The jonathan quinn enrag.., p.72
The Jonathan Quinn Enraged Box Set, page 72
part #5 of Jonathan Quinn Series
“Hey,” he said, smiling.
“Hey.”
For a moment, he couldn’t get another word out and just stared at her. Finally he managed, “How are you?”
“You tell me.”
“You’re alive.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“And the doctor says you’re doing better every day,” he added quickly, pulling himself out of his shock.
She closed her eyes and readjusted her head on her pillow. When she opened them again, she asked, “How long have I been here?”
“A week and a half.”
“That long?”
“The doctor said we can take you home soon.” He hoped that would make her feel better.
She studied his face as if trying to see if he was lying. “How soon?”
“Another week or so.” He leaned over the bed and brushed away a strand of her hair that had fallen over her cheek. “You need to build up some strength first, that’s all.”
He took her hand, and realized she was staring at him again.
“How bad?” she asked.
“How bad what?”
One side of her mouth rose in a weak smirk. “How bad am I?”
“Not as bad as you were.”
“Don’t do that. Please.” She squeezed his hand. “Just tell me.”
He smiled as best he could. “At some point soon, you’re going to need to get your knee replaced.”
“That sounds like fun.”
He was silent for a moment. “You’re missing a couple things.”
She stiffened slightly, and he could see her mind racing as she wiggled the toes on her uninjured leg, and the fingers of both hands.
“Nothing on the outside,” he said.
“Then what?”
“Your left kidney, and your spleen.” He raised an exaggerated eyebrow. “Apparently we’re born with two kidneys. Did you know that? And the spleen? Don’t need it. The things you learn hanging around a hospital.”
She rolled her eyes back and let out an exasperated huff. “Dammit, Quinn. You could’ve just said that right off. For a second there I thought I was going to have to worry about mixing up prosthetics with Nate.”
“Don’t think you guys would get mixed up. He’s a lot taller than you.”
She clamped down on his hand, her grip surprisingly strong for her condition.
“Hey,” he said. “Just being honest.”
The short laugh that escaped her lips quickly turned into a cough.
Quinn grabbed a pitcher of water on the nightstand and filled one of the waiting cups.
“Here,” he said, slipping a hand under her head, and moving the cup to her lips. “My fault. I shouldn’t have gotten you going like that.”
The warmth he’d begun to feel as they’d talked had disappeared the moment she stopped laughing.
When she had enough water, she pulled back and cleared her throat. “I’m okay. My throat’s dry, that’s all.”
He lowered her head to the pillow and returned the cup to the nightstand. “You need to take it easy. Getting stronger is your only job now.” He reached out and squeezed her hand again. “Get some more sleep. That’s the best thing you can do.”
Her eyelids were already half shut, the exertion of their conversation clearly having taken its toll. Thinking she was on the verge of knocking out, he took a silent step backward and turned toward the door.
“You weren’t here before,” she whispered.
He stopped.
“I woke up…I don’t know when, but you weren’t here. Liz said…you were…you were away.”
He licked his bone-dry lips, his guilt thundering back down on him like an avalanche. “I’m here now,” he said.
“Liz told me you were trying…to find out who was…responsible.” Her volume decreased with every syllable, each new word a struggle.
“We can talk about it later.” Dammit. He knew his sister had said more to Orlando than she’d let on.
Orlando took a couple of breaths. “I…want…”
The pause was long, and Quinn wondered if she had finally drifted off. But then she cracked her eyelids open again.
“I want…to help.”
“Just sleep now,” he said. “That’s the best help you can give us.”
But he needn’t have said anything. She was already out.
TREVOR HOLLOW, VIRGINIA
DAENG LOOKED OUT the cabin window. Sometime during the night, clouds had begun rolling in. They were darker now than when he woke an hour ago, and held the promise of rain. Maybe in an hour. Maybe at the end of the day. It was hard for him to tell. In Bangkok he would have known without even thinking about it. Los Angeles, too. But this part of the States was unfamiliar to him.
Across the room, the bedroom door opened, and Misty stepped out quietly.
“How’s he doing?” Daeng asked.
“I gave him some more ibuprofen, and he fell back asleep.”
Daeng knew Howard could probably use something stronger than over-the-counter drugs, but without robbing the drugstore where they’d stopped, their choices had been limited.
“I made some fresh coffee,” he said.
Misty allowed herself a small smile. “Exactly what I need.” She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup. “You want some?”
“I’m fine,” Daeng replied.
When she joined him at the table, she looked at the cloth grocery bag containing Peter’s files, sitting off to the side. “We should get rid of those.”
“Why not now?”
Half a minute later they were kneeling in front of the fireplace, the bag between them. Using some kindling and a few pieces of wood from the holder on the hearth, Daeng got a fire going. Misty then pulled out a file, opened it, and began feeding sheets of paper one by one into the flames.
