The Deceived

by Brett Battles

  utes.” “Of course you do,” Nate said. Tasha guided Quinn toward the motel. As they approached it, Quinn could see it was one of those holdovers from the seventies. An ugly box of a place, forty rooms stuffed into a single two-story building. It was called the Lambert Motor Hotel, and surprisingly seemed to be a pretty busy place. Most of the parking spots surrounding it were full.

  “I’m on the ground floor,” she said. “Room eighteen, near the back.”

  Quinn turned into the lot and drove slowly toward the rear.

  “You can just drop me off he—”

  Quinn glanced over at her. She was staring across him toward the building. The look on her face was both confused and scared. He turned to see what she was looking at.

  The door to room 18 was wide open.

  Tasha started to open the passenger door.

  “No,” he said. “Get down.”

  “What?”

  “Just get down. Don’t let anyone see you.”

  Tasha slumped down in her seat as Quinn drove past her room, then made a slow U-turn and headed back out to the street. Half a block down, he pulled the rental to the curb and turned off the engine.

  “Does anyone else know where you’re staying?”

  “No,” she said. “I...Oh my God.”

  “What?”

  “When I called my friend in Houston to get me into the show, he gave me a number to call to set up the details.” She looked at Quinn. “I used the phone in my room to make the call.”

  “So someone at the exhibit could have figured out where you were staying.”

  “That was stupid,” she said, rubbing a hand over her face. She then glanced back toward the motel. “Do you think it’s them?”

  “Maybe the maid just forgot to close the door.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  Quinn leaned over in her direction, then reached down toward her legs.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, pulling back slightly.

  He said nothing as he slipped his hand under the seat, then pulled out the SIG.

  Tasha’s eyes grew wide, but she said nothing.

  Quinn opened his door and climbed out. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Instead of heading straight for her room, Quinn made his way along the back of the motel using a small service walkway. There were windows along the wall, but most had their curtains closed, including the window to Tasha’s room.

  As he neared the end of the building, his phone emitted two short vibrations, telling him he’d received a text message. He pulled it out and took a look.

  It was from Nate. An address.

  He slipped the phone back into his pocket.

  Emerging from the service walkway, he found himself at the back end of the motel parking lot. Holding his gun at his side, he walked around the short end of the building to the sidewalk that ran in front of the first-floor rooms.

  Room 18 was three doors down from where he stood. Quinn did a quick check of the cars parked nearby. They were all empty. He could hear TVs in several of the rooms, but outside he was alone.

  He walked down the sidewalk slowly, trying to look like someone heading to his room. The TVs were on in both rooms 20 and 19, but the drapes on the windows were closed.

  He raised his gun as he neared the entrance to room 18, stopping just short of the open door. He listened for a moment, but all was silent. Slowly he eased himself around the jamb and looked in.

  The room was dark, lit only by whatever passed through the doorway from the parking lot. Still, it was more than enough for Quinn to see inside.

  The room was deserted, but someone had definitely been there and had done nothing to hide their visit.

  They had tossed the room. Not a robbery, though. The TV was still there, as were the phone and the clock radio. But the bed had been stripped and the mattress pushed haphazardly against the wall. There was a suitcase on the ground near the door. It was empty, its sides sliced open. Its contents were scattered all around the room. Clothes, mostly. Women’s.

  Just like he’d seen at Jenny’s house in Houston, it looked like someone had been searching for something. But whoever had done it was gone.

  Quinn lowered the SIG and kept walking down the path. There was no need to go inside. He wasn’t investigating a crime. Knowing what had happened in the room was enough.

  As he returned to the car, he carefully checked to make sure he wasn’t being followed or watched.

  “Well?” Tasha asked once he had climbed into the sedan and closed the door. “Did you go inside?”

  Quinn started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “You can’t go back there.”

  “But my suitcase...my clothes.”

  “You can replace them.”

  “What happened?”

  “Did Jenny give you something?” he asked. “Something other people would be looking for?”

  Tasha shook her head. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you know if she had anything that would force her to hide?”

  “Is that what this is about? She has something they want?”

  “Do you know if she has something she shouldn’t have?”

  Again, she shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  Quinn turned the car left onto the road that would take them back to the interstate.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You need to get someplace safe. Do you have any friends nearby? Relatives?”

  “Here? I don’t know anyone but Jenny.”

  He knew he should just stick to his plan and let her fend for herself. But someone was directly after her now, and if she really was Jenny’s friend, he couldn’t bring himself to abandon her. Markoff was already dead. Jenny might be, also. He didn’t need to add Tasha’s death on top of that.

  “I’ll find you someplace safe,” he said. “In a few days, maybe a week, you can go home.”

  “Hide out?” she said, as if the words were foreign to her.

  “They were in your room, Tasha. They know who you are. You have to lay low.”

  “What about Jenny?” she asked.

  “Let me worry about Jenny.”

