The prisoner, an Asian man with a goatee and shoulder-length black hair, had been brought in by a McCrillis transport unit twenty minutes after Gloria and her team arrived. The man was immediately taken to the interrogation room and strapped to the chair.
Gloria had then spent the next fifteen minutes watching him on the monitor, hoping to pick up something she could use, but the whole time he just sat there, staring straight ahead, his expression blank. Even the bullet he’d taken didn’t seem to be fazing him. The wound had been treated before he was brought to the facility — nothing fancy, just a clean-and-bandage job. Given what was about to happen, any further treatment would have been a waste of resources.
“Going in,” she said to King.
“You want me to record?” he asked.
She thought for a moment and then nodded. “Until I say otherwise.”
She pushed the cart holding her bag of tricks toward the door.
This wasn’t the first time Daeng had been shot. It wasn’t even the first time he’d been shot in the leg. And as wounds went, this one hardly rated mention. It was a through and through, the bullet cutting a tunnel in his thigh muscle before exiting his leg. No bone hit, and, based on the fact his body hadn’t drained of blood, no artery, either.
As for the pain, the mental training he’d received during the brief time he’d been a monk back in Thailand helped him let much of what he was feeling flow out of him. What pain remained, he was able to mask, cringing with each burning wave on the inside, while outwardly showing nothing at all.
After being shoved into the van, he had been taken to the lowest level of a parking garage, where, about ten minutes later, a dirty white cargo van screeched down the ramp and pulled into the adjacent spot. One of the men he’d been squeezed between climbed out and then wagged his gun at Daeng and said, “Let’s go.”
As Daeng gingerly scooted across the seat, the side door of the cargo van opened. From his angle, he could see four people inside — two up front and two in the cargo area.
“I don’t need to tell you what to do, right?” the man with the gun asked.
Daeng answered by hobbling over to the van and sitting in the opening. From there, he could see a fifth guy in back.
“All the way in,” someone behind him said.
If only these assholes had shot him in the arm instead. He could have made quick work of the guy with the pistol and then run like hell. He could still accomplish the first part in his current condition, but escaping on foot was not going to happen, so he swung his legs inside and scooted out of the doorway.
“Ari, you’re up,” the guy closest to Daeng said as he closed the door.
The guy in the back picked up what looked like a hard plastic toolbox and moved over to Daeng. From the box, he removed a pair of heavy-duty shears that he used to cut away the portion of the pant leg covering Daeng’s wounds. He then cleaned everything out and bandaged Daeng.
“That should hold him,” the man announced.
With that, the van left the garage.
Though there were no windows in back that allowed Daeng to see where they were going, he knew by the time the vehicle stopped that they were well out of Washington.
The guy in the front passenger seat hopped out, and a few seconds later, Daeng could hear the squeaky sound of a metallic roll-up door being chained open. When it stopped, the driver pulled the van several feet forward and turned off the engine.
It wasn’t much of a stretch to guess they were now inside a building. This was confirmed a few moments later when the side door opened. No one asked Daeng to get out this time. Instead, two of the men grabbed him by the arms, hoisted him out of the vehicle, and guided him to a stairwell in the corner of the room. At the bottom they entered a dimly lit hallway that looked to Daeng to be concrete all the way around.
The room they took him into was three doors down and no more than twelve feet square. It had a single chair in the center of the room, facing away from the door. As he was pushed onto it, he discovered it was bolted to the floor. The men handcuffed his wrists and ankles to the chair and then left.
He had seen the cameras when he was brought in, so he knew someone was watching him. The watcher no doubt expected to see a man in pain and fear. Instead, he kept his expression blank and pictured himself lounging on a hammock in Chiang Mai, the scent of pepper and basil in the air, and a Thai pop song somewhere in the distance.
Finally, he heard the door behind him open.
Footsteps. The click, click, click of a woman’s shoes. And the rolling of wheels.
Not far into the room, the moving wheels stopped but the clicks continued.
Out of the corner of his eye, Daeng saw her come around his left side. He kept staring ahead, so it wasn’t until she was standing right in front of him that he got his first good look at her.
The woman from the courtyard. Of course.
She studied his face and then looked him up and down. “Well, you are an interesting specimen,” she said. “I understand you haven’t told anyone your name yet. Perhaps you don’t speak English.” She slowed her speech, pronouncing each word carefully. “Do you understand me?”
Using the southern California accent he’d perfected while living in L.A. as a teenager, he said, “I understand you better when you speak normally.”
“So you do talk. Then how about giving me your name?”
“You’re the host. You should go first,” he said.
“All right, then. I’m Gloria. And you are?”
“Not in the habit of giving my name to someone who holds me hostage. You can appreciate that, can’t you, Gloria?”
The smile she gave him was closed lip and humorless. “And you can appreciate that cooperation is the much easier path.”
“For you, perhaps.”
“Why were you following the Maserati?” she asked.
Daeng knew he had one job — buy time. And to do so sometimes meant dangling a carrot. “Why did you meet with the man who was in the Maserati and give him a suitcase? Was it full of items you took from Mr. Becker’s townhome? Or were you with him in Florida, too?”
She stared at him, fake smile gone. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Careful. Your lack of control is showing.”
She stepped forward and punched him in the cheek.
He stretched his mouth and said, “That was more for you than for me, I believe.”
Predictably, that brought on a second hit. “Who are you?”
Blood trickled out of Daeng’s mouth, but he kept his expression relaxed. “You choose what you want to call me. I’m flexible.”
Breathing heavily, she raised her fist as if she were going to strike a third time, but seemed to get ahold of herself at the last moment and lowered her arm.
As soon as her breathing steadied, she walked back to whatever it was she had wheeled into the room. Daeng didn’t try to see what she was doing. He’d know soon enough.
He heard a latch opening, followed by a squeak of movement. There was a moment or two of things knocking together, then relative quiet. When she walked back into view, she was holding a syringe.
“You’re not going to enjoy this,” she said. “Not only will this make you tell me everything I want to know, it’s going to make you feel like shit, too.”
He smiled and said, “I appreciate the warning.”
Quinn could see the glow of the fire in the rearview mirror as he and Nate drove away from The Hilltop. He gave it another couple miles to make sure they hadn’t been spotted, and then called Orlando.
“Did you find Boyer?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“And you two are all right?”