The Discarded

CHAPTER 22

McCrillis International had three permanent black ops sites within fifty miles of the capital, each well equipped for Gloria’s purposes. The one closest, near College Station, Maryland, was being used by another team, so she had been assigned the facility in an industrial park in Springfield, Virginia.

The interrogation room was below ground in a soundproof space with one-foot-thick concrete walls, a chair bolted to the floor, and cameras that could be turned on or off, depending on what the situation dictated.

The prisoner, an Asian man with a goatee and shoulder-length black hair, had been brought in by a McCrillis transport unit twenty minutes after Gloria and her team arrived. The man was immediately taken to the interrogation room and strapped to the chair.

Gloria had then spent the next fifteen minutes watching him on the monitor, hoping to pick up something she could use, but the whole time he just sat there, staring straight ahead, his expression blank. Even the bullet he’d taken didn’t seem to be fazing him. The wound had been treated before he was brought to the facility — nothing fancy, just a clean-and-bandage job. Given what was about to happen, any further treatment would have been a waste of resources.

“Going in,” she said to King.

“You want me to record?” he asked.

She thought for a moment and then nodded. “Until I say otherwise.”

She pushed the cart holding her bag of tricks toward the door.

This wasn’t the first time Daeng had been shot. It wasn’t even the first time he’d been shot in the leg. And as wounds went, this one hardly rated mention. It was a through and through, the bullet cutting a tunnel in his thigh muscle before exiting his leg. No bone hit, and, based on the fact his body hadn’t drained of blood, no artery, either.

As for the pain, the mental training he’d received during the brief time he’d been a monk back in Thailand helped him let much of what he was feeling flow out of him. What pain remained, he was able to mask, cringing with each burning wave on the inside, while outwardly showing nothing at all.

After being shoved into the van, he had been taken to the lowest level of a parking garage, where, about ten minutes later, a dirty white cargo van screeched down the ramp and pulled into the adjacent spot. One of the men he’d been squeezed between climbed out and then wagged his gun at Daeng and said, “Let’s go.”

As Daeng gingerly scooted across the seat, the side door of the cargo van opened. From his angle, he could see four people inside — two up front and two in the cargo area.

“I don’t need to tell you what to do, right?” the man with the gun asked.

Daeng answered by hobbling over to the van and sitting in the opening. From there, he could see a fifth guy in back.

“All the way in,” someone behind him said.

If only these assholes had shot him in the arm instead. He could have made quick work of the guy with the pistol and then run like hell. He could still accomplish the first part in his current condition, but escaping on foot was not going to happen, so he swung his legs inside and scooted out of the doorway.

“Ari, you’re up,” the guy closest to Daeng said as he closed the door.

The guy in the back picked up what looked like a hard plastic toolbox and moved over to Daeng. From the box, he removed a pair of heavy-duty shears that he used to cut away the portion of the pant leg covering Daeng’s wounds. He then cleaned everything out and bandaged Daeng.

“That should hold him,” the man announced.

With that, the van left the garage.

Though there were no windows in back that allowed Daeng to see where they were going, he knew by the time the vehicle stopped that they were well out of Washington.

The guy in the front passenger seat hopped out, and a few seconds later, Daeng could hear the squeaky sound of a metallic roll-up door being chained open. When it stopped, the driver pulled the van several feet forward and turned off the engine.

It wasn’t much of a stretch to guess they were now inside a building. This was confirmed a few moments later when the side door opened. No one asked Daeng to get out this time. Instead, two of the men grabbed him by the arms, hoisted him out of the vehicle, and guided him to a stairwell in the corner of the room. At the bottom they entered a dimly lit hallway that looked to Daeng to be concrete all the way around.

The room they took him into was three doors down and no more than twelve feet square. It had a single chair in the center of the room, facing away from the door. As he was pushed onto it, he discovered it was bolted to the floor. The men handcuffed his wrists and ankles to the chair and then left.

