The Devil You Know

by Sam Sisavath

  They make it sound like a TV show, Quinn thought as she picked up the black Astros cap from the bag on the floor and slipped it on, then took out a second one and handed it to Zoe.

  The reporter (Ex-reporter now, I guess) sat in the back drying her hair with a towel. She was disheveled and looked noticeably tired, but there was no denying the woman was born to be on TV. She had taken off the orange jail outfit and put on saggy black pants and a black sweater with a hoodie, but that hadn’t done very much to disguise the perfect genes.

  “Try this one,” Quinn said.

  Zoe gave her a (badly) forced smile and took the cap. “Thanks.”

  “Bundle up your hair and try to hide as much of it as possible.”

  Zoe nodded and did as instructed. “Okay?”

  “Good enough.”

  The reporter continued to adjust the brim of the hat. “Who were they back there? The ones that helped us?”

  “The same ones that got us the deputy uniforms and the boat.”

  “I recognized one of them, but I don’t know his real name.”

  “It’s better you don’t.”

  Zoe nodded, understanding. “How many of them are out there?”

  “More than you’d think. The people that did this to you, that we’re up against, have been at it for a while. They haven’t been shy about destroying lives or making enemies to achieve their goals.”

  “You make them sound like the evil empire from Star Wars.”

  “They’re not far off. Minus the space lasers.”

  At least I haven’t seen any space lasers yet, she thought, remembering the chair, the data room, and the sight of Porter floating in a vat of what he called “spew.” Yet being the operative word…

  “Who are they, exactly? The people behind all this?” Zoe asked.

  “We’ll have time to talk about that later. Right now, we need to get to a safe house and figure out our next move.”

  “You’ve done this before.” Then, before Quinn could answer, “Of course you have. What am I asking? I was my station’s point man on your story.”

  “Is that why you recognized me so quickly?”

  The other woman nodded. “I must have stared at your picture a hundred times. You look…different. At least from a distance. But up close, you’re still you.”

  Quinn pursed a smile. Glad to be infamous, I guess.

  The reporter looked out the window and seemed to drift off. Quinn wondered if she ever looked that lost or reflective as she was running from the FBI.

  Owen turned on the blinkers and got ready to leave the highway. Around them, the city began darkening, and streetlights and taillights were switching on.

  After a while, Zoe said, “I’m in a getaway car with Quinn Turner,” and let out a short laugh before looking back at Quinn. “Did you do all the things they said you did?”

  “It’s complicated,” Quinn said.

  “What about your mentor? What was his name?”

  Ben. His name was Ben.

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” Quinn said.

  “Sorry, I—” She paused, then looking out the window again, “They thought you’d left the city. Got out of the state. Everyone in law enforcement I talked to was sure of it.”

  Because that was the smart move. So what does it make me that I’m still here?

  “And yet here you are,” Zoe said.

  “I did leave, but I came back.”

  “Why?”

  “Aaron.”

  “Aaron?” Zoe paused, then, “It was you. On the phone yesterday at the mall.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Everything Aaron told me—about you, about what happened at the school—it’s all true, isn’t it?” the reporter asked.

  “Yes.”

  “He said Porter wasn’t really dead. Is that also true?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  Quinn looked over at Owen, who shrugged and said, “She’s already knee-deep in the shit. Might as well tell her everything.”

  “‘The shit?’” Zoe said.

  Quinn turned back to Zoe. “We don’t know what happened to Porter. When we last saw him at the Wilshire, he was still alive. Some of us think he’s still being held prisoner somewhere.”

  “By who?” Then, quickly, “Right. Who else?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “So they really do exist,” Zoe said.

  “You still have to ask that question? After everything you’ve been through?”

  Zoe sighed. “It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself that it all makes sense, that all the evidence is adding up, when I say it out loud it’s still…”

  “Hard to swallow.”

  “Yeah. Like I’m stuck in a bad science fiction movie.”

