The Buried

CHAPTER 29

The jet carrying Orlando and Daeng touched down at Palm Springs International Airport a few minutes before noon local time. Outside the terminal they found Ananke waiting for them.

The assassin smiled at Daeng, looking him up and down as she offered him her hand. “You must be Daeng. I’ve heard so little about you, which is clearly unfortunate.”

“Nice to meet you,” Daeng said, shaking her hand and looking only a bit flustered.

“And Orlando, you look so…big.”

She opened her arms, offering a hug, but Orlando took a step back.

“No, thanks,” she said. “Did you get the car?”

Ananke shook her head. “I only arrived five minutes before you.”

Orlando checked her e-mail and found out where the car she’d arranged for was parked.

“Why doesn’t Quinn trot you out more?” Ananke said to Daeng.

Before Daeng could respond, Orlando said, “Follow me,” and led them to the waiting BMW 535i.

With Daeng as driver, Orlando in the front beside him, and Ananke relegated to the back, they headed west into town.

“So when are you due?” Ananke asked after they’d been on the road for several minutes.

Orlando ignored the question as she tracked their progress on her phone.

“You’re not having twins, are you?”

Orlando looked out the window. “Three more streets and take a left.”

“Got it,” Daeng said.

“Does the father know?” Ananke asked.

Orlando whirled around. “That is over the line. Not another word out of you.”

Ananke had veered into the topic that had caused the rift between them — Orlando’s former lover and Garrett’s father, Durrie. Back when Orlando lived with him, Durrie had confessed that Ananke had tried to get him into bed. Orlando never knew if she’d been successful or not, but that the girl tried was enough.

“You’re right,” Ananke said, the playful quality in her voice gone. “I’m sorry.”

Orlando settled back in her seat.

Evert had told her that Tex Winston owned a townhouse near the city center.

“I know for a fact that he was there last night,” Gordon had said after giving her the address. “He called me looking for work.”

“Do you think he’s picked up something by now?” she asked.

“I doubt it. People don’t like working with him. He has a short fuse and no sense of humor. Not a great combo.”

They found the townhouse complex on a wide, quiet street three blocks east of Palm Canyon Drive. They parked out front and entered through the guest gate, the electronic lock no match for even the greenest operative.

Winston’s place was number nineteen and in the back row. A vehicle was in its assigned spot out front, and when Orlando listened at the townhouse’s door, she heard a TV inside.

They had a quick discussion on what tactic to use, then Daeng and Ananke moved to either side of the door. Once they were set, Orlando pushed the doorbell. After a few moments, she heard feet shuffling on the other side. The peephole darkened and a voice called through the door, “What do you want?”

“It’s Deedee,” Orlando said.

“That supposed to mean something to me?”

“It’s Deedee. I’m here to—”

Instead of finishing her sentence, she grabbed her stomach, let out a little cry, and bent forward.

Winston let her stay like that for a beat before asking, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Please,” she said. “I need…I need to sit down.”

The door remained closed.

She looked at the peephole, her face straining from the imaginary pain. “Please.”

Nothing for a few seconds, and then the door cracked open. “Are you sick?”

“I’m pregnant. I just need to rest for a minute.”

When he started opening the door wider, Daeng and Ananke shot around the jamb in unison and knocked him back into his house. Not giving him a chance to recover, they grabbed his arm and pushed him against the kitchen counter.

Orlando followed her colleagues in and closed the door.

“Let go of me!” Winston roared. He twisted back and forth, trying to break free.

“I’d stop that if I were you,” Orlando said.

His gaze turned to her, then switched quickly to the gun she was pointing at his chest. His mouth contorted into a snarl. “You wouldn’t shoot me.”

“I wouldn’t challenge her, buddy boy,” Ananke said. “Her hormones aren’t exactly balanced at the moment.”

Winston relaxed and donned a you-got-me look, then suddenly pushed up with his feet and threw his legs into the air, as if to flip onto the counter. It was all very Bruce Lee. The only flaw in his plan was that once he was airborne, Daeng and Ananke let go.

Down he went, the back of his head cracking on the edge of the counter as he fell to the floor.

Daeng toed Winston’s unmoving body.

