The Buried

by Brett Battles

  “Noted,” Nate said.

  “The others are still asleep?” Quinn asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “I had a few hours but I’m awake now. Thought I’d see what was going on with you.”

  Quinn frowned. “Is everything all right?”

  “Of course everything’s all right. Why wouldn’t it be all right?” She paused. “Oh, unless you mean the baby. I delivered a few hours ago. Should I have called you?”

  “Hilarious,” he said. “Seriously, though, how are you feeling?”

  “Annoyed that you keep asking me that every time we talk.”

  The city was beginning to fall away, leaving only the great plains in front of them. Quinn eased around a big rig, thinking they should now be able to pick out the distinctive taillights of the ambulance. But while he could see lights of trucks and passenger cars, he didn’t see the ambulance.

  Orlando was in the middle of saying something when Quinn blurted out, “Hang on.” He glanced at Nate. “Check their location.”

  Nate put Orlando on hold and switched to the tracking app. A short pause, then, “They turned off.”

  “Where?” Quinn asked.

  “Back in Topeka.”

  Quinn made a fast U-turn through the grass-covered center meridian and raced into the eastbound lanes.

  “They’re in the north part of the city, across the Kansas River,” Nate said.

  “Still moving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do I exit?”

  “Checking.” Nate studied the screen for a moment. “First Avenue. It’s about three miles ahead.”

  “Put Orlando back on.”

  Nate took her off hold.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Our friends left the interstate in Topeka.”

  “Stopping?”

  “Unclear.”

  “Tell me as soon as you know.”

  “I will.”

  LOS ANGELES

  ORLANDO HUNG UP and stared out the large window that overlooked the Los Angeles basin. The city lay before her like a brightly glowing carpet but she saw none of it, her thoughts focused on Quinn and Nate.

  Though both men were extremely competent, there were only two of them. That would have been fine if they just had to worry about the men in the ambulance, but the auction meant others would likely soon be showing up.

  Despite those odds, she knew Quinn would still try to rescue Dani .

  She phoned her Los Angeles transportation contact. Once arrangements were made, she went downstairs and woke Daeng and Ananke.

  EASTERN KANSAS

  BY THE TIME Quinn took the First Avenue off-ramp, the ambulance was already out of town, continuing north on Highway 4. The road was a single lane in each direction, but traffic was light. Quinn pushed their speed a bit above the limit.

  “They’re slowing,” Nate said.

  “Where?”

  “Three and a half miles ahead. Yeah, they’re definitely stopping.”

  __________

  THOUGH ORBITS NEEDED to find someplace to hold the exchange before calling it a night, there was no way he would be able to sleep until he made a stop at Danielle Chad’s mysterious location. What he didn’t want, however, was for Stafford and Parnell to come along.

  To that end, he had them drop him off near a small neighborhood so he could score his own ride, telling them he’d call when he was ready for them to pick him up. It wasn’t the perfect location to steal a car, but it was the best they’d seen so far.

  The first house had a couple of trucks and an old Dodge Charger. The second, a minivan and another pickup. But the third had exactly what he needed, a late-model Ford C-Max hybrid. It barely made a sound when he started it up and pulled into the road.

  As he neared the intersection with the highway, he saw the lights of a car heading his way from the south. It slowed, making him think it was going to turn onto his road, but then it increased its speed again and continued past his position, passing under the street lamp at the corner.

  He stared after it in disbelief. The man behind the wheel was Quinn, and the place where he had slowed was the exact same place Orbits had been dropped off.

  How did that son of a bitch end up here? Unless…

  Clearly, he was the one who had bugged the girl, and given that he was still on Orbits’s tail, he must have put more than one tracker on her.

  Orbits put the battery back in his phone and dialed Stafford as he pulled onto the highway.

  “That was quick,” Stafford said. “You want us to pick you—”

  “Listen,” Orbits said. “You need to get a new vehicle right now. You’re being followed.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Hell, yes, I’m sure. The girl must have another homing beacon on her. Leave everything she’s got on in the ambulance. If you get caught, none of us gets paid. Understand?”

  __________

  QUINN SLOWED AS they approached the spot where the others had paused.

  “Are you sure this is it?” he asked.

  “Positive,” Nate said.

  There were several houses ahead on the other side of the highway, but that was it. Nothing obvious to explain why they’d stopped.

  Quinn increased their speed again and continued down the highway.

  “They’re turning,” Nate said a few moments later. “Heading east on Eighty-sixth Street.”

  Eighty-sixth turned out to be dirt, the surface creating a rhythmic rattle throughout the car, forcing Quinn to slow.

  “What could possibly be out here?” Nate asked. “Safe house?”

  “That’s as good a guess as any,” Quinn replied.

  “Turning south again. On Butler Road.” Nate paused, then added, “They’re speeding up.”

  Quinn resisted the urge to do the same until after they turned onto Butler. Even then, he only managed an extra few miles an hour, until they crossed a concrete bridge and found the road on the other side paved again. He slammed the pedal to the floor, but by that point the ambulance had already made several more turns through the nearby small town of Meriden.

