Exactly the way she saw it.
Finally, a real break. Whoever warned Becker had to know about the girl. It was likely the person knew more than the late analyst. “I need to know where that call came from,” she said.
“Without a number, it would be extremely difficult.”
“But not impossible.”
He hemmed and hawed for a moment before he smiled. “Nothing’s ever impossible. My boys are already working on it. In fact, they’ve gotten a partial trace already.”
Martinez loved to make a problem seem insurmountable before giving a solution. She’d learned long ago it was easier to play into this than fight it. “That’s fantastic,” she said. “Please extend my thanks to your team. So, what have they learned?”
“Well, there were a lot of bounces and reroutes, but they’ve narrowed down the location to this.” He opened a map on his screen.
“What am I looking at?” she asked.
“Here. This’ll help.”
He widened the map, and water appeared at one edge of the land, and then at another and another until she finally recognized the area.
“That’s Hawaii.”
“Specifically a four-hundred-square-mile area of Oahu,” he clarified.
“I think your guys must have made a mistake. This is a perfect bounce location. It must go somewhere else.”
“I thought the same thing, but it’s not a bounce. They’ve checked it a dozen times. This is where the signal ended.”
“Hawaii.”
“Oahu.”
She was having trouble buying it, but in the years she’d worked for McCrillis, Martinez had never let her down.
“Four hundred square miles? Any chance of narrowing that down?” she asked.
“Possible, but it’s going to take a bit of time.”
“Send me everything you have so far and keep me updated via e-mail.” She stood up and held out her hand. “I’m counting on you guys, Toby. This could be big for the both of us, so the sooner you can pinpoint a location, the better.”
The gleam in Martinez’s eyes as they shook hands told her that her request had just moved to the top of his to-do list.
“As soon as we know, you’ll know,” he said.
“Excellent,” she said. “There is one other thing I need you to look into for me. But I’d appreciate it if you kept it on the down low. Kind of a personal matter.”
“It shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.
“I need to find out everything you can about an operative who goes by the name of Quinn.”
CHAPTER 28
Quinn, Nate and Daeng’s closer proximity to Quebec City meant that their flight, though later than Orlando and Abraham’s, still arrived first. By the time Orlando and Abraham walked out of the airport, a three-row SUV had been rented and the route to Lac-Saint-Charles worked out.
Nate was behind the wheel with Quinn up front, leaving the two bucket seats in the middle row for the late arrivals. Daeng, crutches bound, had claimed ownership of the bench seat in the back, where he could stretch out his wounded leg.
“Comfy?” Orlando asked him as she buckled into her seat.
“I could use a pillow,” Daeng said.
“I bet you could.”
As soon as Abraham was strapped in, Nate took off.
“How do you want to play this?” Quinn asked Orlando.
“I don’t think Nadine Chastain will just roll over because we walk in there and start asking questions,” she said. “If we can swing it, I’d rather try a self-guided tour first. See if we can find something that proves Desirae is her daughter. Even better, something that points in Desirae’s direction. If we can avoid talking to Nadine at all, that would probably be best.”
Lac-Saint-Charles wasn’t officially a town on its own anymore, but a district within Quebec City. Even then, it had a remote country feel. It was located at the southern end of the lake for which it took its name, in a heavily forested area. The homes were quaint and colorful, most without fences, just snow-covered lawns and leafless trees, reminding Quinn very much of his hometown of Warroad, Minnesota.
“Left ahead,” he said, consulting his phone’s GPS.
They turned onto the road where Nadine lived. Like elsewhere, the houses here were on similarly sized lots, only these all seemed to back up to the woods. Nadine Chastain’s home was a half mile in on the north side, a mustard yellow two-story cottage with dual dormer windows in a black-shingled roof and a single-car garage to the side. The driveway was cleared of snow but had no cars parked on it.
They kept driving to the dead end of the street and were happy to find an area where they could not only turn around but park behind a snowbank, out of view of the homes.
“Did anyone see signs of someone home?” Quinn asked.
A chorus of nos.
He looked at Orlando. “You’re up.”
Orlando called the cell phone number she’d found for Nadine. After a few seconds, she leaned forward and said, “Bonjour. Êtes vous Madame Loge?….Je suis vraiment désolé. J'ai fait le mauvais numéro….Je m'excuse de vous avoir dérangée.”
As soon as she hung up, she opened an app that would track the location of the woman’s phone. “She’s definitely not home.”
“How far away?”
“Ten point three miles, and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”
“Okay,” Quinn said. “Daeng, think you can drive?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Hopefully you won’t have to go anywhere, but I want you behind the wheel just in case.” Quinn turned to Abraham. “You’re staying with him.”
“I am not,” Abraham said.
“You are, and it’s not open for discussion.”
“But—”
“No.”
The retired op leaned back and sulked.
Orlando pulled out a leather bag from her pack and removed several sets of comm gear. “I only have four. I’m sorry, Abraham, you’ll have to go without.”
“Of course I will,” he said. “Maybe I should have just stayed in Florida.”
Nate looked like he was going to throw in a quip, but a withering glance from Quinn nipped that in the bud.
As soon as they had the receivers in their ears and the mics attached to their collars, Quinn said, “Let’s go.”
It wasn’t quite as cold outside as it had been when they’d stepped out of the airport, but that wasn’t saying much. Anything below sixty-five degrees was unacceptable in Quinn’s book.
He checked Google Maps’ satellite image of the area and then pointed at the trees to his left. “We go back about one hundred and fifty feet, then head right until we’re behind her house. Should be able to stay in the woods all the way.”
Nate took point, with Orlando in the middle and Quinn a few steps behind her. In most places the snow wasn’t more than a foot deep, but there were a few drifts where they sank in to above their knees, soaking their pants. When they finally arrived behind Nadine’s house, they crouched and surveyed the scene. There was a shed in the yard and a wooden swing set near the back. As for the house, it had a single door along the rear, accessed up a short set of brick steps, and five windows, three on the first floor and two more dormers up top. Overall, the place seemed quiet.