“I should have enough time to do that.”
That wasn’t quite the answer he expected. “You have other plans?”
“I do, actually.”
As she spoke, Quinn heard what sounded like an announcement over an intercom system in the background. “Where are you?”
“Reagan Airport.”
He exchanged a look with Nate. “Okay. Why?”
“I think we found where Eli left the information he had for Abraham.”
“That’s great news. Where?”
“Tampa,” she said.
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I were.” She told him about Eli’s stroll in the hour before he was abducted, and of the conversation she had with a woman at a place called DeeDee’s Comics. “I called around and was able to get us on a charter heading there in a half hour.”
“You might not be the only one looking for it down there,” Quinn said. “I can send Nate with you.”
He wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of Orlando and Abraham going down there alone. If she had been at full strength, then, sure, he wouldn’t have worried so much, but her injuries still limited her abilities and she was still tiring easily. And Abraham? Well, he was in relatively good shape for a man of sixty-seven, but he was still sixty-seven.
“You’d never get him here on time,” she said. “But don’t worry. I can handle it.”
“I’d feel better if you had some backup. I don’t need you trying to be a hero.”
“Not a role I’m interested in, either. I’ve already pulled up a few names of people who are available, all right? If I think anything’s wrong, I’ll call someone in. That work for you, Dad?”
“Yeah, that works for me.”
“Now if you want me to find these McCrillis locations for you before I leave, I gotta get off the phone.”
“Right. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He disconnected the call.
“For the record,” Nate said, “she doesn’t call you Daddy when you’re alone, does she? Because that would be—”
“Shut it.”
“I mean, I guess everyone is into their own thing. I just never pictured the two of you doing the—”
“I will kill you if you do not shut up now. I don’t care how long we’ve known each other. I don’t care if you are dating my sister. I will kill you and dump you in the deepest part of the ocean. Understood?”
“I’m, uh, not sure if I should answer. You made it pretty clear I should say nothing, but then you asked a question. Conflicting signals.”
Quinn glared at him.
Nate held up a hand in surrender before using it to pull an imaginary zipper across his mouth.
Five minutes later, Quinn’s phone pinged several times with incoming texts. A different address was in each of the first three messages, and in the last, a note from Orlando:
Heading onto plane now.
Takeoff sched. 15 mins.
Should be back online not
long after that if you need me.
The closest McCrillis facility was only ten miles away, right there in Maryland.
VIRGINIA
THE CAPTIVE’S NAME was Daeng, information he sounded almost eager to give up when Gloria started asking him questions again, this time post-injection. He was apparently from Thailand, though he spoke English like he’d been in the States his whole life. When asked about this, he told her about his teen years living in Los Angeles and going to Hollywood High.
With the subject sufficiently primed, she turned to the questions that really mattered.
“Who do you work for?” she asked.
“Work for?” he said, his head bobbing loosely on his neck, a half smile on his face. “Who do any of us work for?”
“Answer my question.”
“I work for myself.”
“Doing what?”
He tried to shrug, but his shoulder moved independently of each other, creating more of a wavelike motion. “Many, many things. Whatever needs to be done.” He looked at her. “Do you need something done?”
“I do. I need you to tell me who was paying you to follow the Maserati.”
“Maserati. Beautiful car, but too showy for me.”
“Who was paying you?”
He blinked. “As far as I know, no one was paying me for that.”
“Then why were you following it?”
“To see where it went.”
“Why?”
His eyes narrowed in confusion. “I told you why. To see where it went.”
“But you stopped following before it got to where it was going.”
“No longer necessary.”
Gloria could feel her frustration level rising. “Mr. Daeng, who—”
“Just Daeng.”
“Fine. Daeng, who told you to follow the Maserati?”
He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment before he said, “Quinn.”
The name meant nothing to her, but at least it was a name.
“Why did he want you to follow it?”
“To find out where it went.”
She grabbed his face and tilted it up. “I want to know why.”
A grin still on his lips, he said, “Already told you.
She shoved his head back and knocked it against the chair. But even this didn’t seem to faze him. While the dose she’d given him had indeed made him more compliant, it was clear this wasn’t the first time the man had been drugged, and he was able to exert some directional control over his responses.
“This Quinn. Who is he?”
“He’s my friend.”
“Okay, he’s your friend, so tell me about him.”
Daeng’s head lolled to the side. “He likes to swim.”
“Why would he ask you to follow the man in the Maserati?”
“Because he was busy following you.”
The woman stared at him. “What did you say?”
His eyes closed. When they fluttered open again, his smile was gone and the color was draining from his face. “I think…I’m going…”
Whatever the man ate last raced out his mouth and onto the floor beside his chair. Gloria leaped back but still ended up with a few droplets on her shoes.
Daeng’s head rolled forward, his chin collapsing against his chest. She grabbed his hair and tilted his head back. His eyes were closed and his facial muscles slack.
