by Alison Ryan
Annalise and Nolan stopped to watch the exchange from a block away.
“Don’t worry,” the strange little man answered. “I’ll keep your secret.”
“Secret?” a startled Carlton replied.
“I knew your father,” the man said. “We met when you were very young. You wouldn’t remember.”
With that, the old man turned and walked briskly away, into the darkness of a pair of shuttered stores.
“Oi!” Carlton called after him, but the old man kept moving. Suddenly, Nolan was at Carlton’s side.
“Are we good?” Nolan asked, his hand on Carlton’s shoulder.
A spooked Carlton responded in the affirmative, and he walked with Nolan and Annalise, looking back to see the street empty where the old man had been walking.
22
“And your guy is positive about this?” Atlas barked into the phone. “Okay, okay, yeah, thanks. Keep me in the loop. In the tightest loop you’ve got.”
Odin looked to his brother for an explanation. Every Titan in the condo sat in the living room, Mickey Mouse keeping Lea entertained while Abner II lay next to the twin Rock-N-Plays that hosted, swung, and vibrated the twins.
Atlas hung up and addressed his brother, sister-in-law, and wife.
“Oleg’s guy, the Romanian ex-KGB guy, saw them all. They’re in Elenite, a Bulgarian resort town on the Black Sea, like we thought.
“He said they look okay, he ate dinner near Annalise and Nolan. He said Canaan wasn’t with them, but that he’d seen him earlier with a redhead. She must be the one he met at the auction; the one who was e-mailing me earlier. They’re all around that place, the Royal Sands, so whatever you told them apparently worked.
“There is a problem, though. A huge one. Annalise and Nolan are with a man they called Carlton. No idea how he fits into the puzzle, or why they’re with him.”
“Okay, maybe he’s a friend, or helping them somehow?” Piper asked.
“Almost certainly not,” Atlas responded. “The KGB guy claims he recognized the guy. Are you ready for this? He said he’s QB’s son.”
“What. The. Fuck,” Odin said, slowly. “That monster has a son?”
“Maybe more than one. The KGB guy says he was part of a task force way back that was looking into QB, working quietly, and illegally, alongside Interpol, to investigate QB and his organization.”
“You worked for the guy for years, didn’t you?” Odin asked. “And you never heard about kids?”
“Odin, I never even knew the guy’s name. He was only ever QB. I got hooked up with him through a SEAL. The money was always right, and for a good, long while, we got good explanations for the work we did. After a while, though, things changed. More money, but the ‘work’ was different. That’s when I got out.
“Anyway, the KGB guy was on a small task force assigned to QB. He’s going to send some stuff to Oleg, and he’ll forward it to me, anything that seems pertinent.”
Clara wiped away a tear and scooted closer to Odin, who wrapped his arms around her. “How can this be happening again? He’s gone. Why the vendetta against this family? And how can we help Canaan?”
Atlas spoke up. “The vendetta is because of me. I left QB’s team, and he didn’t like that. Thought I knew too much, was an asset he wanted working for him, or for nobody. He tried to strong-arm me into coming back to him, and when I refused, he wanted to eliminate me.
“There was more to it than that, Dad’s businesses and stuff with Richard Hunt were also nuisances to QB, I guess, and he had some sort of long-term plan that we Titans interfered with. Or that he thought we interfered with.”
Atlas pulled Lea up onto his lap and the four adults in the room sat quietly, staring at the three little ones, wondering what their futures looked like, and if they’d forever be looking over their shoulders.
The phone on the sectional next to Atlas buzzed with an e-mail.
Atlas opened an encrypted file in Cyrillic, which an app on his phone took a moment to translate to English.
“It’s a file on QB…they have his picture here and everything. Quite a bit of it is redacted, but there’s some information here. Okay, yeah, they have a section on his personal life. He had, it looks like… four children. No, make that five. By four different women. Shit, I don’t think even our intelligence knew that.
“QB’s real name was Quentin Brentford. He—”
Odin jumped in. “Did you say Brentford?”
