by Sam Sisavath
He stopped but didn’t look back at her. He continued staring out the window, as if there were something so fascinating out there that he couldn’t glance away from it. Or maybe he just didn’t have the heart to meet her eyes.
I don’t blame you, Ben.
“Ben,” Quinn said. Then, when he glanced over, “What were they doing here in the first place?”
“Who?”
“Sterling and Brown. What were they doing in my room at three in the morning?”
Ben started to answer, but stopped short.
“Ben?” Quinn said.
“That’s a good question,” Ben said, finally looking across the room at her again. “That’s a damn good question. What the hell were those two doing in here at three in the morning?”
She felt a strange sense of relief when Ben left, mostly because it meant she no longer had to endure the guilt of letting him down while in his presence. It was easier to view what was happening to her as an objective problem once she was alone inside her hospital room again.
Ben was her final visitor for the day, which was a blessing after the interrogation of this morning. Apparently this was her life now—one series of questions after another. What made it worse (and it had already been pretty bad to begin with) was that she didn’t have the answers, and no one believed her.
Except Ben.
But did even Ben actually believe her? Her explanations required a lot of faith, and the only reason Ben would even consider it was their shared history, which made him her most valued ally. But then, hadn’t he always been?
I’m sorry, Ben. I’m sorry for screwing it up so badly.
Without Ben’s presence to remind her of her failures, she was free to stare at the darkening wall across the room and focus on the real problem: Porter.
She was almost certain there had to be more that she hadn’t remembered yet. After all, if she had somehow managed to forget such a big chunk of what Porter had said to her in those last few moments inside Gary Ross’s nightclub, there was a chance there could be more, and some of that “more” could help her find him.
But it didn’t matter how long she stared at the wall, because nothing came to her. Not one more word or one more image from that night.
“Good luck,” Porter had said.
Those two words, more than the rest, haunted her. Why was a terrorist who had taken her hostage telling her good luck? What was the point of that? Was he mocking her? Was that it?
Goddamn it, why can’t I remember!
Maybe because there was nothing else to remember. Maybe Porter’s speech to her about “they” coming after her to find out everything that had happened in that room with him was the end of it.
And who exactly were the “they” he had warned her about? He couldn’t have known about Sterling and Brown, so who were they?
Hours passed, and she couldn’t sleep. Or eat the cold food Pender brought in for her before Ben’s arrival. Instead she lay on the bed without moving for the longest time and stared at shadows dancing across the ceiling above her.
By the time she felt the need coming and pressed the button for Pender, she was about to burst. Pender showed up five minutes later, even though it shouldn’t have taken her more than one since the nurses station she and the other agents were stationed at was just across the hallway from her room. The fact that Pender was late at all was clearly a passive-aggressive move.
I killed two FBI agents, so why not? Hell, she might even know one or both of them.
Pender had a faux smile when she walked across the bed and to the window. “Who opened the blinds?”
“My visitor,” Quinn said.
“SAC Foster?”
“Yes.”
“Nice to have friends in high places. You rang?”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“Number one or number two?”
“One. I drank a lot of water this afternoon.”
“All that talking, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“All that talking and not a whole lot said, from what I hear.”
“They wanted answers I didn’t have.”
“You sure about that?”
Quinn tempered down the flash of anger. Why was she defending herself to a field agent when there were men and women with offices in DC looking to crucify her? Ben had said as much before he left:
“The things that’s going to come down on you…”
I know, Ben. I know. God, do I know.
And here was a nobody like Pender, giving her shit.
“Today,” Quinn said. “I’d like to use the bathroom today.”
The other woman smirked before walking over to the side of the bed. “Do I even have to say it?”
“Say what?”
“There are two agents outside the door and two more somewhere else in the building. And then there’s me.”
“Noted.”
“Just so we’re on the same page.”
Pender took out a key and placed it on the nightstand next to her. “You know the drill.”
Quinn picked up the key and opened the handcuff, then unlatched it from the bed railing and snapped it on her other hand.
Pender had taken a couple of steps back after putting down the key, even though she held all the cards. Like all special agents, Pender was trained in combat, but that would be a last resort with her Glock holstered at her hip. If all else failed, she had reinforcements in the two waiting outside. Five guards in all, including an entire secured wing, for someone accused of killing two agents was not even close to being overkill.
“Slowly,” Pender said.
Quinn swung her legs off the bed and took a breath to let herself get used to sitting up again after lying down for so long. Standing up was more of a challenge than she had expected, and she reached back for the bed to keep her shaky legs upright. A difficult task with both hands cuffed in front of her.
“You have five minutes to get everything done,” Pender said.
“I need more time,” Quinn said.
“Five minutes.”
“I’m going to need more time than that.”
“You got five.”
Quinn held up her handcuffed hands. “It’s going to be difficult doing everything I have in five minutes with these on.”
“You’ll make do.”
“Don’t I get the benefit of the doubt? Until the suits say otherwise, I’m still one of you.”
