The Collected

CHAPTER 38

They took a room in a hotel near the center of Tampico that Orlando deemed to have adequate Wi-Fi coverage.

While she buried herself in her laptop, Quinn tried calling Misty, but only got through to her voice mail. He left a message, then called Steve Howard.

“She wanted me to stay here at her place,” Howard said. “Said she’d be back within a few hours.”

“Where did she go?” Quinn asked.

“To get something for you, I gathered, but she wouldn’t say where that was.”

“You should have gone with her.”

“Oh, I know. I actually did try to follow her, but damn if that woman didn’t give me the slip. Are we sure she was only Peter’s assistant?”

Quinn told him to call back as soon as she returned, and hung up.

Waiting was a prominent part of a cleaner’s job. If you weren’t good at it, you might as well find some other profession. But this wasn’t waiting for someone to give him the signal to remove a body. This was waiting for information other people were gathering for him, and it made him feel restless.

“Anyone else hungry?” he asked, needing to do something. “I’ll go out and see what I can find.”

“I’ll join you,” Daeng said, pushing himself off one of the beds.

“No, I’ll go.” Liz jumped up.

Even Orlando looked up in surprise.

Quinn headed for the door. “All right. Come on.”

There was no need to use the car. There were plenty of places within walking distance to pick up a meal.

For the first few minutes, neither of them spoke as they headed down the street.

As they neared a few restaurants, Quinn said, “Any preference?”

“Mexican?” she said.

“Very funny.”

Quinn flipped a coin in his head, and the second restaurant won. They ordered four tortas de la barda, a half dozen empanadas de camaron, and some freshly made tortillas, then took the empty table near the window to wait.

Quinn stared outside, watching the cars and checking the people on the street out of habit.

Something touched his hand. He jerked it back before he realized it had been Liz.

“I know that you’re upset I’m here,” she told him. She put her hand on his again. “If I were you, I would be, too.”

The corner of his mouth ticked up.

“But if you were me,” she went on, “you would do what I’ve done also.”

“But I have the experience,” he countered.

“Even if you didn’t.”

There was no need for him to respond. She was right. They both knew it.

“I won’t get in your way. But I need to be close.”

“It’s dangerous, Liz. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

She squeezed his hand. “I know it’s dangerous. Don’t forget I’ve seen how crazy things can get in your world. But, Jake, I love him. I’ll do anything for him, just like I know he’d do anything for me. Just like you’d do anything for Orlando.”

“Or you.”

She smiled. “Or me.”

“So what am I supposed to say? ‘Sure, you can tag along anytime you want, just duck if anyone shoots’?”

She laughed, natural and light, something he hadn’t made her do in forever. Though he tried to suppress it, a smile cracked on his face.

“There are certain situations when you should probably tell me no,” she said. “But you can’t shut me out of everything. I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m not someone who needs her big brother to decide everything for her.”

Quinn tensed, knowing he hadn’t been there when she was that girl who needed him. But instead of going down that road, she said, “I know how much you care about me. I know the things you’ve done to help me. I may not always agree with your choices, but I do know your heart has always been in the right place. And…” She paused. “I love you for that. You’re my big brother. I love you. Period.”

It was something he hadn’t allowed himself to hope to hear from her lips again. He turned his hand so they were palm in palm.

“Everything I’ve done is only because I love you,” he whispered.

“I know.”

She squeezed his hand.

He had told himself that his hope for Liz and Nate’s relationship to eventually fade away was for her protection, to keep her from getting emotionally-and maybe even physically-hurt. And while that was true, he now saw that desire for what it really was-his own selfish need to control the world around his sister and keep her from harm.

“If I tell you that you can’t do something or come with us somewhere, you have to listen to me,” he said.

“I can’t guarantee I’m always going to be happy about it.”

“And I can’t guarantee I’ll always be nice about it.”

She pulled her hand from his, turned it sideways, and held it across the table. “Deal.”

He took her hand and they shook.

Quinn put an arm around Liz as they walked back to the hotel. She returned the gesture, even resting her head on his shoulder for a moment.

The smell of the food they were carrying preceded them through the doorway as they reentered the hotel room. It’d been a while since their last meal, so Quinn was sure Orlando and Daeng would hurry over to grab what they wanted. But they both remained by Orlando’s computer, looking at the screen.

“You’ll want to see this,” Orlando said.

Quinn immediately set the bags down and joined them, Liz only a step behind him.

“What’ve you got?” he asked.

“Nate’s beacon went active again for a few seconds.”

“What?” Liz said. “You know where he is?”

Orlando shook her head. “No. There seems to be some sort of interference. Only bits and pieces got through. There was enough, though, for me to narrow it down some more.”

“How much more?” Quinn asked.

Orlando didn’t look as hopeful as he would have liked. “Pretty much the whole Caribbean, with the tip of Florida and a bit of Colombia thrown in.”

“You said you only had it for a few seconds?”

“Yeah.”

“Like last time,” Quinn said, disappointed.

“Actually, not quite like last time. Before, it kind of faded out. This time it was just there, then gone. No fade. Like he turned it off.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Could be anything.”

As Quinn straightened up, a whiff of the empanadas drifted by, but the hunger he’d been feeling moments before was gone.

“There’s more,” Orlando said. “Before Nate’s signal went active again, I dug into the radar database for this area. Given the time our security guard friend told us the plane took off, I was able to isolate the cargo plane’s flight path. The database only saves snapshot readings once a minute, and it’s from only the first thirty minutes of the flight before the plane moved out of range, but it gives us direction.”

She brought up a map showing Tampico and the rest of eastern Mexico. A line of unconnected blue circles started at approximately the location of the private airstrip, then headed almost due east over the Gulf of Mexico. After eleven circles-or minutes-the plane adjusted its path into a more southeasterly direction. After nineteen more, it was gone.

“I did a projection,” she said, and hit a few more keys. The map zoomed out to include the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Where the blue circles stopped, a straight, red line took over. “If they didn’t make any other course corrections, their flight path would have taken them over the northern tip of the Yucatan, between Cuba and Jamaica, over part of Haiti, south of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and finally over Dominica before moving out into the Atlantic.”

“If they didn’t change their flight path,” Quinn said. “If they did, they could be on any of those islands.”

“I didn’t say the info was perfect, but I think there’s better than an even chance that I’m right.”

Even if she were right, the area Nate might be in was still huge.

“Anything else?” he asked.

She scowled at him. “You weren’t gone that long. I was just finishing up programming a worm that I’ll send out to search for radar data along that path. Hopefully, we’ll pick up the plane again. It’s a long shot, but it’s automated so worth trying.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

Letting her get back to work, he helped Liz unpack the food. He then took a tentative bite of a torta, but set the sandwich back down.

Once more he was waiting, and once more he didn’t like it.

He pulled out his phone, needing to do something, and moved toward the window. Misty’s line rang five times, and he was kicked again into her voice mail.

“It’s Quinn. Really hoping you found something. Call me back.”