The man’s weapon flew out of his hand and the two men slammed onto the asphalt. The sentry tried to shove Quinn off but Quinn was having none of it. He recognized the guy now as the same one who’d been with the woman when she met Boyer.
Quinn whacked his palm into the side of the man’s face and stunned him enough for Quinn to get an arm around the guy’s neck, cutting off blood flow to the brain until the sentry blacked out.
Quinn heard someone running up behind him. He jumped to his feet, ready to fight, but it only was Nate.
“Subtle,” Nate whispered. “I almost couldn’t hear you fighting from way down at the other end.”
Ignoring the commentary, Quinn said, “Help me secure him.”
After they had the guy trussed up like his partner, they moved him under a hedge that lined the parking area.
“That’s got to be it,” Nate said. “If there was anyone else, they would have come by now.”
“Outside, anyway,” Quinn said.
They hurried over to the second-to-last building and peered into the alleyway. The McCrillis unit was two down from where they were. A camera was located above the main entrance, and identical ones were above the entrances to the units on the left and right, which probably meant McCrillis owned them, too.
Quinn had a signal jammer in his pack but decided not to pull it out. The woman had been traveling with three men, two of whom they’d already danced with. It was possible the facility came with its own personnel, but if that were the case, the guards would have been on outside watch since they would be more familiar with the area. So it was likely only the woman and her other man were inside, in which case they might not be actively monitoring the camera feeds, but if the signal was jammed, that might very well trigger an alarm that would draw their attention.
He studied the front of the unit. There were two doors, one a large, roll-up garage type and the other a standard-sized security door. Next to the standard-sized door was a security pad that didn’t appear to have any keys for inputting a code.
“Wait here,” he told Nate.
He ran back to the man they’d left by the hedge and gave him a thorough search. In the front pocket of his jacket was an employee badge identifying him as Kelvin Andres of McCrillis International. There were some letters and numbers and other symbols that meant something to someone, but what was most important to Quinn was the microchip sure to be embedded inside.
He returned to Nate and explained his plan.
Keeping their faces angled away from the cameras, they walked up to the security door. On the outer wall just above the security pad was a plaque that read:
NEYER-HOLT ENGINEERING
By Appointment Only
On the security pad itself was a logo. But it wasn’t really a logo. It was a symbol that matched the one on Andres’s ID card.
Quinn tapped the card against the symbol and the door clicked open.
Gloria looked over King’s shoulder at the monitor. The prisoner was finally starting to show signs of life again.
“Restart the cameras,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She headed back to the interrogation room.
As she opened the door, Daeng lifted his head but kept his focus on the back wall.
“Hello again,” she said. “Where were we?”
The interior of the Neyer-Holt Engineering unit consisted of a large open space with what looked like a small, walled-off office in the front corner, and another self-contained space in the back with a sign on the door that read: SUPPLIES.
Along the walls were shelves and workbenches filled with lathes and drills and presses and testing equipment — all the items needed to sell the engineering front to the casual observer.
But this was no engineering firm.
Quinn waved his gun once at the supply-room door. Nate moved over and put his ear against it. When he pulled away, he shook his head.
Quinn ran the alarm detector around the door but it was clean, so he turned the knob and slowly pushed it open.
Instead of the supply room, they found a stairwell.
This, he was sure, was not a standard option the business park had offered tenants. The concrete steps led down approximately twenty feet, creating a nice soundproof barrier between the subterranean facility and those above ground.
Quinn went first, and as he neared the bottom he heard the distinct rumble of voices. A doorless opening led into a corridor about twice as wide as a household hallway. He paused at the threshold.
The noise was now intermittent, a single voice coming from the left.
A woman’s voice.
He edged into the corridor and shot a quick look in both directions. There were several doors in both directions. The only one open was to the left, where the noise was coming from.
Keeping next to the wall, he and Nate made their way down to the room, stopping right outside it.
“…in your best interest. Now answer the question. Yes or no?” Definitely a woman’s voice, though it had an amplified quality, telling Quinn it was coming from a speaker.
“Sure…yes. Is that what you want?” It was Daeng. A bit weak, though surprisingly strong.
“Then why did he follow me?” the woman asked.
“To find out where you were going.”
This was followed by the sound of a loud slap.
“Give me a better answer than that,” the woman said.
“Ask me a better question.”
Quinn pulled out his cell phone, crouched down, and used the camera to peek inside the room. The space was longer than it was wide, maybe twelve feet by six. A built-in desk stretched along the length of one wall, and on it were several monitors and computers. At the moment, only the center monitor was on. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see what it was displaying. It just looked like motion and light.
Seated in front of the screen was the third man Quinn had seen in the sedan. No one else was around.
Quinn looked over his shoulder at Nate and whispered, “Dart.”
Nate retrieved his dart gun from his pack and handed it over. Quinn checked his phone’s screen again, noting the man’s exact location and distance from the door. Standing, he raised the gun, and then inched out until the muzzle was pointed at this target.
At the last second, the man seemed to sense something, but as he turned to look, the dart was already flying through the air. It hit him in the upper right portion of his chest.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled as he pushed himself out of his chair and reached for the dart.
Before he could get it out, Quinn shot again, hitting him in the thigh.
The guy started to say something else, but his words came out in a slur as he began to sway. Quinn got there just in time to catch him before he fell. Quinn laid the man on the concrete and retrieved the darts.
“It’s Daeng, all right,” Nate said, looking at the computer monitor.
The image was of an almost barren room, the only pieces of furniture a wheeled cart and a chair in the center. On the chair was Daeng. His pant leg had been cut off along the thigh where he was shot, but that was about the extent of his exterior damage. It was clear, though, from the odd bobbing of his head that he’d been drugged.
Standing in front of him was Gloria Clark.
“Why are your people interested in the girl?” she asked.
“Already answered.”
“Is she alive?”
“Come on,” Quinn said.
Back in the hallway, he raced to the closest door and listened. All quiet inside.
He moved to the next. Same.
Door number three. Same.
He switched to the other side. That’s when he heard her.