by Sam Sisavath
“I just hope there’s something in there you can use.”
“Even if there isn’t, this trip hasn’t been for nothing.” She pursed a smile at him. “It’s good to know there are still people who believe I’m not what they claim I am on the news. It means a lot to me that you even remember my name.”
Patterson gave her a wry smile. “I’m sorry I can’t do more to help.” He patted his wheelchair. “But I’m a little limited these days.”
She smiled, then sat down on a box in front of him. “Tell me more about Ben, Doug.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You said the two of you talked, more than once. What about?”
“Like I said, at first he just wanted to know about your background. I told him what I knew, showed him what I had.” He nodded at the CD in her hand.
“Did he say anything to you after he read my files?”
“No, not really. Small talk, that kind of thing, but nothing specific. He thanked me and left.” He leaned slightly forward in his chair. “I did reread your file after he left, but there wasn’t anything in there that I didn’t already know.”
“What about my parents?”
“We don’t know who they were. You came to us when you were ten, after your accident. For all intents and purposes, you were a newborn. A blank page. If there’s anything in that disc, it’ll say the same thing. Your life, as far as we know, started at age ten.” He paused for a moment. Then, “Didn’t Ben ever tell you about what he found?”
If he found anything, he kept it from me, she thought, but shook her head and said instead, “I didn’t even know he talked to you. This is the first time I’m hearing of it.”
“That’s...interesting.”
That’s one way to put it. The other is that he lied to me, and I still don’t know why.
“He was a good man,” Patterson said. “Ben Foster.”
Quinn nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I researched him, you know,” Patterson continued. “After he visited me. I felt it was my obligation to make sure he would become a good influence on you. Maybe I was being a bit presumptuous, considering you actually ran away from us…”
She couldn’t help but smile at that.
“But anyway,” Patterson went on. “He found out I was checking up on him and came back to see me. We sort of became friends after that.”
“How did that happen?”
“We discovered that we both liked helping kids that everyone had given up on. He also helped me out when some of the other kids got into trouble. In turn, I kept my ears to the ground for troublemakers in the area. I liked him.”
“Ben was easy to like.”
“I also kept track of your progress through him. That’s how I know how close the two of you were. You were father and daughter in everything except blood and name.”
We were…and he still lied to me.
“That’s why I knew you couldn’t have killed him,” Patterson said. “Not in the way they said you did. You could never do that. When I realized that truth, I knew the rest of it couldn’t have been true. Was I wrong?”
She shook her head. “It’s complicated, but no, I didn’t do the terrible things they’re accusing me of.”
“I didn’t think so.”
She could see it in his eyes—Patterson had questions. A lot of questions. But he didn’t know how to ask them, or maybe he didn’t really want to know the answers.
Quinn didn’t blame him. Given the choice, and knowing the outcome, would she still have told Ben about spotting Porter? Knowing everything—all the blood, the running, the lies—that would befall her as a result?
Not if it means destroying everything I had.
Not if it means Ben being killed.
Not in a million years.
Click as the door opened behind Patterson, and Linda, the nurse, peered inside. “There you are.” She glanced at Quinn, then back to Patterson. “What are you guys doing in here? It’s so dusty.”
“Reminiscing about old times,” Patterson said. Then, to Quinn, “Can you stay longer…Casey?”
Quinn suppressed a smile as she stood up and pocketed the disc. “I wish I could, but I have to be going. I have a long drive ahead of me.”
“I understand.” Patterson turned in his chair, said to Linda, “It’ll just be the two of us for lunch, dear.”
“Come on inside when you’re ready,” Linda said, and closed the door after her.
Patterson looked back at Quinn. “Where to now?”
“I need to find out what’s in this disc,” Quinn said.
“And then?”
“Back to Houston.”
“Houston?”
“Why?”
“Isn’t that…risky?”
She nodded. “It is, and I know it’s stupid to go back, but I have friends waiting for me down there. We’re looking for another friend who’s missing. Until we know what happened to him, we can’t just leave yet.”
“Good friends, I hope.”
“They saved my life. More than once.”
“That definitely qualifies as ‘good friends.’”
The two of them exchanged a smile. It wasn’t nearly as awkward as Quinn had expected. Everything about Doug Patterson was as she remembered, which was more than she could say for everything—and everyone—else in her life.
What did you keep from me all these years, Ben? What didn’t you want me to know?
Maybe that answer was in the disc inside her pocket. Or maybe there was a lot of other orphans whose last names started with a T other than hers on it. What were the chances of that?
With your luck, I’d say pretty good.
Patterson rolled over to the wall next to the door and pressed a button, and the garage door began rumbling up into the ceiling behind her, flooding the room with fresh air and sunlight.
She looked back at Patterson. “Thank you for everything, Doug. Not just for today, but for all those other days, too. Most of us would have been on the streets if it weren’t for you.”
Patterson nodded. “I wish I could have done more.”
“You did plenty.”
He nodded, even if she didn’t think he fully believed her. But then, she wondered if anything in this world other than a time machine could make Doug Patterson not think that he had failed her and all the other “kids.”
You’re a good man, Doug Patterson. I wish there were more like you.
