Shadow of Betrayal (8 page)

“We’ll get Agent Douglas out first,” Peter said, his tone telling the others that this was non-negotiable.

On the monitors, the team had already begun to move into place. On number one, two men dressed in dark clothing stood near the front door watching the street. Though there were no weapons in sight, Peter knew they were each armed and ready to jump into action if needed. The interior shot on two showed one man standing in the small lobby. But unlike his friends outside, he had his weapon out and ready. Number three still showed an empty hallway, and on number four, several dark, unidentifiable objects, but no movement at all.

Peter brought the mic up near his mouth. “Perkins, you’re out of our camera range. What do you see?”

“Just a dark hallway.” Perkins’s voice came over monitor three’s speaker. “The door Agent Douglas entered should be down the next corridor.”

“Do you hear anything?”

“Nothing. Dead quiet.” There was a moment of silence. Then in a whisper, “We’re at the intersection now. Hold while we check.” More silence. “All clear. We’re approaching the doorway now. There’s a lot of dust and smoke in the air. Visibility down thirty percent. Okay, just like you thought. Damage to the floor outside the doorway. The door itself is gone.” Pause. “I’m looking in now. Damn. You said there was a staircase, right?”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“Not now. Morgan, fire up the spot.”

Five seconds later there was a flare of light on monitor four, the one that displayed the feed from the camera Agent Douglas had been carrying. The dark shapes that had been filling the screen suddenly
became bits of concrete and pieces of wood. But there was no sign of the agent.

“Sir, it’s a mess down there,” Perkins said. “Looks like the whole stairway has collapsed.”

“Do you see Agent Douglas?”

“If she’s there, she’s buried. I’ll take one of my guys down with me.”

There was a few minutes’ delay while the gear was prepared.

“Rappelling down now,” Perkins said. For several seconds there was only the muffled sound of someone sliding down a rope. Then, “Okay, we’re on the ground.”

“Watch your step,” Peter said. “There could be other traps.”

“Copy that.”

Light ebbed and flowed on monitor four as the team searched the debris.

“Stop!” Peter yelled.

A foot had just passed within view of the image on the monitor.

“One of you is near her camera. Both of you take one step back.”

The foot reentered the frame.

“Okay, hold there for a second,” Peter said. “Perkins, you move your foot first.”

“Copy.”

The foot in the screen remained stationary.

“Anything?” Perkins asked.

“Have your man move now.”

There was a second delay, then the foot began to rise.

“That’s it,” Peter said. “About three feet to your man’s right.”

The image remained stable for half a minute, then it rose into the air and whipped around the room until it stopped on the face of a man with short brown hair.

“Must have gotten dislodged as she fell.” Perkins’s lips moved on monitor four, but his voice still came out of the speaker on monitor three.

“Chances are she’s in that same general area,” Peter said.

Perkins set the camera down on something elevated, giving the three men back in the hotel suite a broad view of the room. It seemed to be some sort of old machine room. Unfinished cement walls and
floors, and to the left the edge of a rusty furnace. But the dominant feature was the pile of rubble in the center of the room. The majority of debris appeared to be the wood that had made up the staircase, but there was a good bit of concrete mixed in. It must have been dislodged from the ceiling and walls by the blast.

Perkins and his man worked their way through the pile, pulling away planks and chunks of concrete. After several minutes, Perkins’s partner stopped and bent down.

“I’ve got a hand,” he called out, his voice distant over Perkins’s microphone.

The two men began working together to move everything surrounding the spot. Soon Peter thought he could see an arm, then a shoulder. Perkins leaned down and placed his fingers on the exposed wrist.

“Pulse?” Peter asked.

“Faint, but she’s alive,” Perkins said.

Obviously listening in on the conversation, Perkins’s men on monitor one jumped into action. They moved over to the van and pulled a stretcher out of the back. One of them then stayed on the stoop while the other took the stretcher inside the building.

“Stretcher on its way to you,” Peter said. “I’ll call ahead to get medical set up.”

