CHAPTER 11

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Orlando loved Quinn. There was almost nothing he could do that would change her feelings. She even understood his self-imposed exile. Hell, she’d helped him set it up, putting him in touch with Christina in Bangkok in the first place.

He had been so damaged when he left, she wondered if he would ever recover. She wished she could do more for him, but Quinn wasn’t wired that way. Maybe in time she could help, but this first part, this finding himself again, had to be all him.

Why she’d acted annoyed with him when he called, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was just the way she thought most people would act in a similar situation, and she’d just fallen into it naturally. Perhaps, subconsciously, she’d wanted him to know his recovery wasn’t just about him. She was here, too, waiting for him, hurting for him.

Whatever he would discover at the end, she didn’t care. If he wanted to get out of the business entirely, and leave the world of secrets behind, she was fine with that. If he wanted to stay, take on some more work, she could handle that, too. She just wanted him to get to a point where he could decide which it was going to be.

Now this business with Mila had forced itself into his recovery. What his role in it was, she didn’t know. But she was worried it would prevent him from finding his peace again.

Her biggest concern at the moment was the fact he hadn’t worked in nearly nine months. Sure, he was good, the best probably, but was he sharp enough at the moment to return to the field? What if this business with Mila got him killed?

That was the one outcome Orlando dreaded over all others.

There was no question in her mind she would do everything she could to help Quinn, to give him what he needed, to hopefully keep him safe.

She had watched the video Peter had uploaded more times than she probably needed to. The raw, stark security footage was devoid of emotion, and, because of that, oddly riveting. Empty concrete one moment, distorted bag of guts and bones the next. Even seeing the man in the baseball hat check the body-knowing it was actually Mila-was fascinating.

The whole thing was a mix of the surreal and the hyper-real.

When she finally forced herself to quit watching, she turned her attention to identifying the dead man. The news reports were useless. In the initial articles she found, the police were quoted as saying the name of the victim was as yet unknown. Follow-up reports yielded the same. The only things the police would say were that the man was Caucasian, had no ID, and had jumped.

The first part, yes. The second, perhaps. The last, she didn’t believe at all.

After three days, there were no additional reports. The world had moved on to other, more pressing news. A foreigner committing suicide off a new high-rise hotel might be bad for business, but it didn’t hold the public’s attention for long.

The killer would know his name, of course, but she was willing to bet that someone in official authority knew who he was, too.

To see if she was right, she hacked into the Dar es Salaam police network, and scrounged around for any information concerning the incident. The problem was, Swahili was not one of the languages she knew, so she had to rely on the date and the phrase “Majestic Hotel” to guide her.

Still, it didn’t take long to uncover the report. Scanning through it, she looked for any names that she could use as touch points for further searches. None stood out. The only thing she could find were three references to another number that had a similar pattern to the incident’s case number. Some other event that might be tied to this one?

She dug deeper into the system, looking for a case that matched this new number. At first, she came up with nothing. Not willing to give up so easily, she opened a program she’d written herself. She called it the burrower. It was a worm that could dig its way through an entire system, looking for whatever specific word or phrase or pattern she instructed. While it was fast, because of the size of the police network, it could take several minutes to complete its task.

Orlando input the number she’d found, started the program, then got up to refresh her cup of tea.

The water on the stove was still warm enough that she didn’t need to heat it again. As she poured it into her cup, she wondered about the assignment to eliminate Mila. Had Quinn known she was the target? Why was she still alive? Surely the gunman hired for the job had been more than a match for an unsuspecting courier.

Unless she was more than a simple courier.

Orlando realized she didn’t know much about Mila. She hadn’t lied when she told Quinn she’d met her before, and she had liked her, but after that she had only heard the girl’s name in passing and had never seen her again. As far as she could remember, Quinn had never once mentioned Mila Voss.

She was carrying her cup back to her computer when she suddenly stopped mid-stride. What if Quinn and Mila had been more than just coworkers? Mila had certainly been a beautiful woman, and probably could have attracted any man she wanted.

Orlando shook her head. No, not possible. He would have said something.

But, as she returned to her desk, she wondered if he really would have said anything. He was the master of walling things off, and any relationship with Mila would have occurred in those years Orlando and Quinn hadn’t been talking to each other.

It certainly would explain why he might have covered up her death. Of course, that opened up a whole other mess of problems. What about the shooter? Wouldn’t he have known that the woman he’d been sent to kill was still breathing? Was he in on it, too? And if Quinn were having a relationship with Mila, why would he have even been included on the job to take her out?

Orlando decided she needed to find out more about the events surrounding the not-so-well-executed death of Mila Voss.

She sat back down and checked the burrower. Not only was it done, it had found what she was hoping for. The number was indeed another case file. Its prefix, though, was apparently only used for a special set of cases that could be accessed solely by the very top level of the force’s administration. The files for these cases were kept behind an additional password-protected firewall. The people who set up the system were good, just not as good as Orlando. Using another of her self-written programs, she was soon through the wall.

The file was interesting. The majority of it was written in Swahili, but there was a name listed that was most definitely not Tanzanian: Martin Langenberg. Was it the name of the dead man on the sidewalk? She looked for other information that might be useful, and turned up two additional names that sounded Tanzanian-perhaps witnesses or the officers who had worked the case-and one phone number in Dar es Salaam.

She checked the time. It was after midnight. Doing a quick calculation, she determined it would be late afternoon in Dar es Salaam. She picked up her phone and dialed the number.

The person who answered did not speak in Swahili, or even in English, but in Dutch. “Martin Langenberg’s office. May I help you?”

While Dutch was one of the languages Orlando knew, speaking it was not one of her favorite things in the world. It was full of hard sounds that made her feel like she was doing permanent damage to her mouth and throat. Which was the main reason she couldn’t speak it with a native flair like she could French or Vietnamese or Korean.

“May I speak to Mr. Langenberg, please?” she said.

“He is in a meeting. May I ask who’s calling?”

“I’ll just call back.”

She hung up before the woman could say anything more.

A Dutch-speaking office in Dar es Salaam. Interesting. The obvious guess was something oil-related.

She pulled up one of her favorite search engines and typed the phone number into it.

No listing.

There were a couple other legitimate places she could try, but she decided to go right to the source. She found a proven hack posted on one of the specialized message boards she belonged to, and used it to enter the Dar es Salaam phone company’s database. The number was listed to a Karas Holdings.

That didn’t tell her anything.

With an annoyed grunt, she dove in further.

An hour and a half later, she stood up and stretched. She’d found what she was looking for, only it was more than she expected, in a very troubling way.

Karas Holdings was a front for an organization known as REJ, who, in turn, worked almost exclusively for the CIA. She had dealt with REJ before-both she and Quinn had done jobs for them. Martin Langenberg, according to her sources, was the REJ agent overseeing operations in Africa.

Using this info, she did a surgical hack into the REJ server, looking only for anything dealing with the dead man in front of the Majestic Hotel.

She found a single document for the transfer of a body. According to the description, the body had fallen from a great height, and it was recommended that the casket remain closed.

There was a name, too.

Lawrence Rosen.

It didn’t take much work after that to compile a partial bio for Rosen, more than enough to know there was absolutely no way he had jumped. Rosen was a security operative. Freelance now, though a few years earlier he’d been a civilian employee within military intelligence. He was a connected man living in Dubai who undoubtedly had many enemies.

In Orlando’s line of work, believing in coincidences was a quick way to an early death. Rosen and Mila had both worked in the intelligence world. The fact that he died and she’d been the first to his side could not be put down to chance. There was a connection.

What, Orlando didn’t know.

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