The Silenced

by Brett Battles

  She stared at him for a moment, then pushed herself off the wall and tried to run into the living room. Nate grabbed her again, lifting her off her feet, then all but carried her to the couch and set her down.

  “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” she said, striking at him wildly with her hands.

  “Liz, please. Stop.” He was able to finally grab her wrists, and pushed them down into her lap.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Your life’s in danger. Do you understand? Some people who want to harm you are on their way here right now.”

  “No. No. You’re lying,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re just saying that to get me out of the building, then you’ll … you’ll …”

  Nate needed to calm her down, and fast. “I think you should talk to your—” He looked at Julien. The Frenchman already thought he knew the truth, but as far as Nate knew, Quinn had never confirmed it. To hell with it, he thought. Quinn could be pissed at him later. “Your brother.”

  She stopped struggling, confused. “My brother?”

  “I work for him.” Nate said.

  “You work for Jake?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you said you’d only met him once before.”

  Nate took a deep breath. “I lied.”

  Her eyes flicked to Julien, then back to Nate. “Who’s Nate?”

  Nate took a deep breath. “I am.”

  “But … what about … you said your name was Andrew.”

  “Liz, we need to get you out of here.”

  “Why would my brother want you here?”

  “To protect you.”

  “Protect me?”

  “He knew you were in danger.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second.” She started pushing against him again.

  “Julien. Get Quinn on the phone.”

  “Who the hell is Quinn?” Liz asked.

  He looked at her. “Your brother.”

  Nate knew it was all coming at her too fast. He could almost see her mind overloading.

  Dammit, he thought. This was not the way this should have gone.

  “Quinn? It’s Julien. We have a problem.” Nate listened as the Frenchman described their situation to Quinn.

  When he was finished, Nate said, “It would be great if he would talk to her.”

  Julien relayed the request, then walked over to the couch and tried to hold the phone up to Liz’s ear. But she moved her head away, twisting it and turning it so Julien couldn’t get the phone in place.

  “It’s just a trick,” she said. “It’s not him.”

  “Use the speaker,” Nate said.

  Julien touched the screen of his phone, then said, “Quinn?”

  “I’m here.”

  Liz froze.

  “Quinn,” Nate said, “we need to get Liz out, but she’s not cooperating. We’ve got five minutes tops before we run into a potential overlap. Could you please convince her we’re not here to hurt her?”

  “Liz,” Quinn said, “you need to listen to them. They have to get you out of there now.”

  “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not my brother,” she said.

  Quinn took a moment before responding. “When we were out on the lake after we flipped, and I grabbed ahold of you, remember?”

  “Shut up!” she yelled. “Shut up!”

  “I whispered something in your ear.”

  “Please stop,” she said, only this time some of the fight was missing from her voice.

  “I said it over and over. Do you remember? I said, ‘I’ll never let anything hurt you.’ ”

  Liz’s hands began to shake. “Jake?”

  “My friends are there to keep you safe. You need to listen to them, and do exactly what they say. Can you do that?”

  “Jake, what’s going on?”

  “We’ll talk about that later. I promise. Right now you have to get out of your apartment.”

  “I … I don’t understand.”

  “Someone is on their way to your place right now. If they get there before you leave, they will kill my friends and take you. They very likely will kill you, too. You have to leave now.”

  “Kill us? Why would they—”

  “Liz! You’re running out of time. Once my friends get you someplace safe, I’ll explain everything to you.”

  The stunned look on her face turned defiant.

  “Why should I believe you?” she said. “You haven’t cared about me for twenty years.”

  “Liz! You can hate me all you want, but you still need to get the hell out of there. Please, listen to Andrew.”

  “Ah, yeah,” Nate said. “About that. She already knows my name.”

  “I don’t care what she knows! You all need to leave right now!”

  Julien’s phone beeped.

  “What’s that?” Quinn asked.

  Julien looked at the display. “It’s them. I think they’re here.”

  JULIEN TURNED OFF THE SPEAKERPHONE FUNCTION, then switched to the incoming call.

  “Oui? … There’s a café at the corner,” Julien said, switching to English. “I’ll meet you there in five minutes.” The Frenchman listened. “Because I’m checking her floor right now.… No, it’s better that we meet there. I can give you the layout.” He glanced at Liz. “Yes, she was alone last I checked.… I’ll be right there. Four minutes now.”

  Julien switched the call back to Quinn and reengaged the speaker.

  “They’re outside,” he said. “We have five, maybe six minutes before they become suspicious.”

  “Then get moving, and don’t call me until you’re someplace safe,” Quinn said.

  The phone went dead.

  “All right, come on,” Nate said.

  He grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulders, but Liz didn’t move. He put his hand on her arm and yanked her to her feet. “Come on. We don’t have any more time.”

  “Is there really someone downstairs who wants to hurt me?”

  “Yes,” Nate said, leading her toward the door.

  “Wait. How long are we going to be gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She tried to pull her arm out of his grasp. “I need some clothes.”

