The Discarded

by Brett Battles

  __________

  HOUSES EIGHT AND nine were both occupied by large families Gloria quickly dismissed as possibilities.

  House ten, like house six earlier, appeared to be unoccupied. There was not, however, a locked gate across the entrance, so they drove all the way up to the house and had a look around.

  Not just unoccupied. Empty. Whoever had lived there was gone.

  The caller, perhaps? Or was this only the location the caller had used?

  They let themselves in through the back door and found enough dust in the place to know that no one had been inside for weeks.

  She mentally crossed number ten off the list and ordered her men back to the Suburban. They had one more house in the valley to check.

  Two, she corrected herself. They still had to go back to number six.

  __________

  “DON’T GET TOO comfortable,” Desirae said as they walked into the living room. “And don’t expect me to get you anything to drink.”

  Orlando and Nate sat on the couch while Abraham took one of the chairs. Quinn didn’t feel much like sitting and remained on his feet. Apparently, Desirae was feeling the same.

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” Abraham said to Tessa as the girl took a seat on a nearby footstool.

  Still unsure about how she should react to him, she paused before saying, “Thanks.”

  “I never knew what happened to you after…after we separated.”

  She took a quick glance at Desirae. “I’ve been okay. Mom takes care of me.”

  “How long have you been here?” Orlando asked Desirae.

  “None of your business,” Desirae said. “Tell me about Eli.”

  “Do you think maybe…” Quinn let the sentence hang as he glanced quickly at Tessa then back at Desirae.

  Desirae considered his suggestion for a few seconds. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go to your room for a few minutes?”

  “I want to stay,” Tessa said.

  “I know, and I’m sorry. But I promise, I will tell you everything after.”

  Tessa looked disappointed as she stood up. “Everything?”

  “Yes, everything.”

  As soon as Tessa disappeared into the back of the house, Desirae said, “I don’t hide anything from her. That way, she doesn’t question me if we have to do something…unusual.”

  “Like living in a secret underground apartment below your mother’s house?” Orlando asked.

  Desirae didn’t seem fazed by the question. “Something like that.” Her face hardened. “Now tell me about Eli.”

  Abraham carried the load of the story, taking it back to when he had first approached Eli for help not long after leaving Tessa with Desirae. Quinn and Orlando added points here and there in regards to the most recent events.

  “I was angry at myself for leaving her when I thought she needed me most, I guess,” Abraham said. “Apparently, I shouldn’t have worried.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” Desirae said.

  “Your turn,” Quinn said. “What happened after Amsterdam?”

  “I never agreed to take turns,” Desirae said.

  “Abraham needs to know,” Quinn countered. “You owe him that much. He did bring Tessa to you.”

  Looking annoyed, Desirae finally sighed and said, “She wasn’t supposed to stay with me. I was head of the pickup team, that’s all. We were to take her to Mexico City and await further instructions from Carter. Those instructions never came.”

  “Someone killed him,” Quinn said.

  “Yes, but we didn’t know that yet. At that point, there were two of us with Terri…with Tessa. The guy with me went out to try to make contact, but he never came back. It was obvious something was up. Since Carter’s group usually did sub work for the CIA, I used a contact I had there to see if she could find anything out. That’s when I learned about Carter, and the fact that nearly everyone else associated with Operation Overtake had been killed. Not exactly a good feeling knowing you’re probably the last link in the chain.” She looked at Abraham. “For a while, I assumed you were dead, too.”

  “What about the person you were supposed to be taking Tessa to?” Orlando asked.

  “Carter was the only one who knew who that was. Kept it in his head. Took it with him when he died.”

  “So you decided to keep her?” Quinn asked.

  “I was asked to help,” she said. “You have to understand, this was a mess. While the Agency wasn’t directly involved, and would have liked to wash their hands of the whole thing, they knew there was a slim but real possibility that if Operation Overtake was exposed, it could be linked back to them. The abandonment of a little girl? Or God forbid, her death? Think of the careers that would have ruined.” She paused. “The offer was a well-paid early retirement, and access to additional funds for whatever other extras I might need. The trade-off was that once I accepted the job, Tessa would be my responsibility alone. If something happened to her, all the blame would fall on me.”

  “And you said yes to this,” Quinn said.

  “I wasn’t a bad agent, but I wasn’t jumping at the chance to get shot at every day, either,” she said. “It was an out.”

  Abraham scoffed. “It was more than an out, wasn’t it? How long were you with her when they made you the offer?”

  Desirae said nothing for several seconds. “By then, a few weeks.”

  Abraham nodded. “If I had been watching her that long, I would have said yes, too. Hell, I probably would have said yes if you’d asked me in Amsterdam.”

  Desirae said nothing, but by the look on her face, Quinn knew Abraham had hit close to home.

  “So you moved her into your mom’s basement?” Quinn asked.

  A reluctant nod. “The Agency arranged the construction.”

  “And then?”

  “When I felt enough time had passed, we moved here.”

