The west tower itself seemed to be almost a mirror image of its sister. The entrance looked no different. Neither did the camera that was aimed at it. The lobby beyond the door was also identical, but reversed.
There were two notable differences at this end, though. The first was that the apartments on the deck level had small private patios carved out of the main deck, each delineated by a chest-high wall. As far as Quinn could see, there were no cameras on these apartments.
And the second, the signal strength on the tracking device had reached .9900. Its highest level yet.
The west tower looked like it was the winner.
Quinn was about to take a closer look at the patios behind the deck-level apartments when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the display. Orlando.
“Damn,” Quinn said. Anyone else and he would have just ignored the call.
“What?” Nate asked.
“Nothing. Just keep an eye out. I’m going off-line for a second.”
He pulled the earpiece out, then flipped his phone open and pressed the Talk button.
“Hold on,” he whispered into his cell.
He moved away from the tower to one of the sitting areas closest to the outer wall. He crouched down so he was completely hidden from view, then returned the phone to his ear.
“Not a good time,” he whispered.
“Are you inside yet?” she asked.
“Working on it.”
“And no one’s seen you?”
“The plan is not to be seen.”
“Right. I just thought that since you have no idea what you’re looking for, you might have already screwed up.”
“Appreciate the confidence. But I don’t really have time for the I’m-smarter-than-you talk right now.”
“Try apartments zero-four dash twenty-one and zero-five dash twenty-one. West tower.”
“What?”
“Zero-four twenty-one or zero-five twenty-one,” she said. “West tower. Is there a problem with the connection?”
“Why there?”
He could almost hear her smile on the other end. “Thought it might be easier if you knew where you were going, so I dug a little and found a list of tenants for the Quayside Villas.”
“Why those two?”
“Everything in the building is rented by individuals or corporations. All the owners check out as legitimate. All except the owners of those two apartments. Each is owned by a separate corporation. The funny thing is neither corporation exists. Interesting that out of all the apartments in the building, those two would be one on top of another.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean Markoff meant either one.”
“Have you been able to do a signal check?” she asked.
He paused. “It’s coming from inside the west tower.”
“Well then. My work here is done,” she said.
CHAPTER
“I’M GOING IN,” QUINN TOLD NATE ONCE HE HAD HIS
earpiece back in.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Quinn said. “Hold your position and monitor the security station.”
“Got it.”
Quinn moved back through the maze of plants to the main pathway. Just beyond was the private patio of the apartment nearest the tower door. The gray stone wall that enclosed it created an area about twenty feet deep by fifteen wide. A wrought-iron patio table and set of matching chairs sat off to the left. Stuck through a hole in the middle of the table was an opened dark umbrella currently shading the patio furniture from nothing but the stars. Lining one of the walls were several small pots of flowers. At the far end was the sliding glass door entrance to the apartment, the blinds pulled only halfway closed.
Inside, the apartment was dark. Still, Quinn was able to make out what looked to be a couch and an entertainment console. Beyond that, the room plunged into total black.
He was sure he could get in, but there were two problems. The first and most obvious was that someone might be home, while the second was the apartment’s proximity to the security camera. Either one was a reason to move on.
He made his way left to the next private patio. More furniture, this time made of wood. There was even a lounge similar to those on the main deck. But whoever lived in this apartment didn’t appear to be a gardener. There were no plants or flowers, just the furniture and a small hibachi grill pulled under the overhang near the door. Again the blinds were not completely closed, but the angle of the building prevented most of the exterior light from shining in, so Quinn could see little beyond the glass. He got the impression, though, that whoever lived there wasn’t a big fan of the outdoors and had used their portion of the deck sparingly at best.
Patio number three was similar to the first one. Furniture and plants. Only this time, a curtain was drawn across the glass door.
Quinn glanced back at the second patio, a question on his brow. He walked over to it, looked left and right, then hopped the wall.
He paused for a second, waiting to see if there was any response from inside. Nothing.
“Check,” he said.
“No change,” Nate told him.
Quinn scanned the patio again to make sure there was nothing he had missed, then pulled out his cell phone. He accessed the camera menu and switched it to thermal sensor, maximum strength. The image on the screen went dark. Quinn held his hand up in front of the lens to test, and was greeted with the image of a bright white hand on the screen.
He turned the camera toward the apartment. The screen remained dark. The range on the sensor was spec’d out at one hundred feet, so either the place was a lot bigger than he thought it was, or no one was home.
I’ll take door number two, Quinn thought.
“I need a diversion.”
Quinn was inside the apartment, standing next to the front door in the living room. He had replaced his climbing gloves with a pair of latex ones, then had unlocked the door. All he had to do now was pull it open and step through into the common hallway. But he had no idea if there were any cameras in the corridor beyond.
“How long?” Nate asked. “Fifteen seconds at least. Thirty would be better.” Quinn could hear Nate’s mic rub against something. “Okay,” Nate
said. “Give me a minute. I’ll give you a ready-go.”
