Brett Battles - The Collected

In the hours after the call, he’d moved through his apartment, sitting down on the couch or the bed or a kitchen chair, but never for more than a few seconds before his nerves made him stand back up and walk around again.

Fucking money , he thought. You’re an idiot, idiot, idiot!

He should have never taken this job. He should have thought about it more when it was offered to him, but he hadn’t been able to see through the piles of cash, and the dangled possibility it would lead to more.

Lead to more. What a joke .

While his client had dutifully come through with the payment, the man had also conveniently fallen off the map. The timing of which, incidentally , coincided with the job going to shit.

The hit hadn’t been the problem. The target was dead. There was no question of that.

But the cleanup?

Something had gone seriously askew, and Quinn-who Pullman had been hearing for years was the cream of the crop-had disappeared without a trace. That might not have been so bad if police hadn’t discovered the body in an abandoned van just outside Monterrey. And that might not have been so bad if the body had been unidentifiable. Unfortunately, with the exception of a well-placed bullet hole and a few burn marks from a fire that had been quickly extinguished, the dead man was apparently in perfect condition. The police had no problem identifying him as a powerful Mexican senator, and former United Nations official.

If word got around about how disastrously things had gone, Pullman would have a hell of a time drumming up any new business. But it wasn’t business, or even the potential lack thereof, that had kept him awake all night.

It was the phone call.

“I was given your number by a cleaner named Quinn,” the woman had said.

Whoever she was, she wasn’t some broker waiting for Quinn to show up. Pullman was sure about that now. So who, then? Probably more importantly, who did she represent?

His biggest fear was that the senator had ties to the northern Mexican drug cartels. It hadn’t been mentioned in any of the news reports, but he knew all those political types, especially in that part of the world, had to have their hands in someone’s pocket. What if the senator’s cartel friends had already discovered that Pullman had been involved in the assassination?

Perhaps they had captured Quinn, and tortured Pullman’s name and number out of him. That stopped him pacing for a moment.

Jesus. If that were true, he was toast.

Those bastards weren’t just dangerous, they were unrelentingly vicious, and wouldn’t be content to just kill Pullman.

Not long after midnight, he’d retrieved his Colt.45 pistol from the safe in his room. Being on the administrative end of projects, and never having to go out into the field himself, he’d only used the gun a few times at a firing range, with less than spectacular results. But he felt better having it in his hand as he continued carving a path across his floor.

He next wondered if there was a way they could figure out where he lived.

He’d always been careful never to let anyone know where his place was. Even his family had no clue. And when he craved companionship, he paid for a few hours of Jessica’s time in a cheap motel room across town.

The phone call. Could they pinpoint his location through that?

He didn’t think so. He’d paid good money for some equipment that was supposed to prevent anyone from doing that. Granted, it wasn’t quite top of the line, but the guy who sold it to him promised it was more than adequate.

More pacing, more questions.

Run?

Don’t run?

Threat?

Not a threat?

At 5:57 a.m., he still had no answers.

At 5:57 and five seconds, the floorboard behind him creaked.

Pullman stood near his couch, staring at the wall, a cannon of a gun dangling from his hand. Quinn and Orlando, having already checked the rest of the apartment and confirming there was no one else present, watched him from the shadows across the room.

Finally, Quinn gave Orlando a nod, and he moved forward, making it to within ten feet of the man before the floorboard groaned.

Pullman started to turn, his gun rising. Quinn took two quick steps forward and grabbed the gun. A boom filled the apartment as Pullman pulled the trigger, the bullet flying over Quinn’s shoulder and into the ceiling.

Quinn wrenched the gun out of the man’s grasp, tossed it behind him, and slammed the butt of his SIG into the side of Pullman’s head.

Pullman wheeled backward, a shout of surprise and pain escaping his lips. Quinn followed right after him, this time whacking an open hand against the man’s ear.

Pullman jerked in response, his hand flying up to protect himself as he cried out again.

Quinn grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him at a stuffed chair next to the couch. When Pullman’s legs hit the seat, he crumbled backward.

“Please, please,” the broker said, his hands raised protectively in front of his face. “This is all a mistake.”

“You’re damn right it is,” Quinn said. “I am not a fan of being shot at.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…Look, I didn’t realize who he was. Okay?”

Quinn cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. “Didn’t realize who who was?”

“The senator. Um, uh, Lopez. Right? That’s his name, I think…Yeah, yeah. Senator Lopez. I swear. I didn’t know.”

Senator Lopez? Who the hell was this guy talking about?

He glanced at Orlando. She shrugged, as confused as he was.

As he turned back, Pullman started to push himself out of the chair.

“No one said you could get up.” Quinn knocked the broker back down. “Tape,” he said to Orlando, his eyes never leaving Pullman.

There was a loud rip, and a second later Orlando came around his side, a loose end of duct tape in one hand and the roll in the other.

Pullman pushed back in the chair. “Wait! Wait! I told you I didn’t know.”

“Arms at your side,” Quinn ordered.

“Please!”

Quinn pointed his SIG at the man’s shoulder. “Take them down or I will.”

Pullman dropped his arms.

“Take off your shirt.”

“What?”

“Take it off.”

“Okay, okay,” the man said. He pulled off his shirt, revealing an abnormally hairy chest.

“Drop it on the floor.”

As soon as the man did, Quinn grabbed him by the nape of the neck and pulled him forward several inches so Orlando would have room to work. Orlando stuck the end of the tape to the broker’s chest, then wrapped it around the man’s body several times, pinning Pullman’s arms tightly to his side. Once that was done, Quinn pushed the man back, and Orlando wound more tape around the chair, creating a web that would keep Pullman where he was. She then ripped off a small piece and stuck it over the man’s mouth.

Pullman yelled in protest, his voice leaking from the bottom of the strip.

“See, that just pisses me off,” Orlando said.

She tore off two more pieces. The first she put over the lower half of the man’s mouth. The other, longer strip she wrapped under Pullman’s jaw and up the side of his face so that it held down the ends of the other two.

“Yell again,” she said.

Pullman stared back, silent.

“You heard her,” Quinn told him.

Pullman gave a halfhearted yell. This time his voice was sufficiently muffled.

“Better,” Orlando said.

Quinn leaned forward a few inches. “You brought this on yourself. If you hadn’t tried to shoot me, we might have had a nice, pleasant conversation. But you just couldn’t help pulling the trigger, could you?”