  Owen had taken the off-ramp a few minutes ago and was now driving them across a two-lane country road, through a sparse area somewhere on the outskirts of town with only the occasional buildings to dot the landscape. Soon, the sedan’s headlights became the only source of light except for the rare vehicles that appeared on the opposite lane.

  “Can I ask you another question?” Zoe said from the back.

  “Can I stop you?” Quinn asked.

  “Probably not.”

  “Then shoot.”

  “Aaron never told me why he’s doing this—why you guys are risking so much to help me. I’m not even a reporter anymore after yesterday.”

  Because I’ve been in your shoes more than once, and there was always someone there to help me, to lend a hand even though they didn’t have to. I would be dead or worse right now if it weren’t for them.

  Because of Ben, because of Xiao…

  “Aaron,” Quinn said instead.

  “Aaron?”

  “This was his idea. He insisted on it, so you should thank him when we reach the safe house.”

  “I will.” Then, with a wry smile, “I can’t believe I put my life in the hands of an eighteen-year-old kid.”

  Quinn smiled. “Seventeen, actually.”

  “Seventeen?”

  “He’ll be eighteen in five months, if that makes you feel better.”

  “Seventeen going on eighteen in five months. I feel so much better,” Zoe said, and sighed heavily in the backseat.

  The safe house was really just an old RV Sarah had purchased earlier in the day. It looked like it might fall apart at any moment when they drove it over, coughing and sputtering with every mile. But its age was the reason they had been able to buy it with cash for cheap, and the seller, a man in his sixties who had listed it on Craigslist, couldn’t care less why anyone would want his broken-down recreational vehicle.

  The RV was parked in an unused lot partially overgrown with weeds, next to five acres of land that housed a company that stored and sold crushed concrete. The business had a name, but Quinn never got around to finding out what that was. It had closed down for the night, its three large mounds of construction debris jutting into the darkening skies like jagged mountaintops. The area was dirty with clouds of dust that flowed freely from the nearby company, which Quinn guessed explained why there wasn’t another business, house, or person in any direction. Even the country highway they had exited was a good five miles in the distance.

  Rick waved to them as Owen pulled the four-door sedan into the lot and stopped in front of him. The big man walked over, his Uzi hanging off his shoulder by a strap and hidden under the flap of his jacket.

  “Welcome back,” Rick said. “We were just about to have dinner.”

  “What’s on the menu?” Owen asked.

  “Burger King.”

  “Again?”

  “We had McDonald’s this afternoon.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Trust me, there’s a difference,” Rick said.

  Quinn left the two men talking at the car and headed to the RV with Zoe.

  “You said this was a safe house?” the reporter asked as she looked arou
nd them before covering her mouth and coughing as a breeze carried more crumbs of crushed concrete in their direction.

  Quinn grimaced against the specks of dirt flitting at her eyes. “It’s only temporary.”

  “So we are leaving town?” Zoe asked, pulling her shirt over her mouth.

  “It would be stupid to stay here,” Quinn said, and thought, Just like it was stupid to come back here, but you did it anyway, didn’t you?

  Quinn knocked on the RV’s door, and Sarah opened it. The other woman gave Zoe a quick look before turning back to Quinn. “Everything okay?”

  “We’re in one piece,” Quinn said.

  “You’re all over the radio and TV.” Sarah stepped aside for them, then put the gun she’d been holding behind her back away. “Let’s hope all that risk wasn’t for nothing,” she added while looking over at Zoe.

  If Zoe noticed Sarah’s gaze she didn’t let on, and she followed Quinn into the RV. The vehicle was roomier than it looked from the outside, with plenty of seating areas. Reiko and Aaron were sitting across from each another in one of the two circular booths near the front.

  Aaron glanced over and smiled. “Look at you, all dressed up and no Halloween party to crash. How’d it go?”

  “It went,” Quinn said. “How are our friends?”

