Quinn peered through the barn’s partially open door. It was a big, wide, open space holding nothing but dust. They moved to the east side, where the shadows were already deep and black, and headed to the front end. There they stopped and got their first good look at the house.
“Window, second from the right,” Orlando whispered.
Quinn looked where she indicated. It was curtained like the other windows along the back, but the rod holding the drape in place was askew, as if something had bumped it.
“See any movement?” he asked.
“No.”
Staying low, they traversed the ground between the barn and the house, crouched next to the back-door steps, and waited there for some kind of response. When none came, Quinn eased up the stairs and peered through the window in the door.
The room beyond was a kitchen with nothing on the countertops, and no table or chairs in the breakfast nook. The door was locked, so he pulled out his set of picks and remedied the situation in seconds.
He pushed the door open an inch and listened for sounds from inside. After hearing nothing, he opened the door wide enough for them to enter.
A fine layer of dust covered the counters and sink. Their information indicated the house had been rented in the last forty-eight hours, but the occupants had apparently not made use of the kitchen.
Odd.
There were two doors out of the room — one to the left leading into a small laundry area, and one straight ahead that accessed the rest of the house. They moved toward the latter, stopping again to listen.
Quiet came in many forms. The peaceful quiet of people sleeping. The tense quiet of someone lying in wait. The hollow quiet of empty space. Quinn was familiar with all. This quiet was the last. But while he was sure no one else was in the house, there had been those rare times when his senses were wrong, so he kept alert as he eased into the living room, scanning for danger.
Orlando touched his arm and pointed at several places on the floor in front of them. The hardwood planks had received their fair share of dust, too, but in a large section the dust had been disturbed. Someone had been here recently.
There was something else, a smell in the air Quinn recognized immediately. Tangy and metallic.
Blood. And not just a drop or two.
He looked at Orlando again and saw she’d also registered it.
They moved into the dining area and through an opening into a hallway that contained several open doors. The smell was considerably stronger here. Not only that, they could hear something now, low and constant. Almost a hum.
Like the smell, it was a sound Quinn knew.
Slowly, they moved down the darkened hall, checking the first room, then the second, before approaching the last door. As they neared, Quinn noticed something on the hallway wall opposite the room. A dark spot, runny, like someone had dribbled paint against it.
He moved up to the door, checked to make sure Orlando was ready behind him, and then swung into the opening, moving his gun back and forth as he looked for targets.
If dealing with the dead hadn’t been his profession, the smell would have overwhelmed him. The body was crumpled across a gurney that took up the majority of the room. The smell was more blood than rot, which meant the victim hadn’t been dead that long. By the growing swarm of buzzing flies, though, he knew it had been at least a few hours.
He moved to the side so Orlando could take a look.
The dead man couldn’t have been more than forty years old. He was clothed only in a pair of underwear, and while his hands were free, his ankles were strapped to the gurney with leather restraints. He had bruises on his face, shoulders, and legs, all of which looked no more than a day or two old. What had killed him, though, was a gunshot to the forehead.
“Fits the description,” he said.
“Yeah,” Orlando agreed. “Dammit.”
She moved in for a closer look.
“Needle marks,” she said, nodding at the man’s upper arm.
They saw at least four insertion points. Quinn had no doubt something had been pumped into the guy’s system to get him to talk.
“Abraham?” he asked.
Orlando was quiet for a second before she sighed and said, “I’ll get him.”
Quinn heard the back door slam open, and then hurried steps moving through the kitchen and living room.
“Where?” Abraham said outside the hallway.
“Down there,” Orlando replied. “Last door on the left.”
A moment later, Abraham appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
As he moved over to the gurney, Orlando entered the room behind him.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Quinn asked.
Abraham dipped his head, covering his eyes with his hand. “Yes,” he whispered. “It’s Eli.”
Quinn put a hand on Abraham’s back. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s my fault. It’s my fucking fault.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Orlando said. “You couldn’t have stopped them.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.
“If it helps at all,” Quinn said, “I think he went down fighting.”
Abraham looked at him, brow furrowed.
Quinn gently lifted Eli Becker’s left forearm. “Look at his wrist. It’s all cut up and some of the skin is missing right where the cuff would be.” He set the arm down and lifted the cuff as far as it would go. “See, it’s still closed, but it looks stretched. The other cuff is open. I think he worked the first one free and then undid the buckle on the other.”
“A lot of good it did him,” Abraham said.
“True, but I have a feeling he did a little damage. There’s a large bloodstain on the hallway wall. Fresh. Too far away to be his.”
Abraham glanced back at the hallway before returning his gaze to his dead friend.
“Don’t you see?” Orlando asked. “The way he was killed was reactionary. If it had been planned out, they would have gone with a considerably less messy method and dumped his body someplace it would never be found. If you ask me, they weren’t ready to get rid of him yet. Which means they probably didn’t get out of him whatever it was they were trying to learn.”
“He’s still dead, though,” Abraham said.
No one had a response for that.
Abraham took a deep breath. “We can’t leave him here.”
“No,” Quinn said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Daeng had chosen well.
Instead of finding a building that was part of a new construction project, he’d located a secluded tavern outside the city that was in the process of being totally refurbished. In addition to the interior being gutted, the renovations seemingly included replacing all plumbing and sewer lines, necessitating the removal of large chunks of concrete from the basement floor. The kicker was that the place sat in the center of three acres of tree-filled land, giving Nate and Daeng more than adequate privacy.
As soon as the construction crew had cleared out that afternoon, Nate and Daeng had moved in. Nate selected the largest of the temporary basement trenches, and they began by digging sideways under the remaining concrete floor. After that was braced with two-by-four supports, they started digging a grave that would be at a lower level than the new plumbing.
They had been digging only a few minutes when Nate’s phone rang. While he hopped out to take the call, Daeng continued digging.
“Hello?” Daeng heard Nate say. “Oh, hey….Good. Just doing some prep work. Termination’s scheduled for eleven p.m. We should be done and on our way back by morning….What?.…Um, had to improvise a little….Ground and chemical — why?….Excuse me?….Well, I guess. That’s kind of….No, no. It’s okay….I’ll text you the address.”