She slapped him and shouted, “Wake up!” But all she received was a groan. A second slap didn’t even garner that much.
He was out.
Her experience with other guests told her he would be useless for at least twenty minutes, perhaps more.
She stormed out of the room. Unfortunately for King, he was the only one downstairs with her. Nolan and Andres were patrolling the business park above. “Get a bucket and some towels and clean up that mess,” she ordered. She then grabbed the walkie-talkie off the observation-room counter and pressed the button. “Nolan, do you read?”
“This is Nolan,” Nolan answered.
“There’s something I need you to check.”
CHAPTER 23
QUINN AND NATE drove within three miles of both the McCrillis facility southeast of DC and the one just outside College Station, Maryland. Neither location emitted a signal from the tracker on the woman’s car.
“They could have found it,” Nate said as they drove away from the second location. “Or maybe they changed cars.”
Both possibilities had been playing through Quinn’s mind, but with no other clear option at the moment, they headed toward the third location, some fifty miles south of the capital in the city of Springfield, Virginia. They talked for a while, speculating on exactly what Orlando and Abraham might find in Florida, but it wasn’t long before their conversation was replaced by a quiet tension.
A year ago, neither Quinn nor Nate had known Daeng, and yet now he was one of their closest friends and an integral part of their team. Quinn knew it was possibl
e Daeng was already dead, but he kept the thought shoved in a corner, not willing to give it any credence until he saw a body. If that did happen, Boyer wouldn’t be the only casualty at McCrillis International.
About seven miles out from Springfield, Nate sat up in his seat. He’d been holding Quinn’s phone and was now staring at the screen.
“I’ve got something,” he said, and then frowned. “Well, I had something.”
As they drove on, he kept his gaze glued to the cell.
After another mile, he said, “There it is again.”
The signal grew stronger as Quinn entered the town and made his way to the last address Orlando had given him. It turned out to be located in a business park consisting of long buildings subdivided into separate workspaces.
Instead of driving into the park, Quinn cruised the road that ran alongside it and parked a few blocks down, in front of a church.
“The car’s there, at least,” Nate said, handing Quinn his phone.
Quinn looked at the display and nodded, then brought up a wider map of the area. There were main entrances off the road to the south and to the west. The east side butted up against a housing tract, while a wall bordered the northern end, separating the park from a similar but smaller one.
“Here,” Quinn said, pointing at the wall between the business zones. “We can get over in the east corner.”
Nate nodded. “Perfect.”
They grabbed their gear and headed down the street.
The smaller business park appeared to be deserted as they hurried between the buildings to the back corner. There they looked at Quinn’s phone again. The car was pinging from a point on the other side of the north wall, about ten yards from where Quinn and Nate were standing.
“Give me a boost,” Quinn whispered. “Just high enough to take a look.”
Nate laced his fingers together and Quinn stepped into the cradle.
“Here we go,” Nate said as he pushed up.
As soon as Quinn could see the other side, he tapped the wall and Nate stopped lifting.
There were five rows of buildings, the McCrillis facility in the one straight in front of him but at the other end. Along the wall starting right below him were lines denoting parking spaces. At this time of night, only five were filled. Three were identical vehicles. Company cars, no doubt. Another was a pickup truck parked way down near the west end. The last was the sedan Gloria Clark and her men had been using.
He scanned the area for any signs of life, and was about to tell Nate to push him over when he heard a pair of low voices. Though the words were lost to him, he was pretty sure they were coming from somewhere between the building in front of him and the next one to the west. After a few seconds, the voices were replaced by the sound of someone walking on asphalt. The sounds of the steps started out almost as low as the conversation had been, but they steadily increased in volume as the walker headed in Quinn’s direction.
Quinn signaled Nate to lower him until only his eyes and the top of his head were above the wall, but the background he was up against was dark enough that he was confident he wouldn’t be noticed.
Several moments later the walker appeared from between the buildings. Quinn had just enough light to confirm the guy was one of the men who’d been in the car with Gloria Clark, and though Quinn couldn’t see a gun, he was sure the guy had one. He continued to watch as the man paused long enough at the end of the building to check both directions before walking over to the sedan.
When the guy reached the car, he didn’t get in, nor did he open the trunk to retrieve anything. What he did do was considerably more curious. He first stood a few feet behind the trunk and scanned the vehicle. Then he knelt down and began running a hand behind the bumper.
Son of a bitch, Quinn thought. He was checking for a bug.
Quinn motioned for Nate to lower him. When he was back on the ground, they moved along the wall until they were at the spot directly opposite the sedan. Quinn could hear the guy moving along it.
Quinn set his backpack on the ground and mouthed to Nate, “Up.”
