“Copy, team one,” Sa­lah said. “Re­main­ing teams, go.”

  As the re­main­ing teams moved in on the four big rigs, team one’s sharp­shooter took out the lead truck’s gun­ner.

  Less than a minute later, every­one had re­por­ted in, and Sa­lah an­nounced, “Con­voy se­cure.”

  The sol­diers who hadn’t been killed were stripped of their uni­forms and tied up a few hun­dred meters off the road, while the dead were dumped into the gully.

  The con­voy moved out, with Sa­lah driv­ing the lead big rig.

  The rest would be aca­demic. Once they passed the next check­point, they would con­tinue on the route the con­voy was sup­posed to take for an­other thirty minutes be­fore di­vert­ing north­w­est for the coast.

  Ar­range­ments had been made for sev­eral fish­ing boats to ferry the sur­face-to-air mis­siles, rifles, and other weaponry from the con­voy to one of St. Amand’s ships off the coast. The gov­ern­ment patrol that cruised those wa­ters had been well com­pensated for avoid­ing that sec­tion of the sea un­til long after the trans­fer was com­plete.

  St. Amand didn’t hang around to watch any of this. The hi­jack­ing had been the high­light, everything else was lo­gist­ics.

  He left the con­trol room and called Drake. “The mis­siles have been se­cured. How are we do­ing on those drones?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  The private jet put Quinn in Chicago be­fore sun­rise, where he found the Audi A4 Or­lando had ar­ranged for him in the short-term park­ing struc­ture. The en­gine hummed to life with the push of a but­ton, and he was on his way into the city by five a.m.

  He called Or­lando once he was clear of the air­port. “So, where am I go­ing?”

  “I’ve sent the info to the car’s nav sys­tem.”

  Quinn toggled the switch that brought up the map on the dash screen.

  “I’m look­ing at a big red square,” he said, glan­cing at a shaded area about seven blocks per side.

  “He’s in­side there some­where.”

  “You couldn’t nar­row it down a bit more?”

  “Is that a ser­i­ous ques­tion or are you be­ing cranky be­cause you didn’t sleep well?”

  “I love you.”

  “So you keep telling me.”

  Traffic was mostly light as he drove into the city, and soon he was on sur­face streets, cruis­ing the peri­meter of Or­lando’s red zone.

  The area in ques­tion was one of those formerly run­down sec­tions of a city just start­ing to ex­per­i­ence its hip­ster in­va­sion. One didn’t have to look too hard through the graf­fiti-tagged brick build­ings and oc­ca­sional deser­ted lot to see signs of the com­ing re­ju­ven­a­tion.

  Quinn began sys­tem­at­ic­ally work­ing his way through the neigh­bor­hood, scan­ning the parked cars for Nate’s gray Camry. But not only was it one of the most com­mon vehicles around, gray was ap­par­ently its most com­mon color. Each time he spot­ted a po­ten­tial match, he’d slow and get a pic­ture of the li­cense plate. So far, none were from Nevada, but he’d been ex­pect­ing that. Nate had been well trained, and there was a very good chance he’d changed the car’s plates more than once since he left Ve­gas.

  Quinn sent the pic­tures to Or­lando for her to check the plates against DMV re­cords, see if any was a mis­match.

  He was get­ting close to the end of the north/south streets when Or­lando called.

  “Got some­thing,” she said. “Photo num­ber eight. Plates are for a Honda, not a Camry.” She read off the num­ber.

  Quinn de­term­ined the pic­ture had been taken three streets back, to­ward the south end. He turned at the next in­ter­sec­tion and headed back. He parked a block from the sus­pec­ted vehicle and walked from there.

  Even if the Camry was Nate’s, Quinn knew the vehicle’s cur­rent loc­a­tion did not ne­ces­sar­ily mean Nate was stay­ing in one of the nearby build­ings. Park­ing in the area was at a premium, so the spot could have been the only one avail­able and Nate could be blocks away.

  An­other pos­sib­il­ity, one that Quinn did not want to think about, was that Nate had aban­doned the car and was now thou­sands of miles away. Whatever the case, first or­der of busi­ness was to as­cer­tain if the Camry was in­deed the one Nate had pur­chased in Nevada.

  When Quinn reached the corner of the street the Camry was parked on, he paused to scan it. Two people, way down at the other end of the block. One was climb­ing into a beat-up old Buick sedan. The other was a jog­ger.