“Good luck, Quinn,” Patterson said as they shook hands. “I hope you find everything you need.”
“Me too.”
She gave him one last smile before turning and leaving, the CD threatening to burn a hole through her coat pocket.
She thought about calling Aaron, but there was no point. He was in Houston and she was in LA, and besides, there was no password protection on the files, according to Patterson. All she needed was an optical drive to hook onto her laptop to read the thing.
She skipped a couple of smaller electronic stores and finally pulled into a big blue building where she knew she could get what she needed. She grabbed a cheap external drive for under twenty bucks inside and was on her way out the door when she paused at the entrance/exit.
A half dozen or so customers were gathered around a couple of big display of TV sets, along with a pair of twenty-something store employees in blue shirts. No one said a word as they stared at one of the screens, mesmerized by the sight of smoke billowing out from the windows of a school, while men in SWAT gear stormed the building. The footage was clearly being shot from high up by a chopper, and Quinn imagined the cameraman had zoomed in as much as he could, given how grainy everything looked. There was no sound because someone had muted the TVs.
She moved in to get a better look.
The word LIVE was frozen in the top right corner of the screen, while a caption, at the bottom, read: HOSTAGE SITUATION IN HOUSTON, TX.
Houston?
“How long has this been going on?” Quinn ask
ed one of the blue shirts.
“About thirty minutes, I think?” the man said.
“Who are the hostage takers?”
“No idea. They’re still inside the school. There was a really great shot of a bunch of students running out the side door earlier.”
“So everyone’s safe?”
“I don’t think anyone knows for sure. It sort of just went bad like that,” he added, snapping his fingers for effect. “Out of nowhere, really.”
“Terrorists,” a man in a suit and tie standing behind and to the right of Quinn said. “It’s gotta be terrorists.”
“You think so?” the woman with him said.
“First that whole bombing down there, now this? It’s gotta be terrorists. They’re everywhere now. Sleeper cells.”
“Sleeper what?” the other guy in a blue shirt said.
“Sleeper cells,” Suit said. “Terrorists sneak their way into the country and they lay low until it’s time to attack. Same thing happened in Houston last week. I bet whoever’s shooting up the school’s from the same cell.”
“Muslims,” the woman said. “It has to be Muslims.”
“Or domestic,” Suit said. “Homegrown terrorists.”
“No way. Homegrown?”
“Hey, people are going crazy these days. The politicians are just making it worse. Like that guy.”
Suit nodded at a tall man—also wearing a suit, though one that looked much more expensive—in some kind of homeless shelter. He was surrounded by news media as he served gravy to a lady in rags. The man was beaming at the cameras while the woman looked confused by all the attention. Quinn had seen the man before but had never really paid much attention to him. One of those long-shot presidential hopefuls. The caption read: CANDIDATE VISITS CHICAGO SHELTER.
“Let’s just wait and see who’s really behind it,” Blue Shirt #2 said. “No point in guessing now.”
“I’m just saying,” Suit said.
“Gotta be Muslims,” the woman said.
They were still talking when Quinn slipped away and left the store, her mind spinning at a million miles a second.
There were no indications what was happening in Houston right now had anything whatsoever to do with Xiao, Aaron, or Trevor. None at all.
Right?
Except she knew better.
She just knew better.
She immediately called Aaron, but he wasn’t answering his phone, and neither were Xiao or Trevor.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
She quickened her pace through the large parking lot, not even sure what she was going to do once she reached her car. It wasn’t like she could step on the gas and be magically transported back to Houston. Even if she ditched the car and risked getting on a plane, (No, bad idea. Really, really bad idea.) it would still take hours.
She looked around her as she hurried, paying attention to the people going into the Wings ’N More and coming out of the Papa John’s Pizza shop for the first time. There was a furniture store called Clyde’s that looked ghostly empty and a dozen other businesses in the shopping center that she hadn’t (paid attention to) noticed until now.
The sound of car doors slamming made her snap her head toward a father and son as they exited a station wagon five cars up the row in front of her. They were talking about something that had just been released—a game, maybe—as she walked past them.
The Ford she had driven all the way from Texas was somewhere up ahead. At least fifty more yards, at the edge of the lot. Why in the world had she parked so far? Right, because she had planned to connect the optical drive to the laptop and open the disc as soon as she was inside the car and wanted to do the whole thing in privacy, far from prying eyes.
A couple in the aisle to her right, laughing about something as they disappeared out of her peripheral vision. Two more people to her left in a hurry to reach the Wings ’N More. And a black Chevy with slightly tinted windows driving through the parking lot toward the big box store she had just left. It was running on new tires that barely made any sound, though she didn’t know why that caught her attention.
A sudden flicker in the corner of her eye made her look forward again: A woman in a black jacket, jeans, and sneakers walking from the other side of the lot toward her.
Where did she come from?
The woman was wearing a baseball cap with the brim pulled tight over her eyes. Quinn glimpsed strands of brown hair around an oval-shaped face and pale skin.
Forty yards and closing.
Where the hell did she come from? Quinn thought again.
