The Buried (3 page)

“He is,” Quinn said. Nate was dating Quinn’s sister, though Quinn would have answered the question the same way whether or not Nate had been attached. As skilled and savvy as Nate had become over the last few years, Ananke would eat him alive.

“Too bad. But maybe I could change his mind.”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“So demanding,” she said. “Maybe I should set my sights on you.”

“I’m sure Orlando would like to see you try.”

There was no love lost between Ananke and Orlando, Quinn’s partner and girlfriend. He didn’t know why, other than it had to do with something in their past that Orlando never talked about.

“Tempting,” Ananke said. “But I wouldn’t want to intrude on another girl’s territory.”

“Why do I have a hard time believing that?”

“Well, Orlando’s territory, anyway.”

“Now you’re getting smart.”

“Been there, done that.”

He looked at her for a moment, not understanding what she meant. After deciding to ignore the comment, he packed up the duffels and did a visual check of the room to make sure everything was in order. Satisfied, he joined Nate and the late Samuel Edmondson downstairs in the kitchen.

The plan was to put the body in the trunk of the man’s Volvo. Quinn would then drive it out, with Nate hiding in the backseat until Quinn transferred to their vehicle parked a few blocks away. Before sunrise, the Volvo would be involved in a single-car accident along a stretch of road near the Canadian border patrolled by an understaffed sheriff’s department. The authorities would find only Edmondson’s torched remains and enough evidence to point toward a crash caused by driving under the influence. Quinn had already arranged for the results of any lab tests to support this conclusion.

Everything nice and neat with no problematic questions asked.

“Are you ready for your surprise?” Ananke asked as she strolled into the room.

Quinn tensed, his hand hovering on the bag that held his SIG SAUER P226 pistol.

“Loosen up,” she said. “Do you really think I would accept an order to terminate
you
? The last thing I want is your stupid girlfriend chasing me for the rest of my life.”

Nate, who’d had his back to her when she entered, twisted around. “Wait. Who’s getting terminated?”

“No one,” Ananke said, her flirty demeanor faltering. “I want to…ugh. Never mind. Just follow me.”

She marched past them into the garage.

Nate looked at Quinn. “What was that all about?”

Quinn shrugged. “You’re asking me?”

“So…do we follow her?”

“If we don’t, she’ll never leave.”

They crossed to the open door and looked into the garage.

Ananke was on the other side of Edmondson’s Volvo.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “You need to come over here.”

Sensing no immediate threat, they entered the garage.

As the two men came around the front end of the car, Ananke dramatically swept her arms forward, pointed at a hole in the middle of the garage floor, and said, “Ta-da.”

“What in the name of…?” Nate said, moving in for a better look.

Stepping in beside him, Quinn peered down the hole. The only thing visible was the top riser of a set of stairs. The rest was in darkness. He turned to Ananke. “What’s down there?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t still be here,” she said. “I’m hoping money. How about you?” When no one responded, she sighed and explained how she’d discovered the trapdoor.

“And you didn’t go down why?” Nate asked.

“Because it was time to call you jackasses in. Figured you’d need to take a look anyway, so why not join you?”

Quinn lit up the hole with his penlight, but there wasn’t much more to see other than the floor at the bottom.

“Stay here,” he said to Nate.

“Seriously?” Nate said. “I want to see, too.”

“And what happens if someone shows up and closes the door on top of us?”

“We push it open?”

“Not if they lock it and roll the bike back on top.”

“What are the odds of that happening?”

“What’s the number one rule?” Quinn asked.

“Depends. You have, like, thirty of them.”

“Safety first.”

Nate narrowed his eyes. “That’s not even in your top ten number ones.”

“It’s implied.”

Nate growled his displeasure, but said, “Fine.”

“Are you two done?” Ananke asked. “Because I’m starting to regret I
wasn’t
given orders to take you out.”

“Hold on,” Quinn said.

He jogged back into the kitchen and fetched his pistol and sound suppressor from his duffel bag.

When he rejoined the others, he said to Ananke, “Down there, I’m in charge. Everything I say goes. Understand?”

