Becoming Quinn

25

The cabin was fifty miles from the closest town, tucked into the woods in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. It was another safe house, though this one belonged to an organization Durrie had done work for several years earlier that had no ties to the Office. In the recent months, the organization had scaled back its Stateside operations, so Durrie had been confident the building would be unused.

He was right.

By the look of things, no one had been there in more than a year.

The cabin wasn’t as well-equipped as the mobile home south of Phoenix, but it did have a well-made holding cell in the basement, and that was all that really mattered at the moment.

On three separate occasions during the drive there, Durrie had given Oliver BetaSomnol boosters to keep him asleep. It was more drug than he’d really wanted to administer, but he’d had little choice.

Now that he had Oliver in the cell, the drug was no longer necessary. He could do nothing, however, but provide aspirin for the headache Oliver experienced from the withdrawal. A full thirty-six hours passed before the former police officer’s symptoms had lessened enough so that Durrie could move forward.

Using the threat of his stun gun, he had Oliver chain himself to the chair in his room before he carried his own in and sat down.

“You’re one very lucky son of a bitch,” the man said as he took a seat.

Jake almost laughed. “You might have to explain that to me.”

“What do you think I mean?” the man asked.

“I have no idea.”

The man considered him for a moment. “You can do better than that.”

“Why don’t you just tell me, if you think I should know,” Jake said. “Or not. I don’t really care.” Though his headache was gone, he’d never felt so drained in his life, and a verbal game was the last thing he cared about.

The man was silent for a moment, then said, “You don’t see it now, but if it wasn’t for me, your funeral would already be over.”

“Easy to say, hard to prove, but what the hell? Thanks.”

“You think you’re funny sometimes, don’t you? You don’t have to answer. I can tell. You should also know that doesn’t cut it with me. Feel free to tell your jokes, but don’t expect me to laugh.”

“I’ll remember that,” Jake said.

The man stared at him for nearly a minute, then said, “You are going to thank me someday, but not just for saving your life. For changing it completely.”

“Whatever you say.”

“We’ll talk about your choices later.”

The man stood up and carried his chair out of the room. For a second, Jake thought he was going to leave him shackled to the chair, but then the guy returned and grabbed Jake’s left wrist firmly in one hand. With his other, he unlocked the cuff, then tossed the key on Jake’s lap.

With surprising agility, he released Jake’s wrist and stepped back out of range.

“After you finish unlocking yourself, slide the key under the door,” he said.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you never see me again.”

The man started to close the door.

“Wait,” Jake said.

The man looked back, silent.

“Do you have a name?”

A moment’s pause, then, “Call me Durrie.” With that, the man shut the door.

Jake unfastened his other wrist and his ankles, then did as the man — as Durrie—instructed, scooting the key through the small space under the door. He wasn’t sure if Durrie would follow through with the threat, but Jake felt now was not the time to test him.

He lay back on the bed, replaying the conversation in his mind. When he boiled it down, Durrie had basically told him three things besides his name: 1) that Jake would have been dead if Durrie hadn’t kidnapped him, 2) that he had little sense of humor, and 3) that Jake was going to be given some kind of choice.

Of the three things, the only one Jake was sure of was the lack of humor. Beyond that he had to assume it was all just talk. But talk was better than no talk at all, and the longer Jake could keep it going, the better the chance the man would make a mistake. Jake just had to bide his time, and not make a lot of waves.

Easier said than done.

“How?” Durrie asked.

Jake had no idea what time it was. There were no windows in his room. The only thing he knew was that this was their third conversation since his headache had passed, and that he’d slept several hours since the last one.

“What do you mean, ‘how’?” Jake said.

“You found the matchbook at the site. Fine. You followed it back to the hotel. That makes sense. You then convinced the hotel manager and the head of security to allow you to view camera footage from the night in question. But how did you pick us out?”

There was no easy answer to that since Jake himself wasn’t sure how he’d done it. “Just…a feeling, I guess.”

“A feeling.” Durrie stared at him. “You’re telling me you did it based on a random feeling?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Jake was trying to be cooperative. Ultimately what they talked about was unimportant. If it helped increase Durrie’s trust in him, that’s all that mattered. But he could tell his captor wasn’t satisfied. “Well…um, the two other men — they kind of stood out.”

“How do you mean?” Durrie asked quickly.

Jake thought back. How did he mean it? “They were…trying…too hard to blend in, I think. I just got the sense that they didn’t really belong.”

“You could tell they were trying?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Jake blurted out, then regretted it immediately. Cooperation. Remember! “Sorry, it’s just I’m…”

“Being held against your will?”

The words surprised Jake. “Yeah. I guess that would be it, wouldn’t it?”

“I know you still won’t believe this, but this was the only way to keep you alive.”

It wasn’t the first time Durrie had said this, and as much as Jake wanted to push for more, he knew it would be better to wait.

When neither of them said anything for a moment, Durrie asked, “Is that how you spotted me?”

“No. You, I wouldn’t have picked out on my own. It was the other guy, the light-haired one who gave you away.”