Daeng considered helping, but he could tell that for her, this was more than a simple task of getting rid of unwanted documents. This was an act of finality—a cleansing, even—one of the last things she would ever do for Peter. There was a respect to the way she placed each page into the blaze—gently, a pause as the fire caught, then the next sheet.
After a file was empty, the folder itself was burned before Misty moved on to the next. When she finished the last, she stared at the flames until the final bit of paper curled into black ash.
“Thank you,” she said.
Daeng dipped his head in acknowledgment.
He gave her another moment before he stood and grabbed the bag. The heft of the bag caused him to pause. He reached inside and pulled out the wooden box. He opened the top, expecting to see the metal canister, but it wasn’t there.
“Do you have the microfilm?” he asked.
“It’s not in there?”
He turned the box so she could see.
“Quinn must have taken it with him,” she said. “He had it last, didn’t he?”
“Must have,” Daeng said. Not wanting to take a chance, he sent a text asking Quinn if he took the microfilm, and then carried the bag and the box to the table.
The reply came quickly: YES.
That was a relief. Daeng had no desire to retrace their steps in hopes of locating the spool of film. He started to shove the box back into the bag, but stopped. He took his new role as the main support member of Nate and Quinn’s teams seriously, and had learned to always be an asset rather than a liability. One of the things Nate had stressed was details. These were the backbone of a cleaner’s job. Missing a detail could blow a whole mission and quite possibly get someone imprisoned or even killed.
He’d almost missed such a detail. It had been right there in front of his eyes as he’d looked inside the box. The black foam that had held the canister in place had not been level with the plane of the box. Rather, it was tilted, albeit just a fraction of an inch.
He opened the box again and double-checked to make sure he’d seen it right. He stuck a finger into the hole where the canister had been, and pulled up. As he’d suspected, the foam wasn’t glued in place. Once it cleared the opening, he could see something underneath.
A stack of photos. Different sizes, maybe a dozen or more.
He pulled them out.
“Misty,” he said after he perused them. “Take a look at this.”
“What is it?” she asked, rising off the floor.
He showed her what he was holding.
She held out her hand. “Let me see.” She shuffled quickly through the photos. “Where were these?”
“In the bottom of the box. That’s her, isn’t it?”
She said nothing until she’d looked at each one. “Yes. These were the ones in Peter’s missing file. It’s his wife, Miranda.”
Chapter Twenty-One
WASHINGTON, DC
AS SOON AS Griffin felt a drop of water hit the back of his hand, he turned and looked up at the sky. Dark gray clouds hung heavily over the city, the leading edge of a tropical storm that, not long before, had been an early season, category-two hurricane. According to the news, rainfall in the DC area was predicted to reach an inch and a half before the storm passed further inland.
But he wasn’t about to let the weather bother him. He had work to do, actual fieldwork, which was rare these days. He had started out as Morten’s field enforcer years ago, but had gradually become, more and more, the coordinator of other efforts. While he was good at it, sitting in an office dealing with morons like those at O & O was at times maddening. Getting out, doing the work himself—he needed that every once in a while.
Several more raindrops hit him as he opened his car door and climbed in. Instead of starting the engine, he pulled out his phone. His first call went to voice mail after ringing five times. He disconnected and hit the number again. Same result. On the third try, the call was answered after the first ring.
“Hello?” The voice was male and half asleep.
“Good morning, Michael.”
“Who is…” A pause. “Griffin?” The last was almost a whisper.
“Long time no chat.”
In the hush that followed, Griffin imagined Michael Dima’s heart rate increasing as he quickly considered his options, but coming up with only the final, inevitable—
“What can I do for you?”
Part of Griffin’s job had been to cultivate contacts in agencies who could be potentially useful at some point. His preferred method was not one of faux friendship and cash, but of legitimate threat and blackmail. When people’s carefully constructed lives were in danger of crashing down around them, ninety-nine out of a hundred would choose the path of least resistance. In other words, cooperation. The other one percent? That’s where the legitimate part of the threat came in.
Dima’s flaw was a violent streak in his past that he’d been able to hide from all but the most vigorous investigator—Griffin. While a young man, Dima had put someone in a permanent vegetative state by using an iron pipe. The authorities had never learned the perpetrator’s name. Griffin, on the other hand, had discovered the truth, and it proved to be the leverage he needed to obtain Dima’s attention.
It had been a while since Griffin had needed to use the man, but the moment O & O had gone silent, Griffin knew he and Dima would soon become reacquainted.
“Your organization was tasked with keeping tabs on a certain apartment in Georgetown. You know the one I mean.”
“How did you…I can’t talk about that.”
“Please, Michael. Don’t insult me. Who do you think your client was?”
The pause that followed was thick with tension. “You?”
“Of course. So are you familiar with the apartment I’m talking about or not?”
“Yes,” Dima said quickly.
Griffin never doubted Dima would be aware of what O & O had been up to. Dima was one of the people at O & O who served as Central, coordinating the agency’s active projects, so any answer but yes would have been a lie.