He had seen the cameras when he was brought in, so he knew someone was watching him. The watcher no doubt expected to see a man in pain and fear. Instead, he kept his expression blank and pictured himself lounging on a hammock in Chiang Mai, the scent of pepper and basil in the air, and a Thai pop song somewhere in the distance.

Finally, he heard the door behind him open.

Footsteps. The click, click, click of a woman’s shoes. And the rolling of wheels.

Not far into the room, the moving wheels stopped but the clicks continued.

Out of the corner of his eye, Daeng saw her come around his left side. He kept staring ahead, so it wasn’t until she was standing right in front of him that he got his first good look at her.

The woman from the courtyard. Of course.

She studied his face and then looked him up and down. “Well, you are an interesting specimen,” she said. “I understand you haven’t told anyone your name yet. Perhaps you don’t speak English.” She slowed her speech, pronouncing each word carefully. “Do you understand me?”

Using the southern California accent he’d perfected while living in L.A. as a teenager, he said, “I understand you better when you speak normally.”

“So you do talk. Then how about giving me your name?”

“You’re the host. You should go first,” he said.

“All right, then. I’m Gloria. And you are?”

“Not in the habit of giving my name to someone who holds me hostage. You can appreciate that, can’t you, Gloria?”

The smile she gave him was closed lip and humorless. “And you can appreciate that cooperation is the much easier path.”

“For you, perhaps.”

“Why were you following the Maserati?” she asked.

Daeng knew he had one job — buy time. And to do so sometimes meant dangling a carrot. “Why did you meet with the man who was in the Maserati and give him a suitcase? Was it full of items you took from Mr. Becker’s townhome? Or were you with him in Florida, too?”

She stared at him, fake smile gone. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Careful. Your lack of control is showing.”

She stepped forward and punched him in the cheek.

He stretched his mouth and said, “That was more for you than for me, I believe.”

Predictably, that brought on a second hit. “Who are you?”

Blood trickled out of Daeng’s mouth, but he kept his expression relaxed. “You choose what you want to call me. I’m flexible.”

Breathing heavily, she raised her fist as if she were going to strike a third time, but seemed to get ahold of herself at the last moment and lowered her arm.

As soon as her breathing steadied, she walked back to whatever it was she had wheeled into the room. Daeng didn’t try to see what she was doing. He’d know soon enough.

He heard a latch opening, followed by a squeak of movement. There was a moment or two of things knocking together, then relative quiet. When she walked back into view, she was holding a syringe.

“You’re not going to enjoy this,” she said. “Not only will this make you tell me everything I want to know, it’s going to make you feel like shit, too.”

He smiled and said, “I appreciate the warning.”

Quinn could see the glow of the fire in the rearview mirror as he and Nate drove away from The Hilltop. He gave it another couple miles to make sure they hadn’t been spotted, and then called Orlando.

“Did you find Boyer?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“And you two are all right?”

“Of course.”

“Then give me a second.” The speaker went silent as she put him on hold.

“I guess we’re not priority anymore,” Nate said.

Quinn grunted.

After nearly a minute, Orlando returned. “Sorry.”

“Everything all right there?” Quinn asked.

“Yeah, just had to talk to someone. Did Boyer know where Daeng is?”

“Not exactly, but he pointed us in the right direction.”

He gave her a quick rundown of his discussion with Boyer. “I’m hoping that you can track down where these McCrillis facilities are located, then Nate and I will do drive-bys and see if the tracker on the woman’s car is still working.” The trackers, unfortunately, only had an effective range of four miles. After that, the signal became spotty before dropping off to nothing.

“I should have enough time to do that.”

That wasn’t quite the answer he expected. “You have other plans?”

“I do, actually.”

As she spoke, Quinn heard what sounded like an announcement over an intercom system in the background. “Where are you?”

“Reagan Airport.”

He exchanged a look with Nate. “Okay. Why?”

“I think we found where Eli left the information he had for Abraham.”

“That’s great news. Where?”