  He could feel her looking over at him, but he kept his eyes on the road.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay, you’ve heard what I’ve said, but you’re still going to look for her? Or okay, you’ll let me do it?”

  She hesitated. “Okay, I’ll let you do it.” Now that they knew who she was, she was scared. He could hear it in her voice.

  “Good.”

  He’d take her back to his hotel and figure out what to do with her then. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, accessing Nate’s message again.

  First, they had a stop to make.

  Derek Blackmoore lived nearly an hour south of the District on the outskirts of Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was a neighborhood of scattered houses built among the trees of the receding forest.

  It wouldn’t be long before the majority of the trees were gone as the bedroom community of Fredericksburg continued to expand. The signs were there—a handful of new homes in various stages of construction.

  The houses that were already established were a mix of one- and two-stories. Each house was set on a large lot, but unlike the West Coast, no one in this part of the world seemed to believe in fences. There was no way to know where one property ended and another began.

  Quinn turned down Blackmoore’s street. There were mailboxes at the end of each driveway, their addresses prominently displayed. It didn’t take long before he found Blackmoore’s.

  He drove past the driveway, then pulled onto the grassy shoulder a couple of lots away.

  “What are we doing here?” Tasha asked.

  “I need to talk to someone.”

  “Derek Blackmoore?”

  Quinn shot her a surprised look.

  “You said his name on the phone,�
� she said.

  He nodded once, remembering. “Just stay here,” he said.

  “Is he someone who can help find Jenny?”

  “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  He quickly got out of the car to avoid any further conversation, then slipped his gun under his waistband at the small of his back.

  Derek Blackmoore had been a spy runner for the Agency. Quinn had never met the man himself, but he had heard plenty of stories from Markoff. Blackmoore had been Markoff ’s handler more times than not. This was before the older man had been forced into retirement as a scapegoat for intelligence gaffes during the second Gulf War.

  “He had nothing to do with it,” Markoff had told Quinn later. “He was all buttoned up. It was some asshole above him who hadn’t listened to Blackmoore’s warnings, then the guy turned around and pointed the finger at him.”

  Markoff had once said Blackmoore was the only person in the business other than Quinn he trusted completely. There was no bullshit between them, no hidden agendas.

  So if Markoff had trusted him when they’d worked together, maybe he’d trusted him enough to let him know what was going on now. It was a long shot, but at the moment, every move Quinn made was a long shot.

  Blackmoore’s house was set back from the road down a long driveway. It was on a gentle slope that dropped away from the road for about a hundred yards before it rose again on the other side of the small vale. Quinn could hear running water down where the two hills met. A brook, probably barely deep enough to get your feet wet.

  Lights were on in Blackmoore’s house. Quinn took that for a good sign. He would have hated to wake the old man up.

  He walked slowly down the driveway, making sure he was in sight of the front window at all times. If he wanted any chance of getting help out of Blackmoore, then sneaking up on the old spook would not be a great idea.

  He climbed the three steps up to a wide porch that wrapped around the front of the house, then approached the front door. But before he could knock, he heard a voice behind him.

  “What do you want?”

  Quinn turned quickly, expecting to find someone standing there, but there was no one.

  “I said, what do you want?”

  This time the voice came from his right. Quinn looked over, but he was still alone.

  He searched the shadows in the direction the voice had come from, then saw it. A tiny speaker hidden in the eaves of the porch overhang. The voice had been crystal clear, so it had to be top-of-the-line.

  “Answer the question or get the hell out of here.”

  This one was from the left, but Quinn didn’t look this time. Instead, he approached the front door, stopping only a foot away.

  “Mr. Blackmoore, I need to talk with you.”

  “I’m not interested in conversations. Get your ass off my property before I call the police.” This speaker was just above the door.

  “Steven Markoff sent me.”

  Silence.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not,” Quinn said.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Jonathan Quinn.”

  Silence again.

  “Prove it.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  “Tell me how you met Steven.”

  Quinn tensed. The only person he had ever told the story to was Orlando, and they hadn’t talked about it since. “Finland,” he said. “Markoff was undercover and he saved my life.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “By cutting the ropes that suspended me from the trees,” Quinn said, his teeth clenched. “By walking me out of the forest. By driving me all the way to Turku, and taking me on the ferry to Stockholm. Is that enough? Or do you want more?”

  Blackmoore said nothing for several seconds, then, “You’re armed.”

  “I am.”

  “Put it on the ground.”

  Quinn held both hands out in front of him, then slowly moved his right hand around to the small of his back. He pulled out the gun, then set it on the porch, and slid it gently toward the door before standing back up.

  For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the door opened. Standing there was a small gray-haired man. His face was lined with creases and wrinkles. Liver spots dotted his receding hairline. Over his eyes, he wore a pair of metal-framed glasses with thick lenses. He was dressed in a gray Baltimore Orioles sweatshirt and dark blue sweatpants. But the most important part of his outfit was the Smith and Wesson pistol in his right hand.