“According to the reports I received, your people found nothing that would identify the intruders at the apartment. Is that correct?”
The hesitation was slight. “That’s correct. The team that responded to the incursion found nothing.”
Griffin’s eyes narrowed. The team that responded to the incursion…It was a very specific reference. “Think very carefully before you answer this question, Michael.” He fell silent for several seconds, giving Dima time to worry. “How many teams did you send out?”
“Well, the response team, and—I assume you know about the safe house?”
“The one in Arlington Ridge. Yes, I’m familiar.”
“Um, right. So there was the team that went there, but the place was empty.” He paused. “Oh, and then the follow-up recon to the Arlington Ridge home to check for anything that might have been left behind. Again, nothing.”
Dima was doing it again, only this time trying to confuse things by overexplaining. “Was that it? Or were there more?” Griffin asked.
The pause was long. “One more.”
This was new. “Where did they go?”
“The…the apartment.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Midday.”
“And?”
“Well…um…”
“Don’t make me pull it out of you.”
It only took another second before the dam broke and Dima spilled everything—the chase, the two men, the woman, the accident.
“Why didn’t I receive a report about this?” Griffin asked.
“You…you didn’t?”
“Now you’re just trying to piss me off. Why didn’t I get the damn report?”
“T-That decision came from higher up.”
“Who higher up?”
“I’m…not sure.”
Griffin let Dima drown in silence.
Finally Dima said, “Director Cho, I think. She now oversees O & O.”
Griffin had heard of Cho, but their paths had never crossed as far as he could remember. He filed her name away to look into later. “Was O & O able to ID the two men and the woman?”
“Well, there’s the car left behind at the accident, but that’s a dead end.”
“Explain.”
Dima told him what they’d found, which was basically nothing.
Griffin frowned. “You’re holding something back.”
“No, I’m—”
“Why are you making me remind you that there’s no statute of limitation on attempted murder?”
Dima stopped breathing. “The…the…the recon team…they were able to get pictures of all three.”
Well, that was interesting. “So you were able to identify them?”
“It was taken out of our hands. We didn’t have a chance.”
“By Director Cho?”
Dima did not respond.
“I want the pictures,” Griffin said.
“I’m at home. I don’t have access to them.”
“Get access.”
“They’ve probably been purged from the system by now.”
“I want the pictures.”
“I’ll, um, see what I can do.”
“Do more than just see.”
Dima’s response was more a whine than a word.
“One more thing,” Griffin said, before the other man could hang up.
“Yes?”
“Where’s the BMW from the accident?”
MOST OF THE space at the city impound yard was taken up by fully functional vehicles, sitting side by side as they waited for their owners to spring them from jail for parking violations.
The group off to the left, behind a separate chain-link fence, though, was different. Many of these would only see the open road again on the back of a truck hauling them to a wrecking yard. They were leftovers of recent accidents—the bent, the broken, the totaled—kept there only as long as the police needed them.
That’s where the BMW and O & O’s Audi were.
Griffin stopped first at the office, and flashed the FBI badge he always brought with him. It was fake, of course, but even the most knowledgeable authority wouldn’t be able to tell.
“What can I do for you, Agent?” the impound employee asked.
“I need to take a look at a vehicle in your accident lot,” Griffin said, donning his well-honed, bored-investigator persona.
“Which one?”
He made a show of pulling a small notebook from his pocket and shuffling through the pages. “It’s a…BMW.” He gave the license number Dima had provided him.
The man looked it up on the list. “Still here. And I see you’ve already been okayed by Detective Marsh.”
“Good. Wasn’t sure if he’d contacted you yet.” The real Detective Marsh had not contacted the yard. It had been Dima using O & O’s system to e-mail the appropriate clearance from what appeared to be the detective’s account.
“Sign here,” the clerk said.
Griffin scribbled an illegible signature on the sheet.
“You know the way?”
The enforcer flashed a smile. “I do.”
As he stepped outside, he pulled his collar tight to his neck, and popped open his umbrella to ward off the now steady rain. Slogging between the rows of parking violators, he made his way over to the open gate of the accident area and passed inside. It took less than a minute to locate the two vehicles from the crash. From the way the Audi’s side was smashed in, Griffin could now see why the man who’d been sitting in the passenger seat hadn’t died. The BMW had hit the back half of the car, containing most of the wreckage to the rear passenger area. As for the BMW, its damage was mostly limited to the front end—buckled hood, crunched fenders, and, by the way the vehicle was skewed, a bent frame.
If there had been any prints on the outside of the BMW, the storm had washed them away. So Griffin opened the back door on the passenger side, scooted onto the seat, and shut himself in.
The sound of the rain hitting the roof was almost relaxing, its intensity fluctuating in waves that could have easily lulled Griffin to sleep if he’d been in the mood. It was almost like music, something John Coltrane might play. An endless, intoxicating melody.
