The Destroyed (10 page)

With Mila, Quinn had broken that code.

When he had stood in Daeng’s bathroom after walking out of the kitchen, rubbing his face with his hands, he knew he couldn’t put Nate in a situation that might ruin his future. Was he surprised when Nate refused to walk away? No.

What he actually experienced was relief, and that just made him feel worse.

“So, what’s the mission?” Nate asked, quickly glancing at Daeng and back at Quinn. “Or…?”

“Daeng’s already agreed to help me,” Quinn said.

“Wait. You didn’t want me tainted, but you’re not worried about him?”

“I worry about everything, but Daeng’s as stubborn as you are.”

Nate shook his head, then shrugged. “All right, then, I’ll ask again. What’s the mission?”

“Simple. We find Mila.”

“And then?” Nate asked.

“We cover her tracks and make her vanish again.”

“What if she doesn’t cooperate?”

“Then we’ll have to figure out a way to convince her.”

“You’re running this show,” Nate said. “If that’s what you want to do, that’s what we do.”

“Thanks,” Quinn told him, meaning it.

“When do we start?”

“Now.” Quinn held out his hand. “I need to borrow your phone.”

__________

Q
UINN CARRIED NATE’S
mobile into the living room. He selected a name from Nate’s contact list, then hit
CONNECT
. Once he did, he had a sudden urge to hang up as quickly as possible, but instead he raised the phone to his ear.

One p.m. in Bangkok meant it was eleven p.m. in San Francisco the day before. Would she still be up? Or would he wake her? It had been three months since he’d last talked to her.
No
, he realized.
Four. Oh, God.

Orlando answered after one ring. “Did you find him?”

She obviously thought Nate was calling. “He did.”

He wasn’t sure how to read the pause that followed. Anger? Disinterest? Annoyance?

“Hey,” she finally said, that single syllable adding nothing to his understanding of what she might have been thinking.

“I’m…I’m sorry. It’s been a while.”

“It has.”

She is
not
making this easy.

“I…I just…”

“Are you calling to chat? If you are, you’re doing a pretty bad job.”

“No. I, um, need your help.”

“Of course you do.” She paused. “Mila Voss, right?”

“Yes.”

“Figured. I’ve already pulled everything together I could find so far. I’ll email it to you.”

“Thank you. Peter put a video up on ADR-3, security footage of Mila showing up at a hotel in Tanzania. There’s a dead guy in the shot, too. Peter didn’t tell me who he was. I was wondering if you could find out? Maybe even see if there’s a connection between the corpse and Mila?”

“I can try,” she said, sounding somewhat resigned. “You know, I met her once.”

“You did?”

“She was working on an assignment that ran in tandem with something Durrie and I were on.” Quinn’s late mentor had once been Orlando’s boyfriend, not to mention the father of her son, Garrett. “I liked her. I was sad when I heard she died.”

“She didn’t die.”

“So I gather. You had something to do with that?”

“Yes.”

Nothing for a moment, then, “I’ll find out what I can and get back to you.”

“I…I miss you,” he said, but his words fell on dead air. Orlando had already hung up.

CHAPTER 10

FRIDAY, MAY 12
^th
2006

8:48 PM

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

I
F HE COULD
have run flat out, Quinn would have, but it was out of the question. A warm, beautiful Friday night along the Las Vegas Strip meant the crowds were even more massive than usual. The best he could manage was to weave in and out of the waves of people that seemed to be throwing themselves in his way every few seconds.

Once, in a rare moment when a stoplight ahead had halted traffic, he moved out into the road and made a full block in the same amount of time it had taken him to travel a quarter block earlier. Ahead, he could see the Lux casino, and, across the street, the faux cityscape and scaled-down version of the Empire State Building in front of the Manhattan Hotel, his destination.

“She’s been spotted,” Jergins had said over the phone. “They’re converging there now.”