  Quinn waited for the sedan to drive away be­fore he crossed the street and con­tin­ued to­ward the Camry. A few cars away, he checked the street again, this time glan­cing at the win­dows that looked down on it. No one seemed to be watch­ing him.

  He ac­tiv­ated the cam­era on his phone, stepped into the road, and walked along the driver’s side of the cars parked at the curb, as if he was go­ing to get into one. When he reached the Camry, he slowed just long enough to get a photo of the VIN at the lower edge of the wind­shield. Though it was pos­sible to change this out, too, it was a much more com­plic­ated job. The easier choice would have been to pop it off and leave it off, if you were really afraid of the car be­ing ID’d. Who­ever had changed the plates on this vehicle had ap­par­ently thought the ex­tra step un­ne­ces­sary.

  As Quinn moved on, he texted the pic­ture to Or­lando. Less than thirty seconds later, his phone vi­brated.

  Bingo

  It was Nate’s car. The big ques­tion was whether he was still around or had dumped it and moved on. But that was some­thing for Or­lando to an­swer. Mean­while, Quinn had to as­sume Nate was still here.

  Quinn strolled the streets in the vi­cin­ity of the car, try­ing to think like Nate and see things the way Nate would have. Two and a half blocks away, Quinn stopped and stared at an old, ratty sign cling­ing to the side of an old, ratty build­ing across the street.

  THE GRANT HOTEL

  Daily•Weekly•Monthly

  “You’re prob­ably think­ing your best bet is a private res­id­ence,” Quinn had told his then-ap­pren­tice when they dis­cussed emer­gency places to hole up. “In gen­eral terms, it is. But the kind of places you’d need are rare. First off, they have to be easy to get in and out of without any­one know­ing you’re there. Aban­doned places next to other aban­doned places could work. I like places that are for sale that are well hid­den from their neigh­bors by land­scap­ing, that kind of stuff. I would only use some­thing in a hous­ing tract if I had no other choice.”

  “Be­cause of neigh­bors,” Nate had said.

  “Ex­actly. They’re not go­ing to like people they don’t know hanging out in their neigh­bor­hoods. This is es­pe­cially true in smal­ler cit­ies and towns.”

  “How about rich neigh­bor­hoods? You know, where every­one stays to them­selves and you can’t see one place from the other.”

  “Now you’re think­ing. The thing is, though, in most situ­ations, that’s not go­ing to be an op­tion. If you need to hide out in a big city, my first choice would be one of those weekly ho­tels where you can pay in cash. The seedier the bet­ter. If they in­sist on see­ing an ID, get out. You’ll find some­where they’ll take your money without ask­ing ques­tions.”

  “Couldn’t I just use one of my fake IDs?”

  “Only as a last re­sort. You’ll usu­ally only get one chance to use an ID. Don’t burn it if you don’t have to.”

  “Got it. So sleazebag, no-ID-ne­ces­sary ho­tels. I’m guess­ing they won’t have room ser­vice.”

  From where Quinn was stand­ing, the Grant Hotel looked to be a shin­ing ex­ample of the sleazebag, no-ID type.

  Quinn knew he couldn’t just walk in and ask about his friend. Places like the Grant didn’t like ques­tions. The mo­ment Quinn star­ted in­quir­ing about Nate, the desk clerk would likely play dumb, say he didn’t know who Quinn was talk­ing about. And us­ing the FBI badge would prob­ably make mat­ters even worse.

  Quinn con­tin­ued walk­ing around, in case there were other such ho­tels in the area, but the Grant was the only one within easy walk­ing dis­tance of Nate’s car.

  He called Or­lando.

  “I found a flo­p­h­ouse called the Grant Hotel. Doubt they keep re­cords but still worth a check.”

  “I’ll see what I can find.”

  The morn­ing work shuffle was mov­ing into full swing, and more and more park­ing spaces were open­ing up as local res­id­ents headed off. Quinn moved the Audi into a re­cently va­cated space a block from the hotel. It was close enough that he had a good view of the Grant’s front door, but far enough away that he’d likely re­main un­noticed by any­one com­ing or go­ing.

  He killed the en­gine and settled in to wait.

  *

  The pre­vi­ous even­ing, when Quinn had been search­ing for Nate in Ve­gas, Nate had gone out in search of din­ner in Chicago. But, as seemed to be hap­pen­ing to him a lot since his self-im­posed ex­ile, he found him­self con­fron­ted with someone else’s troubles.

