“I did not say that you were not.”

  “I know. Sorry.” He took a breath. “Do you know where he is?”

  “I know where he was, ten days ago. I do not know if he is still there today.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Why do you need to talk to him?”

  Now it was Quinn’s turn to hes­it­ate. “We need his help.”

  “For a job?”

  “Yes.”

  “That does not seem like a very good reason to me. He wants to be alone. You can find someone else.”

  “If I could do this without him, I would. But I can’t.”

  “You are sure?”

  “I’m pos­it­ive.”

  She was quiet for sev­eral seconds. “He was in Las Ve­gas.”

  That was a sur­prise. Ve­gas was only a short plane ride from San Fran­cisco. “What’s his phone num­ber?”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “Jar, please. I know you must have—”

  “He called me. From pay phone. That is what he said, at least. The num­ber was scrambled. He had me store any in­form­a­tion I gathered for him on a server be­long­ing to one of the casi­nos.”

  “In­form­a­tion? He was work­ing?”

  “I…do not think so. Not like you mean.”

  “Then what was he do­ing?”

  “I am not sure.”

  “So, you don’t have any dir­ect method for con­tact­ing him?”

  “No.”

  Quinn thought for a mo­ment. “Would you be will­ing to send me the in­form­a­tion that you sent him? It might help me fig­ure out where he is.”

  She didn’t re­spond.

  “I un­der­stand,” Quinn said. “You feel like you’re break­ing his trust. But I prom­ise you, I will not in­ter­fere with whatever he is do­ing.”

  “Why do you need him and not any­one else?”

  Fair ques­tion. “I need his memory. He wit­nessed some­thing the rest of us didn’t.”

  “And it is im­port­ant to know what he knows?”

  “Very.”

  He heard her take a breath.

  “All right. I will send it to you.”

  “Thank you, Jar. I ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

  Or­lando tapped him on the arm and whispered, “Don’t hang up.”

  “Hold on,” he said into the phone, then put a hand over the re­ceiver. “What is it?”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  Quinn put the call on speaker.

  “Jar, it’s Or­lando.”

  “Sawadee ka, Or­lando. Sabaidee rue, ka?”

  “Sabaidee, khob khun ka,” Or­lando said. “I was only get­ting one side of your con­ver­sa­tion with Quinn. Did you say you know where Daeng is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Can you do me a fa­vor and get in touch with him? Tell him we have a job for him.”

  “Of course.”

  “Ac­tu­ally, it’s for both of you,” Or­lando said. “If you’re free, that is.”

  “I am al­ways avail­able for you. Where do you want us?”

  “I’ll get back to you on that. For now, get Daeng, pack your bags, and get ready to head to the air­port.”

  “But send that in­form­a­tion,” Quinn re­minded her.

  “I am on it,” Jar said and hung up.

  After Quinn filled Or­lando in on what he’d learned about Nate, he checked his email and found a mes­sage from Jar. He opened the at­tached doc­u­ments.

  They all con­cerned a per­son named Samuel Pear­son. Check that, two people—Samuel Pear­son, Sr., and Samuel Pear­son, Jr., the lat­ter a fif­teen-year-old high school sopho­more with mul­tiple dis­cip­lin­ary entries on his re­cord.

  “Why would Nate be in­ter­ested in these two?”

  Or­lando scanned the doc­u­ments and shrugged. “No idea. But he was in­ter­ested, ap­par­ently. And maybe he still is.”

  “Which I guess means I’m go­ing to Ve­gas.”

  MID­W­EST UNITED STATES

  On the morn­ing Nate left Ve­gas, he pur­chased a used Toyota Camry from Craigslist. It was gray with no dents or no­tice­able scratches. An in­noc­u­ous car that would be for­got­ten mo­ments after it was seen.

  He had headed east, un­sure of his des­tin­a­tion, know­ing only it was time to move on.

  The in­cid­ent with the Pear­sons wasn’t the first time he’d in­ter­vened in a prob­lem since his self-im­posed ex­ile had be­gun, but it had been his most in­volved. He doubted he would have come close to achiev­ing the same level of res­ults with less ef­fort, though.

  You did good, Liz had told him after he left the Pear­sons’ house. Her praise was the only thing that really mattered.