Quinn held his position, one hand on the knob and one on the door a few inches higher, holding it closed. If Nate could get the guard’s eyes off the screens for a few moments, he should be able to locate the stairs and begin heading up to the fourth floor.
“Ready?” Nate asked. “Yes.” There was a pause, then Quinn heard what sounded like a muffled
whack. “Go,” Nate said. Quinn pulled the door open and raced into the third-floor lobby.
He gave himself a safe margin of twelve seconds to find the stairs and disappear inside.
Along the wall across from him were doors to other apartments. To the right, the hallway turned toward the small lobby where the elevator was located.
Where the hell were the stairs? He looked to the left. Nothing. As he swung back to the right, he
spotted a door different from those of the other apartments. Metal, with no locks. He ran across the tiled floor and pushed the door open. He was halfway up to the fourth floor before he allowed himself a
moment to relax. “What’s happening?” he asked. “I think I might have gone just a little overboard,” Nate said. “What did you do?” Quinn asked. He reached the fourth-floor
landing and stopped next to the door. “I thought I could throw something against the window of the security room. You know, shake them up a little bit?”
Decent enough plan. The room was all windows. It wasn’t inconceivable some teenagers could be wandering around causing trouble.
“And?”
“I...em... think I cracked the window,” Nate said. “By the way, there are three guards. The guy who was in the room nearly fell on the floor when the rock hit the window. He r
an outside, then called the other two.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re all outside. They look pretty pissed. Especially the first guy.”
“No one’s watching the monitors?”
“Nope.”
Quinn smiled. “Good job.”
He decided to try 04-21 first. Without opening the door, he pulled out his phone again and scanned the hallway beyond for body heat signatures. The only things he picked up were a series of evenly spaced white blobs. Lights.
He pushed the door to the fourth floor open, then stepped through. The lobby was almost identical to the one on the third floor, only there was no glass door at the other end leading outside. And, as far as he could tell, no security cameras.
He quickly made his way down the hall, then stopped when he reached apartment 04-20. A quick check of the tracking device showed the signal strength had reached .9989, which meant he was within twenty feet of where the signal was coming from.
He allowed himself a quick smirk as he shook his head. Orlando had been right, and chances were, she wasn’t going to let him forget it.
From where he stood, the door to 04-21 was another fifteen feet away. To most people, it would have probably looked the same as all the others. But to Quinn’s trained eye, he saw one glaring difference.
Not on the door itself, but on the wall opposite. Mounted directly across from the entrance at eye level was a metal sconce with a bouquet of orchids spilling out the top. It fit well with the design of the rest of the building. But while there were similar sconces along the walls of the hallway, they all housed lights. This was the only one containing flowers.
Quinn’s mind raced through the possibilities. A sensor, a camera, an alarm. Any one of those could have been hidden inside the wall ornament. He knew it had to be something like that. He wasn’t about to believe it was harmless.
There was a quick way he could check, though. He pointed his camera lens toward the sconce. Since it didn’t house a light, it should have appeared dark on his screen, or, at the most, there might have been some slight residual heat from the dying flowers.
But while the flowers were all but dark, there was a small gray dot near the base, indicating some kind of power source.
He switched the camera to normal and zoomed in on the base of the ornament. It looked like there was a small hole near the bottom, facing the door to apartment 04-21. His angle was bad, so he couldn’t be sure.
Before moving in for a better look, he reengaged the heat sensor and turned the camera toward apartment 04-21. The image was almost completely dark. There was only one grayish hint of heat, about the size of a baseball, but that was it. Perhaps a solitary lamp or some other small electronic device.
He shot off a couple quick pictures in case there was anything his eye wasn’t seeing but could be teased out by Orlando on the laptop later, then moved the camera to the left, scanning the rest of the apartment. More darkness, this time complete. No heat signatures anywhere. Odd, he thought. There should have been more. He shot off another photo, then put his camera away.
“Update,” Quinn said.
“Still outside,” Nate said. “One of them’s on the phone.”
“If the police show up, fall back, but stay within radio range.”
“Okay.”
Quinn squeezed himself against the wall and moved toward the ornament. When he was only a few feet away, he lowered himself into a crouch and crept underneath it.
There was definitely a hole near the base. It was a small round recess no bigger than the end of a pencil eraser. It was designed to look like a slot for a screw, but that’s not what it was. From his angle, Quinn could just make out a reflection of light on glass.
A lens.
Quinn shoved his hands into his pockets, looking for anything small enough to slip into the recess. A piece of paper would have been perfect. But he had nothing. He took a quick glance along the floor, but it was clean.
As he turned to look at the recess again, his eyes were drawn to the orchids several inches above it. He smiled, then reached up carefully and plucked a couple of petals off the nearest flower.