  At a dimly lit street corner, a wo­man, prob­ably in her early thirties, was yelling, “Where is he?” over and over at two tough-look­ing, Caucasian guys. The wo­man was dressed in blue scrubs and had her hair in a tight bun, while the guys spor­ted T-shirts that showed off the tat­toos run­ning down their arms and up their necks.

  “Why you ask­ing me?” the skin­nier of the two men said.

  “I know you know! Where is he, Da­mon?”

  “You’re crazy, you know that? Just go home. Get out of here. You don’t want to make me angry.”

  The big­ger guy stepped between Da­mon and the wo­man, but she quickly moved around him and grabbed Da­mon’s arm.

  “He’s just a kid! If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll go to the cops!”

  “Get your hand off me, bitch!” Da­mon said.

  His friend grabbed the wo­man and pulled her away.

  “You think you scare me?” Da­mon snorted. “You don’t scare me.”

  “If Brian isn’t home in thirty minutes, I will go to the cops. And I know you don’t want me to do that.”

  In the blink of an eye, Da­mon whipped out a gun and poin­ted it at the wo­man’s head. Nate’s hand auto­mat­ic­ally shot to the un­der­arm hol­ster he wasn’t wear­ing.

  If Da­mon had ex­pec­ted the wo­man to be cowed by his weapon, he must’ve been dis­ap­poin­ted. She held her ground and stared de­fi­antly at him.

  People other than Nate might have si­lently gone the other way, or blen­ded into the shad­ows and waited for everything to play out. But even if he hadn’t had Liz’s voice in his head telling him to do some­thing, Nate would have ac­ted.

  He con­tin­ued walk­ing to­ward them, loudly scrap­ing his foot across the side­walk.

  The two men’s heads swiveled in his dir­ec­tion. The wo­man con­tin­ued star­ing at Da­mon. Nate kept his gaze fo­cused ahead, as if he hadn’t no­ticed the trio, while ac­tu­ally watch­ing their every move through the corner of his eye.

  Da­mon tucked the gun in his waist­band and whispered some­thing to the wo­man. He and the big guy began walk­ing rap­idly down the other street. Nate half ex­pec­ted the wo­man to go after them, but she re­mained where she was.

  As Nate neared, he could see she was shak­ing. He con­sidered cross­ing over to see if she was all right, but he sensed she wouldn’t ap­pre­ci­ate a stranger pok­ing into her busi­ness so he walked on.

  When he reached the next in­ter­sec­tion, he stopped and looked back. The wo­man had crossed to his side of the street and was walk­ing in the op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion.

  His stom­ach growled. The sand­wich shop he’d been head­ing for was on the next block.

  Help her, Liz said.

  Nate clenched his fists and grim­aced, then sighed and turned to fol­low the wo­man.

  Four blocks south of the Grant Hotel, she entered a six-story brick apart­ment build­ing. Nate walked up to the door and found it opened with a gentle push, the latch miss­ing.

  A hum from the el­ev­ator to the right in­dic­ated it was in use. A door next to it read STAIRS. Nate pushed through the door and raced up to the second-floor land­ing, where he paused only long enough to con­firm the el­ev­ator was still mov­ing. He did the same at the third, and again at the fourth, at this last hear­ing the clank and screech of the el­ev­ator door open­ing one more floor up.

  He hur­ried to the fifth and peeked into the cor­ridor. The scrubs-wear­ing wo­man was walk­ing away from him. When she reached the second to last door on her left, she pulled out a key and let her­self in. Nate waited to make sure she didn’t im­me­di­ately come back out be­fore he walked down to the door.

  Apart­ment 508.

  He could hear someone mov­ing around in­side, but no voices. Ap­par­ently Brian was not home yet.

  Nate left the build­ing the same way he came, and stopped at the mail­box in the down­stairs lobby. Some of the boxes had names on them. Apart­ment 508 did not.

  He looked around to make sure there were no cam­eras, then used a credit card to dis­lodge the box’s use­less lock. In­side were a credit card bill and two med­ical bills—one from a Dr. Win­ston, and one from Chicago Me­morial Hos­pital. Stamped on the out­side of the doc­tor’s en­vel­ope were the words FI­NAL NO­TICE. All were ad­dressed to a Kristina King. He guessed the wo­man had for­got­ten all about check­ing her mail when she re­turned, or she didn’t want to think about what might be wait­ing for her. Given what he’d found, he guessed the second pos­sib­il­ity was closer to the truth.