“Oh, great,” Orlando said. “Please tell me he’s still breathing.”

Quinn and Nate landed at O’Hare International Airport forty-five minutes after their colleagues reached Palm Springs. Following the signal from Dani’s tracking chip, they headed south until they reached an area of warehouses and small manufacturing facilities in Broadview.

The building Dani’s signal was coming from was set back from the road, behind a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. The building was a long, rectangular structure, two stories tall and made of brick. Attached to the front section of the fence was a sign that read FOR LEASE.

“I count three entrances,” Quinn told Nate as they drove by. One in front, and two on the left side — a set of double doors and a large roll-up. “No sign of anyone.”

They continued down the block and pulled into the parking area of a wholesale plumbing-supply business.

“How do you want to handle things?” Nate asked as he killed the engine.

To get to the building, they’d have to go through the fence, but the only gate Quinn had seen would likely be watched. He pulled up a satellite image of the area.

“The lot backs up to a distribution center.” He showed the image to Nate. “If these are still there”—he pointed at several shipping containers near the back of the other business—“we can get in behind them and cut a hole in the fence.”

“Works for me,” Nate said.

Before leaving Spokane, they had equipped themselves from Orlando’s stash in the RV, but had failed to bring along a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. After a stop at a nearby hardware store, they made their way to the distribution center.

The good news was that the containers were still at the back of the lot. The bad was that the entrance to the facility was guarded so they couldn’t drive on. The property next door, however, did not have the same issue.

The sign on that building read EPSTEIN SYSTEMS. Quinn had no idea what they did but apparently it involved only a few people, as there were just four cars parked out front.

Nate drove along the side of the building and turned around the back. As Quinn had hoped, there were no other cars, and no way for anyone inside to know Quinn and Nate were there. At the corner shared with the distribution center, they cut enough of the fence away from the pole to bend it back and slip through.

They walked fast across the thirty feet of open space between the fence and the containers, without anyone back at the main building noticing them. When they were in position, they studied the back of the building Dani was in. No doors, just a strip of long, narrow windows running across the building a few feet below the roofline.

Quinn pointed at an old Dumpster sitting to the side. “If we move that over to those pipes, we can scale up.”

The pipes were a set of four electrical conduit tubes running up to the roof, each no more than an inch in diameter. They weren’t optimum but Quinn and Nate had climbed walls using less.

Nate cut a flap in the fence, held it out of the way so Quinn could pass through, and then he followed. Moving the Dumpster was tricky. It had a bad wheel that wanted to squeak with every turn. Quinn had to lift the corner off the ground while Nate pushed.

“Why don’t you stay down here,” Quinn suggested when he noticed Nate rubbing his bruised ribs. “I’ll go up and scout around.”

“No way,” Nate said.

He pulled himself onto the Dumpster and started up the skinny pipes to the roof. Quinn waited until Nate was finished before making his own way to the top.

The roof was massive. Scattered across it were several old air-con units, dozens of pipe vents, and several other items that made up the building’s systems. Quinn had hoped to find a stairwell entrance but didn’t see any.

“Are those hatches?” Nate asked a few moments later, nodding toward the far end.

It was hard to tell from where they were. To get a better look, they stuck to the edges, where their steps had less chance of being heard, and headed over. One of the metal plates was indeed a hatch, while the other was some kind of vent.

They knelt beside the former. Quinn ran his fingers underneath the lip until he found a release lever. He had to push hard to get it to move, and when it finally slid to the open position, it did so with a much louder click than he would have liked. He and Nate froze. When no one came to check out the noise, Quinn grabbed the lip again and lifted.

The hatch moved up four inches before it was stopped by something inside. Leaning down, he discovered a rod, one end attached to the hatch and the other running down below the frame, out of sight. He moved his hand through the opening and felt around. The problem was a hook on the bottom, and the only way to dislodge it was to lower the hatch.

“I need something thin but strong,” he whispered to Nate. “At least a foot long.”

With a nod, Nate crept back to the edge of the roof and soon returned with several twigs, none more than an eighth of an inch in diameter.

