Nick was the only one in the pictures. They appeared to be taken in bedrooms, no two the same. The bed, fully made, was always behind him, and he was always nude. None were taken in Nick and his wife’s house. From the way they were composed, Quinn guessed they were self-timed shots, taken before whoever lived in the home knew Nick was paying them a visit.
So Ice wasn’t his first.
Quinn thought it was a pretty good guess, though, that the others were women who’d balk at calling the police, too. Immigrants or others in compromising positions. He quickly accessed one of his anonymous servers over the Internet and began uploading the files.
He was watching the status bar when Nick rushed through the door, his gun held out in front of him.
“Don’t move!” Nick shouted.
Quinn stared at him a moment, then returned his gaze to the computer. “You going to shoot me?”
“What are you doing in my house?”
“Checking a few things.”
Quinn’s obvious distain seemed to confuse Nick. He hesitated, then said, “Get away from my computer.”
Quinn held up a finger, still looking at the screen. “Hold on.”
“Get away from my computer!”
Quinn held his position. A few more seconds passed, then the computer dinged.
“There. Done,” Quinn said as he smiled and leaned back. “What was it you wanted?”
“What did you just do?”
“Copy some files.”
Nick’s face started to turn red. “What files?”
“A few old reports.”
“I’m calling the po—” He stopped in mid-sentence, the reality of what Quinn just said sinking in. “What old reports?”
“Didn’t you say you were going to call the police?”
“What old reports?”
Quinn stood up.
“Stay where you are!” Nick told him.
Quinn moved around the desk, forcing Nick to back toward the door.
“Stop!” Nick shouted as he wrapped both hands around the gun.
“That’s good,” Quinn told him, not doing what he was told. “Get a steadier shot that way.”
“Don’t think I won’t pull the trigger.”
Quinn kept coming forward until he was just a few feet beyond Nick’s reach, then finally halted. “Then do it.”
Nick looked at him, his eyes wide and scared, his nose flaring with each breath.
“You’re brave enough to break into women’s homes and make yourself comfortable,” Quinn said. “Here, in your own place, pulling the trigger should be a snap.”
Nick’s mouth dropped open. “Wha…wha…what did you say?”
Quinn’s hands shot forward, grabbed the gun, and twisted it out of Nick’s grasp before the guy even knew what was going on. Two steps forward and Quinn was standing nearly chest to chest with Nick, the muzzle of the gun now pressed against Nick’s temple.
“Should we see if I’m willing to take the shot?” Quinn asked.
“No,” Nick said, trembling.
“Good.”
Quinn paused for a moment. He had been thinking a nice, intimidating chat would keep Nick from paying Ice a return visit. The pictures changed everything. These unclothed visits were obviously a pattern, something not easily broken no matter how much Nick might promise never to do it again. Something that, if it hadn’t happened yet, would one day cross into a potentially deadly area.
Quinn pulled the gun away, flipped it around in his hand, then whacked it solidly against the side of Nick’s face.
“Hey! Hey! Help! I need help!”
The asshole’s screams meant he’d finally regained consciousness.
“Help!” Nick yelled again, repeating it over and over.
Quinn waited for the last item to finish printing from the computer, then carried the small stack of papers through the house to the central bathroom.
Nick was right where Quinn had left him — standing in the shower, his hands bound together with duct tape and secured over the top of the shower nozzle. Quinn had stripped him down to his underwear and wrapped his ankles together, too.
As soon as Nick saw Quinn, he stopped yelling and squirmed against the wall as if he were trying to push himself through the tiles.
“How you doing, Nicky?” Quinn said.
“What do you want?” Nick asked, terror oozing out of every pore. “Money? I don’t have a lot of cash in the house, but you can have my ATM card. I’ll give you the code. Or take anything you want. Okay? I won’t call the police, I swear.”
Quinn stared at him blankly for a moment. “Are you done?”
“What do you want?”
Quinn turned away from him and set the stack of papers on the sink counter, then one by one began taping them to the mirror. These were the ten best shots — if you could call them that — of Nick’s trophy photos. The eleventh printout was a photo of Nick and his wife.
“Does Dr. Meyers know about your hobby?”
The shock in the man’s eyes confirmed that she didn’t.
“Well,” Quinn said, “she’s going to now.”
“No,” Nick blurted out. “Please. I promise…I promise I won’t do it again.”
“Save your breath. I know you won’t.”
Nick looked confused. “Okay, um, then, uh, then there’s no problem, right? You’ll just let me go, and won’t tell my wife. Yes?”
“Sure, Nick. That sounds like a great idea. Then in a couple weeks you’ll convince yourself that I was just here to scare you, and won’t be coming back. You’ll start up again right where you left off. The problem with that is, I would come back. And I would be as mad at myself for giving you a break as I would be at you. So, I figure, why not do now what I would have to do then?”
“What do you mean, ‘have to do then’?”
Quinn smiled sympathetically. “I’m not here to scare you. I’m here to take care of the problem.”
He walked out of the room.
“Wait!” Nick called out. “What does that mean?”
Quinn didn’t answer.
“Hey! What does that mean?”
Back in the den, Quinn printed out the last item, then removed the thumb drive and slipped it into his pocket. In the kitchen, he helped himself to a bottle of water, and leaned against the counter, waiting.
Forty-two minutes later, just a little over an hour after he’d made his calls, his phone buzzed with a text.
2 minutes away
He took another sip of the water, then headed for the front door. The first thing he’d done after Nick had fallen unconscious on the den floor was to completely disable the alarm. So opening the front door now was not an issue.
He crossed the yard to the Mercedes and used Nick’s keys to unlock it. Inside he found a remote, pushed the button, then watched as the gate across the driveway swung open.
Thirty-seconds later a van pulled in. There were no windows along the sides, only a large logo advertising a local plumber who didn’t exist.
Steve Howard and Ivan Donahue climbed out of the front. Quinn had worked with both of them several times in the past. When he’d called to tell them he had a little off-the-clock work for them, neither had even hesitated to say they were in.
They nodded their hellos, but everyone remained quiet until they were inside.
“Hey! You can’t leave me like this!” Nick yelled from the back as Quinn closed the front door.
“I take it that’s the package,” Howard said.
Quinn nodded. “You have the stuff?”
Howard pulled a plastic box from his pocket, and handed it to Quinn.
“Come on. I’ll introduce you,” Quinn said. He led them to the bathroom. “Gentlemen, this is Nick Meyers.”