“Tampa,” she said.

“You’re kidding me.”

“I wish I were.” She told him about Eli’s stroll in the hour before he was abducted, and of the conversation she had with a woman at a place called DeeDee’s Comics. “I called around and was able to get us on a charter heading there in a half hour.”

“You might not be the only one looking for it down there,” Quinn said. “I can send Nate with you.”

He wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of Orlando and Abraham going down there alone. If she had been at full strength, then, sure, he wouldn’t have worried so much, but her injuries still limited her abilities and she was still tiring easily. And Abraham? Well, he was in relatively good shape for a man of sixty-seven, but he was still sixty-seven.

“You’d never get him here on time,” she said. “But don’t worry. I can handle it.”

“I’d feel better if you had some backup. I don’t need you trying to be a hero.”

“Not a role I’m interested in, either. I’ve already pulled up a few names of people who are available, all right? If I think anything’s wrong, I’ll call someone in. That work for you, Dad?”

“Yeah, that works for me.”

“Now if you want me to find these McCrillis locations for you before I leave, I gotta get off the phone.”

“Right. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He disconnected the call.

“For the record,” Nate said, “she doesn’t call you Daddy when you’re alone, does she? Because that would be—”

“Shut it.”

“I mean, I guess everyone is into their own thing. I just never pictured the two of you doing the—”

“I will kill you if you do not shut up now. I don’t care how long we’ve known each other. I don’t care if you are dating my sister. I will kill you and dump you in the deepest part of the ocean. Understood?”

“I’m, uh, not sure if I should answer. You made it pretty clear I should say nothing, but then you asked a question. Conflicting signals.”

Quinn glared at him.

Nate held up a hand in surrender before using it to pull an imaginary zipper across his mouth.

Five minutes later, Quinn’s phone pinged several times with incoming texts. A different address was in each of the first three messages, and in the last, a note from Orlando:

Heading onto plane now.

Takeoff sched. 15 mins.

Should be back online not

long after that if you need me.

The closest McCrillis facility was only ten miles away, right there in Maryland.

The captive’s name was Daeng, information he sounded almost eager to give up when Gloria started asking him questions again, this time post-injection. He was apparently from Thailand, though he spoke English like he’d been in the States his whole life. When asked about this, he told her about his teen years living in Los Angeles and going to Hollywood High.

With the subject sufficiently primed, she turned to the questions that really mattered.

“Who do you work for?” she asked.

“Work for?” he said, his head bobbing loosely on his neck, a half smile on his face. “Who do any of us work for?”

“Answer my question.”

“I work for myself.”

“Doing what?”

He tried to shrug, but his shoulder moved independently of each other, creating more of a wavelike motion. “Many, many things. Whatever needs to be done.” He looked at her. “Do you need something done?”

“I do. I need you to tell me who was paying you to follow the Maserati.”

“Maserati. Beautiful car, but too showy for me.”

“Who was paying you?”

He blinked. “As far as I know, no one was paying me for that.”

“Then why were you following it?”

“To see where it went.”

“Why?”

His eyes narrowed in confusion. “I told you why. To see where it went.”

“But you stopped following before it got to where it was going.”

“No longer necessary.”

Gloria could feel her frustration level rising. “Mr. Daeng, who—”

“Just Daeng.”

“Fine. Daeng, who told you to follow the Maserati?”

He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment before he said, “Quinn.”

The name meant nothing to her, but at least it was a name.

“Why did he want you to follow it?”

“To find out where it went.”

She grabbed his face and tilted it up. “I want to know why.”

A grin still on his lips, he said, “Already told you.

She shoved his head back and knocked it against the chair. But even this didn’t seem to faze him. While the dose she’d given him had indeed made him more compliant, it was clear this wasn’t the first time the man had been drugged, and he was able to exert some directional control over his responses.

“This Quinn. Who is he?”

“He’s my friend.”

“Okay, he’s your friend, so tell me about him.”