  “They’ve stopped again,” Nate said. “Take your next right.”

  Nate guided him past another farm and into the town.

  “How much father?” Quinn asked a couple minutes later.

  “Almost there. Two more turns.”

  “They haven’t moved?”

  “No.”

  They ripped around the first turn, then slowed to a more neighborhood-appropriate speed as they took the second. The ambulance was parked at the side of the road next to a dirt lot filled with school buses.

  “No one in front,” Nate said as they drove past. “Can’t tell about the back, but there are no lights on.”

  A sinking feeling tugged at Quinn’s stomach as he swung back around to make a second pass. Still seeing no signs of life, he pulled in behind the ambulance.

  They waited a moment for a reaction, and then climbed out, guns drawn.

  The ambulance’s back door was not only unlocked but not even fully closed. Quinn pointed his SIG at it and nodded at Nate, who quickly pulled it open. His gun tracking his gaze, Quinn scanned the interior. The back area was deserted.

  The second he climbed inside, his dread increased at the sight of Dani’s clothes piled against the wheels of the gurney. He searched for clues as to what might have happened, but there were none. He moved into the cab and retrieved Nate’s phone.

  When he jumped out the back door, he tossed the cell to his partner and said, “Let’s go. They can’t have gone far.”

  CHAPTER 35

  THE GPS COORDINATES led Orbits off the highway and onto a dirt road, then another, and finally a third that he almost didn’t see. The entrance was nearly grown over, and had NO TRESSPASSING signs posted on each side.

  It turned out to be more path than road, barely wide enough for a single car. From the way it was overgrown, he
was sure no one had driven on it for years.

  For the first few minutes, he caught glimpses of open fields through the trees, but then the brush began to thicken, making it feel like he was driving through a dark tunnel. It wasn’t long after this that the road deteriorated even more, until finally he could go no farther.

  According to the coordinates, the location wasn’t too far ahead, so he decided to go the rest of the way on foot. The brush continued to crowd in, officially turning the road into a trail. The trees, too, grew thick above him, cutting off most of the sky.

  He almost walked right into the barbed wire. He’d been shining his flashlight at the ground to watch his step, and had to stop abruptly when the beam lit up the lowest wire. There were six strands in all, each approximately a foot apart, and running off as far as he could see to either side. Mounted to one of the nearby poles was another NO TRESSPASSING sign.

  The wire was rusty and had long ago lost some of its tension, making it easy for Orbits to pull two of the strands wide enough apart for him to slip through.

  On the other side, the dense cover continued for another thirty yards, and then stopped entirely at the edge of the meadow he’d seen in the satellite photo. Though no X marked the spot, he did pick out the white objects hidden in the grass he’d seen in the satellite image. They turned out to be concrete squares that were part of two longer pieces running parallel to each another, just above ground level.

  He moved between them to give himself a different view. As he took his second step, he felt the ground give a little. He jumped back, thinking he was about to be sucked into some kind of sinkhole. But the ground remained unchanged.

  He knelt down on one of the concrete strips and put his fingers into the dirt near where he’d been standing. It was easier than it should have been to work his fingers through it. About five inches down, he hit something solid.

  He pulled away grass and dirt until he had a palm-sized hole dug to the obstruction. Shining his light into it, he saw that the unmovable object was a flat piece of metal.

  He removed the dirt between the strips, and in ten minutes uncovered a metal door.

  Yeah, baby. This is what I’m talking about!

  Built into the door was a handle, and next to the handle, protected from the dirt by a piece of scratched Plexiglas, was a row of eight tumblers, each showing the number 1.

  He tried the handle first but the door didn’t move.

  The hinge connecting the Plexi to the metal surface had not fared as well as the rest. It took a considerable amount of force to break through the rust to get at the tumblers.

  It was a lock, each dial containing digits from 0 to 9. He tried a few random combinations but, as he expected, none of them worked. The girl was the key. She had the coordinates to this place, so she had to have the combination, too.

  Good thing he hadn’t killed her.

  He wondered what was down there. Gold? Cash?

  Whatever the case, he figured he’d have at least a day before The Wolf showed up here. Maybe even two, depending on how Danielle reacted to the drug he’d give her before the handoff. Plenty of time to grab what he wanted.

  Fifty million and whatever was beyond the door.

  Hot damn.

  __________

  HAVING NO IDEA which direction Orbits and his men had taken Dani, Quinn played a hunch and headed back toward Topeka. At one point, he and Nate caught sight of a pair of taillights in the distance, but before they could close the gap, the other vehicle disappeared.

  As they approached the on-ramp to Highway 24 at the northern edge of the city, Quinn pulled to the side of the road.

  “They could be thirty miles away by now,” Nate said.

  “Then why did they come up this way?” Quinn asked.

  “They were trying to lose us,” Nate said.

  Quinn shook his head. “No. That didn’t happen until they started making all those turns. Think about it. We had driven past the exit they’d taken and were almost out of Topeka before we realized they weren’t there. When you checked, they were already heading north, but were they racing away?”

