As for Jack, well, he was quiet, maybe still simmering, or maybe just gone back to his normal self. Either way, I wasn’t dwelling on it.
I walked through the door joining the two hotel suites Evelyn had checked us into.
“Better digs than he puts you up in, I’ll bet,” Evelyn said, shooting a look at Jack.
“We had a nice place in Ohio,” I said. “Real flowers, Jacuzzi tub…”
Evelyn sniffed. “And a heart-shaped vibrating bed? Classy, Jacko.”
“Do you want this room?” I asked, moving into the bedroom doorway. “Or I guess if the other has two beds, you and I should take that-”
“This one’s yours. You took on Wilkes today, you deserve something special, and this hotel is my way of saying ‘good job.’” She glanced at Jack. “You can take the sofa.”
I shook my head. “We all need a good rest tonight. There are four beds-”
Evelyn cut me off with a sigh. “Fine, share my room with me. You don’t snore, do you?”
I thought about the nightmares, but Jack said, “She’s fine.” He paused. “Or she will be. Gotta get those hands fixed.”
I picked up the drugstore bag he’d laid on the table. “I’ll do that now.”
“Can’t bandage your own hands.” He took the bag from me. “Sit down.”
“I’ll be unpacking,” Evelyn said, and left.
Jack was still cleaning my wounds when Felix rapped at the door. Jack opened it. Quinn walked in and stopped dead, staring at my hands.
“Shit, are you okay?” he said.
I nodded.
“How did you-?”
“Garrote wire.”
Felix stepped up beside me and frowned down at my wounds. “A garrote wire can be tricky to use. The instinct is to wrap it around your own hands, but if it’s sharp enough, then you see the damage you can inflict.”
“This isn’t-I wasn’t using it on someone; he was using it on me.”
“And you managed to get your hands under it? Excellent reflexes. However, it does beg the question…”
“Who the hell tried to garrote you?” Quinn said as he crouched and took my hand.
Jack waved him aside and took his place, then unrolled the bandage.
“Wilkes,” he said when I was slow to answer.
“Wilkes attacked you?” Felix said as he sat in a chair. “So he knows we’re in pursuit? That could lead to some difficulty-”
“Doesn’t know,” Jack said. “Picked Dee as a victim. She-” A hard look my way. “Lured him in.”
Before anyone could comment, Evelyn walked from the other room. As Felix and Quinn greeted her, Jack inspected the cleaned wounds.
“So you decided to join the hunt,” Quinn said, flashed a smile at Evelyn. “Getting a little too exciting to ignore? I bet-Ah, wait. The anonymous ‘concerned party’ who’s paying our wages. Guess I should say thank you.”
Evelyn said nothing, but from the look that crossed her face, she had no idea what Quinn was talking about. I’d never suspected Evelyn was the person funding the job-she wouldn’t hire a group of hitmen for a nonprofit expedition. But if it wasn’t her…
“Stop squirming,” Jack said. “Gotta get this fastened.”
Quinn sat on the sofa. “So Dee lured Wilkes into a showdown?” He grinned my way. “Way to go.”
Jack shot him a look, but Quinn continued, “You went mano a mano with the infamous Helter Skelter killer. The first victim who fought back. Did he say anything? Too busy getting his heart out of his throat, I bet.”
Jack scooped up the bloodied cloths, wrapped them in the empty bag for later disposal and took them back to his room. I crouched to clean up the first-aid supplies. Quinn slid down beside me to help. As he leaned over for the scissors he whispered, “I’m jealous.” I laughed. We both reached for the spare tape roll. I got to it first, but he pretended not to notice and grabbed for it, ending up with my wrist instead. A quick grin and quicker squeeze, and he released me.
“You’ll have to tell me all about it later,” he said.
I smiled. “We’ll see.”
As I straightened, I caught Evelyn watching us.
“When Jack called us in, he said you have a plan,” Felix said. “Care to share?”
Felix liked the plan. Quinn wasn’t so sure. I understood his reticence. What he and I knew, and the others didn’t, was that we were expecting a federal agent to do something no agent should ever consider. However often one might see movie cops playing lone cowboys, it didn’t work that way in real life. You’re trained to be a team player, and there are plenty of checks and balances to make sure you stay that way-like Quinn having to provide a hotel name and phone number while on vacation.
But, as Quinn conceded, if there was a guy who might go for this, it was Martin Dubois. He amended the plan somewhat, building in protections that might sway Dubois, make him feel safer. Even then he warned that we were taking a chance-that Dubois wouldn’t agree, would double-cross us, would back out at the last moment. But we knew that. All we could do was guard against it.
Quinn left to set his part into motion. While he was gone, Evelyn, Jack and Felix compared notes on Wilkes, as they remembered him. Not a conversation I could join, so after twenty minutes I wandered off to the other side of the room to check out the room service menu. Last thing I’d eaten was a sub on the drive to the parade.
“Hungry?” asked a voice at my shoulder. Quinn. “I’ll bet you are. Confront the man the whole country is searching for, and no one even buys you dinner.”
“Did everything go okay?” I asked.
“It’s started. Now we have to wait for a response. Don’t worry. If what I hear about Dubois is right, he’ll at least hear us out.”
“Good.”
Quinn glanced over at Evelyn, Jack and Felix.
“They’re talking about Wilkes,” I said. “I can’t help them there.”
“Me neither.” He took the menu from me. “We can order from this if you’d like, but I saw a place down the road. What do you say I buy you dinner?”
“Sure,” I said.
I grabbed my wallet, shoes and jacket. As I got ready, I glanced Jack’s way, waiting for him to notice I was leaving, but he was engrossed in the conversation.
Quinn called out a “going to grab a bite,” and I thought I heard Evelyn respond, but he only closed the door and ushered me down the hall. If Evelyn or Jack had wanted to stop us, they could have made it to the door before the elevator arrived. No one did, so I took that as permission to leave.
FORTY-SIX
“You know you’re going to have to kill him,” Quinn said as he speared a chicken ball.
We were in Felix’s hotel room-a small one a few doors from ours. Jack might not have minded me going out to eat with Quinn, but I imagined he’d have something to say about our choice of dining area.
Our plans for the restaurant had gone south when we realized it closed at eleven, and we’d arrived at eleven-thirty. That left McDonald’s or a take-out Chinese place. I’d picked takeout, meaning we needed a place to eat. When Quinn suggested Felix’s room, with a hands-lifted “just to eat-no ulterior motives,” I’d agreed.
If Jack was right, the greatest danger I faced being alone with Quinn was that he’d rethink that “no ulterior motives” bit. That I could stop…if I wanted to. So far, he’d kept his word, lying on the opposite side of the bed, with boxes of food laid out between us, as we talked.
“You have to kill him,” Quinn said again when I didn’t answer. “If not you, then me or Jack, but someone has to. It has nothing to do with ‘the bastard deserves to die.’ Give me a choice, and I’d rather see him rot in jail than get a quick ticket out. Problem is, there’s no guarantee he’ll go to jail. You and I know that better than any of them.”