Atlas nodded in confirmation. “That’s what it says here.”
“Brentford was the name of the family auctioning the Gutenberg Bible and the First Folio. The whole thing was a setup. The books were real, I trust the people who did the authentications, I mean who knows how QB got his hands on them, they weren’t even in the records. They must have been in his family for generations, or he acquired them from somebody who’d kept them secret, potentially for centuries.
“I wondered how Canaan had found out about them, about the whole thing, but it’s obvious now. The whole thing was a lure, to get me—us— over there on their turf. They grabbed who they could and figured we’d come to the rescue. But Nolan or Annalise—”
“Or Canaan,” Atlas interrupted.
“True,” Odin replied. “One of them, maybe Canaan, somehow forged an escape. I can’t explain the whole Raven thing, or the e-mails about Bulgaria, but… what else does it say there? Five kids?”
“The oldest is Quentin Jr. His mother was British; it says she was a model. Her name is blacked out. Apparently she’s deceased anyway. There are hospital records here for Quentin Jr. He must have—or had— some health problems.
“His second was also a son, named Quincy. He’s dead as well, there are big parts blacked out, but it looks like he was killed. His mother was…Wow. She was a Miss Namibia. It looks like junior and Quincy were born just a few months apart.”
“That may explain why QB was never married,” Piper replied.
“Number three’s name is redacted,” Atlas said.
“Wild guess—I bet it begins with a Q,” Piper said, drawing a laugh.
“I think that’s practically a guarantee,” Odin added. “What else does it say?”
“The nameless third…this just gets more wild. His mother was the daughter of a Saudi sultan. She’s not named, either.
“Four and five share the same mother, she’s Welsh, but her name is blacked out. A girl and a boy. The girl is named Quinn and the boy is Quintus.”
“Pop quiz. Can anybody tell me what the Latin word ‘Quintus’ means?” Odin asked the group. When they all shook their heads, he answered, proudly: “Fifth. Seriously.”
“Well, I’m going to need a quintus of whiskey if this shit gets any deeper,” Piper grumbled.
“The girl, Quinn…They don’t have a picture of her, do they?” Odin asked.
“Actually, yeah, it’s not a glamour shot or anything, but there are actually two, both from a distance. One on a yacht and the other is coming out of a café.”
“Red hair?” Odin asked.
“Yes,” Atlas said, resignedly. “She’s got to be who Canaan met at the auction.”
“And who he’s with now at the Royal Sands,” Atlas concluded.
“Fuck,” Odin spat. “Call Oleg, right now. We have to abort everything. His guy has to bring them in. I don’t care if that whole resort is crawling with QB’s soldiers, we have to at least give them a chance. Let them know what they’re up against.”
Atlas nodded and called Oleg. Odin and Clara reached for their twins, bringing them close. Odin holding Emmie, Clara rocking Callum.
Abner II struggled to get up, as he always did, and he shuffled over to his water dish. After lapping at the bowl and getting twice as much all over the kitchen floor as went into his mouth, he lifted his nose to the sky and gave a mournful, doleful howl.
23
“I’m going to take a blanket and go retrieve our rifles,” Carlton announced, as he, Annalise, and Nolan arrived back at their room
. Annalise and Nolan made eye contact, but didn’t dare hold it too long. Things were tense, and they didn’t want to tip Carlton off that they thought he might be up to something, especially with night having fallen and the area around the resort pitch black. Anything could be waiting for them in the darkness.
“Sounds good. I’ll cover you,” Nolan said.
“No need,” Carlton insisted. “I can get there and back without being seen. Make this room defensible, I’ll do reconnaissance and bring back our extra firepower. Maybe check on Canaan, yeah?”
“Sure, good idea,” Nolan said. Annalise sat at the small table in the corner of the room, going over a map of the area that she’d picked up in the lobby of the restaurant.
Carlton folded a blanket from the closet in which to hide the rifles, and he slipped out into the night.
“What about Canaan?” Annalise asked. “What’s your gut say?”