She bowed her head a few inches. “I hear and obey.”

“See that you do,” he said. “I’m going first. Wait here until I give you the okay.”

At the bottom, he found a switch where the stairwell met a dark hallway. When he flipped it, overhead fluorescents flickered on, bathing an underground passage in sickly blue-green light.

The hall ran back under the main part of the house for about twenty feet before opening into a darkened space. Quinn moved cautiously forward a few steps, and then stopped and listened. All was graveyard quiet. Even the air seemed not to be moving.

“Come on down,” he said.

A few seconds later, Ananke appeared at the bottom, also carrying a SIG, though hers was a P232.

As Quinn moved down the hall, he noted the faint but unmistakable smell of human waste. When he reached the end, he again motioned for Ananke to wait, and then swung his light through the dark room beyond. Linoleum tiled floor, a couple of metal tables in the middle, and floor-to-ceiling cabinets along the far wall.

There was another light switch just inside. When he turned it on, more fluorescents began to buzz and flicker, each tube illuminating at its own speed.

In addition to the cabinets along the back, more covered the walls on each side, breaking only for a door on the left. Along with the tables he’d already noted, there were two gurneys and a chair that seemed fixed to the floor.

“So?” Ananke whispered from down the hall.

Quinn continued scanning the room, not letting her question rush him. The only place anyone could be hiding would be in the cabinets or behind the other door, both safer to check with help.

“All right,” he said, and moved into the room.

Ananke paused as soon as she entered. “Creepy.”

A hard plastic box was sitting on one of the tables. Quinn headed over and opened it. Photos, four-by-six inch, stacked like papers in a file and separated into plastic sleeves. He leafed through them. There were at least thirty packets, featuring different women.

He called Ananke over and showed her.

 “None of them look too happy,” she said. “Trophy shots?”

The possibility had occurred to Quinn but he wasn’t ready to speculate. “Let’s check the cabinets.”

They started at opposite ends of the room. The cabinets Quinn checked each contained female clothing in different sizes and styles. All the items looked as if they’d never been worn, most still with tags on them. Six cabinets were dedicated to shoes in boxes, a dozen different styles in a wide range of sizes.

Every door he opened added to Quinn’s sense of unease. About the only good thing was that he hadn’t come across any children’s sizes. He knew he wouldn’t take that well at all, especially given the new direction his own life was going.

“Check this out,” Ananke said.

She was on the other side of the room, looking inside a cabinet. When he walked over, he saw that instead of clothes, the space contained three side-by-side lockers, the long kind you could hang a suit in. Each was locked with a padlock. He opened the next cabinet and found more lockers. There were ten of these cabinets, thirty lockers total. Seven of the lockers, those farthest from the first Ananke found, had no padlocks. When Quinn opened them, he found them empty.

Ananke pulled a lock-pick kit from her jacket and grabbed one of the padlocks.

Quinn said, “That can wait. Let’s finish clearing this place first.”

He nodded toward the closed door.

CHAPTER
4

A
S QUINN OPENED
the door, lights on the other side blinked on automatically.

Fluorescents again. Edmondson must have gotten a deal on them.

The harsh glow lit up a ten-foot-wide hallway with three doorways on each side, offset so that none sat directly across from another. The doors were metal and had square plates at eye level that could be slid to the side. Where the handles should have been was only a keyhole.

A private prison. Apparently passing secrets on to terrorists wasn’t the only illegal activity Edmondson was into.

“I don’t hear anything,” Ananke said. “Maybe the rooms are empty.”

Quinn stepped over to the nearest door and pulled the viewing plate open. The stink of human waste from inside was many times stronger than what he’d noticed earlier, forcing him to back away for a few seconds. As soon as he could bear it, he looked inside.

The room wasn’t large, maybe five feet across and six deep, just big enough for the mattress on the floor and the five-gallon paint bucket in the corner. The source of the smell.