The woman had appeared out of nowhere, but what caught Quinn’s attention and refused to go away was that she couldn’t locate the woman’s right hand because it was hidden behind a large brown bag with a department store logo.
Your right hand. Where is your right hand, lady?
Quinn switched the plastic bag she had been holding over to her left hand, even as her right casually dropped to her side, then reached back for—
Dammit.
The SIG Sauer wasn’t back there because she had put it under the driver seat of the Ford before going into the store. The gun would have triggered the metal detectors, so bringing it in with her was out of the question.
Quinn thought about angling left—maybe right—to get out of the woman’s path. What would she do? Would she follow? If she did, then it would be the same as giving away her intentions. And then what? She would be forcing the woman’s hand—literally, in this case, depending on what she was holding behind that department store bag.
She sighed, and without stopping, began angling toward the right side.
The woman mirrored her actions.
Shit.
Twenty-five yards and closing…
Quinn kept walking, but she had slowed her pace. The woman, on the other hand, kept coming at the same speed.
Twenty yards…
Quinn didn’t have any weapons, but she did have the bag and the CD drive inside it. It wasn’t all that heavy, but there was enough heft that if she could hit the right spot she might be able to knock the woman for a loop. At least disorient her long enough to get the upper hand. That, of course, would depend almost entirely on what the woman was hiding behind the bag. If it was a gun…
If it’s a gun, you’re screwed.
Was the woman a cop? A federal agent? A Rhim operative?
None of those things made sense. A cop wouldn’t be dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket and ball cap. Neither would a federal agent. And if she were Rhim, she wouldn’t have come alone. If they knew where she was, they wouldn’t play games with her. There would be three at least, maybe more, swarming her position.
Fifteen yards, and Quinn could now see more of the woman. Early thirties, but maybe most of that age was the result of the hat obscuring a healthy part of her face. Nevertheless, light blue eyes still managed to peer out from underneath the brim of the cap at Quinn.
Quinn thought about her options (What options?) when she felt the heat and heard the sound of car engines behind her and glanced backward.
What the hell?
She was shocked to find a Chevy almost on top of her.
It was the same one with the tinted windows she had seen earlier, but it had somehow turned into her row without her realizing it. She had been concentrating so hard on the woman in front of her that she had forgotten about everything behind her!
The car’s front windshield was tinted, but not enough that Quinn couldn’t make out two figures inside the front seats and two more in the back. She couldn’t tell what they looked like, what they were wearing, or what they were doing, and only saw silhouettes staring back at her, when—
“Quinn!” a voice shouted.
She spun back around at the sound of her name—
Gun!
The woman was only ten yards from her (When the hell did she make up the extra five yards?) and she had dropped the bag. Quinn didn’t know why she was so surprised to
see the gun in the woman’s hand, because she had been anticipating it.
The gun! her mind shouted. The gun!
The woman was aiming, the muzzle of the handgun drawing a bead on her, when Quinn darted to her left. She grabbed at the hood of a parked Ford for cover when the first gunshot shattered the afternoon quiet, but by the time the woman squeezed the trigger a second time—then a third—Quinn’s ears had already adapted.
There was the ping-ping! of bullets slamming into metal, and Quinn braced herself to feel the Ford in front of her trembling from the impacts, except it didn’t—because the woman wasn’t shooting at her.
Quinn was on one knee alongside the hood of the sedan, which gave her a good view of the Chevy that had been creeping up behind her. The vehicle had parked a mere five yards away, (Christ, it would have run me right over! How the hell had I missed it coming up on me?) and men were scrambling out of its open doors, except one of them had tripped and fallen.
No, not tripped, but shot and fallen. There was a bullet hole in his chest, and there, not very far from his sprawled body—
A Glock!
Quinn would have lunged for the weapon, except the sudden torrent of gunfire and the ping-ping! of bullets slamming into metal told her the opportunity wasn’t there. At least, not yet.
The dead man’s friends had taken positions behind their open doors and were returning fire when one of them, hiding behind the rear driver-side door, looked in Quinn’s direction and locked eyes. Ten yards separated them, close enough that Quinn could hear the man’s ragged breathing as he struggled to reload his handgun. The man was in his late twenties, wearing a cheap suit—black slacks and blazer—and he looked frazzled, almost scared. There was a look of confusion on his face when he saw her, then recognized what she was about to do—or at least was thinking about doing.
The fallen gun. She had to get her hands on the gun!
Quinn was positioning her feet to launch forward at the weapon when there was a snikt!—a sound that brought back bad memories—before the man stood up and moved to intercept her. He had a long metal staff that gleamed bright silver under the afternoon sun clutched in one hand.
Rhim. He’s Rhim!
The sight of the familiar weapon froze Quinn in place, and the man would have reached her a second later if there wasn’t a bang! and his legs seemed to give out under him, and he collapsed. There was blood on the Rhim agent’s chest, and he clenched his teeth as he rolled away from her and back toward the cover of his vehicle. The staff was still gripped tightly in his hand, and she didn’t think anything could pry it loose. He looked more annoyed than hurt, and images of Pete Ringo, rising from the dead time and time again, flashed across her mind.