Flight 12: A Jonathan Quinn Thriller

CHAPTER 8

“Did you have to shoot him?” Quinn asked, as he and Nate rolled Fischer’s body into a tarp they’d found in the garage. Thankfully, the blood splatter had been mostly contained to the carpet where the man had fallen, though there was some on the walls that would have to be dealt with.

“I guess I could have let him shoot me first,” Nate replied. “Would that have helped?”

They lifted the body.

Grimacing, Quinn said, “That would have just meant more for me to clean up.”

They carried the body down the stairs at the other end of the hall to the basement level, then lugged it into the crematorium. Morgan was already there, tied up and still unconscious in the corner.

After Quinn fired up the second cremation chamber, he joined Nate at the courier’s body. The door to the first chamber was open and waiting, but neither man was ready to put the girl in yet.

Too young, Quinn thought. She probably hadn’t even fully understood the threat she lived under every day. Few in her line of work did, no matter what their age.

Quinn finally nodded and they lifted the courier.

“Safe journey,” Nate said as they slid her inside and closed the door.

Quinn sent Nate back upstairs to cut out the section of carpet Fischer had died on and scrape the affected portions of the walls. The hallway would receive a full makeover, courtesy of Helen Cho. Quinn might even talk her into redoing the entire first floor. It would go a long way toward appeasing the shock and anger Barry was likely to feel when he finally woke from his stupor.

Quinn needed to talk to her about something else first, though. He stepped into the hall in case Morgan wasn’t as out of it as he looked, and shut the door. As usual, one of Helen’s assistants answered. When Quinn identified himself, the call was put straight through.

“I hope everything went smoothly,” she said.

Quinn had to choke back a laugh before he filled her in on his and Nate’s evening.

“You still have the chip, though, don’t you?” she asked.

“I do.”

“That’s something, anyway. At least Jenna didn’t die in vain.”

Quinn thought the courier would argue the point if she could, but he said nothing.

“The chip needs to be taken to Eli/Kreck in Newton,” Helen said. “I wouldn’t want to presume, but…”

“Wait. Are you asking me to be your courier?”

“If it’s a problem, I can arrange for someone to pick it up from you.”

Quinn usually would never even entertain an idea like that, but he couldn’t help thinking about the girl and the rest of a life she would never live. “Text me the contact info. We’ll get it there.”

“Thank you.”

“There is one other thing,” he said. “What do you want to do with Morgan?”

She was quiet for a moment. “You said he had a flight booked?”

Quinn had found the man’s electronic boarding pass on his phone, and had taken a picture of it with his own device. He checked the picture again. “Skyway Airlines Flight 12 to Rome. Leaves out of JFK at midnight.”

“It would be nice to catch him with Loban,” she said, more to herself than to Quinn. Then, “I’ll arrange for someone to take his place. Let me call you back with the details.”

“Isn’t it likely Loban already knows him? He’ll spot your guy a million miles away.”

“Look, if you have a better idea, I’m happy to hear it,” she said, frustrated.

Quinn paused, and then said, “Actually, I do.”

Morgan heard a voice. Something about cardboard, or was it carpets?

The side of his face thudded with pain. A check with his tongue confirmed at least one of his teeth was loose.

Assholes.

Keeping his eyes closed, he mentally scanned the rest of his body. A faint point of pain on his upper arm told him he must have fallen against something sharp, but other than that and his throbbing cheek, he appeared to be uninjured. His hands, though, were tied behind his back by what felt like zip ties.

He parted his eyelids just enough to see through his lashes. Not the casket room. He slowly turned his head a few inches for a look around.

He was in the crematorium, and he wasn’t alone.

The two cleaners stood next to the central table, their backs to him, talking. No question he’d underestimated their abilities, but they had made a mistake by leaving him alive. He’d make them pay, if not today then soon enough.

One of the guys said something about stairs. Morgan froze as the other one glanced in his direction, but the man quickly turned away and said, “It’ll go faster if we both do it.”

They walked out the door together, but Morgan didn’t move a muscle until their footsteps faded to nothing. Convinced they were gone, he struggled to his feet and scanned the area. There had to be something in the room he could use to cut himself free.

Along the wall to the right were several metal cabinets. With his hands behind his back, he had to work blindly to get them open. The first contained a bunch of supplies, none of which was useful. But in the second, he discovered a large toolbox on the bottom shelf.

He used his feet to work the box out, but as he tried to ease it to the floor, it tilted and banged against the concrete. He raced over to the door and listened, but after nearly a minute passed without the sound of steps, he returned to the toolbox and opened it.

The majority of the tools were screwdrivers and wrenches, but among them was a pair of wire cutters that would work just fine. He was able to get the tool into his hand with little trouble, but had to hold it at an awkward angle to reach the zip tie. Three times he dropped the cutters to the floor before he finally snapped through his restraints.

As he rubbed his freed wrists, he spotted two milk carton-sized cardboard boxes with lids sitting beside them on the central table. Temporary storage urns for the ashes, he guessed. For a moment, he couldn’t understand why there were two, but then he remembered the gunshot in the hallway outside the casket room.

Fischer, the pain-in-the-ass assassin, ending up at the wrong end of a bullet.

On the floor near the exit was a black duffel bag. Opening it, he realized it was the same bag he’d discovered in the backseat of the sedan. Though the duct tape and rope were still there, the tool cases had been replaced by his and Fischer’s suppressor-enhanced pistols.

