Disturbance

EIGHTEEN

Quinn knocked in the agreed upon pattern at the back doors of the ambulance. Kai opened them, letting in brightness, a rush of heat, and-as the wind shifted-smoke from the burning car. He paid little attention to Quinn and went back to stripping the keys and radio off Josh’s inert form.

Quinn was momentarily distracted by the blood spattered on his half brother. He found the sight stimulating and odd. Although Kai and Quinn didn’t really look alike-they looked even less alike in their currently altered appearances-Quinn felt as if he was seeing himself in a similar act but from outside his body. He forced his attention back to matters at hand and went to work to release the gurney. Looking over at Kai, he said, “Be sure to get his cell phone, too.”

“Did you clean off your prints in the cab?” Kai asked.

“Of course. Hurry.”

“You have to admit the roadkill was inspired.”

“I’ve already told you I admired your work,” Quinn said. It was true. Kai was a genius with electronics and explosives.

They were on a desert road. To the right, just beyond the ditch where Quinn had retrieved his assault rifle, was what appeared to be an abandoned business, surrounded by a high chain-link fence. A large, prefab metal building stood at the end of a short drive. Quinn could already hear the sound of an engine from within it.

They smashed the radios and threw them into the inferno that had once been the following car, quickly removed the SIM cards from the phones and did the same. Next they rolled Nick Parrish from the back of the ambulance and up to the locked gate. Quinn opened it and relocked it behind them.

“Will he be okay?” Kai asked, looking down at Parrish.

“Of course,” Quinn said, surprised by the concern on Kai’s face. “But we need to hurry. This road isn’t traveled much, but the smoke will attract attention from miles away. And who knows how soon someone will try to check in with the guards.”

By then they had reached the building. Once they were inside, there was no use trying to talk over the noise of the small plane’s engines. Donovan had already lowered the ramp. As they had rehearsed so many times, they loaded Parrish in the back and secured the gurney, closed up the plane, and strapped themselves in.

Donovan had done no more than glance back to ensure they were seated. He taxied out to the single, rough airstrip, and within minutes they were airborne. Quinn looked at the wreckage they had left below as Donovan turned the plane. What he saw provided an unwelcome shock.

“Land the plane!” he shouted.

“Not going to happen,” Donovan said.

Quinn turned his anger in another direction. “Damn it, Kai, you didn’t kill him!”

Kai, who had been removing Parrish’s manacles and handcuffs, moved to a window and looked down. Quinn continued to watch as Josh Enwill stumbled to the side of the road and collapsed.

Kai shrugged. “If he lives, it’s not as if he can tell them anything they don’t already know.”

Quinn bit back a reply and forced himself to calm down. This was not a time for squabbles.

Kai tried to appeal to Donovan for support, but Donovan remained aloof. Quinn smiled to himself. That was all right. Matters would be more easily managed if Kai continued to feel rebuffed by Donovan. In their strange alliance, it was always better if Kai looked to Quinn rather than to their older brother. Better for Quinn, anyway.

Quinn didn’t fool himself that what he shared with either brother was closeness. The truth was, all three were incapable of genuine intimacy with anyone-not as friends, brothers, or lovers. He knew it was best to think of them as individuals who were engaged in an enterprise that, if it succeeded, would have rewards for each but did not require real bonding of any kind-or even much trust.

The fact that they could function together at all said a lot for the genius of the man strapped to the gurney back there. The men who shared his impulses were rare, and, among those, he had a trait that was rarer still. Nick Parrish embraced longrange planning. Witness his first escape from authorities. If it hadn’t been for Irene Kelly, he’d still be free-and uninjured.

The authorities had all been surprised that Nick Parrish had a helper. A partner, they’d said. What a laugh to consider that one to be something so elevated as a “partner”-“servant” would have been a better word. But the police had seen no further. And they’d congratulated themselves on capturing and imprisoning the so-called Moth. Well, they could keep that one.

Despite the evidence right under their noses that Nick Parrish planned extensively and years in advance, they’d been blind. Apparently they believed they’d put an end to all his plans. How foolish. Nick Parrish always had other plans.

And he had children to help him carry them out.