  “So you’re the cleaner,” he said, his voice surprisingly strong for his body.

  “And you’re the spy runner,” Quinn said.

  “Past life. What do you want?”

  Quinn said, “Markoff ’s dead.”

  Silence hung between them for several seconds. With a sigh of resignation, Blackmoore stepped across the threshold and picked up Quinn’s gun, then motioned for the cleaner to follow him back inside.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  They sat in Blackmoore’s living room, Quinn on the worn couch and Blackmoore on a cloth-covered recliner. The SIG sat on the side table within easy reach of Markoff ’s old boss.

  The room was an interior decorator’s nightmare. A mess of converging styles, none done particularly well. Bad seventies-era furniture, next to worse eighties-era lamps. And everywhere stacks of magazines and papers and books. On the coffee table were plates that hadn’t been washed for days, maybe weeks.

  Quinn made no judgments as he recounted a condensed version of the events from the past few days. He left out Tasha, wanting to limit her liability as much as possible. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Blackmoore. Markoff trusted him, so that was good enough for Quinn. It just didn’t seem necessary.

  “Son of a bitch,” Blackmoore said when Quinn finished. “You’re sure it was him?”

  “I’m sure,” Quinn said.

  “Did you check the DNA?”

  “I didn’t need to check the DNA. I made a positive ID.”

  “These things can be faked, you know. The fuckers have ways of doing it. You said the body was in bad shape. That would make it easy.”

  “It was him, all right,” Quinn said. “He’s dead. He’s not coming back.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “What I’m worried about now is Jenny. I don’t have any physical proof, but my gut tells me his death is connected to what’s happened to her.”

  “Of course it’s connected.”

  Quinn paused. “You say that like you know something.”

  “Forget it. Doesn’t matter, he’s dead.”

  “What about Jenny? She’s not dead yet.”

  “She might be.”

  “I’d rather assume she isn’t,” Quinn said.

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s not important.”

  Quinn decided to try a different tack. “What about finding out who killed Markoff?”

  Blackmoore let out a single derisive laugh. “You really think you can do that?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “You’re just a cleaner.”

  “And you’re just a paranoid old man.”

  Blackmoore stared at Quinn. After a moment, he pushed himself out of his chair.

  “Whoever killed Markoff,” he said, “they’ll get theirs eventually. They always do.” He started walking toward the foyer. “I’m tired. It’s time for you to go.”

  Quinn remained seated. When the old man realized he wasn’t being followed, he stopped and turned back.

  “It’s late and I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  Quinn didn’t move.

  Blackmoore took a few steps back. “Get the hell out of my house.”

  “You said of course they’re connected. What did you mean?”

  The old man’s eyes bored into Quinn again, but Quinn didn’t budge. Finally Blackmoore said, “Fuck.” He returned to his chair but didn’t sit down. “If they were able to kill Markoff, do you really think they�
�ll let you live once they know you’re looking for them?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Don’t be so blind,” Blackmoore said. “Drop it.”

  “Look,” Quinn said, unable to contain his anger any longer. “I have to do this. I have no choice. I owe him.”

  “Owe him? You mean Markoff?” The old man nearly laughed. “Markoff ’s dead. You don’t owe him shit.”

  Quinn tried to keep his voice calm and even. “What did you mean when you said they were connected?”

  “Jesus. You’re not going to stop, are you?”

  “What did you mean?” Quinn repeated.

  “I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long, cleaner. Do you always get this wrapped up?”

  Quinn started to repeat his question, but Blackmoore held up a hand to stop him.

  “I know it’s connected because the reason he was out of the country was due to her.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “How do you think? He told me.” He sighed, then sat back down. “They were having problems, okay? Don’t ask me details. What the fuck do I know about relationships? I’ve been alone for over forty years. Just problems.” Blackmoore frowned. “She had some kind of emergency. Left town without even telling Markoff where she was go

  ing. When he located her, he went to see if he could help.” “Where was she?” “I have no idea.” “None?” Blackmoore looked down for a moment, then sighed. “Goddamn it,” he said. “Follow me.”

  CHAPTER

  BLACKMOORE TOOK QUINN INTO ONE OF THE ROOMS

  at the back of the house. Though it had been designed to be a bedroom, it was now part office, part technical workspace.

  There were no windows in the room. If they had been there once, they were now covered by a wall. There was also no closet. Either it, too, had been boarded over, or there never had been one in the first place.

  Lining three of the walls was a two-foot-wide workbench covered with tools and bits and pieces of electronic gear. And against the wall next to the door was a desk, complete with computer monitor and keyboard. Above the desk and mounted just below the ceiling were five television monitors. Each displayed a view of Blackmoore’s property. Live shots from cameras placed strategically so that no one would get near the house without being seen.