  “So until now there haven’t been any problems?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she said hesitantly. “Though I wasn’t to have any direct contact with anyone at the Agency anymore, my friend there did set me up with access to their system so I could watch my back. She contacted me a few times after that, telling me someone seemed to be trying to find out if Tessa had really died in Osaka or not. I kept tabs on things to make sure no one was getting close. The searches seemed to be coming from two different sources. One I tracked back to Eli Becker right there in the CIA. At first I thought he was a mole working for those who had killed the rest of the Overtake team, but after a while I figured out he was working for you.” She looked at Abraham. “That’s when I realized you were still alive.

  “The real problem, though, was this other group. It took me a few years, but I was able to ID them as McCrillis International. Familiar with them?”

  “You might say that,” Quinn replied. “They’re the ones who killed Eli.”

  “I guessed as much. In the first few years, they would probe several times a week for info about Tessa. After that, it dropped off some, occasionally there were months with nothing. This last time was over six months, and I thought maybe they’d finally given up.” She hung her head for a moment, then looked at Abraham. “It’s my fault they’re on me again, not yours. I’m sorry I said it was.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I thought I was being so smart. See, the one thing McCrillis hadn’t been able to get their hands on yet was a full copy of the Agency’s file on Overtake. About a year ago they got close. Scared the crap out of me when I found out. I’d been told the report had been sanitized to reflect that Tessa had been killed along with Jennifer Kagawa, her…mother, but I hadn’t seen the files myself and couldn’t be sure there wasn’t something in them that would lead back to us. So I knew I had to do something.

  “The dot-xuki virus was yours,” Orlando said, leaning forward.

  Desirae shook her head. “I can’t take credit for creating it—that was done by a tech I still trusted—but I did e
xecute it. Good thing, too. It wiped out the files at the Agency and delivered a copy to me. The stupid son of a bitch who had asked me to take care of Tessa had created a special subfolder detailing the decision and had subsequently been adding updates of her status. If McCrillis had found that, we’d both be dead right now.”

  “What about the recent picture of Tessa?” Quinn said.

  “The one Eli was sent? That came from me.” Once more Desirae looked at Abraham. “I thought maybe it would be enough to satisfy you. See that she was alive and well. I should have never sent it. Within twenty-four hours, not only had Eli somehow been able to dig up more information, but I was also receiving notifications that McCrillis’s activities seemed to have kicked into high gear and I realized they were on his trail. I couldn’t have that. Eli had the picture of Tessa. McCrillis would know she was definitely alive if they got ahold of it.” She took a breath. “I called, told him that someone was after him and he had to leave town. Then I set up some quick and dirty false trails I hoped would keep McCrillis busy for a while. Apparently, it wasn’t enough.”

  “Who took the picture?” Orlando asked.

  “I don’t know. I used one that was in the file, so someone from the Agency, I assumed.”

  “I have news for you, then. Your virus left a few things behind. Eli had a second copy of the picture on his computer, only he’d found it in the CIA system and it had a dot-xuki extension.”

  “What? Oh, my God. How many files were left?”

  “I don’t know. The message Eli left made it sound like only a few. The good news is they’ve been isolated, so it’s doubtful McCrillis has gotten to them.”

  Desirae didn’t look convinced, and Quinn was willing to bet she would attempt a second purge in the future.

  “Have you ever been able to figure out why these McCrillis people would want to kill Tessa in the first place?” Abraham asked.

  Desirae stared at him for several seconds, as if caught off guard. “I live with this every day. I guess I forgot that information was kept from us during the operation. It’s her father. He’s Frank Rostov.”

  Silence.

  “The Frank Rostov?” Orlando asked. “Rostov Dynamics Frank Rostov?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank Rostov had turned his father’s small San Francisco electronics company into one of the largest tech firms in the world, rivaling Apple and Google and Microsoft. Aside from making much of the equipment and software that served as the backbone of the Internet, his company had also become one of the largest tech-related defense contractors in the country, easily making him worth more than thirty billion dollars.

  “Didn’t he get sick or something?” Nate asked.

  Desirae nodded. “A severe stroke. Hung on for a little while before he finally passed away.”

  “That was what? Five or six years ago?” Nate said.

  “The stroke was just a little over seven,” Desirae corrected him. “More precisely, two months before Jennifer was killed in Osaka.”

  Tessa’s mother, Desirae told them, had been Rostov’s mistress. When she became pregnant with Tessa, he had sent her away to appease his wife, promising his mistress he’d take care of her and Tessa, and acknowledge the child as his own at some point in the future. The money had come, but the public acknowledgment had yet to materialize when the stroke cut him down. In his diminished capacity, Rostov was no longer able to run the company, so his wife, Jacqueline Rostov, took on the role of CEO. She had been the one who had used the company’s defense connections at the CIA to find someone who could handle a delicate matter for her. This turned out to be 525, Gavin Carter’s group, and the job was to terminate Tessa and Jennifer.

  “But why?” Nate asked.