He had chosen their mothers carefully, and through the years had decided which of his children would later be most helpful to him. Quinn didn’t know how many brothers and sisters he had, or how many had been contacted. The one time he had ventured to ask, he’d received a look so cold he had never dared ask again. Not many people could intimidate Quinn with a look. His father could. Quinn had spent hours practicing that chilling look in the mirror, and, although that practice had been useful, he knew he had not achieved his father’s abilities.

Nick Parrish had rarely made his presence known to them in their early lives, but he had been watchful. Not all of his children had been deemed worthy to be part of his plans. Some-such as Cade Morrissey-would prove useful if not worthy.

Quinn sat back and closed his eyes, a smile playing on his lips. Killing Cade had been unexpectedly exquisite. Really, the best experience he’d ever had with a male. Cade had been so naïve, so excited about having a brother. And, unlike the two brothers Quinn was with now, Cade actually resembled him.

Quinn had used that, had reflected his emotions to get closer to Cade. He led Cade to believe that he was also given up for adoption, and that he was looking for his own mother. Cade saw him as someone who had been successful and led a normal life, despite having a serial killer for a father. A brother who would act as a go-between to arrange a meeting with his mother.

Killing Cade was almost like killing a little part of himself, and more exciting than anything that had gone before. Once it was done, Quinn felt immeasurably stronger, as if he had absorbed something of Nick Parrish into himself.

Then there was the experience of Marilyn Foster.

Cade had worried over meeting his mother. If he had lived, he might have learned that she had worried over him, too-came right out of the house when Quinn told her that Cade was extremely ill, possibly dying, and wouldn’t go to the hospital. Would she please come to convince him, or at least to meet him, as Cade had always hoped? No, Quinn didn’t have a car, he didn’t have much money, and had used the last of it to ride the bus out here and had walked to her house. In reality, he had parked his van not far away, and Kai had taken him the next day to retrieve it.

But that night she had hurried out of the house, so distracted she’d left her purse and phone behind, and driven with him to the abandoned cannery. She had been appalled that Cade was staying in such a place.

She was under Quinn’s complete control within minutes of stepping out of the car.

She had put up a fight, even after he’d bound and gagged her, but he was far stronger, and told her that if she wanted to see her son, she’d have to behave. She became docile then, even though he knew she didn’t really believe him. But he’d been true to his word-never having promised that her son would be alive when she saw him.

It interested him that she was so grief-stricken. Wept for a boy she never knew.

She’d been enraged for a time, which Quinn had found stimulating. Later, when he’d moved her to the plastic-covered room in the warehouse, he allowed Kai to enjoy her and then kill her. Quinn had left without telling Kai that he’d be at the cannery next door, finishing his artwork on Cade. Kai, at that point unaware of Cade’s existence, had thought Quinn was generous. Quinn had hidden Cade’s body before going back over to the warehouse.

Kai, who had already been up late turning on the hose at Irene Kelly’s house, had fallen asleep when he finished with Marilyn. The hose business was a trick of Quinn’s-he had many such tricks, designed to unsettle a victim. Kai was happy to do it and had nearly been caught, or so he said.

Quinn changed the plates on Marilyn Foster’s Chevy Malibu, put the originals in the trunk, woke Kai and had Kai follow him as he drove her car to a large storage locker in one of the buildings Quinn owned. There they removed the body of one of Kai’s earlier kills, taking her from the freezer in which Quinn had kept her for him-in exchange for letting Quinn practice his designs on her skin. Kai admired the decoration as they put the body in the trunk of the Malibu.

They drove toward the beach and delivered the car to its parking place. These were some of the riskiest moments, because if Marilyn had been reported missing, there was always the chance an ambitious cop might run a plate check and see that these were not originally on a Chevy Malibu. Or even though he wore a hoodie, a wig, and dark sunglasses, he might be seen parking the car by someone who somehow managed to recognize him. Or a cruising patrol car might go down the street while he was changing the plates back. Any of those possibilities could lead to complications.

These dangers had only made it all the more thrilling.

When Kai took Quinn to pick up his van, Quinn mastered a strong temptation to choose a route that went past Marilyn Foster’s home.

Kai helped him load the freezer into the van and take it to the cannery, thinking Quinn was going to abandon it there. After Kai left, Quinn hooked up a generator and placed Cade’s body within the freezer. He admitted to himself now that there had been tenderness in the way he had done it.

People were easier to love when they were dead.