Daeng’s head lolled to the side. “He likes to swim.”

“Why would he ask you to follow the man in the Maserati?”

“Because he was busy following you.”

The woman stared at him. “What did you say?”

His eyes closed. When they fluttered open again, his smile was gone and the color was draining from his face. “I think…I’m going…”

Whatever the man ate last raced out his mouth and onto the floor beside his chair. Gloria leaped back but still ended up with a few droplets on her shoes.

Daeng’s head rolled forward, his chin collapsing against his chest. She grabbed his hair and tilted his head back. His eyes were closed and his facial muscles slack.

She slapped him and shouted, “Wake up!” But all she received was a groan. A second slap didn’t even garner that much.

He was out.

Her experience with other guests told her he would be useless for at least twenty minutes, perhaps more.

She stormed out of the room. Unfortunately for King, he was the only one downstairs with her. Nolan and Andres were patrolling the business park above. “Get a bucket and some towels and clean up that mess,” she ordered. She then grabbed the walkie-talkie off the observation-room counter and pressed the button. “Nolan, do you read?”

“This is Nolan,” Nolan answered.

“There’s something I need you to check.”

Quinn and Nate drove within three miles of both the McCrillis facility southeast of DC and the one just outside College Station, Maryland. Neither location emitted a signal from the tracker on the woman’s car.

“They could have found it,” Nate said as they drove away from the second location. “Or maybe they changed cars.”

Both possibilities had been playing through Quinn’s mind, but with no other clear option at the moment, they headed toward the third location, some fifty miles south of the capital in the city of Springfield, Virginia. They talked for a while, speculating on exactly what Orlando and Abraham might find in Florida, but it wasn’t long before their conversation was replaced by a quiet tension.

A year ago, neither Quinn nor Nate had known Daeng, and yet now he was one of their closest friends and an integral part of their team. Quinn knew it was possible Daeng was already dead, but he kept the thought shoved in a corner, not willing to give it any credence until he saw a body. If that did happen, Boyer wouldn’t be the only casualty at McCrillis International.

About seven miles out from Springfield, Nate sat up in his seat. He’d been holding Quinn’s phone and was now staring at the screen.

“I’ve got something,” he said, and then frowned. “Well, I had something.”

As they drove on, he kept his gaze glued to the cell.

After another mile, he said, “There it is again.”

The signal grew stronger as Quinn entered the town and made his way to the last address Orlando had given him. It turned out to be located in a business park consisting of long buildings subdivided into separate workspaces.

Instead of driving into the park, Quinn cruised the road that ran alongside it and parked a few blocks down, in front of a church.

“The car’s there, at least,” Nate said, handing Quinn his phone.

Quinn looked at the display and nodded, then brought up a wider map of the area. There were main entrances off the road to the south and to the west. The east side butted up against a housing tract, while a wall bordered the northern end, separating the park from a similar but smaller one.

“Here,” Quinn said, pointing at the wall between the business zones. “We can get over in the east corner.”

Nate nodded. “Perfect.”

They grabbed their gear and headed down the street.

The smaller business park appeared to be deserted as they hurried between the buildings to the back corner. There they looked at Quinn’s phone again. The car was pinging from a point on the other side of the north wall, about ten yards from where Quinn and Nate were standing.

“Give me a boost,” Quinn whispered. “Just high enough to take a look.”

Nate laced his fingers together and Quinn stepped into the cradle.

“Here we go,” Nate said as he pushed up.

As soon as Quinn could see the other side, he tapped the wall and Nate stopped lifting.

There were five rows of buildings, the McCrillis facility in the one straight in front of him but at the other end. Along the wall starting right below him were lines denoting parking spaces. At this time of night, only five were filled. Three were identical vehicles. Company cars, no doubt. Another was a pickup truck parked way down near the west end. The last was the sedan Gloria Clark and her men had been using.

