Brett Battles - The Silenced

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.

“Wish I was.”

“You know you took a chance with the ID.”

“Not a big one,” he said.

“Bigger than you should have.”

“I made Nate do it.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” she said.

Quinn smiled. “So what’s up?”

When she spoke again, all the playfulness that had been in her voice was gone. “Somebody tripped one of my flags.”

Orlando knew her way around computers better than most people knew how to walk. One of the things she had done was set up electronic tripwires throughout cyberspace that would notify her when someone looked at whatever it was she’d flagged.

“Okay,” he said. “Is this something we need to worry about?”

“It got me to check some of the other related flags I’d set up,” she went on, ignoring his question. “There are at least five that should have sent me a message, but didn’t. Someone bypassed them.”

Quinn started to feel uneasy. “What does that mean?”

“It means someone’s been poking around where they shouldn’t. It’s been going on for over a week. The only reason I found out is that there was a dual flag set up this time. They got around the first, but missed the second.”

“What exactly are we talking about?”

“You, Quinn,” she said. “Someone’s been trying to find out all they can about you.”

THE PAST.

It was something Quinn had tried to cover up and, in many ways, tried to convince himself had never happened in the first place, convince himself he’d been born Jonathan Quinn.

The awkwardness with his father-his step father-his estrangement from his sister, and then, of course, his brother.

From early on, Harold Oliver had shown no more than an uneasy tolerance toward him. It had confused him. Especially so after his brother was born, and then his sister, neither of whom received the same disdain from their father as young Jake did. And now that his father was dead, it was too late to try and mend that wound.

Liz was still around, of course, but the wall that had grown between them when he’d left home had become as wide and as insurmountable as the Himalayas. Even if he did try to explain, she wouldn’t even listen.

And then there was Davey…

“I just want to see it,” Davey said. He was five, strapped in his child’s seat in the back, behind their father.

“No,” Jake told him. “You should have brought your own.”

“Just for a minute. Please, Jakey.”

He leaned over in front of their one-year-old sister, Liz, who was asleep in her car seat between the brothers. Jake flipped the page of the comic book, and turned so Davey couldn’t see.

“Mom, Jake’s not sharing!”

“It’s mine,” Jake pleaded. “I don’t have to share with him.”

“Jake, just let him look with you,” their mother said. “He doesn’t have to touch it.”

Jake looked pained. “Do I have to? He’s got plenty at home. He should have brought one of them.”

“I’ve looked at all those!” Davey said.

“Boys, you’re going to wake your sister. Just share, okay?”

“Fine,” Jake said, then turned just enough so that at the right angle his brother could see half a page.

“Mom!” Davey cried.

“What?” she asked, sounding weary.

“He’s not really doing it.”

“Jake, honey. I told you, you need to-”

“Right now,” Harold Oliver’s voice cut through from the driver’s seat. “Give it to him.”

“What?” Jake asked. “Why?”

Davey reached toward Jake, but Jake leaned away from him.

“Give your brother the comic,” his father ordered.

“But it’s mine.”

“I said give it to him!”

Jake glanced at his mother. She looked for a moment at her husband, then turned to her oldest son. The expression on her face told him all he needed to know. “Just do it,” she mouthed.

Jake narrowed his eyes, and grunted in frustration. “Whatever,” he said. He flapped out his hand and tossed the comic in Davey’s general direction.

But the comic hit the front seat instead and ricocheted into the side of Liz’s face.

Liz stared wailing as Davey grabbed for the book. She pushed at the comic, knocking it from Davey’s hands and onto the floor.

“Mom!” Davey screamed. “He did that on purpose!”

Liz’s cries grew louder.

“I did not!” Jake said.

More crying.

“Liz, honey, it’s okay,” their mother said, turning to the back seat.

“He threw it at me!”

“I was holding it out to you, not my fault you can’t catch.”

“Liz, sweetie, it’s okay,” their mother said. She slipped her shoulder strap off, leaned between the seats, then rubbed her daughter’s cheek as Liz continued to sob.

“I can’t reach it!” Davey wailed louder than Liz. He was stretched out as far as he could go, but the comic book was still beyond his grasp.

“Jake, please pick it up and hand it to your brother.”

“He’s the one who dropped it,” Jake said. “He should-”

“Enough!” Harold Oliver roared. Jake looked up. The side of their father’s face was red with anger.

“I’ll get it,” Davey said quietly. He unbuckled his car seat and leaned down to the floor.

“I tried to give it-” Jake muttered.

“I said enough!” Harold yelled. Only this time he turned and looked back.

The police later said that it could have been a rock in the road. But the more Jake thought about it, the more he suspected his father accidentally turned the steering wheel a few degrees to the left as he looked back at his kids.

Whatever the reason, the car changed direction just enough so that when Harold looked back, there was no chance of avoiding the deep drainage ditch that paralleled the opposite side of the highway. The best he could do was to keep the car from going straight in. It slammed down on the driver’s side before coming to rest against the slope of the ditch, flipped partially on its roof.

A broken leg, a broken clavicle, a gash on the side of a head.

And one dead son.

That was the tally.

The only one to come out of it basically unscathed was Jake. Bruises from the impact, a few cuts and abrasions, that was all. If only he’d been hurt worse…

Though his father had never openly placed the blame on him, Jake was sure that’s how he felt. Because, deep down, that’s how Jake felt, too.

They laid Davey to rest five days later, Harold on crutches and Jake’s mother with her left arm strapped across her chest. Liz sported a bald patch on the side of her head covered with a bandage. Beneath was the gash that would form a scar that would be with her the rest of her life.

The scar Jake bore-that Quinn bore-was invisible, but just as permanent.

Petra and Mikhail found a motel 6 outside of Lowell, Massachusetts. Petra dragged herself to her room, then tried to sleep, but it just wasn’t happening. At 4:30 a.m. she gave up.

Kolya, like Luka, was dead.

She had known at the start of their mission that death was always a possibility. But she had expected any bullet would have hit her, not one of her team members. But twice now, it had happened. At least, unlike with Luka, she wouldn’t have to tell Kolya’s family. They had all died when he’d been just a child. It was why Kolya had joined the search for the Ghost in the first place. If he had any family at all, she and Mikhail and the others in their group were it.

She tried to push him from her mind, but what filled the void was just as devastating. All of them, every person on her list, was dead. Chang, McKitrick, Thomas, Winters, the others before them. And now Moody.

His death was the hardest to take. They had found him alive. They had even talked to him. He knew people in the photograph. But the final step, identifying the two strikingly similar young men standing at opposite ends of the bar, had not been completed.