He hesitated a moment. He’d come to the point of commit or leave. He’d already spent more time in the building than he had planned, but he knew he couldn’t leave without seeing what was on the other side of that door. If this was the room Markoff had been pointing to—and the signal seemed to be saying it was—Quinn had to check.
He rolled one of the petals into a cylindrical shape roughly the size of the opening on the sconce, then simply stuck it in the hole and folded the end over to completely cover the lens.
“One of the guards is going back inside,” Nate said.
“The security room?” Quinn asked.
“No. The west tower.”
Quinn frowned. “Does he seem like he was in a hurry?”
“No. It looks like he’s returning to his rounds.”
“All right,” Quinn said. There were eleven floors in the tower. It might be a half hour before he made it to the fourth floor.
Quinn glanced at his watch. Thirty seconds had passed since he’d obscured the camera’s lens. Nothing had happened.
He waited an additional thirty, then stepped across the hallway to the door. He scanned the doorjamb top to bottom, looking for any apparent security device, but found nothing.
He next turned his attention to the locks.
There were two: a deadbolt and the lock in the knob. Both looked solid and new. Quinn pulled out his lock picks, then leaned down to get a better look. He moved the pick and tension wrench toward the keyhole of the deadbolt. The wrench slipped into the hole a quarter inch, then stopped. Quinn tried to move it around, but it would go in no further.
“What the hell?” he said.
He set the tools on the floor and retrieved his flashlight, aiming the beam into the deadbolt’s keyhole. The problem was the hole wasn’t a keyhole at all. It was a fake, made just deep enough to give the appearance it was an actual slot for a key.
Quinn moved the light to the hole on the doorknob. Same story.
“Son of a bitch,” Quinn said.
“What’s going on?” Nate asked.
“Not now,” Quinn said as he put his lock picks away.
He placed his palm on the door and gave it a gentle push. Solid. But not wood solid, something more. There was no give in the door at all.
As he started to run the possibilities through his mind, there was a muffled ding from his left, around the bend in the hallway. The sound of an elevator car arriving.
He looked to his right. The hallway continued on for another forty feet, then turned again. Perhaps there was another staircase around the corner. There was no way he could make it back to the one he’d used without being seen.
He could hear the elevator door open, then steps as someone exited into the tiled hallway. Whether it was the security guard or not, the last thing Quinn wanted was for someone to see him.
He moved to the right down the corridor as quickly and quietly as he could. When he turned the corner, he saw a doorless opening near the end of the hall.
He reached it in seconds. The room beyond the threshold was unlit, but not totally dark. He could make out a trash chute and a couple of vending machines. With no time to make a more thorough evaluation, he squeezed between one of the machines and the wall. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was the best he could do.
For several minutes, there was nothing, then the footsteps on tile returned as the security guard neared the utility room. Quinn tensed, preparing himself for action.
Closer and closer, until they were right outside the door. There the steps stopped.
Keep walking, buddy, Quinn thought.
The beam of a flashlight darted into the room. It swept left, right, then left again. Just as quickly, it went out, and the steps began moving back down the hallway again.
Fifteen minutes later, Quinn and Nate met up on the path along the r
iver. On his way out, Quinn had removed the petal he’d stuck over the camera lens in the sconce, leaving no trace that he’d been in the building.
“So what did you find?” Nate asked. “Trouble, I think,” Quinn said. “What kind?” It was a good question. Unfortunately, Quinn didn’t have an an
swer.
CHAPTER
THE NIGHT WAS A SHORT ONE. QUINN FELL INTO BED
just after 5 a.m. Three hours later, his eyes snapped open and his body tensed as someone shook him awake.
“It’s just me,” Orlando said. She was sitting on the edge of his bed, a somber look on her face.
“What is it?” he asked as he pushed himself up.
“I have something you’ll want to see,” she said.
“What?”
She stood up. “I’ve got it up on the computer.”
Quinn watched her walk out of the room, then sighed and pushed himself out of bed. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, then walked barefoot into the other room.
Orlando was sitting at the desk, her computer open in front of her. She was alone. Nate was undoubtedly still asleep in his room.
Quinn walked over to her. “Okay,” he said. “Show me.”
She turned the laptop and tilted the screen so he could see it. She had the browser open to a newspaper article from the Washington Post.
FORMER CIA OFFICIAL IN CRITICAL CONDITION
Fredericksburg, Virginia—Derek Blackmoore was found unconscious in the entryway of his home outside Fredericksburg, Virginia, yesterday afternoon. Mr. Blackmoore, a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, had suffered multiple bruises and fractures when a neighbor discovered him.
“He was beaten severely,” Detective Scott Geist said. “It appears that he was probably left to die. Mr. Blackmoore was lucky someone found him when they did. He’s in bad shape, but he’s alive.”
When asked what might have motivated the attack, Geist said, “We’re operating under the theory that it was a robbery at this point, but we’re not ruling anything out.”
The Deceived Page 21