  “They were fine when I talked to them thirty minutes ago. No one’s been compromised.”

  “Good. You never know when we might need them again.”

  “They’ll be ready and waiting.” He looked over at Zoe. “So, how’s it feel to be the story instead of covering it?”

  “How bad is it?” Zoe asked.

  Aaron put his Burger King fries away and turned his laptop around so Zoe and Quinn could see. The screen was divided into four smaller PIPs, each one showing a different local channel. The sound was on mute, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what they were talking about—Zoe’s escape from custody. Two of the PIPs had a picture of Zoe in one corner, while others were recorded footage of police on foot, in the air, and on boats as law enforcement blanketed a long stretch of Buffalo Bayou.

  Zoe sighed. “I wish it were the other way around, Converse.”

  “Converse?” Reiko said, looking up from the Double Whopper she was eating. Thick lumps of ketchup and mustard covered the torn bag under the sandwich.

  Aaron lifted one of his legs to show off the Converse he had on. “I like it. Maybe I’ll use that as my codename from now on.”

  Sarah handed her two bags of mostly-warm Burger King food. Quinn could already smell the soggy fries inside both as she handed one to Zoe.

  “God, I’m starving,” Zoe said. She sat down with her bag and tore it open, then dug out the wrapped sandwich and started eating right away. “What is this?” she asked after a couple of bites.

  Aaron chuckled. “Shouldn’t you have asked that first before diving in?”

  “Which part of ‘God, I’m starving’ didn’t you hear, Converse?”

  Quinn put her bag down. After this afternoon’s fast food, she didn’t feel like a second helping so soon. “Anything happen while we were gone?”

  Sarah exchanged a look with Aaron.

  “What?” Quinn said.

  “Maybe something big, maybe not,” Aaron said.

  “Show her,” Sarah said.

  Aaron pressed some keys on his laptop, and the PIPs were replaced by a single screen showing shaky news footage of people in suits and fancy evening dresses running through some kind of ballroom. The sound was muted, but it wasn’t hard to feel the mass chaos onscreen. It took a few seconds before Quinn realized she was looking at some kind of camera phone video.

  “What am I looking at?” she asked.

  “It happened about an hour after you guys took off for the jail,” Sarah said. “The locals were all-in on the coverage until the jailbreak, then they switched over.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone tried to assassinate one of the presidential candidates.”

  “Which one?”

  “Robert Taylor.”

  “The billionaire?” Zoe asked, looking up from her sandwich.

  “Another Richie Rich who wants to be president,” Aaron said. “What a shocker.”

  “I don’t know why anyone would want to be POTUS if they were already filthy rich,” Reiko said as she wiped ketchup off her lips with a napkin.

  “It’s the same reason anyone would want to be anything,” Sarah said. “Power.”

  Zoe put down her half-eaten sandwich to stare at the footage. “The better question is, why would anyone try to kill him? He has no chance of winning the primaries, never mind the general. Everyone I know who’s covering him thinks the campaign’s a joke, some kind of publicity stunt for his failing businesses. He’s been taking a hit financially for years.”

  “You know him?” Quinn asked.

  Zoe shook her head. “Not personally, but my station manager—” She stopped short. Then, regrouping, “They wanted to send me on the campaign trail with him, but I turned it down. Those things are boring.”

  “Not anymore,” Aaron said.

  Quinn turned back to the laptop. There were two texts of note on the screen: AMATEUR FOOTAGE at the top and CANDIDATE SURVIVES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT at the bottom. It was about twenty seconds of footage being looped over and over, each time showing the same wall of bodies—men in black suits and women in dresses—darting across the frame. It was a stampede of human beings, with people shoving, grabbing, and running into each other in desperation.

  “Where did it happen?” Quinn asked.

  “Chicago,” Sarah said.

  “This was in Chicago?” Zoe asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “That’s where I was supposed to be embedded. Starting in Chicago.”

