“Don’t need it. Got my own,” he said, nodding back to the gun Tessa had dropped. “Now get the hell out of here.
He turned before anyone else could say anything and crawled toward the gun and the safety of the deeper jungle. It was a moment before he finally heard the others returning to the path.
They had barely reached it, though, when a female voice called out, “That’s far enough.”
Gloria heard their voices a moment before she spotted Quinn and his people standing about a dozen feet off the path. She made a quick count. Four adults.
And one blessed child.
Could this really be it? Could she really be the one to close the books on the Rostov assignment? If so, she could write her own ticket at McCrillis from now on.
She clicked on her comm to get King’s attention. When he looked back, she pointed to a spot on the other side of the group.”
With a nod, he was off.
She activated her mic again and whispered, “Andres, need you up here with me.”
“On my way,” he replied.
She edged down the path as far as she could without exposing her presence, and watched as one of the women held out her gun. Why wasn’t clear. A moment or two later, the woman pulled it back and the group headed back toward the path.
“King?” she asked.
“I’m about fifty feet beyond them.”
“All right,” she said. “Here we go.” She cupped a hand over her mouth and yelled, “That’s far enough.”
The group immediately collapsed into a circle around the girl, their rifles up and ready. Gloria let off a well-aimed shot that cut through the jungle to their left.
“Guns down,” she yelled. When they didn’t comply, she keyed her mic. “King, warning shot.”
King sent his bullet sailing a few feet over their heads.
“Put your weapons down,” she said. “Or we won’t miss next time.”
Gloria Clark.
Quinn had recognized her voice immediately. And though he couldn’t see her, the flash of her gun had given away her position.
“Anyone have the second shooter?” he asked, not moving his lips.
“My right, seventy-five feet ahead,” Nate said from the other side of the protective ring they’d formed around Tessa.
“Do we see any others?” Quinn asked.
“No movement here,” Orlando said.
“Same with me,” Desirae said.
The car Clark had driven up to the gate was a sedan and could hold up to five passengers. One man down thanks to Abraham, and the two shooters meant one or two more were still out there somewhere.
“Very well, then,” the woman said. “Mr. Quinn, we’ll start with you.”
The use of his name was clearly meant to show that by knowing who he was, Clark was in a superior position. It wasn’t the first time someone had tried that trick with him, and it was something he could use to his advantage.
“All right,” he said, sounding as if he were admitting defeat. “I’m putting it down, okay?”
As he dropped his rifle to the ground, he slipped his other hand behind his back, retrieved the pistol, and tucked it against his leg. Around him, he heard his friends drop their rifles, too.
“No need for anyone to get shot,” he said.
A tense few seconds passed before Clark said, “Send the girl down the path toward my voice.”
Quinn heard Tessa take in a jittery breath.
“She’s just a kid. A nobody,” Quinn said.
“You’re lying, Mr. Quinn. If I’m not mistaken, the girl is Tessa Kagawa. Or does she go by Rostov?”
“You’ve got the wrong girl,” Desirae said. “Her name’s Terri Drake.”
“Terri. Cute. Personally I would have tried a little harder to get something a little less Tessa-like. Now send her over, or we’ll kill you all then walk over there to get her ourselves.”
Quinn noticed a bush move in his peripheral vision, about twenty feet from Clark.
“Get ready,” he whispered. In a louder voice, he said, “Isn’t that your plan anyway?”
“Excuse me?” Clark replied.
“If this girl is who you think she is, you’ll have to kill all of us because we know too much.”
Another tremble of a branch, a few feet closer to the woman.
“The things I heard about you weren’t wrong after all. You are a smart man. Have it—”
“Now!” Quinn shouted.
Just a little closer, Abraham thought.
He had crawled as quietly as he could toward the woman’s voice. Though at some level he knew his injured knee was hollering in pain, he felt nothing, his fear for Tessa’s life and his anger at all this woman represented masking anything that would hinder his movements.
There. He could discern the outline of shoulders and head on the other side of the bushes in front of him, less than ten feet away. As he repositioned to bring his gun up, his arm bumped against a plant. He froze.
“…are a smart man. Have it—”
“Now!” Quinn yelled.
As if the cleaner were speaking to him, Abraham pushed to his feet and pulled his trigger.
He saw the woman’s shadow twist as she screamed in pain and fury. As he was about to pull his trigger again, he lost her for a moment in the vegetation.
Then, two bright flashes and the double thup of the woman’s gun betrayed her position. He fired two shots before finding himself on the ground again.
At first he thought he must have tripped as he fired, but that wouldn’t explain why he was suddenly cold and his shirt wet.
And then the barriers in his mind began to break, allowing the pain to rush in.
Quinn raced toward Clark, his gun whipping up in front of him. Behind him he could hear Desirae rolling into the brush with Tessa, while Nate and Orlando opened fire on the second shooter. As Quinn was about to pull his own trigger, Abraham rose out of the brush and fired almost point blank at the woman.
The woman yelled and returned fire.
Abraham’s body twisted from the impact, but he remained on his feet long enough to send off two shots before collapsing into the jungle. Quinn kept going, knowing he had to get to the woman before he could do anything for Abraham.
There was a dark splatter on the bushes in the area Clark had been, but the woman was gone. Quinn lowered to a crouch and eased forward, following a trail of wet spots on the ground. Twenty feet farther on, the path bent around a half buried boulder.
He heard her ragged breaths coming from the other side of the rock. He inched forward, his weapon at the ready, and found her sitting on the ground, her back against the rock. In her hand was her pistol, but she didn’t even try to lift it. As he drew closer, he saw why. One of Abraham’s shots had torn through her upper arm, and she was lucky to have held on to the gun at all. Her real problem, though, was the gut shot that had turned her shirt into a glistening mess.
She eyed Quinn. “You’re a real asshole…you know that? I was…”—she coughed—“just doing my job.”
He crouched in front of her and looked at her for a second before saying, “If your job is to kill a child, which one of us is really the asshole?”
“People like us…it’s not our…place to question an assignment.”
Quinn heard a noise, close, but he kept his gaze on the woman. “Who taught you that?”
She tried to scoff but ended up coughing again. “They’ll come for you….They won’t stop until…you and the…girl are dead.”
A shifting of dirt.
“Who? Your friends at McCrillis?” he asked.
“You…don’t have…a chance. They’re too…big.”
“I’ve dealt with bigger.”
Before she could reply, he twisted to the side and fired into the jungle.