  He gripped her harder. He didn’t want to hurt her, but at the moment it was better than delaying their departure. “We can buy what we need. Now let’s go.”

  “My purse at least,” she said.

  It was on a small table along the back wall of the living room. Nate steered their course so she could grab it, then hurried her out of the apartment.

  As they ran down the corridor, Nate said, “There’s got to be a back way out of the building. Where is it?”

  Liz didn’t seem to hear him.

  “Liz.” He gave her a gentle shake. “You need to help us. Back exit. Where?”

  “There’s a door to the alley. But you can only get to it through the lobby.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Nate said.

  “Stairs, yes?” Julien asked as they neared the end of the hallway.

  “Stairs,” Nate said.

  Julien raced down, agile for such a large man. On his own, Nate would have been able to keep up with him, but he knew if he let go of Liz she’d fall back, so he slowed his pace and kept a hand on her.

  When they reached the final flight, they found Julien three risers from the bottom standing rock still.

  “What is it?” Nate whispered.

  “I saw someone through the window outside.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “He was turned the other way.”

  “One of them?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Could be anyone, Nate thought. But Quinn had taught him to always assume the worst. He looked at Liz. “Which way to the alley door?”

  “It’s across from the elevator at the back of the lobby,” she said. “There’s a hallway that leads to the exit.”

  They would have to cross through the
center of the lobby. If someone looked through the window while they did, they’d be spotted.

  “I’ll check,” Nate said.

  The men outside might have descriptions of both Liz and Julien, but they would have no idea who Nate was.

  “Stay with Julien,” he said as he let go of her arm.

  He moved around Julien and entered the lobby. Then, as if he’d done it a million times before, he strolled toward the entrance of the rear hallway. He was only a few feet from it when someone rapped against the window on the front door.

  “Monsieur, s’il vous plaît. Pouvez-vous me laisser entrer?” The voice was male, most likely the same person Julien had seen.

  Not even flinching, Nate continued on as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

  “Monsieur? S’il vous plaît.”

  The rapping on the glass didn’t stop until Nate disappeared into the back hallway.

  That’s a problem, he thought.

  He looked at his watch. Julien was due at the café in one minute.

  “Julien,” he whispered as loud as he dared.

  “Oui?”

  “You’re going to have to go out and pretend like everything is okay. You need to get that guy away from the door long enough so I can get Liz out the back.”

  “D’accord,” Julien said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Nate angled himself so he could see as much of the lobby as possible without coming into view of the door. Fifteen seconds passed, but the Frenchman hadn’t appeared.

  “Julien. Now would be good.”

  Ten more seconds went by before Julien emerged from the staircase. The Frenchman stutter-stepped, glanced back over his shoulder in the direction he’d just come, then recovered and headed to the door.

  He whispered something, but Nate couldn’t make it out.

  As Julien opened the door, the man who’d been standing there backed up a few steps. He looked at Julien, and they exchanged a few words. As this was happening Julien let the door close behind him, then moved in front of the window to block the view.

  Nate sprinted across the lobby and turned onto the stairs. “Come on, we—”

  He didn’t finish, because no one was there to hear him.

  Quinn looked stunned as he disconnected the call from Julien.

  Orlando already had her own phone up to her ear. “Steven? I know it’s early there. But there’s been an escalation. What’s your situation? … Have the others seen anything unusual? … Okay, I’ll hold.” She moved the cell away from her mouth and looked back at Quinn. “Everything’s quiet at your mother’s house. He’s calling Rickey to see if he’s seen anything.” She suddenly swung the phone back. “Yeah, I’m here.… Okay … good.” To Quinn, she said, “Everything’s quiet.”

  “Let me talk to him,” he said.

  Orlando handed him the phone.

  “Steven? It’s Quinn. We have reason to believe that someone might make a move on my mother at any time. I need you to get her out of there.”

  “Okay, sure,” Steven Howard said. “Anyplace specific?”

  Quinn thought for a moment. “If they do come looking and see that she’s gone, they’ll think she headed to either Winnipeg or Minneapolis.” They were the two closest cities of any size, and would be obvious destinations. “Go west into North Dakota. Stay on Highway 2. When you reach Montana, find a motel somewhere out of the way. Use precautions.”

  “Got it,” Howard said.

  “I should probably talk to my mom,” Quinn said.

  “I’m going to have to wake her.”

  Quinn looked at his watch, then did a quick calculation. It was 4:27 a.m. in Minnesota.

  “Do it,” he said. First he had to convince his sister, and now his mother. This was a day he never saw coming.

  On the other end, he could hear Howard moving through the house. There was a gentle knock. “Mrs. Oliver?” A pause. “Mrs. Oliver, are you awake?” Then in a whispered voice, “She’s coming.”

  The creak of a door opening, the same creak Quinn had heard a few weeks before when he’d been there for his father’s funeral.

  “Steven? Is something wrong?” Dorothy Oliver said, her voice muffled.