  “I couldn’t figure it out at first, either,” Desirae said. “His wife had inherited the company. What did she care anymore? At the suggestion of my hacker friend, we infiltrated the system belonging to the law firm that represented the Rostovs. It turns out that while Frank Rostov hadn’t publicly acknowledged Tessa, he had added her to his will a few weeks before he became incapacitated. If Tessa showed up, half the estate would be hers. Mrs. Rostov is clearly not interested in sharing. She made a bad choice, though, by hiring Carter. He might have been greedy for the money the project would bring in, but he wasn’t able to stomach the idea of killing a little girl and had come up with an alternate plan.

  “What he didn’t realize was that apparently Mrs. Rostov had a separate plan to eliminate anyone associated with the deaths so they wouldn’t be able to talk about them later. There’s no doubt in my mind that’s where McCrillis first came in. In the process, either McCrillis or Mrs. Rostov herself must have realized something odd was going on. Otherwise, why continue looking for Tessa?”

  They all fell quiet as they digested this last bit.

  “They may never find out about this place,” Orlando said.

  “I can’t take that chance.”

  “Do you have somewhere else to go?” Quinn asked.

  “I have backups.”

  “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “The best thing you can do is leave us alone.” There was no malice in her words. She was only stating a fact.

  Abraham rose from his chair. “Can I at least tell Tessa good-bye?”

  “Of course,” Desirae said. “Her room’s last one on the left.”

  He had barely disappeared into the hallway when somewhere toward the front of the house a buzzer sounded.

  CHAPTER 33

  DESIRAE TURNED TOWARD the noise, startled.

  “What is that?” Quinn asked.

  “Driveway intercom,” she said, and then headed across the room.

  The buzzer went off again as she reached a panel by the door. On it was a speaker, a few buttons, and a small video screen. Though Desirae blocked most of the screen from view, Quinn could see it flicker to life when she pushed one of the buttons.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Detective Baker with the county crime investigation unit,” a woman’s voice said. “Wondering if I could have a moment of your time?”

  Quinn moved quickly across the room so he could see the monitor.

  “About what?” Desirae asked.

  “It would be much easier to do this face to face. Could we come in?”

  Though the camera appeared to be mounted several feet above the gate, it was angled enough that Quinn could see most of the driver’s face. He grabbed Desirae’s hand as she was about to push the button again.

  “It’s them,” he said. “McCrillis.”

  She looked at the monitor. “Are you sure?”

  “That’s the woman responsible for Eli’s death.”

  Desirae thought for a second before pushing the button again. “Now is not really a good time for us. Would it be possible for you to come back in the morning?”

  On the monitor, the woman hesitated before she touched the talk button again. “Of course. Would eight a.m. be all right?”

  “That would be fine,” Desirae told her.

  “We’ll see you then,” the woman said. She pulled back inside her vehicle and backed out of camera range.

  “They’re not leaving,” Quinn said.

  “I know,” Desirae said, turning. “Follow me.”

  __________

  “NOW IS NOT a good time for us,” the woman inside house number six said. “Would it be possible for you to come back in the morning?”

  Alarm bells clanged in Gloria’s head. The woman was hiding something. But did it have to do with the phone call or was she worried because Gloria had said she was the police?

  “Of course. Would eight a.m. be all right?” Gloria asked.

  “That would be fine.”

  Gloria pushed the button again. “We’ll see you then.” As soon as her window was up and the Suburban was rolling backward, she said, “Everybody ready. We’re going to check this one out.”

  __________

  DESIRAE GRABBED HER Tavor assaul
t rifle and quickly led Quinn, Orlando, and Nate into the hallway.

  “Please tell us you have more of those,” Quinn said, motioning to her weapon.

  Instead of answering him, she yelled, “Terri, code red.”

  Before they reached the end of the hall, Tessa, pulling Abraham by the hand, came rushing out of her room, looking scared but in control.

  “Is this practice?” she asked.

  “No, honey. You know what to do. Take Abraham with you.”

  Tessa nodded and led him down the hallway and into the guest bathroom, while Quinn and the others followed Desirae into the master bedroom.

  “Where’s Tessa taking Abraham?” Orlando asked.

  Desirae flung open the door to a walk-in closet and hurried inside.

  “Tunnel under the house,” she said, pulling an old trunk away from the wall. She yanked back the carpet, revealing a trapdoor. “Comes out in the jungle behind my neighbor’s place.” Using a key on a chain around her neck, she unlocked the door and pulled it open. “There’s a path that goes to the next valley. We stashed a motorcycle there.”

  “Tessa knows how to drive one?” Nate asked.

  Desirae leaned into the opening. “She can drive pretty much anything in a pinch. Here.” She handed out three more Tavors and then pulled out four GLOCK 9mm pistols, suppressors, and extra magazines. When she was through, she jumped back up and shut the door.

  As she connected the suppressor to her GLOCK, she said, “I’d rather not freak out my neighbors too much if we can help it. So rifles only if you have no choice, okay?”

  Once they were all ready, they moved back into the hallway. Quinn was expecting them to go into the guest bathroom and join Tessa and Abraham in the tunnel, but Desirae kept going toward the living room.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said.

  “In a second,” she said. “I just gotta grab something.”

  Quinn motioned for Nate and Orlando to wait by the bathroom, and then headed after Desirae.

  __________

  GLORIA PULLED TO the side of the road a hundred feet down from house six’s driveway.