He scanned the area for any signs of life, and was about to tell Nate to push him over when he heard a pair of low voices. Though the words were lost to him, he was pretty sure they were coming from somewhere between the building in front of him and the next one to the west. After a few seconds, the voices were replaced by the sound of someone walking on asphalt. The sounds of the steps started out almost as low as the conversation had been, but they steadily increased in volume as the walker headed in Quinn’s direction.

Quinn signaled Nate to lower him until only his eyes and the top of his head were above the wall, but the background he was up against was dark enough that he was confident he wouldn’t be noticed.

Several moments later the walker appeared from between the buildings. Quinn had just enough light to confirm the guy was one of the men who’d been in the car with Gloria Clark, and though Quinn couldn’t see a gun, he was sure the guy had one. He continued to watch as the man paused long enough at the end of the building to check both directions before walking over to the sedan.

When the guy reached the car, he didn’t get in, nor did he open the trunk to retrieve anything. What he did do was considerably more curious. He first stood a few feet behind the trunk and scanned the vehicle. Then he knelt down and began running a hand behind the bumper.

Son of a bitch, Quinn thought. He was checking for a bug.

Quinn motioned for Nate to lower him. When he was back on the ground, they moved along the wall until they were at the spot directly opposite the sedan. Quinn could hear the guy moving along it.

Quinn set his backpack on the ground and mouthed to Nate, “Up.”

Nate pushed Quinn high enough so that Quinn could look all the way over the edge. The man was nearing the front fender, right below him. If the guy kept to form, he would move around the front end and be only inches from the tracker.

Quinn didn’t care so much if the bug was discovered. The real problem was the alarm that would be raised when the man found it.

With extreme care, Quinn climbed onto the top of the wall, stretching out prone as he monitored the man’s progress. Slowly, the guy felt along the inside bottom of the car, up the wheel well, along the top, and down the other side. When he moved toward the front corner, Quinn sat up and tucked his knees against his chest.

The man rose a few inches as he came around the corner, which was exactly what Quinn had been waiting for. He shoved himself off the wall and slammed his shoes into the side of the man’s head. The guy rocked backward and landed in a heap on the ground. Before the man hit the asphalt, Quinn dropped beside him, ready to follow up his initial blow. But the man was unconscious.

Worried that whoever the guy had been talking to might be near, Quinn whipped around and scanned down the alley between the buildings. All was clear, so he used the hood of the sedan to give him enough height to lean back over the top of the wall.

He took both packs from Nate and then helped his partner up and over.

They relieved the unconscious man of his radio and weapon, then zip-tied his hands and ankles and used the guy’s own shirt to gag him.

“There’s at least one more walking around somewhere,” Quinn whispered.

After pulling out their night vision goggles, they donned their packs and moved over to the alleyway between the last two buildings. Quinn carefully scanned the building to either side, in case someone was leaning in a doorway, but no one was there. He was about to suggest they move a couple alleys over to be farther from the McCrillis facility and less likely to be spotted, when a man walked across the opening at the far end, heading toward the east wall, and then disappeared again. The distance had been too far for them to recognize any facial features, but the gun in his hand had been plain as day.

They went to the alley between buildings two and three, and then down to the other end. Once there, Quinn slipped the lens portion of his phone far enough past the corner for them to see the other side. There was no sign of the other man.

Was he heading down the far side of the last building? If so, he might discover his tied-up buddy. Quinn motioned for Nate to head back the other way for a look.

As soon as Nate was gone, Quinn used his phone to check around the side again.

“What the hell?”

The alarmed voice had come from less than ten feet away. Quinn dropped the phone and whipped off his goggles as he rushed around the corner. He miscalculated the man’s position by half a foot, so instead of hitting him center mass, he rammed the man shoulder to shoulder.

The man’s weapon flew out of his hand and the two men slammed onto the asphalt. The sentry tried to shove Quinn off but Quinn was having none of it. He recognized the guy now as the same one who’d been with the woman when she met Boyer.