  “No,” Nate admitted.

  “Were they employing any tactics to lose a tail?”

  Nate shook his head. “They were heading down the highway at normal speed.”

  “Exactly. They had no idea we were still behind them.”

  “Maybe not then, but they did later.”

  “Something tipped them off, but not until after we neared them again.” He fell silent for a moment. “No, they’re in this area for a reason.”

  “Hold on,” Nate said. “They could be just driving through and heading farther north.”

  “That wouldn’t make sense.” Quinn brought up a map of the area on his phone. “Look. Highway 4 connects to the same road we came across Missouri on. If Orbits wanted to go someplace to the north, he would have stayed on that and not dipped down to Kansas City. Whatever he’s interested in, it’s somewhere in this area.” He circled a ten-mile length of Highway 4. “It’s got to be.”

  Nate started to say something, but stopped.

  “What?” Quinn asked.

  “I was thinking—he’s supposed to hand Dani off in about eight hours. This seems like kind of an odd place to do that, don’t you think?”

  It was a good point. A city would be considerably better for this kind of transfer—more location choices, not to mention plenty of options for getting away if things went south. But perhaps there were other circumstances dictating where it needed to take place. Something Roger Platt—Edmondson’s partner—said echoed in Quinn’s mind.

  Sam wanted to get the location from her first.

  The location.

  The reason everyone was interested in Dani.

  “I don’t think the handoff is the reason Orbits came here,” Quinn said.

  “Then what is?”

  He shared his thoughts with Nate.

  “Whoa,” Nate said. “Getting paid and taking whatever everyone’s looking for—that’s major double-dipping. If it’s true, Orbits’s got some balls. There are so many ways that could get messy.”

  The only problems now were, they didn’t know where Orbits was or where the handoff would take place. Quinn called Orlando.

  “Did you find them?” she asked.

  He told her what had happened, and his theory about why Orbits had brought Dani here. “We could hunt around all night and not find them,” he said. “The one thing we do know is that they’ll be at a specific place at nine a.m., and there is a way to find out where that’ll be.”

  She said nothing for a moment, then, “The Wolf.”

  “Exactly. There can’t be too many chartered jets flying from Minneapolis to somewhere in eastern Kansas at just after seven in the morning.”

  “No, there shouldn’t be. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out where she’s headed.”

  Now that he wasn’t focused on telling her what he needed, he realized he could hear a background hum over the line. “Are you in a car?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Are you trying to keep tabs on me?”

  “No, I was just—”

  “Nate doesn’t keep a lot of food in his house. I’m hungry, okay?” Her tone dared him to question her.

  “Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”

  Softer now, she said, “I know. I love you. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  “I love you, too.” He hung up and said to Nate, “Let’s find someplace to get some sleep.”

  LOS ANGELES

  ORLANDO COULD FEEL Ananke staring at the back of her head as she put her phone away. “Go on. Say it.”

  “Say what?” Ananke asked.

  “What you’re thinking. That I just lied to him.”

  “Did you? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Because I’m not lying,” Orlando said. “I’m starving. We’ll stop on the way.”

  From the driver’s seat
, Daeng said, “Riggo’s taco stand or In-N-Out?”

  “In-N-Out, please. A double-double and fries, animal style.”

  CHAPTER 36

  EASTERN KANSAS

  ORBITS AND HIS men camped out in a shuttered café along the road, north of Meriden.

  In anticipation of the coming day’s events, Orbits only slept in fits and starts, and was up and dressed at six fifteen. He checked the girl first. She was still asleep, the ill-fitting T-shirt Parnell had given her twisted around her chest, exposing her belly.

  Careful not to disturb anyone, Orbits made his way out to the field behind the building and relieved himself. After zipping back up, he scanned the horizon. There were a few scattered clouds to the east, but otherwise the sky was clear.

  A beautiful day. He took that as a good omen.

  At precisely seven a.m., he reinstalled the battery in his phone and called The Wolf.

  “Topeka, Kansas,” he said without preamble. “If you have a good pilot, you should make it there by eight thirty without a problem. I’ll call you then with further instructions. Oh, you should arrange for a car.”

  “Just tell me where to meet,” she said. “There’s no need for—”

  “I’ll call you in an hour and a half.”

  He hung up and removed the battery again.”

  MINNEAPOLIS

  “DO YOU HAVE him?” The Wolf asked.

  The man sitting across the aisle looked up from his computer and grimaced. “His signal’s scrambled. About the best I can say is that he’s in the Kansas-Missouri-Oklahoma area.”

  “That’s a huge help,” she said, unsmiling.

  “I’ll, uh, go over the data again. Maybe I can fine-tune it.”

  “You do that.”

  She turned her attention to the hunter in the seat in front of him. “Bianca,” she said. “Would you mind telling the pilot that our destination is Topeka, Kansas?”

  EASTERN KANSAS

  A THROWBACK TO a bygone era of families in station wagons on cross-country journeys to take in the wonders of America, the motel at the north end of Topeka had one story with two wings forming an L around a parking area, and the prerequisite fenced-in swimming pool.