Becoming Quinn

by Brett Battles

  Durrie closed the door, then engaged the double bar system that secured it to the walls, ceiling and floor. In the living room, his phone was ringing again. He picked it up, and slipped it into his pocket, once more ignoring Peter.

  Outside, he reprogrammed the lock with a new combination, then looked at his watch. He’d give himself four hours just to be safe. That should be enough.

  • • •

  It felt as if someone had taken a hatchet to Jake’s skull. The pain radiated in a line just off center, from an inch above his left eye all the way back to the nape of his neck. Slowly, he moved a hand to his head and carefully touched his hair, sure he would find a gaping wound. But there was no blood or exposed bone. Whatever was causing his distress was on the inside.

  The day came back to him in bits and pieces, like images caught in a strobe light. The man with the weapon, Jake’s attempt to get away, falling onto the van, then the man again, a needle in his hand, and finally the prick on Jake’s skin.

  How long ago that had been, he had no idea. He only knew whatever hope he’d had of fighting off the man disappeared with his own consciousness.

  He lay unmoving, willing the pain to subside. While it didn’t go away completely, it became more manageable after a while, enough so that he decided he could try opening his eyes. Either he’d gone blind or he was surrounded by complete darkness. He could see absolutely nothing.

  He touched the surface he was lying on, and discovered it was a thin mattress sitting on top of a wire-mesh frame. On his right side, there was empty space beyond the frame, but on his left, it butted up against a wall.

  Knowing that any sudden movement might bring his pain back, he slowly swung his legs into the open area, and eased himself into a sitting position. His foot banged into something, stinging momentarily and making him realize he wasn’t wearing his shoes. He carefully moved his foot back over, touching the object and feeling around it. It seemed to be metal with sides coming out of the floor and an opening on top. A toilet, he thought.

  Moving his hand in front of him, his fingers quickly came in contact with a wall only a few feet away. He slid them across the surface, finding a crease that must have denoted a door, then touching a switch.

  Without hesitating, he flipped it up, and a weak light, recessed in the ceiling, came on.

  As much as he was glad to know he wasn’t blind, he almost wished he’d left the light off. The space was tiny. Other than the bed and the toilet, the only other thing in the space was a bottle of water sitting near the door.

  His tongue involuntarily pushed against the top of his mouth at the sight of it. Before he even knew what he was doing, he picked it up and unscrewed the top. As he raised the open end toward his mouth, he hesitated.

  Drugged?

  He sniffed the opening. Smelled like water, but that didn’t mean anything. Reluctantly, he screwed the cap back on and set it down. He couldn’t afford to take a chance.

  He stood up, and took a closer look at the door. There was no handle on the inside, and nowhere else he could get a grip on it. There were two panels in the door. One was at the floor, and was large enough to slip a plate of food through. The other was at eye level, a rectangle about two inches high and five inches long, covered by Plexiglas on Jake’s side and a piece of metal on the other that probably could be slid out of the way so someone on the outside could look in.

  He pressed his ear against the rectangular panel, trying to pick up any noise that might give him a better idea where he was. But he could hear absolutely nothing. With little else he could do, he collapsed back on the bed.

  Conserve your strength, he thought. Be ready for any opportunity.

  It wasn’t much of a hope, but it was hope.

  • • •

  In the days leading up to this one, Durrie had arraigned for movers from two separate companies to show up at Berit Davies’s townhouse and Jake Oliver’s apartment at just after noon. To prevent any unnecessary questions, he had sent a letter to the homeowner’s association for the woman’s townhouse a week earlier. He informed them about the move, notified them that cleaners would be coming in the next day, and that the condo would be listed for sale within a few days after that. Ms. Davies, the letter said, had taken a government job back east, and to assist in the move, her new agency was taking care of the details. This was not unheard of, so no one would question it.

  Durrie had thought the trickier one would be Oliver’s place. Though he was able to arrange for the movers and cleaners ahead of time, he couldn’t contact the landlord until after Oliver was out of the way. But, to his surprise, it turned out that Oliver had already given notice, so the landlord barely even reacted to the news that the movers were coming so soon.

  Durrie made several trips between the places, monitoring the moves without actually making his presence known. While he did this, he made several calls to confirm that utilities had received their final payments and would be turned off on time. On one of his trips between places, he dropped change-of-address cards into a mailbox, and soon all their mail would be diverted to private P.O. boxes—in D.C. for Davies, and Houston for Oliver. From there, the mail would be forwarded through several other blind addresses before arriving on someone’s desk at the Office. Any mail that arrived before the changes took effect would be forwarded by the management of each facility.

  Once he was sure there would be no problems at the two residences, he moved onto the last item on his list: selling Jake’s Civic. It went easy enough. Though the deal the used car place gave him wasn’t particularly fair, he wasn’t going to haggle. After the details were taken care of, one of the dealership’s employees gave him a ride to a rental car agency a block from where he’d parked his car. Done, he headed back out of town.