  He wound his way north­east, across the Rock­ies, where he spent two days in Den­ver be­fore de­cid­ing it wasn’t the place for him. The thing about Ve­gas was that whichever dir­ec­tion he looked, he had seen either the casino-filled ar­ti­fi­cial play­ground of the soul­less, or the never-end­ing brown of the desert, the glare and the stark­ness ex­cel­lent fits for his dam­aged psyche. In Den­ver, the moun­tains were a tower­ing, ever-present wall in the west. Beau­ti­ful and majestic, the an­ti­thesis of where he had just come from. That kind of beauty had a way of frac­tur­ing shells like the one he’d built around him­self. He wasn’t ready for his to crack yet.

  On­ward, then. Farther east.

  Kan­sas and Mis­souri were ap­peal­ing, but his de­sire for an­onym­ity still re­quired a lar­ger city than either state pos­sessed.

  He fi­nally found what he was look­ing for five hours north­east of St. Louis.

  Chicago, the sprawl­ing, un­of­fi­cial cap­ital of middle Amer­ica, con­tained more than enough people for him to lose him­self among. He took a room at a pay-by-the-week hotel in a seedier part of town, and once more began walk­ing the days away.

  He wasn’t look­ing to find an­other pro­ject. In fact, he told him­self to avoid do­ing just that. But two weeks after he left Ve­gas, after he had given Sam Ju­nior a chance to re­deem his life, an­other pro­ject found him.

  Help her, Liz said.

  LAS VE­GAS

  Quinn ar­rived in the late af­ter­noon, picked up his rental car, and drove straight to the ad­dress be­long­ing to Samuel Pear­son.

  The house was loc­ated in an un­im­press­ive middle-class neigh­bor­hood of de­cent-sized homes whose de­veloper had clearly been work­ing from a lim­ited play­book. There seemed to be only four ba­sic home designs, and three ex­ter­ior color choices, all in the brown fam­ily. The ma­jor­ity of the houses looked well kept, though there were a few whose own­ers seemed less ad­ept at main­ten­ance than oth­ers. The Pear­son house fell firmly into this lat­ter group, as did the Dodge Char­ger sit­ting in front of it.

  Quinn drove by the high school the son at­ten­ded. It looked like any other high school in the desert—a bunch of sep­ar­ate one-story build­ings spread out over a large piece of land. The school was sev­eral miles away from the Pear­sons’ place.

  Tell me, Nate. Why the in­terest in these people?

  He called Or­lando and told her what little he’d dis­covered. “You come up with any­thing on your end?” She had prom­ised to take a deeper dive into the Pear­sons while Quinn was trav­el­ing.

  “Get this,” she said. “Right after Jar helped Nate, Pear­son with­drew his son from high school.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Re­lo­ca­tion.”

  “The house still looked oc­cu­pied to me. And I didn’t see any signs that they were get­ting ready to move.”

  “Not the whole fam­ily. Just the kid. Turns out the dad trans­ferred him to St. Bartho­lomew’s in Mary­land.”

  “St. Bart’s?”

  “Yep.”

  That was too co­in­cid­ental. A few years earlier, Quinn and Nate had worked on a mis­sion con­nec­ted to the school. A St. Bart’s alumni, em­ployed by a cor­por­a­tion with close ties to the CIA, had given a guest lec­ture about the pride of choos­ing a ca­reer in in­tel­li­gence. The irony was that the man had been selling secrets to more than one for­eign gov­ern­ment for years. The cor­por­a­tion he worked for had un­covered the de­ceit and wanted to clean up the mess be­fore their CIA over­lords found out.

  An as­sas­sin had ad­min­istered the drug that killed the man in his sleep, and Quinn and Nate had done cleanup. Dur­ing their prep work, they had learned everything they needed to know about the town, the hotel, and the school, even tak­ing a tour of St. Bart’s the day be­fore the lec­ture. Though neither Quinn or Nate would have wanted to at­tend there when they were younger, they both came away im­pressed not only by the beauty of the school, but by its high rate of gradu­ation and col­lege place­ment.

  Late May was a weird time of year to be trans­fer­ring to St. Bart’s. The spring semester would be near­ing an end, and the shorter sum­mer pro­gram would still be a few weeks off.