He set the generator running and went back over to the warehouse. Kai had already moved Marilyn Foster’s body to the metal table. Quinn prepared his canvas by removing all her bindings, then thoroughly washing her, including all her orifices and wounds, and cleaning her fingernails and toenails. He dried her, then sealed the buckets of wash water and carried them down to the van.

By the time he came back to the room, she was ready. He used an airbrush and stencils and metal-based paints, permanent markers and calligraphy brushes to cover the bare skin of Marilyn Foster even as her body continued to go through the changes of rigor mortis. When he was inspired, he could work for hours. He stopped only to refuel the generator at the cannery next door.

He wasn’t able to spend as much time on her as he would have liked, but she would serve her purpose.

He cleaned up, removing the plastic tarps, and took her to another section of the warehouse, setting her out in a manner that would cause the light from the multitude of high, filthy windows along one wall to bathe her skin and bring out the brilliance of her new colors.

He drove off and called Donovan, who called the police from a stolen cell phone to report the body’s location. Donovan destroyed the phone; Quinn destroyed all the other evidence. Quinn was thoroughly exhausted by the time he reached his own bed.

He awoke ten hours later and groggily watched the television news while checking the Internet compulsively. He watched Irene Kelly’s press conference with interest-he enjoyed seeing that she was so frightened, even before she knew that Marilyn Foster was dead.

Two moth-covered bodies had certainly set things in a whirl! He could not help but feel pleased. He looked carefully through the online news reports for any reference to the discovery of a third body, but there was none. He had thought the noise of the generator might attract some attention, but apparently either other industrial sounds in the area or all the racket made by the police in the warehouse kept that from happening. He wanted the generator back if he could retrieve it, but not at the price of his freedom.

He went back to bed and thought of Cade before falling asleep.

Quinn kept the generator running for a week, then decided it was foolish to risk being seen going in and out of the building. The police had traced ownership of both buildings to his company, but there was nothing unusual in Moore Properties owning real estate. He was credited with helping to revitalize the area. He had employees who worked on that sort of thing, exactly so that the company’s image remained positive.

“He’s starting to come around,” Kai announced happily from his seat near the gurney.

Quinn smiled, nodded, stretched, and sighed.

Other than the moment when he had noticed the blood on Kai, nothing in today’s activities had been arousing. Exciting, yes, but not the sort of thing he ultimately found satisfying. That was all right, though. His involvement in the abduction and killing first of Cade and then of Marilyn, so close to each other in time, had left him sated. Experience said he wouldn’t remain so, but the restless edge was off for a while.

Quinn supposed that, as a matter of self-preservation, at some point he would have to kill Kai and Donovan and-saving the best for last-his father. But that could wait. Besides, his father had plans, and like his brothers, Quinn was curious about them. That curiosity would keep them all doing just as Nick Parrish bid them to do.

For now.

The plane landed smoothly and taxied toward a hangar. The flight had been short, as intended. It was a flight that Donovan had completed many times between these two destinations in recent weeks, in part to rehearse, in part to allay the suspicions of anyone who might have noticed the flight today. It was a remote area but not utterly uninhabited.

The plane came to a halt, and they disembarked, but Donovan did little more than help them unload before taking off again. He would eventually meet them in Las Piernas.

The drugs that had been given to Parrish at the prison were finally wearing off. With Kai’s help, Parrish came woozily to a sitting position.

“Thank you, Son,” he said, and Kai beamed. Parrish looked over at Quinn and gave him a charming smile. “You’ve both been of great help to me.” He stretched. “How good to be free! But we haven’t any time to waste. Quinn, you have what we need?”

“Yes, sir.” Quinn opened a locker at the back of the building and brought out the wig and clothing stored there.

They changed quickly and packed up all signs of their presence. The gurney was moved to a locked storeroom behind a workbench, covered with a drop cloth, and then loaded up with boxes and other items. Donovan would dispose of it later.

They climbed into the Ford Escape (Quinn wondered even now if irony had determined Donovan’s choice of vehicle) parked just outside the hangar. Quinn drove, Kai sitting next to him. Their father sat in the back, looking calm and pleased with himself, and not at all like someone who might at any moment be apprehended as a prison escapee.

When I grow up, Quinn thought with a smile, I want to be like you, Dad.