Pender looked conflicted.
“Where am I going to go?” Quinn asked. “You’re in here, and there are two more out there. What exactly am I going to do, and where am I going?”
The other woman sighed. “All right. Ten minutes.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t tell the others.”
“Mum’s the word.”
Quinn walked around the bed and over to the bathroom, Pender watching her like a hawk the entire time.
“Ten minutes,” Pender said when Quinn opened the bathroom door.
“Ten minutes. Gotcha.”
Quinn flicked the light switch before closing the door behind her, her mind racing at a hundred miles per second.
What were her options?
Limited.
Very, very limited.
They had her dead to rights for the murder of Brown and Sterling. Even if they didn’t call it murder, it was homicide of two fellow special agents. That by itself would land her enough years in a federal prison to ensure she never breathed free air again in this lifetime.
And what was her big defense?
“Your Honor, Special Agents Brown and Sterling came into my hospital room with a third man, and they didn’t have faces.”
She could imagine the looks now staring back at her, wondering if she should be locked up in a psych ward instead of a federal pen. Most of all, she tried to picture Ben’s face when she put up that defense in an open courtroom.
She was an FBI agent because of him. Everything she was was becau
se of him. He’d led her on the right path, given her direction and, probably most importantly, expected things from her when no one else did.
Forgive me, Ben, but I wouldn’t do this if I had any other choice.
But I don’t. I just don’t see it. I’ve tried looking, I’ve tried searching, but I just don’t see any other choice.
Quinn glanced back at the door. Pender was outside, but the real problem was the two in the hallway. Even if she could take Pender—and that was already a big if—what about them?
Damn, her options were limited.
But she still had options. For now, anyway. There was no guarantee of that tomorrow, or the day after—
A knock on the door, followed by Pender’s voice: “Turner, your ten minutes are up.”
Quinn was startled back to the present. Ten minutes? Had she actually been standing here for the last ten minutes?
“Turner,” Pender said from the other side of the door. “Come on. We had a deal. Don’t make me regret this.”
Quinn took a deep breath and flushed the toilet, and as it belched and the water began sloshing around, she turned to the sink and poured water into her cupped hands, fisting them—or as much of it as she could “hold,” anyway—in her right.
I’m sorry, Ben, she thought as she opened the door with her left hand.
Pender was standing outside keeping about five feet of safe space between them. “About time. I guess you really did need all ten—”
Quinn flicked the water in her right fist at Pender, even as the thought This is a mistake. God, this is such a mistake raced through her head.
It wasn’t much—in fact it was downright pitiful, and because of the distance only a few splashes hit the other woman in the face—but it was enough to make her flinch reflexively. At the same time, the agent’s right hand stabbed down toward her holstered sidearm, but she never reached it because Quinn dove forward and barreled into Pender’s chest.
The gun fell from Pender’s grip just as it cleared the holster, but Pender had no chance to retrieve it because she was already being driven back, back into the bed where her body folded backward awkwardly at the waist.
Quinn jumped up onto the bed, scooted behind Pender, and slipped her handcuffed arms over the other woman’s head and pulled. It didn’t take Pender long to know what was happening, if her suddenly wild thrashing was any indication. Like Quinn, Pender would have learned how to apply an effective chokehold to an unwilling victim by compressing on the carotid artery and restricting blood flow to the brain. They were all taught the same techniques at Quantico.
Pender whaled on Quinn’s arms with her fists, but the hits got weaker the longer Quinn held on. It took about eight seconds after Quinn had gotten a good hold before Pender’s entire body went slack, and Quinn released her. She was out of breath and lay down on the bed for a good thirty seconds, gasping for air while Pender gradually sagged to the floor in a pile.
Jesus, that worked. I can’t believe that worked.
Quinn sat back up and climbed off the bed. She took a moment to check on Pender. The agent had a pulse and looked completely at peace curled up on the floor.
“Pender,” a male voice said.
Quinn lifted her head from Pender’s unconscious body, startled by the sound. It only took a second to realize where the voice had come from:
The radio clipped to Pender’s left hip.
“What’s taking so long?” the male voice asked. Then, more urgently, “Pender, are you there? Answer me, or we’re coming in.”
Chapter 5
Pender’s gun. Where the hell was Pender’s gun?
Quinn was crawling around the room on her knees looking under the bed and every other furniture in her way, but there were no signs of the weapon.
Goddammit, where’s that gun?
“Pender,” the agent said through the radio. “Last chance…”
She gave up on finding the Glock and instead spent the next precious five seconds searching Pender’s slackened body, rummaging through some change and bills, and—
There!
The key to her handcuffs. They snapped loose at the same time she heard the very distinctive click! as the door opened behind her.
Quinn hurried across the room, wishing she had clothes on instead of just a hospital gown that was open at all the wrong places. But looking graceful was the least of her concerns as she pressed against the wall while tightening her grip around the handcuff in her right hand. It wasn’t Pender’s gun (Where the hell did that thing go?), but against two of the Bureau’s agents, it was a lot better than nothing.
