Brett Battles - The Collected

“Jonathan. You there?”

With a sigh, Peter said, “I’m here.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t think anything.”

“Come on. You must have some ideas.”

“Sure, I have one,” Peter said. “Looks like we just got a few hours off.”

Harris’s cell phone rang as he was heading to Romero’s room to deliver the news. He looked at the screen. It was Ryan Porter, Romero’s point man on Isla de Cervantes.

“What?” Harris said.

“Mr. Harris,” Porter said. “Sorry to bother you, but just a little while ago someone used the database at Cristo de los Milagros Hospital to look for info on Senor Romero.”

Harris slowed his pace, surprised. “Who?”

“I don’t have a name, sir. They used the IT department’s log-in, but the IP is from a hotel a few miles away.” There was a pause. “Sir, one of the terms they used for their search is on the hot list.”

“What term?”

“‘Current location,’” Porter said.

Son of a bitch , Harris thought. Crap was piling up on crap now. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He needed to concentrate on finding the cleaner. That was the most immediate problem. “Just see if you can find out who-”

“Sir, they also included a second name in the search.”

A second name ? He was almost afraid to ask. “What was it?”

“Jonathan Quinn. Does that mean anything to you?”

Harris froze where he stood.

“Sir?” Porter asked.

“Send the men to that hotel, find out who made that search, and eliminate them. Call me as soon as you know who they were.”

The Marguerite Hotel was located a block from the beach in the touristy west side of Cordoba. It had been an easy hack for Orlando to insert into the hotel’s records that room 317 was occupied by a Mr. and Mrs. J. Quinn. That was also the room where the IP address she used in the search was assigned. In addition to room 317, she had claimed room 316 across the hall, and room 323 near the elevators.

Since they would need more than just the two of them to cover everything, they’d called Daeng and had him and, with some reluctance on Quinn’s part, Liz join them. They stationed Daeng in 323 and put Liz down in the lobby with a newspaper. Quinn and Orlando took room 316.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Quinn told Liz over the phone. She was their early warning system, tasked only with noting hotel arrivals.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she said. “I’m just reading the paper. If anyone asks, I’m an early riser who didn’t want to wake up her husband.”

“All right. Just…be careful, okay?”

“I will.”

After he hung up, he went over to the bed and sat next to Orlando. She was reading something on her computer.

“If no one shows up,” he said, “we’ll have to find another way to locate this son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She shut her computer. “A few minutes ago someone hacked into the hotel system, and checked on the occupants of room 317. I say they’ll be here in fifteen minutes or less. How about you?”

The text from Liz came seventeen minutes later.

4 MEN IN SUITS W/BRIEFCASES. NOT TALKING. LOOK SERIOUS. HEADING FOR ELEVATOR

.

“I should have taken the bet,” Quinn said as he forwarded the info to Daeng, then moved toward the door.

“Did I not mention the plus-or-minus-three-minutes factor? I’m sure I did,” Orlando said, walking up beside him and turning off the light.

Via the microcam mounted just above the frame of their door outside, they were able to monitor the door to room 317 on Quinn’s phone. No one was there yet.

Quinn’s phone buzzed with a message from Daeng that momentarily flashed over the video image.

DING!

Daeng’s proximity to the elevator meant he could hear when a car arrived. Apparently one just had.

Ten seconds went by before two men in suits walked past the room. Five more seconds and they came back, stopping this time at the door to 317, where the other two joined them.

They all set their briefcases on the floor and opened them. There was no question now why they’d come. Each removed a suppressor-equipped pistol.

Quinn shot Daeng a quick text telling him to be ready. He checked that his own sound suppressor was firmly attached to the end of his gun.

Veronique had supplied them with a variety of weapons. Quinn was holding his favorite SIG P226, while Orlando was carrying a GLOCK and had a vaccination gun full of sleep juice in her pocket. Daeng, too, was armed with a GLOCK.

One of the men pulled a small black box from his case and held it up to the electronic lock on the door. A light flashed green, he gently turned the handle, and began pushing the door open.

“Get ready,” Quinn whispered.

Orlando was holding her phone in her free hand. On the screen was one of her many self-created apps. It displayed a simple green button that, when touched, would send a signal to the device now hooked to the fuse box controlling the lights on the third floor.

Across the hall, the first man entered room 317 and stopped a few feet inside. One by one the others joined him.

As the fourth started in, Quinn said, “Now.”

Orlando’s thumb tapped down on the green button and darkness descended, sudden and complete.

Quinn opened the door and raced across the hall in a crouch, reaching the fourth man before the guy had even turned around. He shoved the intruder in the back, pushing him farther into the room and knocking him into the guy just in front of him. Both men tumbled to the ground.

Muzzle flashes lit up the far end of the room. If Quinn had been standing, the bullet that smashed into the wall above him would have hit him square in the face. The other bullets flew through the doorway and into the hall.

Shooting first had been a mistake. Quinn and Orlando aimed at the flash points and pulled their triggers, once each. The two men who had entered the room first dropped dead.

Quinn heard the other two trying to free themselves from each other and join the fight. He whipped his gun down and positioned the end of the suppressor an inch from the closest guy’s ear. The heat radiating from the muzzle was enough motivation for the man to freeze.

The other one continued trying to twist free. The shadowy form of the gun in his hand moved upward. Quinn was about to whip him on the side of his head with the SIG when Orlando stepped around him and kicked the gun out of the guy’s hand. She then lashed out again, catching the guy under the chin.

His body went limp.

“Drop your gun,” Quinn said to the fourth man.

“ No hablo ingles .”

“Bullshit. Drop it.”

The gun clunked to the floor. Quinn reached over and pushed it back toward the door.

“Orlando, some light.”

There was a slight delay, and then the lights in the hallway came back on. A few seconds later, the room lights flipped on.

Quinn glanced back and saw Daeng standing just inside the threshold. “Door.”

With a nod, Daeng closed the door.

Quinn returned his attention to the man on the floor. “Who sent you? Romero?”

A second of nothing, then, “Who Romero?”

Quinn grabbed his man by the shirt and pulled him up. He forced him to the back of the room, where his two dead colleagues lay. “Tell me what I want to know or you’ll join them.”

There was fear in the man’s eyes, a particular kind of fear Quinn had seen before-the fear of an asshole who was used to being the deliverer of violence, not the receiver.

Quinn pushed the suppressor into the back of the man’s head. “ Who sent you?”