Quinn chose one, notched a V into the end, and slipped it through the opening, placing it so that the cut cradled the rod. He then lowered the hatch until there was just enough space for the twig. With a push of the stick, the hook swung out of its mooring point, allowing him to open the hatch all the way.

He leaned through the hole. An empty hallway, the only illumination coming from the sunlight streaming past Quinn.

He lowered Nate in first, and then slipped into the opening. Nate grabbed on to him as Quinn hung from the frame and helped him down without making any noise.

Nate winced as he straightened up, but Quinn acted like he hadn’t noticed.

There were several more doors along the corridor, but the one at the very end interested Quinn the most. He was sure it would lead them farther into the building.

It opened with a slight squeak. Again, they paused.

Though they heard no one heading their way, they did hear a voice.

Winston’s townhouse was an end unit, designed so that the master suite didn’t share a wall with anyone else. Perfect for their needs.

Daeng and Ananke brought two dining room chairs up to the master bathroom. One they placed in the large Jacuzzi tub, then dumped Winston onto it and tied him up. The other was placed just outside the tub for Orlando.

“Daeng, if you will,” Orlando said, when everything was ready.

Daeng picked up a bucket of ice water they’d prepared downstairs and began pouring it over Winston’s head. The man woke with a jolt, gasping for breath.

Orlando let Daeng douse him for a few more seconds before saying, “Enough, I think.”

Daeng tipped the bucket back.

“What the hell, man?” Winston said between pants. “Who are you?”

“We have a few questions for you, Mr. Winston, and would appreciate your cooperation,” Orlando said.

“Fuck you!”

Orlando glanced at Daeng and tilted her head ever so slightly. He stepped forward again and dumped the remaining water over the man’s head.

Winston sputtered and started panting again. With a shiver in his voice, he said, “You think that’s going to make me talk?”

“Of course not,” Orlando said.

This time her nod was to Ananke.

The smiling assassin approached Winston slowly and leaned forward until her mouth was only a few inches from his ear. “She doesn’t like it when you don’t cooperate,” Ananke whispered. As the last word left her lips, she stabbed a syringe into his arm and shoved down the plunger.

Winston yelled out and tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go.

As Ananke stepped back, Orlando said, “In about an hour you’ll start to feel the sweats. Nothing too drastic. Under normal conditions you might not even notice. Another hour after that, your gut will begin to clench, and soon you’ll be vomiting up everything that’s in your stomach. But the spasms won’t stop. As you continue to dry heave, your temperature will spike. It’ll probably be a good five or six hours before you start bleeding from your nose and your eyes, but it will come. And the pain—” She sucked in a breath and shook her head. “I’m not going to lie to you. It’s going to be bad. Every nerve ending is going to feel like it’s being smashed under a hammer. You’re going to die, Mr. Winston, but not until morning. Unless, of course, you take your own life. Most in your position do.”

Throughout her speech, he stared at her, his eyes growing wider and wider.

She reached over to the sink counter and picked up a hand towel. Unfolding it, she revealed another syringe. She held it in the air and admired it.

“This,” she said, “will stop all that from happening.”

It was a lie, of course. Her syringe contained the same harmless saline solution that had just been injected into him. This part of the plan had been Ananke’s idea, a riff, she told them, on the method she’d used on Edmondson.

“Give it to me,” he said. “Please. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

Orlando frowned. “You’ll answer our questions first, and then you get it.”

“No way, man. You give it to me first. If I die, whatever it is you want to know goes with me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ll admit it would be easier to get the information from you, but there are other ways to obtain it. So, if you’re refusing to cooperate, I guess we’re done here.” She stood up. “Have a good life, Mr. Winston. What little of it that’s left.”

She started for the door. Daeng and Ananke turned to leave with her.

“No!” Winston yelled. “All right, all right. I’ll talk first. I’ll talk!”

Beyond the door, Quinn and Nate found stairs leading down to the first floor. Walls lined both sides, the one on the right stopping near the bottom, while the one on the left continued on for another dozen feet until it met the front corner of the building.

Quinn went first, stopping four steps from the bottom.

The voice was a bit louder, but still too distant to make out the words. He could tell the speaker was a man.

He peeked around the end of the wall. A huge room extended all the way to the far side of the building and back nearly to the center point. To his left, at the front of the structure, was a walled-off room, probably a lobby.