“My gut says that we ought to leave him alone and a better allocation of our resources would be tailing Carlton,” Nolan replied. “If that ginger wanted to do harm to Canaan, then why give us anything? I haven’t figured her angle yet, but maybe he can. I’m going out after our friend to make sure he doesn’t disappear with all our extra firepower.”
“Be safe.”
“Clearly not a condition with which I’m afflicted,” Nolan said with a smile. He peered out the window at an angle, so as not to disturb the curtain, then quietly exited the room.
Carlton, meanwhile, had initially crossed the street, looking to anyone watching as if he were bound for the beach. In fact, he was looking for the man he’d confronted after dinner, the stranger who claimed to recognize him.
With Nolan staying in the shadows behind him, Carlton snooped and snuck his way around the front of the hotels and restaurants closer to the water, and then dipped into the forest, near where he and Canaan had hidden the guns.
Only when Carlton had disappeared from view did Nolan realize he wasn’t the only one with a vested interest in Carlton— a small figure quietly stepped out from between buildings and went into the woods a bit further down, nearer the beach.
Nolan drew his gun and moved quickly to the closest vantage point that gave him both a view of the woods and some cover; beneath a set of stairs leading to the second floor of the small hotel on the corner of the main street and the road out of town.
Carlton reached the rifles and brushed away the crude camouflage of branches and leaves with which he and Canaan had hidden them.
Everything was as he left it, and he set to bundling the weapons in a blanket when he heard something break behind him.
Carlton ignored the temptation to freeze or run or do anything else. He pretended not to have heard it, hoping to draw whomever was out there closer, where he could get his hands on them rather than have to make any noise. The pistol he carried had no silencer, and the rifles would be heard for miles if he discharged them.
Sensing the approach of someone or something, Carlton bent low and pretended to be busy tying the blanket. When he could stand it no longer, he rolled and pulled his handgun all in one motion, popping up behind a tree and setting his sights on… nothing.
He sat very still and scanned the area, slowing his breathing until he was sure he’d imagined the presence. He holstered his weapon and turned back to his work, until he felt the pressure on the back of his head. The pressure of the barrel of a gun.
“Please set your weapon down, Quintus,” a voice behind him said. He complied and turned, slowly, to find the man he’d had words with on the street earlier standing there with a weapon drawn, at point blank range.
“You Brentfords don’t know when you’re beaten, do you?” the small, wiry man asked.
“I’m afraid you’ve got me confused with someone else, friend,” Quintus/Carlton insisted.
“There’s no mistake,” the man asserted. “You’re Quintus Brentford, and your father ran one of the most dangerous criminal organizations on the planet, all while staying entirely off the radar. Well, almost entirely.”
“Mate, I wish I knew what you were talking about, but I’ve got no idea,” Quintus replied. “Shouldn’t you be off enjoying your pension somewhere, anyway?”
Stoichkov stepped back and motioned for Quintus to rise to his feet. “Up, up now. You won’t need those. Back out onto the street now. Quick, but not in a hurry. Understand?”
Just then, Nolan Weston wrapped an arm around the throat of the ex-KGB man, tightening his grip until he collapsed, unconscious.
“Who’s this?” Nolan asked Carlton, referring to the man he’d just snuck up on and choked out.
“Not sure, but he’s a pro. Snuck up on me like a bloody ghost,” Carlton replied. “Thanks for the save. He must be with QB’s people, reckon?”
“Whoever he is, when he comes to, we have a problem,” Nolan responded. “He must have seen the guns. Toss him.”
Carlton turned the old man’s pocket inside out and came up empty. All he had on him was the gun, which Carlton handed to Nolan for identification.
“MP-443 Grach,” Nolan surmised. “This is Russian, military issue. What the hell is that doing here and who is this guy?”
“It’s time to start tying up loose ends,” Carlton replied, drawing a knife he’d hidden in his boot. “I’ll cut his throat and leave him in the woods, drag him a hundred yards deeper in. He won’t be found until we’re long gone.”
Nolan had seen plenty of killing throughout his career, and participated in it when he had to, but Carlton’s tone and plan surprised him.
