The Enraged

CHAPTER 18

The sun had just set when Quinn’s plane landed at St. Renard’s International Airport. He hurried through Customs and grabbed the first available cab. When it finally pulled up in front of the hospital compound, he didn’t even wait until it came to a full stop before throwing open the door and jumping out.

It took all of his will not to run through the corridors as he made his way to Orlando’s room. Reaching her door, he paused to catch his breath and then stepped inside.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find, but it wasn’t seeing Orlando lying in bed, her eyes closed, and looking exactly as she had when he’d left. He stopped a few feet in, perplexed.

Liz was sitting in a chair next to the bed. She twisted around when she heard him enter, then jumped up and rushed over.

“I…I thought…” Quinn stammered. “I mean, Nate said she was awake.”

His sister put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, “She was.”

He looked past her at the bed again. “But…”

“She’s asleep. Normal sleep. Not like before.”

He relaxed a little. “Did she say anything?”

A gentle smile graced Liz’s lips. “Not much. Just that she was thirsty.”

“That’s it?”

Liz started to turn him toward the door. “Why don’t we talk in the hall?”

He glanced at Orlando, not wanting to leave in case she opened her eyes again.

“We’ll be right outside,” Liz assured him.

With extreme reluctance, he followed his sister into the corridor. As soon as the door was closed, he said, “Dr. Montero said she wasn’t going to wake for three days at least.”

“Her vital signs were improving, so he eased back on what they were using to keep her under.”

“You could’ve told me that. I would have come back sooner.”

She grasped his bicep. “Jake, look at me. If I had known, I would’ve called you, but we only found out he’d done that after she opened her eyes the first time.”

“How many times has she been awake?”

“Two more times since Nate called you.”

Two more times Orlando had seen he wasn’t there. “What’s Dr. Montero saying now?”

“He’s cautiously optimistic.”

“That tells me nothing.” Quinn spun around as if he might spot Montero standing nearby. “I want to talk to him. Where is he? I need to know exactly how she is.”

As his voice grew louder, a nurse at a station down the hall looked up. With a frown, she patted the air, gesturing for him to lower his volume.

“Jake,” Liz said, taking hold of both his arms this time, and stopping him from twisting the other way. “The important thing is that she’s getting better.”

“I want to talk to Dr. Montero.” Until he heard the doctor tell him that, he couldn’t allow himself to believe it.

Liz took a breath. “Fine. Why don’t you go back inside and I’ll see if I can find him, all right?”

He nodded. “All right.” He paused. “Thank you.”

He let himself back into the room, walked over to the bed, and looked down at Orlando. He immediately realized his original assessment of her had been wrong. She didn’t look exactly as she had when he’d left. There was color in her cheeks now that helped rid her face of the lifeless mask it had been wearing. And someone — Liz, no doubt — had combed her hair, so that it lay on either side of her head.

If he narrowed his eyes to slits and blocked out everything else but her, he could almost believe they were at her house in San Francisco. That she was taking a nap, waiting for him to return from a workout, a trip to the store, or some other unimportant task. That if he leaned down and kissed her, she would ease her arms around him and pull him onto the bed with her, where they would stay for the rest of the day.

And the next.

And the next.

Her hand was lying on top of the covers. He slipped his fingers under it, and gently moved them across her palm, tracing the familiar creases. He desperately wanted to squeeze her palm, not hard, just enough to wake her so that she would see him, so that she’d know he was there. But he knew that would only be selfish. She’d wake soon enough.

“She looks better, doesn’t she?”

Quinn snapped his head around. Nate was standing a few feet away. Quinn had been so focused on Orlando, he hadn’t heard the door open. That was unnerving. He always knew what was going on around him.

“Sorry,” Nate whispered. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Quinn’s former apprentice was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, not the hospital gown Quinn had last seen him in. “Not intruding,” Quinn said. “I was just…” He stopped as he lost the energy to explain himself, and turned back to Orlando. “Did you talk to her?”

“Only for a moment,” Nate said.

“What did she say?”

“It wasn’t easy for her to talk. She’s still weak.”

“She must have said something.” Quinn hesitated. “Did she ask for me?”

A pause. “Yes.”

Relief? More guilt? It was becoming hard for Quinn to separate all he was feeling. “What did you tell her?”

“That you’d be back soon.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else.”

Quinn looked back at him. “What else?”

“Nothing,” Nate said, meeting Quinn’s stare. “I think she wanted to say something more, but she drifted off. As far as I know, that was the last time she was awake.”

Quinn closed his eyes. He should be happy, ecstatic even. But instead he was frustrated and angry and guilt ridden and jealous that Nate had already talked to her. He had to get a grip. He had to get himself under control.

When he opened his eyes again, Nate was still looking at him.

“I’m sorry,” Quinn said. He opened his mouth to explain himself, but Nate held up a hand, stopping him.