He pulled his weapon out, pleased to be armed again. But when he checked the chamber, he saw it was empty. He popped out the mag and found no bullets in there, either. He checked Fischer’s gun but it had also been cleaned out.

He searched through the duffel, hoping the ammo was inside, but no such luck. The bastards had apparently added the bullets to their own stash.

His hunt through the bag did turn up something very interesting, though — a small plastic container with the letters E/K embossed on top. He opened it and couldn’t believe what he was looking at.

The chip.

He dumped it into his hand. It had no markings but the E/K on the box was more than enough to ID it.

So much trouble for such a little thing.

He heard a distant thud from beyond the door.

Quickly, he put the chip back into the box. It was slightly smaller than the cutout space in the foam but he had probably just put it in wrong. No time to worry about it now. He closed the top and shoved it into his pocket next to his phone that contained the boarding pass for his flight — a flight that would now have a much happier ending than he’d feared.

He smiled as he realized that with Fischer out of the picture, the fee would all be his.

He inched open the door and peeked into the corridor. Wherever the thud had come from, it hadn’t been from the hall so he exited the crematorium.

Unlike before, the outside doors to the ramp were closed. He paused at them only long enough to listen for anyone on the other side, and then quietly opened one and sneaked outside.

Fifty-five seconds later he was behind the wheel of the Mercedes. As soon as the engine roared to life, he shifted into DRIVE and sped off into the night.

From the darkened window of Barry’s second-floor office, Quinn watched the man run across the mortuary parking lot.

“He’s away,” he said into the phone.

“And he took the bait?” Helen asked.

“He did.”

Fifteen minutes earlier, Quinn had injected Morgan with a mild stimulant. After that, it had simply been a matter of waiting for the first sign the man was coming to. Quinn and Nate then staged their exit and headed upstairs. There, they had watched everything Morgan did on a portable monitor, the feed coming from a micro camera Nate had set up downstairs. The chip the man had taken had actually come out of the electronic lock deactivator from Quinn’s clean kit, and Orlando would not be happy about losing it. It was not quite the same size as the Eli/Kreck chip, but close enough to fool Morgan.

“I’m worried he might take it somewhere else and skip Rome altogether, ” Helen said.

“If he does, we’ll know. Either way, we’ll be in touch later.”

He hung up and called Orlando.

“So?” she asked.

“It worked.”

“Damn,” she said. She had bet him twenty bucks Morgan wouldn’t find the chip.

“I’ll collect when I get home.”

“Whatever.”

“Is Daeng on the line?” Quinn asked.

“I’m here,” Daeng answered.

When Quinn and Nate had sneaked out of the crematorium and grabbed the duffel bag from the backseat of the sedan, the item Quinn had given his partner was a tracking device. Nate had then gone out to the street and located the Mercedes that had been following them. The tracker was now affixed on the underside of the rear fender.

“You’re on,” Quinn told Daeng. “Should be easy to tail him. No water this time.”

“You’re hilarious,” Daeng said.

“I’ll keep tabs on the tracker and guide you,” Orlando said. “But once he’s out of the car, it will be all you.”

“If he does go to the airport, I’ll need a ticket to get past security.”

“Already arranged,” she said.

“Do you want me to get on the flight, too?” Daeng asked. “See who he meets?”

“You just want a free ride to Italy,” Orlando said.

“I’m shocked you’d say that. I’m only thinking of the job.”

“Sure you are.”

“No plane ride,” Quinn said. “Once he’s on board, you can leave. Helen’s people will handle things in Rome. Our job ends at the gate.”

Quinn had thought Barry would wake before they finished with the second body, but the mortician was still snoring away when it was time for them to go.

“You know what we should do,” Nate said. “We should hide the camera someplace where we can catch his reaction when he sees the missing carpet. That would be priceless.”

As amusing as that would have been, before they took off, Quinn left a note explaining that everything would be taken care of, and that Barry should check his special bank account for his usual fee plus a nice bonus.

It was midafternoon by the time Quinn and Nate arrived in Newton, Massachusetts. The handoff of the chip went off without a hitch, finally closing the book on Jenna Tate’s last mission.

By the time Skyway Flight 12 to Rome was boarding later that night, Quinn was back in San Francisco, stretched out on the bed next to Orlando.

“There’s the call for first class,” Daeng said over the speakerphone. “He’s showing the attendant his boarding pass…she’s scanning it…annnnd there he goes into the tunnel.”

“Well done,” Quinn said.

“Can I go now?”

“Wait until the plane pulls away from the gate, then you can do whatever you want.”

“I guess I could do that,” Daeng said. “See you when I see you,”

Orlando disconnected the call and put the phone on the nightstand. “You know what I’d love right now?”

He looked over at her. “Paying up on the bet?”

She frowned at him. “Like I’ll ever do that.” She settled back against her pillow. “No. A foot rub.”

“A foot rub? Really?”

She thought for a moment. “That or bacon.”

“Dear God. How long is this going to last?”

Narrowing her eyes, she said, “Why? Is this a problem?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Not at all.” In a burst of faux excitement, he pushed off the bed. “Why don’t I fry up some bacon? You can eat it while I massage your toes.”

“Now there’s a smart man. You’re forgiven.” She raised an eyebrow. “For now.”