“Copy that,” Perkins said.

For the next several minutes the team worked quickly and efficiently. Soon Agent Douglas was in the van, heading for medical attention. Thankfully, for the moment at least, she was still breathing.

The images on the monitors were now still and quiet.

“We can’t let this opportunity slip out of our hands,” Furuta said, his voice rising. It was the first emotion Peter had seen from the man.

“I agree,” Chercover said. He looked at Peter. “You need to get someone in there tonight. You can do that, can’t you?”

Peter was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”

“So you have someone in mind? Someone close?” Furuta asked.

“Yes.”

“Who?” Furuta said.

“That is something you don’t need to know,” Peter said.

Furuta was about to respond when his boss put a hand on his shoulder. “I think we’re done here,” Chercover said.

Reluctantly, Furuta nodded. “Keep us posted on what you find,” he said.

“What about Agent Douglas?” Peter asked as the other two began walking toward the door. It was an unnecessary question, but Peter couldn’t help pushing.

Chercover stopped and looked back at Peter. “Of course,” he said. “Keep us informed on her condition also. We’re not exactly heartless, but this is much bigger than her life, or even any one of ours.”

Peter stared at them as they turned and left, his lips now closed.

The truth was Chercover was right.

QUINN AND NATE HAD NOT RETURNED TO LOS
Angeles after Ireland. They were in the States, but still thousands of miles from home. After handing off the envelope to Peter’s contact at the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, they boarded a flight north instead of west, landing several hours later in Boston.

It was another job. The new client required only some electronic and visual surveillance, no body removals. It was a gig that suited Quinn just fine for the moment. The fiasco in Ireland was still fresh in his mind, and his annoyance with Peter for forcing him to risk his life to catch the assassin had yet to abate.

Whoever that assassin was, he’d better be talking
, Quinn thought.

Boston turned out to be the easiest job he’d taken all year. A big part of that was due to the fact that he was working with Orlando again. She’d flown in early while he and Nate were still across the Atlantic, and set everything up. It made the assignment go smooth and simple.

The fact that he didn’t have to sleep alone anymore was a bonus.

“This is really what you wanted me here for, isn’t it?” Orlando had
asked him as they lay sweaty and panting beside each other on their hotel bed, the sheets and the blankets pushed to the floor. “You just wanted sex.”

“That took you long enough to figure out,” he said, trying not to break a smile.

Her shoulder-length black hair was draped partially over her face. With her right hand she tucked the loose strands behind her ear.

“Oh, I knew it. I just wanted to hear it from your lips.”

“Don’t play innocent. You want it just as much as I do.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“I know you do.”

“You’re wrong,” she said, a glimmer in her eye. “I want it more than you.”

“That I’ll never believe.”

She pulled him to her, their lips meeting soft but urgent, their bodies crushed together as if they wanted to meld into one.

For several years, Orlando had been living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with her son, Garrett. Her mixed ancestry helped her to blend in—her mother Korean, her father Thai-Irish. The result was a look that allowed her the ability to claim she was from almost anywhere in Asia. But now that her relationship with Quinn had developed into more than just friendship and business, she had been spending an increasing amount of time in the U.S. at the house her aunt Jeong had left her in San Francisco the previous year. Conveniently, it was only an hour plane ride up the coast from Quinn’s home in Los Angeles.

But even with this new accessibility, it had been several weeks since they’d spent any time together. Jobs and life seemed to have gotten in their way. So even though the Boston job was finished, they decided to stay on a few extra days.

Nate, on the other hand, had been able to get ahold of tickets for the Yankee-Detroit series at the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. So Quinn had let him go to New York, while he and Orlando remained. His only instructions were for Nate to keep his phone close, and answer if Quinn called. In this business, you had to be ready all the time.