“Pender,” a voice called out. Not quite shouting, but getting there. It was male, but wasn’t the same one who had spoken over the radio. Then, just slightly louder, “Pender!”
The room was laid out in such a way that the agents wouldn’t have been able to see the bed (and Pender curled up in a ball on the floor next to it) right away, but would have to walk an additional five feet before they could turn around the corner to get a look at the rest of the room. Right now their vision was limited to the windows in front of them.
Quinn slid along the wall toward the entrance hallway. Being barefoot meant she didn’t make a lot of noise as she moved, though the same couldn’t be said for her increasingly rapid breathing.
Calm down. Jesus, girl, calm down!
She clenched her fingers around the handcuff, hating the thought of what she was about to do but knowing she didn’t have any choice. Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t kill Brown and Sterling, but she knew for a fact they had been in here along with a third man to do her harm last night. They had said as much to her face.
“It’ll be painless,” one of them had said. “Go back to sleep. You won’t feel a thing.”
But knowing and proving were two completely different animals. The only thing she knew with absolute certainty was that she wasn’t going to be able to prove any of it while sitting handcuffed to a bed in a hospital waiting for the Bureau to recall her for another round of pointless questions. She knew how the bureaucracy worked, and according to Ben, they had her dead to rights. The gunshot residue on her hand, the dead bodies in her room, the lack of drugs in her system to prove she had been doped...
“Pender,” the same male voice said, and this time it sounded much, much closer. She could also hear footsteps approaching the end of the hallway.
She cocked back her right hand and counted to five, syncing the numbers with the soft tap of footsteps.
One…
I’m sorry for all the trouble this is going to cause you, Ben.
Two…
But someone out there is setting me up, and I can’t just sit here and take it.
Three…
It’s not how I’m wired. It’s never been.
Four…
I wish it were different. I wish, I wish, I wish.
Five!
She swung—and made contact!
Even as her hand vibrated from the impact, she was bursting out from behind the wall, pulling her fist back while still gripping the handcuff like a brass knuckle for another strike. She caught a glimpse of the man she’d hit as he staggered back, one hand reaching for his chest as the other one clutched onto a pistol at his side.
Quinn swung again, this time at the second figure trying to lumber around the first, and landed against his arm as the man raised it to defend himself. Something that sounded like bone breaking and the clatter of a gun falling to the floor, and Quinn’s mind screamed, The gun. Get the gun!
Except there was no opportunity, because instead of trying to reclaim his lost weapon, the agent tackled her and Quinn was tossed back across the room while wrapped tightly in the man’s arms like precious cargo. She crashed onto the smooth floor, barely holding back a scream as the agent landed on top of her, his much bigger body threatening to crush her against its unyielding weight.
She gasped for breath as the behemoth pummeled her to the floor with his size. But Quinn still h
ad the handcuff-knuckle in her right hand, and she slammed it into the man’s face even as he was raising himself up. She landed a solid blow against his nose, the sound of metal hitting flesh ringing off the walls. Blood flicked from the man’s face and hit her and sprayed the floor around them, but Quinn ignored the warm wetness on her face and cocked her right fist back because he wasn’t going down.
Not only was the man still perched on top of her, his weight keeping her pinned flat on her back, but he glared at her and she thought, Oh shit, now I’ve really pissed him off!
Quinn focused on the blood pouring out of his busted nose and swung again (Second time’s the charm!) but he reached out and grabbed her fist with his left palm, his hand so much bigger than hers that the contrast was beyond ridiculous.
For a second or two they stared at each other, blood dripping down the man’s face and splattering his white dress shirt and black tie before making its way down to her hospital gown. He was breathing hard, but that wasn’t going to be enough to put him down.
“Truce?” Quinn said.
The agent grinned at her and might have been in the process of opening his mouth to reply when something zipped over and past Quinn’s face and embedded itself into the man’s chest, pinning his tie to his shirt and the flesh underneath.
The agent glanced down at the object poking out of his chest—some kind of…dart?—and then back at her.
“It wasn’t me,” Quinn said, when the man let go of her fist and toppled sideways and landed with a loud thwump! next to her.
Quinn pushed off the man’s legs, then spun around while still hugging to the floor as much as she could as she focused on the window behind her. There was a hole there that hadn’t been there before—a very, very tiny hole, just barely visible against the blanket of moonlight in the background.
Sniper!
Except this sniper had saved her. Maybe. Unless he had aimed for her and gotten the agent instead.
No, that was stupid. The agent was clearly the target.
Probably.
She turned back around and looked toward the door. The first agent was on the floor, lying on his side while struggling to breathe. Had she hit him harder than she thought? No, not exactly, because she had hit him as hard as she could in hopes of dropping him. She had succeeded, apparently. Maybe too much.