“We’re all a bit out of sorts right now,” Nate said. The corner of his mouth ticked up in a wry grin. “It’s been a pretty screwed-up few weeks.”

Quinn felt a bit of his tension ease, and returned the half smile in kind. “It has been, hasn’t it?”

“I blame you.”

“Excuse me?” Quinn said, tensing again.

Nate shrugged. “If Romero’s men had taken you instead of me, I wouldn’t have all these welts on my back.”

“But that means I would.”

Another shrug. “There’s give and take on everything.”

Quinn suddenly felt his fingers being pressed together. He turned back to the bed. “Orlando?” he whispered.

Her eyes were still closed, and the rhythm of her breathing unchanged. He glanced at her hand. The fingers encircling his palm had relaxed, but he knew they had definitely squeezed him. Had she only been dreaming?

“Orlando?”

No response.

Quinn’s phone vibrated. His first inclination was to ignore it, but it was a patterned ring, one he used for only two people: Nate and Daeng.

He eased his hand out from under Orlando’s and retrieved his cell.

“Yes?”

“We have a problem,” Daeng said.

Not wanting to disturb Orlando, Quinn told Daeng to hold as he and Nate relocated to an empty room down the hall. Keeping the volume low, he put the phone on speaker so they could both hear.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“We ran into a little trouble when we went for Misty’s car.”

“What kind of trouble?”

Daeng briefed Quinn and Nate about the men who’d spotted them outside Peter’s place, and the subsequent chase that ended with Howard using his car as a blunt instrument.

“Is he all right?” Quinn asked.

“He’s shaken up and bruised, and probably going to hurt for a while, but he should be okay.”

“And the other two?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t have time to check them. All I know is that they weren’t moving.” Daeng paused. “There’s something else.”

“What?”

“They took pictures of us as we drove by. I would have searched for their phones, but the police were almost there.”

Quinn was silent for a moment. This was definitely not good. “Where are you now?”

“Steve’s friend’s cabin. It’s in a place called Trevor Hollow. I’ll SMS you the GPS coordinates.”

“You didn’t use Misty’s car to get there, did you?” After the chase and the accident, Misty’s car would be white hot.

“No. We appropriated another vehicle before we left DC.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “You should be safe there. Just hunker down, and let’s let things cool for a few days.”

“Will do.” A beat. “Orlando?”

“Asleep. But…but better.”

“I’m happy to hear that.”

“Stay safe.”

After Quinn hung up, Nate asked, “Who were these guys chasing them?”

“Probably the same outfit that sent the team to kill us last night,” Quinn said.

“Wait, what? What happened last night?”

As concisely as possible, Quinn did what he had earlier promised, and brought Nate up to speed.

“Sounds like you pushed somebody’s button,” Nate said.

“Yeah, but whose?” Quinn asked.

“This Witten guy — he couldn’t tell you?”

“He didn’t know. His organization works client-blind.”

Nate nodded in understanding. There were a handful of agencies that operated under client-blind rules, when only a select few — often only one person — would know who was really picking up the tabs for specific operations. “So do you at least think this unnamed client is the one Peter was worried about, and maybe the person who gave Romero the list?”

“For sure? No, I don’t, but it’s damn hard to ignore the connection.”

When they returned to Orlando’s room, they found Dr. Montero and Liz waiting in the corridor outside the door.

“Dr. Montero only has a few minutes,” she said to her brother.

“Perhaps it’s best if I start with an update,” the doctor said.

Quinn nodded.

“Your friend’s vital signs are right where we want them. And there’s been no signs of infection, which was one of my major concerns.”

“So she’s out of the woods?” Quinn asked.

The doctor weighed his response. “I think it’s safe to say she’s no longer in danger.”

No longer in danger. Those were words Quinn had longed to hear, words that meant he wasn’t going to lose her.

That she would live.

“She will, however, be weak for some time,” the doctor continued. “It could take months or years before she reaches the level of strength she was at before being shot, if she ever does.”

While Quinn knew the last part should have been troubling, all he could hear was that Orlando had years to live, not just hours or days.

“What she’ll need is rest and physical therapy. Lots of both.”

“How long?” Quinn asked.

“There’s no way to know right now. She may need PT for the rest of her life.”

“No. I mean, how long does she have to stay here? When can we take her home?”

The doctor frowned like a father disappointed in his child. “You realize she’s still in very serious condition? I wouldn’t consider discharging her for two or three weeks at the earliest.”

“What if there’s a facility closer to home we can take her to?”

Again, the frown, but this time the doctor considered what Quinn said. “I would have to know more about the place, and talk to the staff there. Even then, there is no way she can leave here for at least ten days. Any lengthy trip prior to that could jeopardize the progress she’s already made.”

Ten days and Quinn could take her back to California. He could live with that.

Not home at first, of course, but closer than Isla de Cervantes. Two private hospitals that catered to people in his and Orlando’s world came immediately to mind. One was near his home in Los Angeles, while the other was near hers in San Francisco. He had more experience with the former, but the latter would be closer to her son, Garrett. Quinn could easily bring him to visit her every day.

