But Dehler knew it would be a good idea to be ready to bolt, just in case.

  She created a new account, clicked on the comment link below Feisty’s review, and wrote:

  Would you say Reacher is more Dirty Harry Clint Eastwood, or Man With No Name Clint Eastwood?

  She had hoped not to use this particular code yet, but given her unease, it seemed prudent. The short sentence would tell Esa to forgo their current communication method if things heated up, and to call her directly. The new username, once decoded, would give him the number to her disposable phone.

  The back of her neck tingled as she logged off the business-center computer. She knew it was just in her head, her imagination all wound up because of Esa’s note. Still, as she turned to leave, she scanned the room. The only people present were the hotel employee at the main desk, and an older man who had been there at one of the other computers when she arrived.

  She worked her way back through the hotel, and when she stepped outside, she waved at the line of taxis waiting half a block away.

  “NATE?”

  Nate clicked on his mic to let Jar know he was there.

  “She is moving,” Jar said. “Heading through the hotel.”

  “And if you’re looking for something relaxing, take a walk through Kensington Gardens,” Michael said, continuing a monologue on the best spots in the area to visit. “My girlfriend and I love it. On a nice day, there’s nothing like spending time in the park.”

  “She is in the lobby,” Jar said. “Okay, now at the door. She is leaving.”

  Nate exchanged a look with Kiet, who was listening in on his own earpiece.

  “Uh-oh,” Jar said.

  Nate chanced a quiet “What?”

  Apparently, it wasn’t quiet enough, as Michael said, “I said Hyde Park. You’ve heard of it, right? It’s right next to the gardens, just on the other side of the Long Water.”

  Jar said, “She is motioning for a taxi.”

  “How long until we reach the hotel, do you think?” Nate asked Michael, cutting the driver off as he started to talk about God knew what else.

  “Oh, um, maybe three minutes.”

  Nate dropped a ten-pound note onto the front passenger seat. “Any chance we can get there a little faster?”

  “I, ah, I can try.”

  “Please do.”

  The car picked up speed.

  “What’s happening?” Nate whispered.

  “The taxi is pulling up now…stopping…she is getting in…okay, the taxi is leaving.”

  “How close are we now?” Nate asked the driver.

  “You see that brick building straight ahead?”

  The road dead-ended at the structure, about a block and a half ahead. “Yeah.”

  “We take a left and we’re at the hotel. You see where that cab just turned from? That’s it.”

  The cab in question had turned from the road Michael had indicated onto the one they were on, and was now heading in their direction.

  “Cab ID?” Nate whispered.

  Jar told him it was black, which didn’t help much since the majority of cabs in London were black. She did, however, also give him the first four characters of the license plate.

  As the taxi neared, Nate focused on the front bumper until he could read the plate. The characters were an exact match. And if that wasn’t enough, his glimpse of the man-who-wasn’t-a-man sitting in the backseat cinched the deal.

  “We need to turn around,” Nate told Michael.

  The driver shot him a glance through the mirror. “I’m sorry?”

  “We need to go the other way. Now.”

  “But the hotel—”

  “Forget the hotel. I’m changing destinations.” Nate added two twenty-pound notes to the ten spot already sitting on the passenger seat.

  “Uh, okay. I guess that’s fine. Where am I taking you?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “Not sure—”

  “Turn around. Now!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Michael sped to the end of the block and made a U-turn in the intersection.

  Worried that they were too late to catch up, Nate said to Jar without lowering his voice, “Do you still have eyes on them?”

  “Yes. They just turned east on Kensington High Street.”

  Nate leaned forward. “How close are we to Kensington High Street?”

  The driver glanced at him in the mirror again, confused. “It’s-it’s right up here.”

  “Turn right when we get there.”

  “Okay.” Michael flicked his gaze back and forth between the road and the mirror. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Not important.”

  “Right. Not important. You know what? I think it might be better if you found another driver.” He started to pull the car to the curb.

  “Don’t do that,” Nate ordered, his tone stern.

  The car immediately veered back into the lane.

  Switching to a kinder tone, Nate said, “It’s okay, Michael. We need your help, that’s all. We’re, uh, following someone. You know how to follow someone, don’t you?”

  “I-I guess. I don’t want to get into any trouble, though.”

  “Who said anything about trouble? Everything is going to be fine, and you’re going to make yourself a nice pile of cash.”

  They stopped at the intersection with Kensington High Street.

  “Turn,” Nate said.

  They remained at the corner. “This doesn’t feel like a very good idea,” Michael said.

  “We’re not the bad guys. We’re the guys following the bad guys. As long as you make the turn, that is.”

  Oozing reluctance, Michael turned onto Kensington High Street.

  “Excellent. We’ll make a spy out of you yet.”

  “Spy?”

  “Just a figure of speech. Now, I’m going to need you to speed it up again.”

  With Jar’s help, Nate part-guided, part-coaxed Michael through the city until finally, the back of Dehler’s taxi came into view.

  “All right, you can slow it down a little,” Nate said.

  The driver eased up on the accelerator.

  “You see that cab, three cars ahead, this lane?”

  “I see it.”

  “We need to keep it in view, but we don’t want them to know we’re back here so you can’t get too close.”

  “Ooookay.”

  “Can you do it?�
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  “I guess so.”

  “Come on, Michael. A little more confidence.”

  A beat. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do it.”

  Nate smiled. “Great.”

  QUINN, ORLANDO, AND Daeng hurried through the Tube station and up the stairs to Kensington High Street.

  “Nate?” Orlando said into her comm.

  “Go for Nate.”

  “We’re at Kensington now. Where are you?”

  “A kilometer or two east of you. We’re circling around Hyde Park, heading north.”

  “You have her in sight?” Quinn asked.

  “She’s in a cab just ahead of us.”

  Quinn came a hair’s width away from saying, “Don’t lose her,” but he caught himself, knowing it would not go over well with Nate or Orlando. Instead he said, “We’ll get there as quick as we can.”

  He and Orlando clicked off their mics.

  “Cab?” Daeng asked.

  That would be the quickest way to get back on the road, but not the most flexible. Quinn scanned the area and spotted several cars parked down a side street.

  Orlando followed his gaze, and, like she usually did, immediately understood what he was thinking. “Right. Let’s see what we can find.”

  The winning vehicle turned out to be a late-model Volkswagen Golf, with a door that had been left unlocked.

  Quinn drove, while Orlando coordinated with Jar and Nate on direction.

  They had barely passed Hyde Park when Nate said, “She’s getting out.”

  “Where?” Orlando asked.

  “Marylebone, right before Chiltern Street.”

  Orlando consulted her map, and started to tell Quinn to keep going straight for now, but hadn’t even gotten the first word out when Nate said, “Oh, crap.”

  NATE HAD MICHAEL pull his sedan to the curb the moment he realized Dehler’s taxi was doing the same.

  He waited until he was sure she’d reached the end of her ride before reporting it to the others, and then watched her walk west down the sidewalk toward their car.

  Long before she would have reached them, she turned and crossed a narrow side road that ran directly in front of the building on the north side of Marylebone. He projected her path to see if her destination was someplace obvious.

  “Oh, crap,” he said.

  “What happened?” Quinn said in his ear. “Did you lose her?”