by Sam Sisavath
“Porter.”
“Right. Porter.”
“He’s the key, Ben. Everything that’s happened, it’s because of him. Whatever’s going on, whoever these people are that Ringo and Hofheinz are working for, they want Porter in the worst way. They killed Gary to find out what he knew, and they were going to do the same to me.”
“All that’s probably true, but finding Porter is going to be a problem.”
“It’s a big problem.” She sighed and leaned back farther against the counter. “Is there anyone you can trust? That might be able to run down some clues for us?”
“An hour ago, I would have said Pete Ringo.”
“But you believe me?” Quinn said. “Everything I’ve told you about him. About what’s happened to me since the hospital.”
“I’ve known you since you were thirteen and boosting cars for lowlife scumbags, Quinn. You turned your life around and became a special agent of the FBI. You persevered when a hundred other kids in your shoes would have given up.” He nodded and smiled, then turned around and put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Yeah, I believe you. I believe every word of it.”
She pursed her lips back at him. It was getting harder not to start crying like that thirteen-year-old he had first met all those years ago. But she fought and pushed and pulled and somehow managed to keep her eyes dry.
Or mostly dry, anyway.
“Thank you, Ben,” she said quietly.
“Anytime, kiddo,” he said and pulled her against him, and Quinn let his arms tighten around her and didn’t ever want him to take them away.
Chapter 14
“What’s your next stop?” Ben asked.
Quinn smiled. “Why, you already trying to get rid of me? Got a hot date, maybe?”
“Well, since you brought it up, there’s this really attractive receptionist from Human Resources. I’ve been working my charms on her for months. I think it’s finally starting to have an effect.”
“Months?”
“I’m getting old, kiddo. What used to take just weeks now takes months. By the way, is that a knife behind your back, or are you just happy to see me?”
“A little of both.”
Quinn brought out the scalpel. She had wrapped it in an old oil-stained cloth so she could carry it with her.
“Should I even bother asking whose blood that is?” Ben asked.
“I wouldn’t.”
He nodded at her forehead. “Does it have something to do with that?”
“It has everything to do with that.”
“And this Hofheinz character?”
“He would have done worse if I’d let him.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t let him. Is he…?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“I probably shouldn’t ask about that either, huh?”
“Probably not. Just in case the suits from Internal Affairs drag you back in for questioning.”
“Back in? They haven’t stopped asking me questions, kiddo.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Everything they wanted to know, and nothing they didn’t need to know.”
She frowned. “You have to be careful, Ben. I never wanted to bring you into this. I’m already committing career suicide; I don’t want to drag you down with me.”
Ben smirked. “Is that what you think I’m worried about? My career?”
“I know how much the Bureau means to you…”
“Screw the Bureau.” Then, “Follow me.”
“Where we going?”
“Just follow me.”
They left the bathroom and went into the bedroom across the hall.
“You think your tail’s still out there?” she asked.
Ben glanced down at his watch. “They should be gone by now. You can always go to the living room window and make sure.”
“Nah, I’ll take your word for it.”
She stood at the open door and peered out at the living room anyway as Ben walked across his bedroom to the closet. He returned with a blue box and placed it on the bed before snapping it open.
“Get in here,” Ben said.
She walked over to him and smiled at the contents.
“Figure you can probably use this sooner rather than later,” Ben said. “Let’s see if it fits.”
It was a shiny and new Glock G42, identical to the model she had lost to Porter at Gary’s nightclub.
She gave Ben a wry look. “Really?”
He chuckled. “It’s not meant to be a service weapon. Just something for you to carry around on your down time. That was the original idea, anyway.”
She flexed her fingers around the gun’s grip. She had to admit, it felt good.
“I was going to give it to you for your birthday in two weeks, but with everything going on, might as well take it now,” Ben said. “It’s better than that pig sticker you’re carrying around. What is that, some kind of scalpel?”
“Yes—wait. My birthday?”
“Two more weeks.” Ben gave her an amused look. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
“I guess I did.”
Birthdays had never been something she paid attention to, mostly because it was a luxury she couldn’t afford to care about. That was for kids who had parents to throw them parties in immaculately mowed backyards and friends who brought gifts wrapped in perfect paper that their moms spent an hour on.
“Tell me, Quinn, what do you know about your parents?” Hofheinz had asked.
They were always at the back of her mind, even before Hofheinz, but she’d never allowed herself to fully embrace the question, because it didn’t matter. Not when she was trying to survive, trying to stay away from old men who wanted to use her body and young men who wanted to use her for completely different reasons.
But now the question wouldn’t leave her mind no matter how hard she tried.
“Tell me, Quinn, what do you know about your parents?”
“Well, you do have a lot on your mind these days,” Ben was saying. “The unit was going to throw you a surprise birthday party at the office, but I guess that’s not going to happen now. So, no cake for you.”