  “Did he get a schol­ar­ship?” he asked. The tu­ition costs at St. Bart’s, if he re­membered cor­rectly, was sim­ilar to that of a private uni­ver­sity. And if the Pear­sons’ house was any in­dic­a­tion, they did not have that kind of money ly­ing around.

  “Ac­cord­ing to the ad­mis­sion notes, Samuel Pear­son, Jr., was en­rolled on a spe­cial-cir­cum­stances basis.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Beats me. That’s all it said.”

  “What about the money?”

  “A five-thou­sand-dol­lar de­posit was made the day be­fore the son ar­rived, and there’s a pay­ment of twenty grand due by June fif­teenth.”

  “That’s com­ing up quick. Does the fam­ily have that kind of cash?”

  “Barely.”

  Quinn looked out at a patch of open desert. St. Bart’s was open to any­one, but it had a repu­ta­tion for tak­ing in troubled kids and put­ting them on the right path. From the re­cords, the son seemed to fit that bill. Had Nate be­friended the fam­ily and sug­ges­ted the move?

  “You still there?” Or­lando asked.

  “Yeah, sorry. Just try­ing to fig­ure out Nate’s con­nec­tion to all this. He’s not re­lated to the fam­ily, is he?”

  “I couldn’t find any con­nec­tion.”

  Nate never really talked much about his fam­ily. Of course, that didn’t mean Quinn and Or­lando were ig­nor­ant of their friend’s his­tory. Quinn had done ex­tens­ive re­search on Nate’s back­ground be­fore re­cruit­ing him as his ap­pren­tice. When Or­lando had joined the team, she be­came privy to that in­form­a­tion.

  “I guess I could go have a con­ver­sa­tion with Pear­son,” Quinn said.

  “I’ve got a bet­ter idea. I had Jar send me the ex­act times of the calls Nate made to her, and was able to cross-check those against the data­base of pay phone us­age in the city.”

  “There’s got to be a ton of pay phones in this city.” Ve­gas was unique that way.

  “True, but not as much as there used to be,” she said. “And people don’t use them that much any­more.”

  “Are you say­ing you know which phone he used?”

  “Babe, who do you think you’re talk­ing to?”

  *

  The phone was loc­ated in the back of a place called Lucky Lynn’s Sa­loon and Gambling Hall. It was one of the smal­ler es­tab­lish­ments, a bar and grill on one side and the casino on the other.

  When Quinn walked in, about a dozen people were in the gam­ing room, spread out between slot ma­chines and the two Black Jack tables. He looked around, as if search­ing for the right ma­chine to plop in front of. Near the cen­ter of the room, he stopped next to a slot ma­chine and sent Or­lando a text.

  Cam­eras in­side and out. Foot­age?

  He con­tin­ued to the back of the room.

  Five phones lined the wall op­pos­ite the en­trances to the re­strooms. Foot-and-a-half di­viders stuck out between them, giv­ing some semb­lance of pri­vacy. Ac­cord­ing to Or­lando, the phone num­ber of the one Nate had used ended with 2502. Quinn went straight to the one farthest from the gambling area. Above the keypad, un­der a plastic cov­er­ing, was the phone’s num­ber, which—sur­prise, sur­prise—ended in 2502.

  He picked up the re­ceiver and punched in Or­lando’s num­ber.

  “Cute,” she said, an­swer­ing.

  Quinn looked around. “It’s about as se­cluded as you can get in this place.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “You see my text?”

  “Yeah. Work­ing on it right now.”

  “Call me on my cell when you’re done. I’m go­ing for a walk.”

  He left the build­ing through the nearest exit and crossed the park­ing area to the pub­lic side­walk. There, he looked up and down the street. It was a mixed neigh­bor­hood of fast-food places, gas sta­tions, cheap mo­tels, and for­get­table apart­ment build­ings. Had Nate been stay­ing at one of the nearby mo­tels? Or had he driven here from some­where else in the city?

  Nor­mally, Quinn would have thought the lat­ter, but Nate hadn’t been here on a job, at least not as far as Quinn knew, so it was pos­sible he had chosen con­veni­ence over trade­craft.