Being with Orlando now, Quinn could feel the stress he’d been
carrying drain away, if only for a night. The stress had been building since Singapore and Nate’s accident, all due to guilt over what had happened to his apprentice. Guilt that he was having a hard time shedding. Guilt that, because of the amputation, Nate would never be whole. Quinn had put him in a position to be hurt, and had made the call to cut off the damaged part of his limb. He knew at the time it probably meant the end of Nate’s career as a cleaner. And though he had kept Nate on, he couldn’t help but feel like he was waiting for the moment he would have to let his apprentice go.

But he also couldn’t hide the fact that Nate’s situation wasn’t the only thing that had added to his stress. It had been two weeks since he’d received the call from Liz, but he could still remember every word. It was the first time he had talked to his sister in nearly five years. She was younger than he was by eight years, so they had always traveled in different circles, and weren’t close.

“First, everything is fine, okay?” she’d told him.

Instantly he was on alert. “What is it?”

“Dad went in for some tests.”

“Tests? For what?”

He could hear her take a deep breath. “The doctor thought he might have had a small stroke.”

“A stroke?”

“Take it easy, Jake. I said a small stroke.” Jake. The nickname his father had given him. And like the name Jonathan Quinn, Jake had no relation to Quinn’s real name. “Turns out it wasn’t a stroke at all.”

“What was it, then?”

“They’re not sure. Maybe a virus. He’s fine now. Well, his blood pressure is high, so he’s taking some medication for that. But otherwise he’s fine.”

Quinn wasn’t sure how to feel. His relationship with his father was an odd one. They had never been close, even when Quinn was a child. It wasn’t from lack of trying on either of their parts. They just didn’t have anything in common. Quinn knew the real answer why, but he never spoke it out loud. His dad was the only father he had ever known, but genetically they weren’t related. So their core points of references for life were different, and neither could really understand the
other. Still, he cared about his father, because he knew his father loved his mother deeply.

“How’s Mom?”

His sister—technically his half-sister—sighed. “How do you think she is? She’s glad he’s better, but she’s still concerned. She keeps checking on him to make sure he’s all right.”

“I was just asking, Liz.”

There was silence for a moment. “She tells me you haven’t visited them for a long time. You need to come out here.”

At the time, he was just getting ready to leave for Ireland. “I can’t come right now.”

“Of course not.”

“But I will come soon. In a few weeks.”

“Whatever. Do what you need to do, Jake. I just thought you’d want to know.”

Before he could say anything else, she’d hung up. He’d called his mother next, but she was evasive, doing her best, as always, not to burden Quinn with anything she felt he didn’t need to worry about.

Now that the jobs in both Ireland and Boston were complete, he knew he had to go see his parents. They’d be in Minnesota now, summering in the home Quinn had grown up in. He’d stop by on the way back to L.A.

“What are you thinking about?” Orlando asked.

“Nothing,” he said as they stepped out of Strega, an Italian restaurant in Boston’s North End. He hadn’t told her about the call from his sister.

There was a slight chill in the air. Quinn could feel Orlando shiver under his arm, so he pulled her small frame closer to help warm her up.

“Thanks,” she said.

She tilted her head up, and he leaned down and kissed her.

“Well, I
was
thinking about something,” he said as they walked down the street with no specific destination in mind.

“Thought so,” she said, an eyebrow raised. “I assume it hurt. Maybe you should leave the thinking to me.”

It was a playful argument they’d had often, each claiming to be the more intelligent one.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said again, “about our location problem.”

“What location problem?”

“The fact that you’re not geographically available to me when I need you.”

“Wait,” Orlando said, the hint of a wicked smile on her face. “You need me?”

“Shut up,” he said. “You know what I mean.”

“We’re a hell of a lot closer than we used to be,” she said.

“True enough,” he said. “But I was just—”

“Hold on.” She pulled away a little. “We’re not moving in together. Not yet. We’ve already talked about that.”

“I know that.”

He eased her back against him. But as he was about to explain what he meant, his phone began to vibrate in his pocket. Annoyed, he pulled it out and looked at the display, then glanced at Orlando.

“It’s Peter,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe you should just let him go to voice-mail.”

It was a good idea. Quinn tapped the Reject prompt on the phone’s touch screen, then put the device back in his pocket.