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Nolan insisted. “Leave him. Grab the rifles. We’re going back for Canaan and Annalise. We’ll find a vehicle and we’re out of here. I need a phone I can use, and trust.”
Carlton shrugged his shoulders. “Have it your way. But keep in mind, I don’t recall putting leadership of our little band of fugitives to a vote. I’ll go along, but if I don’t see things happening soon that are going to get me home, I’m taking what I need and going my own way.”
“The sooner we part ways, the better, friend,” Nolan agreed. “But let’s not be stupid. This is a volatile situation. Once we get out of Bulgaria and I’m convinced we’ve lost QB and his goons, you go wherever you want.”
Carlton gave Nolan a stern look and grunted his accordance. The two men exited the forest and hurried back toward the Royal Sands.
24
“I could go on making love to you all night and all day tomorrow,” Canaan said, inspiring a purr from Quinn. “But I have questions you have to answer. My friends and I have been to hell and back today, and I’d be a fool to think you aren’t involved, somehow.”
Quinn made eye contact with Canaan, looked down at the bed, then back at him, before taking a deep breath.
She stood and walked to the mirror outside the bathroom, examining herself for a moment before shaking the nerves out of her fingertips.
She walked back across the room to the bed, where Canaan sat, propped against the headboard. She sat at the foot of the bed, facing him.
“My father wasn’t a good man,” she began. Canaan looked perplexed. “He was actually, by any measure, a very bad man. And I was born into a family that thought he hung the moon. I was his little girl. He called me his princess. So I did the things he asked me to do; I put the family first. And I’ve accumulated a fortune along the way, lived a life of unparalleled luxury, never wanted for anything.”
“That actually sounds very familiar,” Canaan added. “I haven’t always been proud of some of my Dad’s business decisions, either. And I would have loved to spend time with him growing up that didn’t include his appointment calendar dictating when, where, and for how long he was available. Always taking a backseat to work isn’t fun, no matter how much money’s involved.”
“Oh, Canaan,” Quinn said, smiling softly and shaking her head. “If only that’s what I was talking about.” She looked away from him for a moment.
“There’s no sort
of clean or nice way to put this,” she continued. “I watched my father kill people. And I thought it was normal. Part of ‘doing business’. Blackmail and torture. He ordered the death of one of his own sons; my brother. And I barely batted an eye, since he gave me my first Maybach that same week for my eighteenth birthday.”
Canaan tensed up and found he was pressed up hard against the headboard now, rather than simply leaning against it, as Quinn continued.
“And today, I lost another brother. It was fratricide. My oldest brother, who you met today, murdered another of my siblings, who you also met.”
“Quinn, what the fuck? What are you talking about?” Canaan stood, pulled up and buckled his pants, and took a long look out the window. “This isn’t funny.”
“No,” Quinn agreed. “It isn’t. Not at all. Please, Canaan, let me finish. I’ll tell you everything, answer any question you have.”
“I’m fine right here,” Canaan said, moving toward the door. “Go on, but I’ve got one foot out the door. Start making sense or I’m going back to my friends and we’ll fight our way out of here if we have to.”
“Canaan, my father was QB. The QB you met today, in the wheelchair, is my oldest brother.”
The look on Canaan’s face was confused horror.
“His name is Quentin. Quentin Jr. He had Qadim killed this afternoon over a disagreement.”
“What are you…” Canaan’s voice dissolved.
“I sat in a room with my two brothers this afternoon, they had a disagreement, and minutes later, one of them was dead. It took me twenty-eight years, and meeting you, to finally open my eyes and see that this life isn’t right. It isn’t normal. It’s fucked up. Sick. It has to end.”
A realization dawned on Canaan. “Your father had my brother killed. Achilles. He held a fucking gun to my niece’s head when she was a newborn!” Canaan was shouting, nearly foaming at the mouth in his rage. “He threatened my entire family!”
“True. All those things are true,” Quinn replied, in a small voice. “Indefensible and horrible.”