  He re­turned the credit card and the hos­pital bills to the box, but held on to the en­vel­ope from Dr. Win­ston.

  Back in his hotel room, he filled the pot from the cheap cof­fee maker with wa­ter and turned on the heat­ing func­tion. When steam rose from it, he held the en­vel­ope in the va­pors, let­ting it loosen the flap.

  Dr. Win­ston’s spe­cialty was on­co­logy. The bundle of pa­pers his of­fice had sent con­cerned treat­ment for someone named Nancy Olsted. Though Ms. Olsted’s dia­gnosis wasn’t men­tioned, it was ob­vi­ous from the treat­ments that she had been in pretty bad shape.

  Pay­ment on an out­stand­ing bal­ance of $94,578 was nine months over­due. Nate checked the treat­ment dates. The last had oc­curred over ten months ago. Had the wo­man switched doc­tors? And why were her bills com­ing to Kristina King?

  Nate set the bill down and looked out the room’s only win­dow.

  This wasn’t his busi­ness. He should just leave it alone.

  “Where is he?” the wo­man had said.

  “He’s just a kid,” she had pleaded.

  “Where is he?”

  Liz smiled at him from nowhere, gentle and un­der­stand­ing. You know what you need to do.

  Nate closed his eyes. “Crap.”

  Thirty minutes later, he took the L to an all-night Fed Ex Ex­press in a nicer part of town, where he used one of their com­puters to get onto the in­ter­net.

  The name Kristina King did not gen­er­ate a lot of hits, but a few was all Nate needed. The most im­port­ant link he found was to a monthly news­let­ter from a Chicago-area trade school, the date two years pre­vi­ous. An art­icle men­tioned the then up­com­ing gradu­at­ing class of dental hy­gien­ists. It was a small group, thirty-five in all, and Kristina King had achieved the highest marks. The wo­man pic­tured was the same wo­man Nate had fol­lowed to apart­ment 508. The couple of lines in the art­icle dir­ectly re­lated to King read:

  Kristina is a nat­ive of Chicago, and lives with her son and mother. She looks for­ward to help­ing people main­tain healthy teeth.

  Play­ing the ob­vi­ous hunch, Nate searched BRIAN KING. There were sev­eral hits, but none were plaus­ible as Kristina King’s son. He tried NANCY OLSTED. The top hit was a short ob­it­u­ary that had run in the Chicago Sun-Times.

  Nancy Olsted, 57, passed away peace­fully on July 6 after a long battle with ovarian can­cer. Born in Bo­ston, Mas­sachu­setts, Olsted had moved to Chicago with her fam­ily as a teen. She is sur­vived by her daugh­ter, Kristina, and grand­son, Brian. Ser­vices will be held July 11 at Kauf­man Mor­tu­ary.

  While there was still plenty of miss­ing in­form­a­tion, this is how Nate saw the situ­ation: a single work­ing mom crushed un­der the emo­tional and fin­an­cial toll of tak­ing care of her dy­ing mother, los­ing con­trol of her son due to the strain.

  Liz’s voice, You know what you need to do.

  Alive or dead, she would never have wanted him to walk away from a situ­ation like this.

  He sat back, his gaze un­focused. What he needed to do was help Kristina get her son back, and not just in the phys­ical sense. But to do that, he needed to know more about the Kings, and to learn who this Da­mon as­shole was.

  No time to do all that, Liz chided him.

  “I know,” he mumbled.

  He didn’t know Da­mon’s last name, and the guy would re­quire some leg­work first, but Nate could handle the as­shole. What he needed was help with the Kings, and he knew ex­actly whom to ask.

  He found a pay phone in the lobby of the Renais­sance Hotel.

  “Sawadee, ka,” Jar answered.

  “Sawadee, khrap. It’s Nate. I know I’ve been ask­ing a lot from you lately, but I need your help again.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  He gave her what he knew about Kristina King and her fam­ily. “I need as much as you can find out about them.”

  “I will see what I can find. You should call me back in no longer than one hour. I will be un­avail­able after that.”

  “Per­man­ently?” he asked, sur­prised.

  “For a day only.”

  “Oh, good. You had me wor­ried there for a mo­ment. I’ll be sure to call back be­fore then.”

 

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