The Collected jq-6

by Brett Battles

  “So far. I want to do another look around, then check the building’s common area and out front.”

  “Okay. Report back when you’re done. Let me talk to Misty.”

  The image whipped around the room as Howard carried the phone over to Peter’s former assistant and handed it to her. Though Quinn had talked to her hundreds of times on the phone, he’d met her in person only twice. The last time had been several years earlier. But it wasn’t those intervening years that made her otherwise youthful face look aged this morning.

  “Are you okay?” Quinn said.

  “What do you think happened?” she asked as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “No way to know yet.”

  “You’ll find out, though, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  His words seemed to relax her, if only a bit. “If you need me to do anything, you just say the word. I can take some emergency leave. I have plenty of vacation time.”

  “Actually, there is something you can help with.”

  “What is it?”

  “I need you to figure out the last time anyone saw him. Steve can help you. You can ask around there at his building, maybe talk to some of his friends.”

  “He doesn’t really have a lot of friends.”

  “There’s got to be some people he talks to now and then. Wherever they had him working, maybe.”

  She nodded.

  “Whatever you do, though, be very careful. We don’t know what this is, and I don’t want you walking into anything that’ll get you in trouble.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Just find Peter.”

  He gave her a reassuring smile. “Check in with me later.”

  “I will.”

  Quinn hung up.

  “What the hell is going on?” Orlando said. “Nate and Peter?”

  “Maybe what’s happening to them isn’t related,” Daeng suggested.

  Quinn and Orlando looked at him, their skepticism etched on their faces.

  Daeng held up his hands defensively. “Or maybe it is.”

  Quinn knew Daeng had a point. They couldn’t just assume the two disappearances were connected. The incidents had occurred sixteen hundred miles apart, in different countries, and Nate’s main association with Peter was through Quinn. He’d seldom ever talked to Peter directly.

  Then again, if those who’d done the taking thought Nate was Quinn…

  “Maybe we should see if anyone else is missing,” he said.

  Their search was handicapped right from the start.

  While Quinn and Orlando knew a fairly substantial number of people in the business, there were still plenty of others they’d never met. And pinpointing the current whereabouts of the ones they did know was not the easiest thing to do. It wasn’t like there was some central switchboard operatives reported to, giving updates of their status. Usually if someone was suddenly unreachable, it was assumed they were on a gig.

  When they finally took a break at noon, the list of potential missing contained over twenty people.

  “We’re not getting anywhere,” Quinn said. “Most of them have got to be out on jobs.” He frowned. “I think we might be wasting our time.”

  “No,” Orlando said. “We’re not.” She glanced down the list of names. “Look, you’re right. Most of these people probably are working. But this one…” Her finger stopped two thirds of the way down the list. “Alex Berkeley.”

  “What about him?”

  “He works with a partner most of the time. Tom Benson. You know him, right?”

  “Sure. I’ve worked with both of them.”

  “I talked to Tom. He said Alex had been hired on something that was supposed to last a week, tops, a surveillance thing that apparently didn’t need both of them. He was supposed to be back a few days ago, but Tom hasn’t heard from him. He’s getting a bit annoyed because they have something scheduled for early next week.”

  “His project probably got extended.”

  “Probably,” she admitted. “But you’d think Alex would have let Tom know.”

  “Maybe,” Quinn said, unwilling to make the full leap just yet.

  Orlando circled Berkeley’s name and studied the list again.

  “Hold on,” she said. “I have an idea.”

  She pushed back from the dining table and went into the kitchen. Drawers and cabinets began opening and closing.

  “Where do you keep your Post-its?” she called out a moment later.

  “Used to be some in the drawer by the sink,” he told her.

  “Well, they’re not here now.”

  “Try the pantry.”

  As her steps crossed the kitchen, the front door opened and Daeng walked in, carrying several bags.

  “Who’s hungry?” he said.

  Quinn hadn’t even thought about eating, but the intensifying aroma that preceded Daeng into the dining room was hard to resist.

  “I’ve got two spicy chicken banh mi, two barbecue pork, some spring rolls, and a couple containers of pho we can split.”

  “I thought you were getting Thai?” Quinn said.

  “I was, but I passed by a couple of those food trucks and wanted to check them out. One of them was Vietnamese food and looked too good to pass up.”

  “I’ll take a spicy chicken,” Orlando said as she walked back into the dining area, carrying three different-colored pads of Post-its and a bottle of Sriracha hot sauce.

  While Daeng handed out the lunch, she set the hot sauce on the table, wrote NATE on a light blue Post-it, and stuck it to the window. Next, she wrote PETER on one of the same color, and put his name right below Nate’s. On a yellow note, she wrote Berkeley, and started a new column on the window. Finally, she wrote out individual green ones for the other twenty-two names and gave them a third column.

  She touched the glass above Nate’s name. “Assuming Nate and Peter are connected, these are our known missing,” she said. She moved her fingers to the yellow column. “Our possibles.” To the green. “And our pool of potentials. When we can rule someone out, we’ll start a fourth column.”