He suddenly realized everyone was staring at him. “What?”

“I asked if you had any other questions,” the doctor told him.

Full of thoughts about getting Orlando home, he almost said no, but as he started to speak, his hand brushed against his pocket and he felt the tiny lump of the microfilm canister. In his rush to fly back to be with Orlando, he hadn’t even realized he’d brought it along.

He said, “Do you have a laboratory on site?”

The hospital did indeed have its own laboratory. It was located on the first floor between the in-house pharmacy and a CT scanner suite.

Quinn’s knock on the locked door was answered by a woman in a white lab coat. Though she was probably in her early thirties, the pinched look on her face made her seem as if she was at least a decade older.

“Dr. Montero called,” Quinn said in Spanish. “I believe you’re expecting us.”

The only things that moved were the woman’s eyes, as she first scanned him and then Nate before moving out of the way so they could enter.

Though the room wasn’t huge, it was impressive. Half a dozen workstations were split up long the walls, with four more taking up space on an island that ran through the center. The area between stations was filled with various pieces of equipment, the purpose of most known only to the specialists who used them.

There were four other lab workers present. Three were so engrossed in their work they took no notice of the new arrivals, while the fourth merely glanced up before looking back at his computer monitor.

Still silent, the woman who’d opened the door led Quinn and Nate across the room to an empty station far from the others. As Quinn had requested, a microscope — a Keyence VHX-2000—was sitting on the counter. A better machine than he’d hoped for.

“Here,” the woman said in English.

She pressed a button and the monitor next to the microscope came to life. She then demonstrated a few basic functions and started to leave.

“Wait,” Quinn said. “How do we capture a picture?”

She frowned, but showed him what to do.

“We’ll also want to take the images with us. You wouldn’t happen to have a spare thumb drive, would you?”

She stared at him as if he were crazy, but Quinn held her gaze, smiling. After a moment, she rolled her eyes, walked across the room to one of the stations, and pulled open a drawer. When she returned, she placed a black thumb drive on the counter, and looked at Quinn, her eyebrow raised. It didn’t take a genius to know she was asking if she could go.

“If we have any problems, we’ll let you know.”

She didn’t look happy with this response, but with a grunt Quinn guessed was a good-bye, she returned to whatever she’d been working on.

Quinn pulled out the microfilm canister and Nate moved in behind him, creating a wall that would prevent anyone else in the lab from seeing the microscope’s monitor. After a few aborted tries, Quinn finally got the first frame under the lens.

“That’s fascinating,” Nate said.

Quinn looked at the monitor. On the screen was a big blob of white, with a hint of black encroaching at the top. The microscope’s current magnification setting was much too strong. As he began reducing the power, black moved in from all four sides, creating blurry lines and squares. When it was evident he had the entire frame of microfilm on the monitor, he fine-tuned the focus, sharpening the image.

Just like he’d noted when he’d looked at the frames with the magnifying glass, the horizontal lines were made up of dozens of black squares. He took a picture, then moved the film to the next frame.

“How many shots are there?” Nate asked.

“Twenty-three.” Quinn took another picture and moved the microfilm again. “Eleven of them are like this.” He nodded at the screen. “The other twelve look like they could be photos, but we won’t know until we decode them.”

He worked his way through the rest of the documents, and started in on the colored frames.

As he was about to move from frame nineteen to twenty, Nate said, “Whoa, whoa.”

Quinn sat back and raised his fingers off the keyboard.

“What’s that look like to you?” Nate asked.

Quinn examined the screen.

“Right there.” Nate circled the upper right corner of the monitor. “See it?”

“Looks like part of an ear.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“Probably just the encryption. It could be anything.”

“It looks pretty real to me.”

Though it was purple and gray, it did look real — like the outside ridge of an ear near the base, with a hint of the lobe at the bottom. Since there was no way to know for sure, Quinn continued working his way through the rest of the photos, neither he nor Nate seeing anything else that looked familiar.

Once he had all the images saved to the thumb drive, he switched off the monitor and put the microfilm back in the canister.

At any other time, his next step would have been to give the images to Orlando, and she’d have them decoded in no time. But that option wasn’t open to him right now.

There were a few other people he thought might be able to handle it, but he wasn’t sure how much he could trust them. This wasn’t just some job. This had been personal to Peter, and, if it was connected to the whole Romero thing, it was personal to Quinn, too, so he had to be very careful about whom he involved.

Perhaps he could try to decode the images himself. The gear they’d had on the jet that had taken them to and from Duran Island was now in a locker in the hospital’s basement. Orlando’s bag would be there, and in it would be her laptop. He might not be as quick as she, but with a little trial and error, he thought he could figure out which program to use and how to work it.

He put the drive into his pocket and stood. “Let’s go.”