The Buried

CHAPTER 12

“I’m going to suck at this,” Quinn said.

Orlando smiled. “Hardly.”

“Yes, I am. It’s not like I had a great role model.”

“If you even come close to sucking, I promise I’ll kill you. Does that help?”

“You should. Look what a mess I am. I don’t want to do that to our kid.”

She grabbed his face with both hands. “You’re not going to be anything like your stepfather. You’re going to be a great dad.” She touched his chest. “You have a good heart. And you’re one of the smartest people I know.”

His features softened a bit. “Not as smart as you.”

“That goes without saying,” she said. “Our baby is going to be lucky to have you as a father.”

“How can you know that?” he asked.

“I can, and I do.”

He laid his head in her lap, his ear against her belly. “I think I hear something.”

“Just my lunch.”

“No, really. I think the baby’s moving.”

Orlando’s eyes snapped open. For a few seconds she didn’t know where she was, but then the drone of an engine brought everything back. She was in Mr. Vo’s RV, lying on one of the dining table bench seats.

She assumed a bump in the road had caused the jolt that woke her, but as she struggled to sit up, she felt a tightening of muscles in her lower abdomen.

A contraction? Hey, I know I said you could come at any time, but let’s put a hold on that for a little while, okay?

She took a couple deep breaths. Up front, she could see that Garrett had moved into the passenger seat next to Mr. Vo, and that Mrs. Vo was lounging on the built-in recliner near the side door. None of them had noticed Orlando was awake.

With each breath the cramp lost strength. To distract herself, she thought about the dream. She’d been having a conversation with Quinn about…she couldn’t remember. The baby, most likely. It was always the baby these days.

When she’d been a teenager, she couldn’t even fathom the idea of having a kid, much less two. Garrett was turning out all right, though, despite everything. And at least this second child would have the advantage of having two parents around.

The pain finally gone, she decided it had been a false contraction. She’d had them with Garrett, too.

She maneuvered off the seat — something that was much harder to do than it should have been — and headed up front, her hands on the walls to steady herself.

When she passed Mrs. Vo, she saw that the woman was asleep, so she took extra care not to disturb her. Up front, she held on to a side panel and attempted to kneel, but her balance was off. Her right arm flailed out and snagged the back of Garrett’s chair.

Her son turned quickly. “Mom?”

He reached out to grab her but his seat belt held him back. By the time he got it unbuckled, she’d managed to lower herself ungracefully to the floor without any permanent damage.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mr. Vo said, looking at her through the rearview mirror. “I not see you come.”

“It’s okay. I’m fine.”

Looking unsure, Garrett let go of her arm.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Oregon,” he told her.

“Cross border forty minute ago,” Mr. Vo said.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Twelve-twenty,” he told her.

“Twelve-twenty-two,” Garrett corrected him. He was at that age when time was an exact thing. None of this “rounding off” stuff. Give or take the two minutes, she’d been asleep for over four hours, far longer than she’d planned.

“Looks like you guys have everything under control,” she said as she pushed herself up.

She reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and called Quinn. The call went straight to voice mail.

“Checking in,” she said after the tone. “Call when you have time.”

She called Daeng next.

“Sawadee, khrap,” he said, greeting her in his native Thai.

“Sawadee, ka,” she replied in kind. “Where are you?”

“Eugene, Oregon.”

“I thought you were flying to Portland.”

“I did, and then I drove here. You’re about two hours south of me, near a place called Grants Pass.”

“Oh, you’re tracking me, are you?”

“I’m merely using the software you provided,” he said. “Shall we meet in the middle? Say, Roseburg?”

Nate picked Quinn up in a parking lot just off the interstate, south of the airport.

After Quinn shared what he’d learned, Nate asked, “The Wolf? Any idea who she is?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. I think there was someone years ago who used that name. I don’t remember the context. At most it was something I heard in passing. Next time we talk to Orlando, we’ll see if she remembers.”

“So what now?”

“Now we leave town.”

Nate hesitated. “You know, there is one other thing we can check before we get out of here.”

Quinn looked at him.

“The safe house Helen set up for us,” Nate explained. “If someone went there looking for us, wouldn’t it confirm her disappearance is tied to our mission?”

Though Quinn was already convinced the connection existed, it would be better to have proof. But was checking worth the risk?

He mulled it over and consulted the map. “I-90’s up that way. We can at least do a drive-by, and then take the interstate east when we’re done.”

Looking pleased with himself, Nate shifted into drive and headed for the freeway.

Dani heard voices, close, but the words were lost to her, the drug still clouding her ability to understand. She tried to part her eyelids, but each felt as if it were sealed in place.

Her thoughts seemed to drift this way and that, until she couldn’t even remember what she was trying to figure out.

A continuous hum, either heard or imagined, underlined everything. That, and the voices—right, the voices—were the only sounds.

She fought through the fog. The voices, she realized, belonged to the two men. Nate, the younger one had been called. And…and…Quinn? That was it, right?

She felt oddly relieved that they hadn’t handed her off yet. She wasn’t sure why, but she had a sense that the longer she could stay with them, the better her chance of protecting the secret.