  “And what color will that be?” Quinn asked, an eyebrow raised. “I don’t want to get confused.”

  “You only have the three colors, so it’ll also be green, jerk.”

  He took a bite of his pork sandwich, and nodded at her makeshift bulletin board. “You’re missing a name.”

  She looked at the glass. “Whose name?”

  “Mine.”

  “Right.” She wrote Quinn on a blue piece, put parentheses around it, and butted the square against Nate’s. She then repositioned Peter’s Post-it so that it was centered beneath them. “Okay, now look at the names. Anything stand out?”

  Quinn set his sandwich down and examined the Post-its. “Well, the obvious connection is that I’ve worked with everyone up there, but that doesn’t really get us anywhere.”

  “Just concentrate on you and Nate and Peter and Berkeley. Anything you all have in common? Any jobs you may have worked on together? Anything.”

  He frowned. “We’ve all worked together over the years. Nate not so much, of course, but sometimes.” He looked at Orlando. “I could come up with a dozen or more connections that might or might not mean anything.”

  She turned back to the names and stared at them for several seconds. “We need to narrow down the pool.”

  As much as he thought they might be going down the wrong road, he didn’t see what else they could do at this point.

  After they quickly finished lunch, Quinn called the next name on his contact list. As he was in the middle of what he realized would be another fruitless call, Orlando yelled, “Quinn!”

  He put a hand over his phone and whispered, “What is it?”

  “I just got a ping.”

  “Sally, I’m sorry,” he said into his cell. “I need to get off the phone. I might call you back later. Is that okay?”

  “That’s fine,�
� the woman told him.

  “Thanks.”

  He hung up and moved behind Orlando. On the screen of her computer was the program she’d set up to automatically ping Nate’s emergency beacon until it made a connection. Which, according to the display, had finally happened.

  “Can you get a location?” he asked.

  “I’m trying. The signal’s weak. I just need a little more-dammit!”

  The readout in the program window switched from CONNECTED to SIGNAL LOST.

  She tried to reestablish the link, but after a few minutes, it was clear it wasn’t happening. She set the software on automatic, and opened a new window that was filled end to end and top to bottom with what looked to Quinn like a single string of numbers and letters. She scrolled through it carefully, her head angling back and forth as she scanned each row.

  When she reached the bottom, she grunted in frustration and leaned back. “Partial coordinates. I can get us a range based on which satellite picked up the signal, but that’s it.”

  “A range is better than nothing,” Quinn said.

  Not looking happy, she said, “Yeah, but I was hoping for more. Hold on.” She ran the numbers through another program, and a map appeared on the screen. “Here’s what we’ve got: St. Louis, Missouri, in the north; Trujillo, Honduras, in the south; Hermosillo, Mexico, in the west; and Roseau, Dominica, in the east.”

  The area included, among other things, pretty much the entire southern US, the Caribbean, and a good chunk of Mexico, with a little bit of Central America thrown in.

  “Northern Mexico,” he said, pointing at the map. He thought for a moment. “Can you bring up that news report about that manhunt?”

  Before going to bed the previous night, Orlando had done a search of news sites serving northeastern Mexico to see if there was anything about the manhunt Pullman had mentioned. The only article she found was about a search police had conducted for someone they were calling “an important operator” in the drug trade. It had taken place in Reynosa, though, not Monterrey. And while witnesses said they saw someone taken into custody and flown away on a helicopter, the police had yet to confirm that. The timing was right, especially if Nate was making a run for the border, but it seemed iffy at best.

  They had planned to make some follow-up calls once people woke up in the morning, but the disappearance of Peter and the possibility of even more missing had pushed the manhunt to a back burner.

  Perhaps that had been a mistake.

  Orlando opened a web browser, and brought up the bookmarked article. It was in Spanish, but that wasn’t a problem. Both Quinn and Orlando spoke it fluently.

  Quinn leaned in as he skimmed through the piece, stopping a third of the way down. There was a quote from a captain in the Federal Police, and a photograph that must have been his official police portrait.

  “This guy,” he said. “Captain Eduardo Moreno. Can you find a number where we can contact him?”

  “Give me a second.”

  It took more than a second, but not much. “This is interesting,” she said. “He’s not based in Reynosa.”

  “Where, then?’

  She glanced at him. “Monterrey.”

  Quinn felt the tingling he got when he started making connections. Monterrey, where the job Nate had been working on was located. Where, if Burke was to be believed, several police cars had been waiting to intercept them. If they were actual officers and not just men dressed up in uniforms, someone would have had to organize them. Someone in a position of authority.

  There are no coincidences.

  “Maybe it would be better if we talked to the captain in person,” he said. If Moreno was involved, he was the best lead they had so far, and the last thing Quinn wanted to do was scare him off with a phone call.

  As Orlando returned her attention to her computer, Quinn looked over at Daeng. “US passport?”

  “I have two.”

  “Break one out. We’re going to Mexico.”

  CHAPTER 22

  At what he guessed was around eleven a.m., Nate heard a door open somewhere outside his cell. It was too far away to belong to one of the rooms his neighbors were being held in, and seemed to be coming from a different direction than that of the courtyard he’d had dinner in the previous evening.