  He re­turned to Lucky Lynn’s, this time en­ter­ing the bar and grill, where he ordered a chicken Caesar salad and a Three Weavers Ex­pat­ri­ate IPA. Or­lando called back not long after he star­ted eat­ing.

  “He was def­in­itely there,” she said.

  “You found foot­age of him?”

  “I did. I’m run­ning a bot through the casino’s stored foot­age to see if he showed up any other times be­sides the calls we know about.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “Ap­peared to be.”

  “What about the ex­ter­ior cam­eras? Did he leave in a car?”

  “No car. He was on foot every time.”

  Quinn perked up. Per­haps Nate had been stay­ing in the area. “Did you see which dir­ec­tion he went?”

  “He al­ways ar­rived from the north, and headed back that way when he left.”

  “Please tell me you tried track­ing him from there.”

  “I just star­ted. I’ve got him to the street­light at the end of the block so far, and have a search un­der­way for other cam­eras along the road.”

  “I’ll head that way as soon as I fin­ish eat­ing. Feed me whatever you learn as soon as you have it.”

  “Will do.”

  Quinn pol­ished off the rest of his salad and headed out­side. At the in­ter­sec­tion Or­lando had men­tioned were two gas sta­tions, a Mc­Don­ald’s, and a place called the Dream Along Inn. Was that where Nate was stay­ing?

  The double buzz of a text.

  Con­tinue north to 7-El­even.

  Or­lando had ob­vi­ously seen him on one of the cam­eras.

  He waited for the green light and crossed the road. The 7-El­even was two blocks down. By the time he reached it, a new text had come in.

  Left at the corner.

  One block to Peaches’ Mar­ket.

  Cross to other side of the street.

  Down one more block to KFC.

  Right be­fore he reached the chicken place, Or­lando called.

  “I have him on archive foot­age go­ing straight ahead for an­other block and a half. But then he moved into a dead zone and didn’t come out the other side.”

  Quinn star­ted walk­ing again. “Any side streets he could have gone down?”

  “None in that area.”

  “What about cars? Maybe that’s where he’d left his car and drove off.”

  “Already checked. He was in none of the cars driv­ing out of the area in either dir­ec­tion.”

  “For what time range?”

  “I gave him a twenty-minute win­dow from the mo­ment he dis­ap­peared.”

  Quinn had the urge to hurry, sens­ing they were close, but he made him­self keep to a nor­mal, ped­es­trian pace. When he reached the point where Or­lando lost Nate, he stopped and looked around.

  “Looks like about seven apart­ment build­ings per side,” he said. “No houses or empty lots. No busi­nesses, either. He must have gone into one of the build­ings.”

  “You can elim­in­ate the first three you passed, and the one ahead of you on the corner. I’ve got all of those on cam­era. Also, I don’t think it would have made any sense for him to have crossed the street only to need to cross back.”

  “I agree. So that leaves me with three build­ings.” He checked the time. It was a little after seven p.m.

  “I can check prop­erty re­cords and see who owns each place,” she said. “It’s pos­sible I might even be able to dig up ten­ant lists.”

  “Don’t waste your time. This time at night, I’m bet­ting I should be able to find man­agers at home.”

  A pause. “Quinn.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If Nate’s there… don’t be—”

  “I know I screwed up be­fore. I’m not go­ing to be an as­shole.”

  “I wasn’t go­ing to say an as­shole.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I swear. Of course, it’s what I would have meant.”

  “I love you, babe.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Quinn star­ted with the nearest build­ing. A dir­ect­ory at the en­trance poin­ted him to apart­ment 201. He found it on the second floor, a metal plaque read­ing MAN­AGER un­der the apart­ment num­ber.

  A wo­man with a high head of coiffed hair answered, wear­ing a bright red thigh-length robe and a look of im­pa­tience. “Yes?”

  “Spe­cial Agent Marsh,” Quinn said, flash­ing the FBI badge he’d brought for this pur­pose.

  “FBI? I don’t know what any­one told you, but I—”

  “Ma’am, have you seen this man?” He showed her a pic­ture of Nate on his phone.

  It took her a few seconds to pro­cess the re­quest. When she fi­nally looked at the screen, she said, “What’s he done?”

  “Have you seen him, ma’am?”

  She frowned. “I don’t think so. Maybe.”

 

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