Spotted?
How
? Of course there was no way he could ask the team leader, so Quinn had gotten off the call and headed straight for the Strip.

At the moment, he was on the wrong side of the street, but that would be rectified when he reached the pedestrian bridge that stretched from the Lux to the second-floor entrance of the Manhattan.

“Hey, watch it!” a man said.

“Sorry,” Quinn replied, knowing his apology had probably been lost in the hum of the crowd.

Foot traffic thickened as he neared the Lux, his pace dropping to what could best be described as a quick walk. The pedestrian overpass was maybe a block away, but damn if he couldn’t buy a break in the crowd.

“Excuse me,” he said, pushing forward. “Excuse me, excuse me.”

“Hey, we’re all going somewhere, buddy. Why don’t you cool it a bit?”

Quinn looked at the man, his face hardening into an expression that had made violent men back down. The other man’s eyes widened, then looked away as if he’d never seen Quinn.

The quick encounter only heightened Quinn’s self-anger. The civilian crowd was not fair game. His response to the man had shown weakness, not strength.

He didn’t let it stop him, though. He couldn’t afford to do that.

Finally, he reached the escalators that led up to the elevated walkway. It, too, was crowded with people, so he could only stand there as it slowly rose to the top. The inaction momentarily allowed him to wonder once more what had gone wrong.

The assassin and his spotter should have been at the Planet Hollywood Hotel waiting for Quinn’s confirmation from the hospital, not at the Manhattan. But instead, Kovacs and his man had
found
her. How?

As he reached the top of the escalator, he pushed the question aside and made his way across the bridge. He slowed to a walk just before he reached the hotel door, and entered right behind a group of guys barely old enough to buy a drink. Now that he was inside, running would only draw attention, and not just from those he was coming to stop. Casino personnel would not be keen on someone turning their establishment into a racecourse.

He walked past the pretzel stand and straight over to another escalator. This one took him down to the casino floor. Spread out before him were dozens of tables where guests were playing blackjack and mini baccarat and roulette and craps and Let It Ride, apparently enjoying handing over their money to the dealers.

Once he reached the bottom, he made his way past the central bar, and the faux Manhattan streets with their full restaurants and shops. Finally, he reached an unmarked door tucked away where most visitors would never see it.

He tried the handle.

Locked
.

That wasn’t a good sign. He’d manipulated the lock himself so that it would only seem to be engaged, but if pushed and turned the right way, the door was supposed to open. Unfortunately, no matter how much he pushed and turned, it wasn’t budging.

He glanced around, made sure no one could see what he was doing, then pulled out his lock picks. It still didn’t open. Someone had jammed it closed from the inside.

There were two other ways to the area beyond that door; neither was convenient. The least inconvenient was via a service elevator and a maintenance-access hallway located over fifty yards from his current position.

Seeing no other options, he headed in that direction. The elevator was beyond a set of doors that could only be opened via a security card issued to hotel staffers. That wasn’t a problem. He had his own copy.

The problem turned out to be waiting for him on the other side of the door. It came in the form of a big beefy security guard with a wry smile and superior look in his eyes.

“Can I help you, sir?” the man said.

“Maintenance elevator?” Quinn asked, not missing a beat.

“And why would you need that?”

Quinn looked at him like he was an idiot. “To do some
maintenance
.”

The left side of the guy’s mouth rose even higher. “Perhaps you should come with me first.”

Even though he knew there was little chance of it working, the maintenance ploy had been worth a try. Quinn acted like he would cooperate. As he came abreast of the guard, the man said, “Keep going. There’s a door at the end of the hall. We’ll—”

Whatever else he was going to say was lost in the expulsion of air that rushed from his lungs due to Quinn’s unexpected gut punch. Even before the guard’s wind was completely knocked out, Quinn had twisted the man’s arms behind his back, and quick-walked him down the hall to the maintenance elevator. Using his foot, Quinn pushed the call button.