Quinn whacked his palm into the side of the man’s face and stunned him enough for Quinn to get an arm around the guy’s neck, cutting off blood flow to the brain until the sentry blacked out.

Quinn heard someone running up behind him. He jumped to his feet, ready to fight, but it only was Nate.

“Subtle,” Nate whispered. “I almost couldn’t hear you fighting from way down at the other end.”

Ignoring the commentary, Quinn said, “Help me secure him.”

After they had the guy trussed up like his partner, they moved him under a hedge that lined the parking area.

“That’s got to be it,” Nate said. “If there was anyone else, they would have come by now.”

“Outside, anyway,” Quinn said.

They hurried over to the second-to-last building and peered into the alleyway. The McCrillis unit was two down from where they were. A camera was located above the main entrance, and identical ones were above the entrances to the units on the left and right, which probably meant McCrillis owned them, too.

Quinn had a signal jammer in his pack but decided not to pull it out. The woman had been traveling with three men, two of whom they’d already danced with. It was possible the facility came with its own personnel, but if that were the case, the guards would have been on outside watch since they would be more familiar with the area. So it was likely only the woman and her other man were inside, in which case they might not be actively monitoring the camera feeds, but if the signal was jammed, that might very well trigger an alarm that would draw their attention.

He studied the front of the unit. There were two doors, one a large, roll-up garage type and the other a standard-sized security door. Next to the standard-sized door was a security pad that didn’t appear to have any keys for inputting a code.

“Wait here,” he told Nate.

He ran back to the man they’d left by the hedge and gave him a thorough search. In the front pocket of his jacket was an employee badge identifying him as Kelvin Andres of McCrillis International. There were some letters and numbers and other symbols that meant something to someone, but what was most important to Quinn was the microchip sure to be embedded inside.

He returned to Nate and explained his plan.

Keeping their faces angled away from the cameras, they walked up to the security door. On the outer wall just above the security pad was a plaque that read:

On the security pad itself was a logo. But it wasn’t really a logo. It was a symbol that matched the one on Andres’s ID card.

Quinn tapped the card against the symbol and the door clicked open.

Gloria looked over King’s shoulder at the monitor. The prisoner was finally starting to show signs of life again.

“Restart the cameras,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She headed back to the interrogation room.

As she opened the door, Daeng lifted his head but kept his focus on the back wall.

“Hello again,” she said. “Where were we?”

The interior of the Neyer-Holt Engineering unit consisted of a large open space with what looked like a small, walled-off office in the front corner, and another self-contained space in the back with a sign on the door that read: SUPPLIES.

Along the walls were shelves and workbenches filled with lathes and drills and presses and testing equipment — all the items needed to sell the engineering front to the casual observer.

But this was no engineering firm.

Quinn waved his gun once at the supply-room door. Nate moved over and put his ear against it. When he pulled away, he shook his head.

Quinn ran the alarm detector around the door but it was clean, so he turned the knob and slowly pushed it open.

Instead of the supply room, they found a stairwell.

This, he was sure, was not a standard option the business park had offered tenants. The concrete steps led down approximately twenty feet, creating a nice soundproof barrier between the subterranean facility and those above ground.

Quinn went first, and as he neared the bottom he heard the distinct rumble of voices. A doorless opening led into a corridor about twice as wide as a household hallway. He paused at the threshold.

The noise was now intermittent, a single voice coming from the left.

A woman’s voice.

He edged into the corridor and shot a quick look in both directions. There were several doors in both directions. The only one open was to the left, where the noise was coming from.

Keeping next to the wall, he and Nate made their way down to the room, stopping right outside it.

“…in your best interest. Now answer the question. Yes or no?” Definitely a woman’s voice, though it had an amplified quality, telling Quinn it was coming from a speaker.

“Sure…yes. Is that what you want?” It was Daeng. A bit weak, though surprisingly strong.

“Then why did he follow me?” the woman asked.

“To find out where you were going.”

This was followed by the sound of a loud slap.