The room appeared unoccupied. He scanned it again, and then lifted up on his toes to look downward through the hole. This allowed him just enough of an angle to see the sliver of a person’s head. The hair was buzzed short so that barely a quarter inch remained.

The head shook with fear as the person tried to hide from sight.

“Hey. Are you okay?” When Quinn received no response, he said, “Just sit tight. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to get you out of there.”

No reaction, not even a flinch.

He let Ananke take a look. When she pulled back, anger had usurped her usual sardonic façade.

By silent agreement, they moved to the next cell. The layout was identical but the smell was missing, and as far as Quinn could tell, no one was inside.

He slid the plate open on cell three, and immediately jerked back. A face was looking out, only inches away on the other side.

“Please, I’ll, I’ll do whatever you want,” the prisoner said, the voice female. “Just let me go home. Please.”

“No one’s going to hurt you,” Quinn said. “We’ll get you out in a minute.”

Her brow creased, and then she took a step away from the door, revealing not only that her hair was cut short but that she wasn’t wearing anything. “Who are you?” She sounded even more scared than she had a moment before. “Where’s Mr. Black? I want to talk to Mr. Black.” She moved deeper into her room, her terror growing. “Where is he?”

“We’re going to help you,” Quinn said.

“Where’s Mr. Black?”

Quinn’s words were doing nothing to calm her, so he moved on.

“Jesus,” Ananke whispered. “What the hell did he do to them?”

Cell four held another prisoner, also a woman, shorn and unclothed. But instead of hiding or begging, she sat on her mattress staring at Quinn. While there was a hint of fear in her eyes, she looked mostly defiant.

He decided not to engage her just yet and moved on to number five. Like cell number two, it was empty.

The occupant of the final cell was lying on her bed under a blanket. She looked asleep, but intertwined with the ever-present odor of waste was another smell that told Quinn otherwise. Tangy and metallic—blood, and lots of it. If she wasn’t dead yet, she was well on her way.

He dropped quickly to a knee and examined the lock. It was a specialized piece that required a key that could move through a serpentine set of tumblers. He’d seen a few similar to it and knew it was impossible to pick with the tools they had at hand.

A bit of explosive would take care of it, but that would risk further injury to the captive.

“Did you see any keys when you were looking through the lockers?” he asked Ananke.

“No.”

He hadn’t, either.

“Wait here.” He sprinted through the secret basement and up the stairs into the garage.

“So?” Nate asked. “Any hidden treasure?”

Quinn said, “Did you see any keys?”

Nate had worked with Quinn long enough to know when things were serious. “The dresser. Top drawer.”

Quinn raced up to the second floor and found a ring with a couple dozen keys right where his partner said they’d be. They were all from the same manufacturer of the padlocks on the lockers. None, however, would work on the cell doors.

He stuffed them in his pocket and hunted through the other drawers, not worrying about the mess he was making, but he found nothing.

Back downstairs, he ran into the kitchen and was about to shout for Nate to help him search when he noticed the rack next to the garage door. It had vertical slots for mail, and at the bottom a tray with several keys in it.

He rifled through them, pushing aside keys for the car and the motorcycle and a set he guessed was for the house, until he spotted a key caged in a metal frame. When pushed into the right kind of lock, the key would emerge from the frame in tiny sections so that it could bend through a set of curving tumblers, exactly like the cell locks.

He snatched it and ran into the garage. As he hurried onto the stairs, he said to Nate, “Come with me. We’re going to need your help.”

Ananke was looking through the viewing hole of cell number six, but moved out of the way the moment she saw them.

Quinn unlocked the door, and then used the viewing hole as a handle to swing it out.

He rushed in, yanked the blanket off the woman, and rolled her onto her back, but he was too late. By an hour, if not more.

The portion of the mattress she’d been lying on was soaked with blood from two jagged cuts on her wrists. The tool she had used lay near where her right hand had been before they’d moved her. It was an inch-and-a-half-long chunk of concrete sharpened to a dull point. Scratches next to the cuts indicated it had taken the woman several tries to do the job.

“God, if she could have just waited a little longer,” Ananke said, her voice a pained whisper.