  Aaron chuckled. “Just by looking at your face, I can’t tell if you’re glad you weren’t there, or if you’re regretting it.”

  Zoe started to answer but stopped and shrugged instead. “I don’t know the answer to that one, either.”

  “They said Taylor survived?” Quinn asked Sarah.

  “Barely,” Sarah said. “He would have bled out in minutes if there wasn’t a doctor in the room at the time. There were professional bodyguards on the stage with him and more in the ballroom. They got to him as fast as they could once the shooter revealed himself, but the assassin still got off two shots.”

  “There was just one shooter?”

  “Reports are saying just one. They don’t know how he got in there or out afterward.”

  “He’d have to either be a big money donor or one of the hotel staff,” Zoe said. “Taylor’s been blacking out the media from his thousand-a-plate dinners.”

  “A thousand a plate?” Reiko said.

  “That’s the lowest tier.”

  “What’s the highest?” Aaron asked.

  “More than what I’ll make in a year.”

  “Damn.”

  “You’re looking at the one percent, Converse. The guy running and the people listening to him.”

  The footage had looped for the sixth time when Quinn finally noticed the figure in the left corner moving away from everyone else. It was in the way he moved that caught her attention: It was calm and purposeful, while everyone else was running for their life. Even with the footage shaking badly, it was impossible to miss how casually he was walking away.

  “Who is that?” Quinn said, pointing.

  “The shooter,” Sarah said. “They identified him pretty quickly from the footage. Aaron?”

  Aaron clicked the laptop’s space bar, freezing the video in place just as the man looked over his shoulder and slightly to the left, at something (or someone?) behind him, at the same time giving the camera a full view of his face.

  Quinn stared at the screen.

  Do I know you?

  She’d never seen the face before, but there was something about it, something…familiar?

  She couldn’t look away.

  “Who is that
?” Zoe asked.

  “They don’t know yet,” Sarah said. “But it’s not going to be long before they find out based off that picture.”

  “This ain’t your grandpa’s attempted assassination,” Aaron said. “These days everyone’s got a smartphone with a gazillion megapixels. Feds are lucky there was someone in that ballroom more concerned with getting good footage than saving his own hide.”

  “Thank God for idiots,” Reiko said.

  “Aaron, can you zoom in on him?” Quinn asked.

  “Sure,” Aaron said, and used his mouse to isolate the face before enlarging it.

  “What is it?” Sarah asked, looking at Quinn curiously. “Do you recognize the face?”

  Maybe, Quinn thought, and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “You either do or you don’t, Quinn.”

  “I don’t know,” she said again, leaning in closer. “Can you blow it up some more, Aaron?”

  “Whoever shot the footage was using a good camera—scratch that, great camera—but it’s got limitations.” He clicked on his mouse. “This is the best I can do before it becomes unrecognizable.”

  He was right, and the face began blurring as the pixels started to overwhelm the clarity.

  “Okay, go back a little,” Quinn said. And after Aaron did just that, “Okay, that’s good.”

  “You know him,” Zoe said. It wasn’t a question, and she was staring at Quinn the same way Sarah was.

  Soon, both Reiko and Aaron were, too.

  “Quinn?” Sarah said. “Who is he?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Quinn said.

  “Who do you think it is?”

  Quinn leaned back but didn’t dare look away from the screen for fear the man on it might vanish.

  The nose was slightly sharper, and the hair was a different color. The chin wasn’t quite as square as before, and he looked like he had lost some weight. If she put up a picture of him from a month ago and compared it to the frozen image on the laptop, she would have had difficulty recognizing him.

  Except she did recognize him, because they could change his appearance—his nose, his chin, his hair, and even his jawline—but they couldn’t change his eyes. It wasn’t the color, because they had changed that, too, but the soul behind the eyes. She had stared at them too many times to count while at the FBI academy, and had done it even more times as she chased after him, knowing that everything that had happened to her began and would end with him.