The doors opened just as the security man started to get his breath back. Thankfully, the car was empty. Quinn forced the man inside, and did the same toe trick on the button for the lower basement.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the guy sputtered.

“Kicking your ass.”

Quinn shoved the man’s arms upward.

The man screamed and moved forward, trying to alleviate the pain. That was exactly what Quinn was waiting for. He pushed hard on the guy’s back, ramming the guard’s face into the side of the car with a loud smack.

“Fuck!” the guy yelled.

“Want me to do it again?”

“No, man. No.”

Something dripped on the floor. Blood, probably, but Quinn saw no need to check. There was a soft
bong
, and the doors opened again.

The lower basement was not a place most people went. Maintenance only, mainly pipes and electrical systems and the kind of things no one ever thought about. Quinn pushed his companion out of the car and took a look around. Off to the right were two large storage rooms he had checked out on his initial recon. He used his free hand to open one of the doors then shoved the guard inside.

“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you’re in a shitload of trouble,” the man said.

“You couldn’t be more right about that.”

He shoved the guy’s arms up even higher, then rammed the man’s head into the wall. The security guard dropped to the ground, unconscious.

“I’m sorry,” Quinn said. “You should have just pointed me to the elevator and kept walking.”

He jammed the lock as he went out and shut the door. Even if the guy did wake up soon, he’d have a hard time getting it open.

Without giving the guard another thought, Quinn took off, sure that he was already too late. He worked his way through the labyrinth of the lower basement until he reached the small, closed-off hallway.

Like the door he’d tried on the main floor, this one was locked, but this time he was able to pick it open. The dark hallway beyond had mainly been used when the hotel was being built. Now its only real purpose was as an unintentional shortcut to a group of storage rooms that had a separate stairwell and elevator.

Quinn used the light on his phone to navigate to the other end where a second door—this one unlocked—led into the back of one of the storage rooms. Whoever had packed the place had the foresight not to put any of the wooden crates that took up a majority of the space all the way against the walls. What had been left was a two-foot gap. Quinn had to shimmy sideways down it until he reached the slightly less narrow walkway running through the middle of the room.

When he reached the storage room door, he withdrew his SIG Sauer P226 and attached a sound suppressor to the end of the barrel.

He stepped into the corridor.

There were seventeen separate rooms down here. The one Mila should be in was marked 21AY. It was six down and on the other side.

Quinn padded quietly along the cement floor, his head cocked, listening for any noise ahead.

Reaching the door to 21AY, he slowly opened it, and stared in surprise at what he saw inside.

CHAPTER 11

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

O
RLANDO LOVED QUINN.
There was almost nothing he could do that would change her feelings. She even understood his self-imposed exile. Hell, she’d helped him set it up, putting him in touch with Christina in Bangkok in the first place.

He had been so damaged when he left, she wondered if he would ever recover. She wished she could do more for him, but Quinn wasn’t wired that way. Maybe in time she could help, but this first part, this finding himself again, had to be all him.

Why she’d acted annoyed with him when he called, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was just the way she thought most people would act in a similar situation, and she’d just fallen into it naturally. Perhaps, subconsciously, she’d wanted him to know his recovery wasn’t just about him. She was here, too, waiting for him, hurting for him.

Whatever he would discover at the end, she didn’t care. If he wanted to get out of the business entirely, and leave the world of secrets behind, she was fine with that. If he wanted to stay, take on some more work, she could handle that, too. She just wanted him to get to a point where he could decide which it was going to be.

Now this business with Mila had forced itself into his recovery. What his role in it was, she didn’t know. But she
was
worried it would prevent him from finding his peace again.

Her biggest concern at the moment was the fact he hadn’t worked in nearly nine months. Sure, he was good, the best probably, but was he sharp enough at the moment to return to the field? What if this business with Mila got him killed?

That was the one outcome Orlando dreaded over all others.

There was no question in her mind she would do everything she could to help Quinn, to give him what he needed, to hopefully keep him safe.