Brett Battles: The Collected

Those abandoned years had been painful, a wound that never seemed able to close completely. Intellectually, she now understood why he’d done what he did, not that she would have made the same choices. But he’d played his hand as best he could, and it was what it was. She got that. She even knew now how much he’d always cared about her, but she was still having a hell of time separating the past from the present.

One thing she couldn’t ignore, though, was that if he hadn’t come back into her life, she would have never met Nate.

She walked over to the pedestrian door in the wall that surrounded her brother’s property, and pressed the intercom buzzer.

No response.

She pressed again, and received the same non-answer.

There was a numbered security pad next to the buzzer. She punched in the code Nate had created for her, waited for the click, and entered.

A driveway took up most of the area in front of the house. There were no cars present, and the door to the garage was shut.

Though the house was two stories high, the level she was standing in front of was the top, while the lower level, the one where the bedrooms and the gym were located, followed the slope of the hill down.

There was no doorbell button next to the entrance. If anyone made it that far, it would be only because someone inside had buzzed them through the front gate. There was, however, another security keypad hidden behind a moveable flap of siding directly below the porch light.

Though Nate had shown it to her and given her a code-different from the one for the gate-she had never used it before. She hunted around for several seconds before she found the right spot, then closed her eyes and tried to remember exactly how he’d said the panel opened.

In, to the left, and up , she thought.

She did as she remembered and was pleased when the lower edge of the flap popped out. Moving it all the way up, she exposed the panel. The new code was one she wasn’t likely to forget-the room numbers of the first two hotels they’d stayed in together, starting with the hotel in Paris where everything between them had begun.

Twenty seconds later she was standing inside.

“Nate?” she called out.

The silence was total, and she knew she was alone.

Just to be sure, though, she left her bag in the foyer, checked the top floor, and headed down the stairs to the lower level.

“Nate?” she said again.

The bedrooms and the room that served as the gym were all empty. She entered Nate’s room. Everything was neat and in its place.

Too neat.

Liz felt fingers slowly squeezing her heart. She walked over to his en suite bathroom. Counters clean and empty, sink and shower bone dry. She grabbed the shower towel and ran a hand up and down it. No moisture at all.

He’s not here. He hasn’t been here for at least a day or more.

She could no longer ignore the possibility she’d avoided earlier. She knew, despite his assurances to the contrary, that his job often put him in danger. It still might not be that, but…

Please, let him be all right.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, worried, unfocused eyes locked on worried, unfocused eyes.

She pulled out her phone.

San Francisco, California

Jonathan Quinn flipped over in the water, pushed off the wall, and started a new lap. So far he’d gone up and back forty-eight times. Five more and he’d reach a mile and a half, his goal for the day.

He kept a steady pace, his smooth strokes cutting a path through the pool that instantly sealed up behind him. He tended to be more of a runner, but in the past couple of months he’d worked swimming into his routine, mainly to help strengthen his shoulder and neck after they’d been injured in an unfortunate meeting of flesh and bullet.

It was Orlando who had suggested he try it when they were still in Thailand, mentioning how it would help improve his mobility.

“Plus, you’re not getting any younger,” she’d added. “The less stress you put on your body, the longer it’ll last.”

“Thanks,” he said sarcastically. He wasn’t even forty yet, but truth be told, he could see the birthday in the not-too-distant future.

“Seriously, you’ve got to think about these things,” she told him. “I do.”

“You do? For me or for you?”

She gave him one of her patented blank stares. “Me? No. I’m not as old as you are.”

While they were staying at the temple in Thailand, Quinn had taken a boat up the Chao Phraya River every day to a hotel that allowed him to use its pool. Upon returning to the States three weeks earlier, he’d joined a gym with a lap pool not too far from Orlando’s house.

Enrolling there had been a strange step for him. The last time he’d belonged to a public gym was during his time as a rookie cop back in Phoenix. Since then, the only time he shared his workout space with people he didn’t know was at the occasional hotel while he was on a project. Going back to the same place nearly every day, seeing the same people on the treadmills and weight machines and in the pool made him feel exposed, like he was creating a habit that could be a problem later.

In his business, habits could be dangerous, but the draw of the water was enough to keep him coming back. That, and the fact he wasn’t even sure he was in the business anymore.

He reached the end of the length, executed another flip turn, and headed back for the second half of the lap.

Forty-nine, forty-nine, forty-nine , he told himself, so he wouldn’t forget which one he was on, then let his mind return to what he’d been thinking about-the business and his place in it. It was the same topic he’d considered the day before, and the day before that, and the weeks before that.

For years he’d been one of the best cleaners in the espionage world, the person in-the-know clients would go to when a body needed to disappear. Quinn was efficient, discreet, and reliable, with a highly developed ability to see details where others would see nothing. Using him on a job was as close as possible to a guarantee that there would be no blowback.

A year ago, he’d occasionally wondered how long he’d be able to keep doing the job, but hadn’t given it any serious thought. A lot had happened since then, most notably his mother and sister being targeted because of the man he’d become. He’d been able to keep them from harm, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been severely shaken by the events, or ashamed of his own arrogance at thinking he’d built adequate barriers to keep them safe.

The months in Thailand-despite the interruption of having to deal with an old job that had flared back to life, and getting shot in the process-had helped him work through those feelings, and learn how to live with them.

That was all fine and good, and a necessary step, but what they hadn’t done was help him decide what was next. Should he leave the business completely? He had more than enough money to retire on and live the rest of his life with Orlando and her son Garrett without worry. Or should he jump back in? Do what he had been good at? What he knew he was still good at? Was he ready to just stop? And if he wasn’t, what about his family? Would they ever be in danger again?

He knew it should be easy to walk away, but it wasn’t.

It also wasn’t easy to stay.

Another flip turn.

Fifty, fifty, fifty .

Quinn showered, toweled off, and headed over to his locker.

As he was dressing, his phone vibrated once. He pulled it out and saw that someone had called while he was in the pool. The surprising part was who.

Liz.

His relationship with his sister was still a work in progress. There were years of damage yet to be undone, all of which were Quinn’s fault. Things were improving, but, until now, they had not reached the point where she would call him. It was always the other way around. The times when she did want to reach him, it was either via email, text, or she would call Orlando.