She managed another smile, though this one probably came out a little too forced. She hoped Ben didn’t notice, but of course he probably did. Ben rarely missed anything, which was what made him such a good field agent, and later the SAC of his own unit.
“Damn, and I so wanted cake, too,” she said.
“We can still arrange that. It won’t be a party, but I’ll be there.”
“Two’s a party and three’s a crowd, anyway.”
“You remember your first birthday with me?”
“How could I forget?”
“You told me it was the first time you ever had cake.”
She nodded. “It was.”
“I believed you then, and I believe you now.”
“Thank you, Ben,” she said, because she knew he wasn’t talking about cake. None of this was or had ever been about cake. “Thanks for everything.”
Ben put both of his large hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Have faith, kiddo. We’ll get through this. We’ve been through a hell of a lot worse. Remember?”
She nodded and choked back the emotions.
She felt like a teenager all over again, but then she’d always felt like a child in front of Ben, because he was the only one she could feel like that around. Ben had seen her at her lowest point, and he hadn’t run. So many people had abandoned her, but not Ben. He should have—anyone else would have—but he hadn’t.
Because Ben Foster didn’t run from anything, and she loved him for it.
“Now,” Ben was saying, “do you like the gift or not? I spent a whole day picking it out, you know. Even skipped lunch, and you know how much I love lunch.”
Quinn turned the Glock over in her hand. “Couldn’t you at least have given me something that could hold more rounds?”
“Hey, a Glock is a Gloc
k is a Glock.”
“If you say so.”
“So, later we’ll get cake.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Ice cream cake?”
She rolled her eyes. “What am I, fifteen?”
He grunted, when the doorbell in the living room chimed.
They both glanced toward the open door.
“Expecting someone?” Quinn asked.
“Not tonight,” Ben said.
Another chime, this one followed by knocking.
“The agents?” Quinn asked. “Checking up on you?”
Ben shook his head. “They wouldn’t reveal themselves unless they had to. And if they had to, they wouldn’t be knocking.” He glanced at his watch. “Besides, they should be gone by now.”
Another chime followed by another round of knocking.
“Better answer that before my neighbors get pissed off,” Ben said and walked past her to the door. “Stay put.”
“Can I watch TV?”
“Sure, but no video on demand. Those cost extra.”
“Yes, sir.”
He stopped at the door and smiled in at her, and she smiled back.
She saw it again—that slight hesitation in his eyes, the tell that he wanted to say something but didn’t know how.
“What is it?” she asked.
“About your past,” Ben said.
“Ben, I know all about it.”
“No, you don’t. Not all of it.” He paused before continuing: “I told myself I did it to protect you, but maybe…I don’t know. Maybe I did it to protect myself a little bit, too.”
“What are you talking about, Ben?”
“Your parents…”
“You never knew my parents. No one did.”
“That’s not entirely true.”
She stared at him, unsure how to react, as Hofheinz’s words echoed in her head:
“Tell me, Quinn, what do you know about your parents?”
The doorbell chimed in the living room, followed by another round of knocking. This time it sounded more impatient, and it made both her and Ben glance in the living room’s direction.
“Ben,” she said.
He gave her another smile, but it came out just a little bit too forced. “Let me get rid of them and then we’ll talk. Really talk. We should have done this a long time ago, but it just never seemed like the right moment. Now, with everything that’s going on, I think it’s time.”
She nodded, speechless, and watched him turn around and leave, wanting badly to grab him and make him tell her now. Instead, she leaned next to the open door and watched Ben walk down the hallway. She lost sight of him when he turned toward the door, just as the doorbell chimed again and was quickly followed by more knocking.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” Ben called out. “You better not be selling mint cookies, or someone’s getting a boot up the ass.”
She heard the click of the door opening, then Ben’s voice again, this time sounding surprised. “What the hell’s wrong with your face?”
Then there was silence.
She waited three agonizing seconds.
Five…
Ben had gone quiet, and so had the doorbell.
Seven seconds…
Ben!
She clutched the Glock in her hand before stepping through the open door and into the hallway. She hadn’t taken more than a few steps down the darkened corridor when someone appeared on the other side.
Quinn lifted the gun but quickly lowered it when Ben’s face slipped into the light. There was pain in his eyes and he was holding his stomach with one hand, the other groping at the wall to keep from falling.
“Ben,” she said breathlessly.
“Run,” he said, as if that one single word took everything he had. Then, through clenched teeth, “Run, kid! Run!”
But she didn’t run because this was Ben and he was hurt, and when he took his hand away from the wall he left behind a bloody handprint.
No. No, no, no, no!
“Ben!” she shouted and ran toward him.
He held out his bloodied hand to ward her off when his feet seemed to give out from under him, and he fell face-first onto the carpeted floor and didn’t move.
She had only managed one step toward Ben when a shadowy figure appeared in the spot where Ben had stood just seconds ago. It was a man wearing all black, and his face was moving rapidly just like the three faceless men back at the hospital.
