“Checking in,” she said after the tone. “Call when you have time.”
She called Daeng next.
“Sawadee, khrap,” he said, greeting her in his native Thai.
“Sawadee, ka,” she replied in kind. “Where are you?”
“Eugene, Oregon.”
“I thought you were flying to Portland.”
“I did, and then I drove here. You’re about two hours south of me, near a place called Grants Pass.”
“Oh, you’re tracking me, are you?”
“I’m merely using the software you provided,” he said. “Shall we meet in the middle? Say, Roseburg?”
Nate picked Quinn up in a parking lot just off the interstate, south of the airport.
After Quinn shared what he’d learned, Nate asked, “The Wolf? Any idea who she is?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. I think there was someone years ago who used that name. I don’t remember the context. At most it was something I heard in passing. Next time we talk to Orlando, we’ll see if she remembers.”
“So what now?”
“Now we leave town.”
Nate hesitated. “You know, there is one other thing we can check before we get out of here.”
Quinn looked at him.
“The safe house Helen set up for us,” Nate explained. “If someone went there looking for us, wouldn’t it confirm her disappearance is tied to our mission?”
Though Quinn was already convinced the connection existed, it would be better to have proof. But was checking worth the risk?
He mulled it over and consulted the map. “I-90’s up that way. We can at least do a drive-by, and then take the interstate east when we’re done.”
Looking pleased with himself, Nate shifted into drive and headed for the freeway.
Dani heard voices, close, but the words were lost to her, the drug still clouding her ability to understand. She tried to part her eyelids, but each felt as if it were sealed in place.
Her thoughts seemed to drift this way and that, until she couldn’t even remember what she was trying to figure out.
A continuous hum, either heard or imagined, underlined everything. That, and the voices—right, the voices—were the only sounds.
She fought through the fog. The voices, she realized, belonged to the two men. Nate, the younger one had been called. And…and…Quinn? That was it, right?
She felt oddly relieved that they hadn’t handed her off yet. She wasn’t sure why, but she had a sense that the longer she could stay with them, the better her chance of protecting the secret.
Her thoughts began to scramble again and slowly scatter.
The voices faded.
And there was only the hum.
Then that faded, too.
The Bellevue safe house was much larger than the one in Tacoma.
As they drove slowly past the place, Quinn noted that it looked exactly as it should have — deserted.
Maybe no one had been here at all, he thought.
“Pull over,” he told Nate as they neared the end of the block.
When they were stopped, Quinn retrieved two sets of comm gear from one of the duffels and tossed one packet to Nate.
“If you can’t reach me for any reason,” he said, “get out of here right away.”
“Got it.”
His senses on alert, Quinn headed down the sidewalk, but made it all the way to the safe house’s driveway without any warnings flashing in his head.
He paused there and pulled out his phone, looking as if he’d received a text.
Quiet. Not the tense quiet of men lying in wait. Just…quiet.
Deciding it was safe enough for a closer look, he headed up the driveway, ready to grab his weapon at the first sign of trouble. He took in the roofline and the bushes and the windows and the door, but spotted no unexpected movements anywhere.
An attached garage sat at the end of the driveway. Quinn headed for the small section of fence between it and the edge of the property, and hopped over. No longer in view of anyone on the street, he pulled out his SIG and made his way into the backyard.
Trees lined the rear half of the property, with a large grass area taking up much of the rest of the space. As for the house, a sliding glass door at the back was closed, vertical blinds pulled across it. Shades were also drawn across the rest of the windows.
Quinn returned his attention to the yard, giving it a longer look this time. The grass ended three feet from the fence, leaving a strip of land covered in dark bark chips acting as buffer between the two.
Sticking to the grass, he moved along the strip and studied the chips. About a third of the way down the side opposite the garage, he stopped. Several chips had been disturbed in a way unlike anywhere else. A few were broken. Someone had come through this way, but it could as easily have been a week ago as an hour.
He found the proof he was looking for several feet farther down, in a spot where the chips petered out, leaving a three-inch patch of soft soil. On the dirt was the partial print of a boot. Quinn had examined thousands of prints since becoming a cleaner, so it wasn’t difficult to determine this one was no more than twelve hours old.
With this in mind, he studied the grass again. Though the blades were already in the process of returning to their normal state, he could now pick out several points where they had recently been bent down.
He keyed his mic. “Nate.”
“Go for Nate.”
“You were right.”
Ricky Orbits never checked luggage onto a plane. Waiting at baggage claim was his definition of hell. Besides, the most important items he usually needed would never pass inspection. So when he landed at Sea-Tac International at 12:10 p.m., he walked straight out to the parking area where the car he’d ordered was waiting for him, complete with a loaded suitcase in the trunk filled with the rest of his requests.
The client had provided him with the address where the girl had original been found, and a list of possible locations she’d been taken to afterward. Orbits had sent out some feelers before he boarded the plane at O’Hare, and had received several responses by the time he landed. Most had no information other than what was on the news. Seems the girl wasn’t the only one being kept at the Columbia City address. Why she was more important than the others, he didn’t know, nor did he care.
One of the responses, however, reported that an elite team from a California-based security agency had arrived in the area early that morning and gone to a house in Bellevue — a house that was at the top of the list of possible hiding locations Orbits had been given.
His client had informed him that other interested parties would likely also be looking for the girl, so it was a good bet the California team was one of his competitors. He was sure they hadn’t located the girl yet, though. If they had, he would have already received a text thanking him for his time and releasing him.
He thought for a moment. It wouldn’t hurt to have a look around the Bellevue house. If the Californians had gone in hard and heavy, they might have missed some clues that could put Orbits on the right path.
He plugged the address into his GPS and hit the road. Thanks to a bit of traffic, the eighteen-mile drive took over thirty minutes.
The house was located in a nice neighborhood where most of the homes were set back from the road, with lawns of deep green grass running right up to the sidewalk.
“Your destination is one hundred feet ahead, on the right,” the female GPS voice informed him.
Right before he reached the property, he noticed a man walking along the sidewalk in front of the house. The guy hadn’t been there a moment before. Either some of the bushes near the end of the driveway had blocked him from view, or he’d been up at the house.