  As he opened the door of the mobile home, his phone began to ring again, and once more he let the call go to voice mail. He knew Peter had to be more than just concerned at this point. First, Oliver had missed his flight to Houston, and second, the man he’d hired to clean up after Oliver was MIA.

  Peter was a smart man, though. At some point in the last few hours, he had undoubtedly dispatched a team to Phoenix to find out what was going on. Eventually, that team would check out the mobile home.

  He checked the computer security log, and could see that he was the only one to come within a mile of the trailer all day. He removed a small hard drive from his kit bag and connected it to the computer, then ran a program that would erase all records from twelve hours before to twelve hours after that point, effectively erasing his and Oliver’s presence.

  While that processed, he went over to the detention cell. He flipped the switch that would turn on the interior light, then opened the eye-level panel. He suddenly jerked back. Standing just on the other side, his eyes only inches way, was Oliver.

  “Let me out!” Oliver demanded, his voice coming over the intercom speaker on the wall next to the door.

  “Please step back,” Durrie said.

  “Why? So you can come in here and kill me?”

  “Step back, and sit on the bed.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Durrie frowned at him. “I’d rather not resort to anything extreme, so it would be better if you sat.”

  “Look, I don’t care about what happened on Goodman Ranch Road. Nobody would listen to me even if I did. Just let me go, and I’ll keep quiet.”

  “Mr. Oliver. Move to the bed.”

  “I only told my supervisors about the other two. I never told them about you. I never showed them your picture.”

  “Sit!” he ordered.

  “Please. Just let me go.”

  Durrie reached over and slid the eye slot shut. He didn’t have time to deal with this.

  The light switch wasn’t the only control next to the door. There was a panel with dials and buttons that accessed a menu displayed on a small digital screen.

  The choices ran the gamut from mild to lethal. He made his selection then slid the eye slot open a
gain.

  At first, Oliver looked as defiant as before, but soon he began to lose his sense of balance. It was only another moment before he collapsed on the floor.

  • • •

  Durrie made the call two hours later from the parking lot of a truck stop near the New Mexico border. He wasn’t worried about his location being traced. The call was being automatically routed through several relays designed to confuse any such attempt.

  On the second ring, a woman picked up.

  “Yes?”

  “I need to speak to Peter,” Durrie said, forgoing normal procedures.

  “I’m sorry, we don’t have anyone—”

  “Tell him it’s Durrie.”

  She paused. “One moment.”

  The delay lasted only ten seconds.

  “What the hell is going on?” Peter asked as he came on the line. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day! Oliver never showed for his plane. You were following him, right? What happened?”

  “He’s with me.”

  The pause was long. “What do you mean, he’s with you?”

  “He’s with me.”

  “Are you telling me you’re taking care of the problem?”

  “I’m telling you the problem was never Oliver. It was Larson. Killing Oliver would have been a mistake. He can be useful.”

  “Useful? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I believe he could be an asset, Peter.”

  “An asset?”

  “I’ll know in a few weeks. I’ll contact you then.”

  “What? Hold on! I agree that this was an…unfortunate termination, but, if you’ll remember correctly, Oliver was deemed a potential risk.”

  “And I’m telling you he’s potentially the opposite. I’ll know in a few weeks. If it turns out I’m wrong, the original order will be carried out. But if I’m right, then you and I can talk about what happens then.”

  “Are you deliberately trying to throw your career away?” Peter asked.

  “I’m not throwing anything away. I’m cultivating an asset.” Durrie paused. “A free pass for three weeks, that’s what I’m asking. No one comes after us. No one bothers us. I’ve done nothing but good work for you, Peter. I’m not trying to screw you or my career.”

  “Jesus, Durrie. You can’t be serious. What can you possibly see in this cop—this ex-cop—that’s worth the risk?”

  “The same things you saw that made you decide to get rid of him. I don’t like seeing potential wasted.”

  “You’re way off the mark this time, my friend.”

  “Free pass or not? Either way, I’m not changing my mind.”

  Peter said nothing for several seconds. “Three weeks. If I don’t hear from you by then, consider both of your lives sacrificed.”

  Durrie hung up, not bothering to say goodbye.

  25

  The cabin was fifty miles from the closest town, tucked into the woods in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. It was another safe house, though this one belonged to an organization Durrie had done work for several years earlier that had no ties to the Office. In the recent months, the organization had scaled back its Stateside operations, so Durrie had been confident the building would be unused.

  He was right.

  By the look of things, no one had been there in more than a year.

  The cabin wasn’t as well-equipped as the mobile home south of Phoenix, but it did have a well-made holding cell in the basement, and that was all that really mattered at the moment.

  On three separate occasions during the drive there, Durrie had given Oliver BetaSomnol boosters to keep him asleep. It was more drug than he’d really wanted to administer, but he’d had little choice.

  Now that he had Oliver in the cell, the drug was no longer necessary. He could do nothing, however, but provide aspirin for the headache Oliver experienced from the withdrawal. A full thirty-six hours passed before the former police officer’s symptoms had lessened enough so that Durrie could move forward.