Nate pushed Quinn high enough so that Quinn could look all the way over the edge. The man was nearing the front fender, right below him. If the guy kept to form, he would move around the front end and be only inches from the tracker.
Quinn didn’t care so much if the bug was discovered. The real problem was the alarm that would be raised when the man found it.
With extreme care, Quinn climbed onto the top of the wall, stretching out prone as he monitored the man’s progress. Slowly, the guy felt along the inside bottom of the car, up the wheel well, along the top, and down the other side. When he moved toward the front corner, Quinn sat up and tucked his knees against his chest.
The man rose a few inches as he came around the corner, which was exactly what Quinn had been waiting for. He shoved himself off the wall and slammed his shoes into the side of the man’s head. The guy rocked backward and landed in a heap on the ground. Before the man hit the asphalt, Quinn dropped beside him, ready to follow up his initial blow. But the man was unconscious.
Worried that whoever the guy had been talking to might be near, Quinn whipped around and scanned down the alley between the buildings. All was clear, so he used the hood of the sedan to give him enough height to lean back over the top of the wall.
He took both packs from Nate and then helped his partner up and over.
They relieved the unconscious man of his radio and weapon, then zip-tied his hands and ankles and used the guy’s own shirt to gag him.
“There’s at least one more walking around somewhere,” Quinn whispered.
After pulling out their night vision goggles, they donned their packs and moved over to the alleyway between the last two buildings. Quinn carefully scanned the building to either side, in case someone was leaning in a doorway, but no one was there. He was about to suggest they move a couple alleys over to be farther from the McCrillis facility and less likely to be spotted, when a man walked across the opening at the far end, heading toward the east wall, and then disappeared again. The distance had been too far for them to recognize any facial features, but the gun in his hand had been plain as day.
They went to the alley between buildings two and three, and then down to the other end. Once there, Quinn slipped the lens portion of his phone far enough past the corner for them to see the other side. There was no sign of the other man.
Was he heading down the far side of the last building? If so, he might discover his tied-up buddy. Quinn motioned for Nate to head back the other way for a look.
As soon as Nate was gone, Quinn used his phone to check around the side again.
“What the hell?”
The alarmed voice had come from less than ten feet away. Quinn dropped the phone and whipped off his goggles as he rushed around the corner. He miscalculated the man’s position by half a foot, so instead of hitting him center mass, he rammed the man shoulder to shoulder.
The man’s weapon flew out of his hand and the two men slammed onto the asphalt. The sentry tried to shove Quinn off but Quinn was having none of it. He recognized the guy now as the same one who’d been with the woman when she met Boyer.
Quinn whacked his palm into the side of the man’s face and stunned him enough for Quinn to get an arm around the guy’s neck, cutting off blood flow to the brain until the sentry blacked out.
Quinn heard someone running up behind him. He jumped to his feet, ready to fight, but it only was Nate.
“Subtle,” Nate whispered. “I almost couldn’t hear you fighting from way down at the other end.”
Ignoring the commentary, Quinn said, “Help me secure him.”
After they had the guy trussed up like his partner, they moved him under a hedge that lined the parking area.
“That’s got to be it,” Nate said. “If there was anyone else, they would have come by now.”
“Outside, anyway,” Quinn said.
They hurried over to the sec
ond-to-last building and peered into the alleyway. The McCrillis unit was two down from where they were. A camera was located above the main entrance, and identical ones were above the entrances to the units on the left and right, which probably meant McCrillis owned them, too.
Quinn had a signal jammer in his pack but decided not to pull it out. The woman had been traveling with three men, two of whom they’d already danced with. It was possible the facility came with its own personnel, but if that were the case, the guards would have been on outside watch since they would be more familiar with the area. So it was likely only the woman and her other man were inside, in which case they might not be actively monitoring the camera feeds, but if the signal was jammed, that might very well trigger an alarm that would draw their attention.
He studied the front of the unit. There were two doors, one a large, roll-up garage type and the other a standard-sized security door. Next to the standard-sized door was a security pad that didn’t appear to have any keys for inputting a code.
“Wait here,” he told Nate.
He ran back to the man they’d left by the hedge and gave him a thorough search. In the front pocket of his jacket was an employee badge identifying him as Kelvin Andres of McCrillis International. There were some letters and numbers and other symbols that meant something to someone, but what was most important to Quinn was the microchip sure to be embedded inside.
He returned to Nate and explained his plan.
Keeping their faces angled away from the cameras, they walked up to the security door. On the outer wall just above the security pad was a plaque that read:
NEYER-HOLT ENGINEERING
By Appointment Only
On the security pad itself was a logo. But it wasn’t really a logo. It was a symbol that matched the one on Andres’s ID card.
Quinn tapped the card against the symbol and the door clicked open.
__________
GLORIA LOOKED OVER King’s shoulder at the monitor. The prisoner was finally starting to show signs of life again.
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