“What the hell’s wrong with your face?” Ben had said when he answered the door.
The stranger was holding something in his gloved right fist—a gun with some kind of smooth silver suppressor attached at the end. He was looking down at Ben when he must have sensed her at the other end of the shadowed hallway and glanced up, his face twitching and blinking supernaturally in the darkened living room.
She couldn’t be certain if the man even saw her, because she couldn’t tell where his eyes began and his nose and mouth ended. But he tilted his head up in her direction and started to lift the hand with the gun when he hesitated.
Quinn fired before the faceless man could follow through, her gunshot booming in the closed confines of the hallway. The man jerked back as the round drilled through his shoulder—and revealed a second figure coming up quickly behind him!
The newcomer—his face twisting like a top spinning out of control on a pair of broad shoulders—pushed the first one out of the way like he was little more than a nuisance, and unlike his partner, he didn’t hesitate when he saw her. He was already aiming, stray moonlight gleaming off the long silver suppressor at the end of his weapon, even as Quinn twisted around and leapt through the opened bedroom door while subsonic rounds zip-zipped! over her head.
She wasn’t sure what surprised her more—the speed of the return fire or the fact that she hadn’t heard a single gunshot. And she should have heard something because even a suppressed gun made noise, especially inside a narrow apartment hallway.
Shut up and run, run, run!
She did just that, scrambling up from the floor and kicking the door closed behind her. She pushed in the lock and feverishly looked for a way out.
What way out?
There was just the door and…the window.
Ben’s door and Ben’s window.
Ben, who was lying out there in the hallway right now, in desperate need of her help.
She had seen it, the light leaving his eyes just before he fell.
“Run,” he had said. His last words to her. “Run, kid! Run!”
He’s dead. Ben’s dead.
But didn’t she have to make sure? Didn’t she have to make absolutely certain before she abandoned him?
Because he was Ben.
He was Ben, goddammit!
Her legs were backpedaling away from the door even though she wasn’t certain how she was doing it. Every instinct told her to move in the opposite direction, to go back out there and make sure that Ben wasn’t still alive. Hurt and bleeding, but alive.
He’s dead! a voice shouted inside her head, but she refused to accept it.
She stopped and tightened her grip on the gun. It was suddenly very heavy, and she had lost count of how many shots she had fired in the hallway. Had it just been the one? Or had she managed to return fire even while she was fleeing?
“Run,” Ben had said. “Run, kid! Run!”
The look on his face, the life sapping from his eyes as he did all he could to hold on to the wall, to keep from falling…
“Run. Run, kid! Run!”
She couldn’t run. She wanted to. She should run.
But he was out there. Ben. She had seen him go down, but he could have still been alive. He probably was alive. Or maybe that was just what she wanted to believe. Either way, she had to make sure. She had to make absolutely sure.
Quinn took a step back toward the door when the doorknob moved.
She fired a shot into the slab of wood on instinct—dead center, where a body would be on the o
ther side—and the doorknob stopped moving.
She waited, her heart hammering against her chest.
“Quinn,” a voice said.
It had come from the other side of the door, and for a split second her mind screamed, Ben! He’s alive!
But no, because it hadn’t been Ben’s voice, even though it sounded familiar.
Or was it? It was difficult to be sure of any exterior noise with the continuous pounding in her ears.
“Fancy meeting you here,” the voice said.
Ringo.
She didn’t know why she was so surprised to hear his voice, and slowly the fear and pain (Ben’s out there! He’s still out there!) slipped away and was replaced by anger. Pure, unadulterated anger rising from the depths of her soul and overwhelming all of her senses.
“He’s dead, you know,” Ringo said. “Ben, I mean. Probably should have shot him more than once, but I wanted to see how far he could make it with a bullet in his gut. Pretty far, as it turned out. Of course, I didn’t know you were back here.”
It was the confirmation she was dreading. Ben was dead. Ringo had shot him, just like he had shot Pender and Clyde and Gavin back at the hospital and blamed it on her. She knew it was him even though he hadn’t said so. Who else could it be?
“Open the door, Quinn,” Ringo said, “or we’re coming—”
She fired into the door again, aiming at the spot where she thought the voice was coming from, and turned around and ran even before the gunshots had finished bouncing off the bedroom walls.
She was moving on automatic pilot when she grabbed the large pillow off the bed just as she passed it, Ben’s voice echoing in her head (“Run, kid! Run!”) the entire time.
Behind her, the door’s frame splintered as someone slammed their body into it again and again.
Someone? Someones. They were taking turns and it wouldn’t be long now—
The door crashed open at the same time she smashed into the window, clutching the pillow to her face as glass shards exploded around her.
The fall was much shorter than she had anticipated, but it made perfect sense because Ben’s apartment was only on the second floor. Cold evening air pressed around her, and Quinn turned slightly just as she crashed into something below. Something cold and hard, but thankfully yielding.