  Several seconds passed, then he heard footsteps. Three…no, four pairs. As they neared, he moved over to the vent and scrunched down so he could look through the thin slats.

  The light in the corridor was dim, but more than enough for him to see the feet as they walked by. There were three pairs of dark work boots, and one of men’s black sneakers. The person in sneakers was between two of the people in boots, and it was clear they were assisting him.

  The steps went on for another couple of seconds, then stopped. A door opened, this one much nearer than before. Intermixed with the shuffling of feet was a firm “In,” then the door slammed shut, the locking rods shifted up and down, and the three booted pairs of feet walked away.

  Apparently the new member of their party had arrived.

  Things remained quiet for twenty minutes, then Lanier called out like he had with Nate. The new guy, though, didn’t respond. Nate was willing to bet he’d been nearly unconscious when he was dumped off and completely knocked out now.

  Back on his mattress, Nate pulled the threadbare blanket over his legs and leaned against the wall. It wasn’t that he was cold. He wanted to access the storage compartment in his prosthetic leg. Though he hadn’t spotted a camera, it was safer to assume one was tucked away somewhere, keeping tabs on him.

  Acting like his leg itched, he reached under the blanket and pulled his pant leg up over his fake calf. He separated the seam just enough so he could open the storage container and remove the bolt he’d hidden away. It was doing him no good just hitching a ride. If he was going to use it-as a weapon or whatever-it needed to be accessible.

  He pulled at the shaft, but the bolt didn’t move. Confused, he tried to get the tip of his finger all the way around it so he could give it a tug. The bottom end seemed to be jammed into the crevasse where the back panel and the side one met. The head of the bolt had been shoved up into the top of the container.

  It took him a moment, but finally he got it to pop free. It wasn’t the only thing he suddenly felt in his hand. He pulled it up so he could take a look. In addition to the bolt was a black piece of plastic that looked very much like part of the button that activated his emergency beacon.

  He slipped his finger back into the container. It was part of the button, all right. He could feel where the bolt had pressed against it and broken it off. He wiggled his finger around and found that the entire button felt loose.

  Was the beacon still on?

  He cursed under his breath. He knew the container had been a tight fit for the bolt, but he hadn’t had a choice. He played with the button for a moment, hoped the beacon was still active, and closed his leg again.

  Clenching the bolt in his fingers, he lay back down and closed his eyes.

  It’s fine, he told himself. It still works.

  Whether that was true or not, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it, so he focused on trying to figure out why he was here. Once more, he was unable to come up with a satisfying answer.

  At some point he drifted off, and found himself standing on the beach in Santa Monica, Liz beside him.

  “Don’t leave,” she told him.

  “I’m just going for a swim.”

  “Stay here.”

  “Liz, I’ll be right there,” he said, pointing at the water. “You can watch me the whole time.”

  He swam out through the waves and stopped just past where the swells began. He treaded water in a circle, turning back to the shore, intending to give Liz a wave.

  Only the shore wasn’t there. Just more ocean.

  “Liz?” he called out. “Liz?”

  There was no answer.

  “Hey, new guy. You awake yet?”

  Nate shook off his s
leep and rose on an elbow.

  “New guy. Can you hear me? Hey!”

  For a few seconds, Nate thought Lanier was talking to him. Then he remembered the person who’d been escorted in that morning.

  He moved over to the door and leaned down by the vent.

  “I think it’s a trick,” Berkeley said. “No one’s down there.”

  “There is someone,” Lanier said. “I heard the door.”

  “You’re right,” Nate said. “They put him in a room down here by me.”

  “Have you heard him?” Lanier asked.

  “No. Nothing since he arrived.”

  “I still think it’s a trick,” Berkeley said.

  “New guy,” Lanier whispered loudly. “Can you hear us?”

  No answer.

  “New guy.”

  Silence.

  CHAPTER 23

  Harris entered the suite and found Romero sitting in his wheelchair behind his desk, writing.

  “Well?” his employer asked, without looking up.

  “The shooter has arrived. He’s a little banged up.”

  Romero’s head shot up. “Why?”

  “He apparently wasn’t in a cooperative mood when he was taken.”

  Romero thought for a moment, then waved a hand in the air. “As long as he’s alive, that’s all that matters. So, they’re all here now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harris said.

  “And the schedule?”

  “Set. Tonight I’ll have dinner with Curson, and first thing tomorrow morning we begin.”

  “The camera? You haven’t forgotten?”

  “It will all be recorded as you requested.”

  “Good.” A smile appeared on Romero’s face. “I want to see everything immediately after the session.”

  “Of course. That won’t be a problem.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The day before, as Liz listened to her brother’s message telling her he and Orlando would be heading back to L.A. that evening, an idea began to form in her mind. She’d been feeling frustrated just sitting there alone, waiting for others to find Nate. That wasn’t the way she operated. She was far from helpless and was used to tackling problems head on. Not that this was the normal kind of complication that usually came up in her life, but if she and Nate were going to have a future together, she needed to learn how to deal with it.