“Give me a better answer than that,” the woman said.

“Ask me a better question.”

Quinn pulled out his cell phone, crouched down, and used the camera to peek inside the room. The space was longer than it was wide, maybe twelve feet by six. A built-in desk stretched along the length of one wall, and on it were several monitors and computers. At the moment, only the center monitor was on. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see what it was displaying. It just looked like motion and light.

Seated in front of the screen was the third man Quinn had seen in the sedan. No one else was around.

Quinn looked over his shoulder at Nate and whispered, “Dart.”

Nate retrieved his dart gun from his pack and handed it over. Quinn checked his phone’s screen again, noting the man’s exact location and distance from the door. Standing, he raised the gun, and then inched out until the muzzle was pointed at this target.

At the last second, the man seemed to sense something, but as he turned to look, the dart was already flying through the air. It hit him in the upper right portion of his chest.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled as he pushed himself out of his chair and reached for the dart.

Before he could get it out, Quinn shot again, hitting him in the thigh.

The guy started to say something else, but his words came out in a slur as he began to sway. Quinn got there just in time to catch him before he fell. Quinn laid the man on the concrete and retrieved the darts.

“It’s Daeng, all right,” Nate said, looking at the computer monitor.

The image was of an almost barren room, the only pieces of furniture a wheeled cart and a chair in the center. On the chair was Daeng. His pant leg had been cut off along the thigh where he was shot, but that was about the extent of his exterior damage. It was clear, though, from the odd bobbing of his head that he’d been drugged.

Standing in front of him was Gloria Clark.

“Why are your people interested in the girl?” she asked.

“Already answered.”

“Is she alive?”

“Come on,” Quinn said.

Back in the hallway, he raced to the closest door and listened. All quiet inside.

He moved to the next. Same.

Door number three. Same.

He switched to the other side. That’s when he heard her.

“What about Eli Becker? Do you work together?” she asked.

Daeng said, “Becker…poor, poor Becker…”

“Down here,” Quinn whispered to Nate.

Gloria was not satisfied in the least. She had no doubt Daeng knew more than he was sharing, but even with the drug he was able to hang on to his secrets.

“Why are your people interested in the girl?” she asked yet again.

“Already answered.”

The response he’d given—“Because we want to know”—was little more than babble.

“Is she alive?”

“No clue. Is she?”

At least he was consistent in answering that question. Which meant he and whoever this Quinn was weren’t any better off than she and her team. But who exactly were they? And why would they be interested in the girl? That’s what didn’t make sense.

She had been working under the belief there were only two interested parties — one, the group who had used the.xuki virus to expunge all information about Operation Overtake from CIA computers, and the other, McCrillis’s client.

When a CIA contact leaked to McCrillis what the virus had really done, Boyer, with the client’s approval, reactivated the long dormant job and put Gloria in charge of the investigation team. In the first months after the.xuki attack, as Gloria sifted through the history of the job, she began to think the client was simply paranoid, her concern about this girl — who was dead, by all accounts — bordering on the maniacal. But the more Gloria dug, the more things didn’t quite add up, and then, just a few days ago, Eli Becker had shown up on her radar, forcing her to seriously reconsider her opinion.

And now there were Daeng and his boss Quinn, pushing the thought of client paranoia further and further from Gloria’s mind.

The problem was, the way the prisoner had been answering questions led her to believe his group had not been responsible for the virus. That would make him and his boss a third interested party.

“Do you know where she is?” she asked.

He grunted what might have been a laugh.

“She’s alive, isn’t she?”

“Did you…hear me say that? I didn’t.”

She decided to come at it from a different direction. “What about Eli Becker? Do you work together?”

Daeng said, “Becker…poor, poor Becker. Were you the one…who killed him?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Did you work together?”

Quinn grabbed the door handle. “Ready?”

Nate nodded.

“One. Two.” On three, he threw the door open and rushed inside, his gun pointed at the woman. “One step backward,” he ordered. “Then freeze.”