If he had to guess, machinery had once filled the space. Now, the only machine in the room was an ambulance parked near the closed roll-up door. The room appeared otherwise deserted.

He heard the voice again, and realized it was coming from an open doorway along the back. After letting Nate take a look, he pointed at the walled-off room up front. It would provide a considerably better vantage point than the stairs. Staying low, they crept over to it and worked their way down the wall until they came to a door. All was quiet on the other side, so Quinn inched it open. Taking the darkness within as a good sign, they slipped inside.

Quinn did a quick scan with his penlight to make sure they were alone, and then said, “Head for the ambulance. While you disable it, I’ll check out that back door to see if I can figure out what’s going on.”

“Got it.”

Quinn eased the door open, and immediately stopped.

Someone was walking across the big room. Make that two people. When they stopped, Quinn heard one of the ambulance doors open. A third set of steps, farther away.

Quinn mimed for Nate to switch places with him and hold the door. He then slipped his phone through the narrow opening until the camera lens cleared the jamb.

On the screen was a view of the other room. He changed the angle until the ambulance was the focus, and zoomed in. The rear door was open wide. One man was standing in front of the opening, pulling out a gurney. Another was walking toward the man from the back of the room.

As the back end of the gurney came out of the vehicle, the rear legs and wheels automatically deployed. The third man climbed out of the ambulance a moment later, set something on top of the rolling bed, and grabbed the end.

The two with the gurney rolled it toward the back door, while the other man continued to the ambulance and circled to the driver’s side.

“Are they going somewhere?” Nate asked.

Quinn had been wondering the same thing, but remained silent as he tried to figure out what to do.

Their choices were few, and none of them good.

Orlando, Daeng, and Ananke left Winston a huddling mess under a steady stream of cold water in his shower. That had been Ananke’s doing, a little ad-libbed addition to what Orlando had told the guy.

“You may feel clammy for the next twenty-four hours,” Orlando had said as she administered the “antidote.” “There’s a chance you’ll have a headache, too.”

His fear ticked up another notch. “I–I already have one.”

She nodded. “If you’re lucky it won’t get too bad. Sometimes…” She shrugged. “Let’s just say, to lessen the side effects of the antidote, you’ll want to do nothing for at least the next twenty-four hours. Forty-eight would be even better. Can you do that?”

Lips shaking, he said, “Yes.”

“I would stay in bed and sleep. Wouldn’t even turn on the TV. But that’s just me.”

Though he said nothing, Orlando knew he would do exactly that.

When she signaled Daeng, he cut Winston loose from his chair. The man immediately threw the ropes off.

“Slowly,” Orlando warned. “If you increase your heart rate, you’ll speed up the spread of the poison, making it all that much harder to rid it from your system.”

The man’s movements switched from high speed to slow motion in an instant.

“We’ll be off now, Mr. Winston. We thank you for your cooperation.”

“There is one other thing he can do,” Ananke said as Orlando and Daeng were turning for the door. “I heard one’s chances are greatly improved by soaking in cold water for thirty minutes every three hours.” She looked directly at Winston. “I don’t know if it’s true, but you might want to give it a try.”

He pushed the last of the rope away, stumbled out of the tub into the shower.

As he turned on the water, Ananke said, “Cold, remember. Only cold.”

“Cold. Right.” He moved the dial all the way to C and slipped down the wall to the tiled floor.

When they were outside, Daeng said, “The water was a nice touch.”

Ananke smiled. “Thank you very much, Daeng. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things.”

Orlando had to admit it had been a good addition, but she kept the thought to herself.

Once they were in the car, Daeng said, “Where to now?”

“You heard him,” Orlando replied. “L.A.”

“We’re not done, then?” Ananke asked.

“No.”

“Oh, goody.” She sounded genuinely excited.

Daeng looked less enthusiastic. “Maybe we should pass the information on to Helen’s organization. They’d probably want to deal with it.”

“You have more confidence in them than I do,” Orlando said.

“Okay,” he said, “but shouldn’t we at least let Quinn know what we’re doing?”

Quinn would shut her plan down before they even pulled away from the curb.

“Just drive,” she said.