“How?”

“He was in the elevator coming down from his floor. It stopped on number three, and you got on. The other man gave you a look that made me think he knew you. But you didn’t respond. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were involved or not until the parking lot.”

Durrie looked away, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Then, without another word, he got up and left the room.

Terminate him. Now, Durrie thought.

That was survival mode kicking in. Any identified threat needed to be dealt with immediately and permanently. It took everything he had to keep from running upstairs, grabbing his gun, and returning to put a bullet in Jake Oliver’s head.

Calm down. He was a threat. But not now. Or, at least, not at the moment.

What Oliver had proven once more was that he was gifted. Granted, he lacked training, but his raw skills were impressive. Given the right guidance, who knew what the kid might achieve?

That, of course, was dependent on a couple of factors. Would the kid be open to it? Really open to it? And even if he were, would Durrie have the patience to see it through?

The survival part of him was pushing for the kid to be turned over to Peter if Durrie wasn’t going to finish the job himself. While the rest was saying, “Isn’t this why you brought him here in the first place?”

So, what’s it going to be?

Jake was visited twice more by Durrie before he fell asleep again, but never to talk, only to bring in meals. It wasn’t that Jake didn’t try to engage him, but no matter what he said, Durrie never replied.

When he awoke the next morning — or what he assumed was the next morning — Durrie was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, staring at the bed. Behind him, the door was open.

Jake sat up quickly, startled.

“Tell me about the marks in the sand,” Durrie said.

“What?”

“The marks in the sand, outside the barn. Describe them.”

Jake took a second to realize what he was talking about, then thought back to the night of the fire. “Which ones? By the tank, or in between the tank and the building?”

“Start with the tank.”

“Okay. The dirt was disturbed.”

“All the dirt was loose in that area. How could you tell it was disturbed?”

“The patterns. There was a portion of the dirt that looked like it was moving in the same direction, but askew to the pattern of the dirt around it. I guess it looked like it had been pushed there.”

Durrie nodded for a moment. “I was in a hurry. If I’d taken more time, you would have never seen it.”

Jake stared at him. This was the first direct confirmation that his theory of the men being involved with the Goodman Ranch Road murder was correct. “You were there.”

“Don’t get all excited,” Durrie said. “I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.”

“But one of your friends did.”

“They aren’t my friends.”

“One of the men you were with, then.”

“Tell me about what you found between the tank and the building.”

Jake said nothing for a moment, then, “All right. It was less than an inch long, a kind of rounded cradle in the sand that might have been created by a rope or a thick wire.”

“A cable,” Durrie said.

Jake looked at him, his brow creased. “For what?”

“Video monitoring.”

“Of…what was going on in the barn?”

“How did you find it?” Durrie asked, ignoring the question.

“I…uh, found traces of more disturbed dirt, followed it, and found the mark. I guess it was a spot you missed.”

“I guess it was. That’s what happens when you work with fools and are forced into a hurry-up situation that should have never occurred.”

As much as Jake liked getting answers to questions he’d had for nearly a month, he wasn’t sure Durrie’s openness was a good thing or not. But he couldn’t help himself and asked, “When you say work, you mean murder, don’t you?”

For a moment, it didn’t look like Durrie was going to respond, then he said, “We call it termination.”

“Termination? Like a hit?” Jake asked. That would actually make sense, he realized. If this really had been drug-related, a hit was exactly what it must have been.

Then, as if reading his mind, Durrie said, “This isn’t The Sopranos. And I don’t work for organized crime, at least not in the way you define it.”

“Then who do you work for?”

Durrie stood, picked up his chair, and started for the door. “Depends on the week.”

“The night on Goodman Ranch Road?”

Durrie stopped in the threshold. “Uncle Sam.”

He stepped out and shut the door.

Jake immediately dismissed the answer as just something to confuse him.

But it didn’t really matter what Durrie said now. The man had admitted to being involved in the murder. If Jake could get free, he would report what he’d found out. He didn’t think it would be enough to get him back on the force, but it would prove to the assholes who had kicked him out that he’d been right.

Uncle Sam. Right.

There were three more sessions that day. This time Durrie questioned Oliver about the back-trail search he’d done on Timmons and Larson, what he’d found at the coffee shop, and what had happened when he’d presented the information to his superiors.

The kid was playing it really smart. Cooperating completely, while Durrie knew on the inside he was trying to come up with a plan for escape. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be worth the time Durrie was putting in.

When the idea had first come to him several weeks before — that Oliver might be a useful asset in the future — he had been thinking about starting him as a courier somewhere, with the possibility that he’d work his way into a frontline ops position. But the kid’s eye for detail was extraordinary. And that meant one thing to Durrie.

Cleaner.

To do the job Durrie did took a special mindset and the ability to see everything. Though he wasn’t sure if Oliver had the mindset yet, the former cop certainly had the missing-nothing foundation required. He also had the smarts to make intuitive leaps that others wouldn’t even consider.

Still, there was a lot more work to do if that was going to happen.