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

Daeng peeked over his shoulder and smiled. “Quinn. Been waiting.”

“Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.” Quinn glared at the woman. “Take that step back now.”

She remained where she was a moment longer, her jaw set, but then did as he ordered.

“Check him,” Quinn said to Nate.

Nate moved over to Daeng and began undoing the restraints. “You all right?”

“Been better…been worse,” Daeng said.

“We’ll get you out of here and fixed up.”

Daeng swayed a few inches to the side before righting himself. “That works for me.”

Quinn studied the woman. “Hands.”

“Go to hell.”

“Let me see them.”

Hesitantly, she brought them forward. Her right was empty, but in her left she held a syringe.

“Drop it,” he said.

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

“Yes.”

By the matter-of-fact way he said it, Gloria knew he would have no problem putting a bullet in her, so she let the syringe fall to the floor.

“What now?” she asked.

“Now you and I talk,” he said.

“Do I get to ask questions, or…?”

“One, and you just used it.”

This Quinn guy was a pro for sure, but why had she never heard of him?

She shoved the thought away. That was something she could worry about later. Right now she needed to concentrate on getting out of this alive.

Keeping her gaze aimed at the man, she checked the door behind him. No shadows moving around out in the hall, so did that mean it was just Quinn and his partner?

“My people were concerned when we realized your friend was following us. Naturally, we’d want to find out who he was and why he was interested. You’d have done the same.”

Quinn said nothing.

“I suggest we all back off and be on our way. How does that sound?” she said.

“Like another question,” he said. “But I’ll answer it with this — do you really think your bosses back at McCrillis will be happy you let us walk away?”

She’d guessed he already knew the name of her employer since he’d found the facility, but it still bothered her, especially since she didn’t know anything about his organization.

“I heard some of the questions you were asking my friend,” Quinn went on. “I would actually be interested in your response to a few of them. Why are your employers interested in the girl?”

She laughed. “Very good. But I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to discuss confidential matters.”

Off to her side, Quinn’s partner helped Daeng out of the chair.

“Get him out of here,” Quinn said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

The two men left the room at a slow shuffle and turned toward the stairs.

As their footsteps faded, Quinn said, “You’re the one who killed Eli, aren’t you?”

“Becker’s dead?” she asked.

He smirked. “You’re not as good an actress as you think.”

“Really, I had no idea he was—”

Without warning, she juked to the right then dove left, ramming her forearm into his hands and sending them flying upward just as he pulled the trigger.

“And you’re not nearly as badass as you think!” she yelled as she landed a left jab to his gut and raced out the door.

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to make it all the way to the stairs before he could gun her down, she ran toward the observation room. King had most likely been taken out, but hopefully his weapon was still there.

She was a step away from the room when she heard Quinn burst into the corridor. He took another shot as she turned through the doorway. His bullet grazed her waist before she could get all the way inside.

Ignoring the burning pain, she grabbed the door and shoved it closed, and then jammed a chair under the knob.

Given that the woman seemed to be his friend’s principal interrogator, Quinn couldn’t help but ask, “You’re the one who killed Eli, aren’t you?”

All innocent and shocked, she said, “Becker’s dead?”

“You’re not as good an actress as you think.”

He should have seen it, should have known it was coming. But he had let his emotions get the better of him and found himself momentarily focused on what she’d done instead of what she might do.

“Really, I had no idea he was—”

By the time he got off a shot, her arm was already shoving the gun away. She yelled something as she slugged him but he didn’t hear it. He followed her into the hallway just as she was turning into the room where the computers were. He shot again. He thought his bullet might have nicked her but it certainly didn’t stop her.

He reached the door seconds after she’d closed it. He yanked the handle and it turned but the door wouldn’t budge.

He took a step back. He’d seen no other exit from that room when he checked it earlier, so at some point she would have to come out. But wasting even one second waiting for her while Daeng was in need of help was not an option.

He turned and headed for the stairs.