Her thoughts began to scramble again and slowly scatter.

The voices faded.

And there was only the hum.

Then that faded, too.

The Bellevue safe house was much larger than the one in Tacoma.

As they drove slowly past the place, Quinn noted that it looked exactly as it should have — deserted.

Maybe no one had been here at all, he thought.

“Pull over,” he told Nate as they neared the end of the block.

When they were stopped, Quinn retrieved two sets of comm gear from one of the duffels and tossed one packet to Nate.

“If you can’t reach me for any reason,” he said, “get out of here right away.”

“Got it.”

His senses on alert, Quinn headed down the sidewalk, but made it all the way to the safe house’s driveway without any warnings flashing in his head.

He paused there and pulled out his phone, looking as if he’d received a text.

Quiet. Not the tense quiet of men lying in wait. Just…quiet.

Deciding it was safe enough for a closer look, he headed up the driveway, ready to grab his weapon at the first sign of trouble. He took in the roofline and the bushes and the windows and the door, but spotted no unexpected movements anywhere.

An attached garage sat at the end of the driveway. Quinn headed for the small section of fence between it and the edge of the property, and hopped over. No longer in view of anyone on the street, he pulled out his SIG and made his way into the backyard.

Trees lined the rear half of the property, with a large grass area taking up much of the rest of the space. As for the house, a sliding glass door at the back was closed, vertical blinds pulled across it. Shades were also drawn across the rest of the windows.

Quinn returned his attention to the yard, giving it a longer look this time. The grass ended three feet from the fence, leaving a strip of land covered in dark bark chips acting as buffer between the two.

Sticking to the grass, he moved along the strip and studied the chips. About a third of the way down the side opposite the garage, he stopped. Several chips had been disturbed in a way unlike anywhere else. A few were broken. Someone had come through this way, but it could as easily have been a week ago as an hour.

He found the proof he was looking for several feet farther down, in a spot where the chips petered out, leaving a three-inch patch of soft soil. On the dirt was the partial print of a boot. Quinn had examined thousands of prints since becoming a cleaner, so it wasn’t difficult to determine this one was no more than twelve hours old.

With this in mind, he studied the grass again. Though the blades were already in the process of returning to their normal state, he could now pick out several points where they had recently been bent down.

He keyed his mic. “Nate.”

“Go for Nate.”

“You were right.”

Ricky Orbits never checked luggage onto a plane. Waiting at baggage claim was his definition of hell. Besides, the most important items he usually needed would never pass inspection. So when he landed at Sea-Tac International at 12:10 p.m., he walked straight out to the parking area where the car he’d ordered was waiting for him, complete with a loaded suitcase in the trunk filled with the rest of his requests.

The client had provided him with the address where the girl had original been found, and a list of possible locations she’d been taken to afterward. Orbits had sent out some feelers before he boarded the plane at O’Hare, and had received several responses by the time he landed. Most had no information other than what was on the news. Seems the girl wasn’t the only one being kept at the Columbia City address. Why she was more important than the others, he didn’t know, nor did he care.

One of the responses, however, reported that an elite team from a California-based security agency had arrived in the area early that morning and gone to a house in Bellevue — a house that was at the top of the list of possible hiding locations Orbits had been given.

His client had informed him that other interested parties would likely also be looking for the girl, so it was a good bet the California team was one of his competitors. He was sure they hadn’t located the girl yet, though. If they had, he would have already received a text thanking him for his time and releasing him.

He thought for a moment. It wouldn’t hurt to have a look around the Bellevue house. If the Californians had gone in hard and heavy, they might have missed some clues that could put Orbits on the right path.

He plugged the address into his GPS and hit the road. Thanks to a bit of traffic, the eighteen-mile drive took over thirty minutes.

The house was located in a nice neighborhood where most of the homes were set back from the road, with lawns of deep green grass running right up to the sidewalk.

“Your destination is one hundred feet ahead, on the right,” the female GPS voice informed him.

Right before he reached the property, he noticed a man walking along the sidewalk in front of the house. The guy hadn’t been there a moment before. Either some of the bushes near the end of the driveway had blocked him from view, or he’d been up at the house.

Another hunter?

Orbits grabbed his phone and switched on the camera. Draping his arm across the other seat and holding the device next to the headrest, he snapped off several pics as he passed the man.

Maybe the guy was no one, but it wouldn’t hurt to have him checked out.

Fifteen minutes later, he had finished his examination of the house and was sitting in his car again. He had seen signs that others had recently been there, but a look inside revealed no one had used the place for some time.

He smiled. The Californians had definitely not found the target here.

He sympathized with the others, he really did. Catching that first scent of a prey was always the hardest part of the job, but for him, it was also the most enjoyable. He was damn good at it. He was Ricky Orbits, after all. The number one hunter in the world.

The brief had mentioned that the woman had been helped in her escape by unknown individuals. Find them and he’d find her.

He pulled out his phone.

“It’s me,” Orbits said.

“What’s up, boss?” Donnie said.

“Got a few things I need you to look into.”