“It’s her,” Abraham said, seeing it now, too.
Orlando nodded as she opened a new window on her browser and brought up a map of the area surrounding the Azure Waves Hotel. “All right. Eli could have gone, what? Maybe a mile and a half out and back, if he kept walking the whole time. But we’ve got to figure he would have stopped for a bit and—”
“Orlando, that was the woman,” he said.
“I realize that. Not a big shock she was there, though, is it? Now, come on, I need you to concentrate.” She created a circle with a mile radius around the hotel. “Wherever Eli went, I’m pretty sure it’s in this circle. Think. What kind of place would he have gone to?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was getting something to eat.”
“All right. Restaurants. We’ll start there.” She put in the parameters and the program highlighted all the known eating establishments in the area. There were dozens. “Does he have a favorite type of food?”
“When we met up, we sometimes went for Italian or Chinese or for steaks. Nothing in particular.”
“If we’re working off the premise that he did leave something behind, and it would be somewhere you could figure out, then I guess restaurants are out.”
Abraham reluctantly nodded.
“What, then? Bars?” she asked, then remembered the stack of posters at his townhouse. “How about a movie theater? He liked movies.”
“That could be it.”
She searched for movie theaters, but the only two were right at the edge of the mile — unlikely candidates.
“Bookstores,” she said, thinking back to his place again.
She tried that. There were seven hits. Five were used bookstores, one of which was only a couple blocks from the hotel. Another was part of one of the big chains.
“That’s it,” Abraham said, pointing at the last store on the list. “If he did leave something, that’s where it would be.”
She couldn’t argue with him.
The seventh bookshop was a place called DeeDee’s Comics, and was located somewhere between a five- and ten-minute walk from the hotel.
She brought up the store’s website. “They’re open to eleven. You want to give them a call?”
“Why not?”
The call connected after the fifth ring.
At first only loud rock music came out of the speaker on Abraham’s phone — a classic Arctic Monkeys tune, if Orlando was correct — then a man said, “DeeDee’s.”
“Good evening,” Abraham said. “I, um, have a bit of an unusual question to ask.”
“You wouldn’t be the first. What is it?”
“I’m wondering if a friend of mine left something there for me.”
“This isn’t a mailbox store,” the guy said, sounding like he was about to hang up.
“I realize that,” Abraham said quickly. “He would have come in three nights ago just before you closed.”
“I wasn’t on three nights ago.”
“Well, is there someone there who was?”
An exasperated “Hold on.”
The Arctic Monkeys filled the absence until a woman came on and said in a much friendlier voice than her colleague’s, “This is Vanessa. Can I help you?”
“Yes, my name is…Abraham Delger. I think a friend of mine may have left something there for me the other night.”
In an unexpectedly cautious tone, she said, “It’s possible. Who was your friend?”
“Eli Becker,” he said. “Oh, or he may have been going by Charles Young.”
“May have been going by?” the woman asked.
“His name is Eli. It’s…well, it’s a long story. Did he leave something for me?”
If it weren’t for the fact they could still hear music, Orlando would have wondered if they’d been disconnected. Finally Vanessa asked, “What was the girl’s favorite game?”
Orlando could see that Abraham was shocked by the question.
“Hey, you still there?” the woman asked.
“Checkers,” he blurted out. “She loved checkers.”
“Then yeah. I do have something for you. When do you want to pick it up?”
CHAPTER 21
If there was one thing you didn’t do, it was mess with the people important to Quinn.
Those who had tried to harm his mother and sister had found that out, as had those who’d caused Nate to lose half of his leg, and the ones responsible for nearly killing Orlando. Unfortunately, not everyone seemed to have been clued in to that particular nugget of information, so it fell back on Quinn to hammer home the lesson again.
The section of the Maryland countryside he and Nate were driving through was a haven for those who made their living trying to suck the US government dry — lawyers and businessmen and lobbyists and those who were a bit of all three. Five-bedroom, six-bedroom, seven-bedroom homes on an acre or more of land. Some with columns, some with guesthouses, and almost all with more cars than could fit into oversized garages.
Ethan Boyer’s home was in a gated community called The Hilltop, on a street named River View Lane. The Hilltop’s security staff appeared to be competent, with two vehicles constantly roaming the development and pairs of guards stationed at the three separate entrances. Competent, yes, but little problem for Quinn and Nate.
The two cleaners entered over the wall into the backyard of a darkened house whose owners were either not home or early sleepers. Sticking as much as possible to the shadows, they moved silently through the community to River View Lane. Behind some bushes across the road from Boyer’s property, they found a spot that would serve as the perfect observation point.
Nate pulled the pack off his back and removed the two sets of night vision goggles they’d procured from Peter’s stash. In addition to allowing them to see their surroundings as if during daytime, the goggles were equipped with two magnification settings, turning them into adequate if a bit underpowered binoculars.
Each man donned his pair and scanned the area. Boyer’s home was a Federal-style clapboard house, three stories high with a four-car garage off to the side. Though they couldn’t see it from their position, they knew from the layout Orlando had obtained that a two-story annex stretched behind the house, with a room on the second floor designated on the plans as OFFICE.
“See anything?” Quinn whispered.
“Nothing,” Nate replied.
While The Hilltop did have its own security force, Quinn was positive someone in Boyer’s line of work would employ his own people to ensure his safety.
Motioning toward a copse of trees fifty yards to the left, he said, “Let’s reposition.”
Quietly, they moved straight back from the bushes, away from the road, before skirting the front of a neighboring home and entering the small grove. Staying low, they shuffled forward again until they were only a few feet from where the trees ended. Once more, they scanned Boyer’s property.
“Got one,” Nate said.
“Show me.”
Nate touched the side of his goggles, pushing the button that would put a digital tag on the sentry he’d seen. A second later, a yellow dot appeared in Quinn’s view, showing him where the man was. By the time they were through with their visual search, they had tagged three total.
“Probably two more on the other side,” Quinn said. “Maybe three.”
“D-guns?” Nate asked.
Quinn nodded. “They’re all in range.”
In addition to the goggles, they had procured two SIG SAUER P226 pistols with matching sound suppressors, four flash-bang stun grenades, and a pair of high-tech dart guns — D-guns — complete with scope and set of twelve tranquilizer-filled darts. Since they were operating in a highly populated civilian area, the less noise they made, the better.