  “It’s your son,” Howard said. “He needs to talk to you.”

  “Jake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jake. Is everything all right?” His mother’s voice was now clear and unimpeded.

  “Mom, I need you to do something for me.”

  “Of course.”

  “I need you to leave the house. Steven will—”

  “What?” she said. “Why?”

  “Please, Mom. I need you to trust me, and not ask any questions.”

  She was silent for a moment, then said, “I trust you, honey. But you can’t wake me in the middle of the night and tell me I have to leave my house without telling me why.”

  He hesitated, but knew he had to tell her something. “There are some people … people who might use you to get to me. They may be on the way to the farm right now.”

  “What are you talking about? What people?”

  “Mom, we can talk more later. Right now I need you to do whatever Steven asks. He has a couple of friends who will be there in a few minutes to help. They’re going to watch over you.”

  “Jake, are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “I won’t be if you do what I’ve asked.”

  “Okay,” she said. “If that’s what you need me to do.”

  “That’s what I need you to do.”

  “Then fine, honey. I’ll do what Steven tells me to do.”

  “Thank you, Mom,” Quinn said, relieved. “Please put him back on.”

  “I love you, Jake.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.”

  When Howard was back on the line, Quinn said, “Text me every hour, and call me if anything even slightly unusual happens.”

  “You got it.”

  “Keep her safe, Steven.”

  “I will.”

  Quinn hung up. Orlando was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, her computer in her lap.

  “I can get us on a flight to Paris leaving in an hour and a half,” she said. “That should give us plenty of time to get to the airport.” When Quinn didn’t respond right away, she looked up. “Yes or no?”

  He took a deep breath, trying to quell his anger and frustration. He wanted to take out whoever was trying to harm his sister with his own hands. But he let the moment pass in silence, and tried to rein in his emotions. As much as he wanted to say yes, he knew it was more important for him to stay here and find the source of the problem than to go rushing off to Paris to act as a bodyguard. He shook his head. “Nate and Julien can handle it for now. The only way to really stop this is to get to the one calling the shots.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “The guy I just quit on.”

  Not sixty minutes after Quinn said he was not going to finish the project, a move was being made on his family. In Quinn’s world, the obvious wasn’t always right, but there were times it just couldn’t be ignored.

  Orlando turned her laptop so Quinn could see the screen. On it was a hybrid map/satellite image of a city street. A single glowing blue dot pulsed over a building.

  “Your sister’s street in Paris,” Orlando explained.

  The blue dot, then, would be Nate’s position. Orlando had implanted chips in both Quinn’s and Nate’s phones that would allow her to track them even if the SIM cards had been removed.

  “They’re still in Liz’s building,” he said. “They need to be out of there already!”

  He started to raise his phone, but Orlando reached out and put a hand over his. “Don’t.”

  Quinn glared at her, fire in his eyes.

  “If you call him now, he’s not going to answer. And even if he did, you’d only delay them more.”

  It took every ounce of will he had to lower his hand.

  Nate raced up the stairs to the landing of the first floor.
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  “Liz,” he said, raising his voice as loud as he dared. “Liz. Where are you?”

  She wasn’t on the landing. He looked down the central corridor, but didn’t see her there either. He took two steps in to make sure there was no place she could hide. There wasn’t.

  He returned to the landing, listened for a second to make sure Julien and the others hadn’t come in yet, then headed up the stairs, searching the second and third floors.

  As he neared Liz’s floor, he heard the lobby door open far below. It wasn’t loud, but it was unmistakable. He increased his speed.

  When he reached the fourth floor landing, he could hear breathing. Rapid, but low, like someone trying to keep from being heard. Then, as he stepped into the hallway, he saw her.

  She was pressed against the door to her apartment, trying in vain to find the right key to the lock. Her purse was at her feet, her wallet half in, half out. Nate guessed she’d dropped the bag when she found her keys, no longer concerned about anything but getting into the false safety of her own apartment.

  He ran over to her and grabbed her wrist just as the key began to turn.

  “Let me go,” she said.

  “Liz, we have to get out of here.”

  “Let me go. I’ll be fine inside. I won’t let them in.”

  “They’ll still get in.”

  “I won’t let them!”

  Nate pulled the key out of the lock, then swept up her purse and handed it to her.

  “Hold this,” he said.

  Out of reflex, she did. He then lifted her over his shoulder in more or less a fireman’s hold.

  “Put me down,” she said.

  “If you keep talking, they’ll kill us,” he said.

  Just then the door to apartment 25, two down from Liz’s place, opened. An old woman stuck her head out.

  “Qu’est-ce que vous faites?” she asked.

  “Rien. Tout va bien. Rentrez à l’intérieur,” Nate said, reassuring her there was nothing going on she needed to be concerned about.

  “You speak French, too?” Liz said.

  “A little.”

  The woman looked at them for a moment longer, then closed her door.

  Nate, with Liz still over his shoulder, began moving toward the stairs.

  “What else did you lie to me about?” Liz asked.