  Using the threat of his stun gun, he had Oliver chain himself to the chair in his room before he carried his own in and sat down.

  • • •

  “You’re one very lucky son of a bitch,” the man said as he took a seat.

  Jake almost laughed. “You might have to explain that to me.”

  “What do you think I mean?” the man asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  The man considered him for a moment. “You can do better than that.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me, if you think I should know,” Jake said. “Or not. I don’t really care.” Though his headache was gone, he’d never felt so drained in his life, and a verbal game was the last thing he cared about.

  The man was silent for a moment, then said, “You don’t see it now, but if it wasn’t for me, your funeral would already be over.”

  “Easy to say, hard to prove, but what the hell? Thanks.”

  “You think you’re funny sometimes, don’t you? You don’t have to answer. I can tell. You should also know that doesn’t cut it with me. Feel free to tell your jokes, but don’t expect me to laugh.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Jake said.

  The man stared at him for nearly a minute, then said, “You are going to thank me someday, but not just for saving your life. For changing it completely.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “We’ll talk about your choices later.”

  The man stood up and carried his chair out of the room. For a second, Jake thought he was going to leave him shackled to the chair, but then the guy returned and grabbed Jake’s left wrist firmly in one hand. With his other, he unlocked the cuff, then tossed the key on Jake’s lap.

  With surprising agility, he released Jake’s wrist and stepped back out of range.

  “After you finish unlocking yourself, slide the key under the door,” he said.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you never see me again.”

  The man started to close the door.

  “Wait,” Jake said.

  The man looked back, silent.

  “Do you have a name?”

  A moment’s pause, then, “Call me Durrie.” With that, the man shut the door.

  Jake unfastened his other wrist and his ankles, then did as the man—as Durrie—instructed, scooting the key through the small space under the door. He wasn’t sure if Durrie would follow through with the threat, but Jake felt now was not the time to test him.

  He lay back on the bed, replaying the conversation in his mind. When he boiled it down, Durrie had basically told him three things besides his name: 1) that Jake would have been dead if Durrie hadn’t kidnapped him, 2) that he had little sense of humor, and 3) that Jake was going to be given some kind of choice.

  Of the three things, the only one Jake was sure of was the lack of humor. Beyond that he had to assume it was all just talk. But talk was better than no talk at all, and the longer Jake could keep it going, the better the chance the man would make a mistake. Jake just had to bide his time, and not make a lot of waves.

  Easier said than done.

  • • •

  “How?” Durrie asked.

  Jake had no idea what time it was. There were no windows in his room. The only thing he knew was that this was their third conversation since his headache had passed, and that he’d slept several hours since the last one.

  “What do you mean, ‘how’?” Jake said.

  “You found the matchbook at the site. Fine. You followed it back to the hotel. That makes sense. You then convinced the hotel manager and the head of security to allow you to view camera footage from the night in question. But how did you pick us out?”

  There was no easy answer to that since Jake himself wasn’t sure how he’d done it. “Just…a feeling, I guess.”

  “A feeling.” Durrie stared at him. “You’re telling me you did it based on a random feeling?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Jake was trying to be c
ooperative. Ultimately what they talked about was unimportant. If it helped increase Durrie’s trust in him, that’s all that mattered. But he could tell his captor wasn’t satisfied. “Well…um, the two other men—they kind of stood out.”

  “How do you mean?” Durrie asked quickly.

  Jake thought back. How did he mean it? “They were…trying…too hard to blend in, I think. I just got the sense that they didn’t really belong.”

  “You could tell they were trying?”

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Jake blurted out, then regretted it immediately. Cooperation. Remember! “Sorry, it’s just I’m…”

  “Being held against your will?”

  The words surprised Jake. “Yeah. I guess that would be it, wouldn’t it?”

  “I know you still won’t believe this, but this was the only way to keep you alive.”

  It wasn’t the first time Durrie had said this, and as much as Jake wanted to push for more, he knew it would be better to wait.

  When neither of them said anything for a moment, Durrie asked, “Is that how you spotted me?”

  “No. You, I wouldn’t have picked out on my own. It was the other guy, the light-haired one who gave you away.”

  “How?”

  “He was in the elevator coming down from his floor. It stopped on number three, and you got on. The other man gave you a look that made me think he knew you. But you didn’t respond. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were involved or not until the parking lot.”

  Durrie looked away, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Then, without another word, he got up and left the room.

  • • •

  Terminate him. Now, Durrie thought.

  That was survival mode kicking in. Any identified threat needed to be dealt with immediately and permanently. It took everything he had to keep from running upstairs, grabbing his gun, and returning to put a bullet in Jake Oliver’s head.

  Calm down. He was a threat. But not now. Or, at least, not at the moment.

  What Oliver had proven once more was that he was gifted. Granted, he lacked training, but his raw skills were impressive. Given the right guidance, who knew what the kid might achieve?