Brett Battles - The Silenced

“I can’t help you.”

She started to point her gun at him. But he reached out and yanked it from her hand before she even knew what was happening, then shoved her to the ground.

“Get the hell away from me,” he told her.

“I can’t,” she said, pushing herself up and rushing to catch him. “You’re the only lead I have left.” They reached the section of bushes and trees that separated the park from the street. “I’m not leaving until you help me.”

Quinn stopped and turned to her. “I’m not your lead. I’m not anyone’s lead. I can’t help you. You need to get away from me right now, or I’ll-”

“Or you’ll kill me?” she asked, cutting him off. “Then go ahead and kill me.”

Who the hell is this woman?

He stared at her for a moment, then walked down the path toward the street.

The sirens were very near now, and all instincts told Quinn to run the other way. But he knew that the easiest escape route was often toward the police, not away. At least initially. If he could get past them before they’d set up a perimeter, then he’d be in the clear. Most of their focus would be in the direction Quinn had come from, not behind them.

But his biggest problem wasn’t the police. It was the Russian woman. She was still shadowing him, matching him step for step. Then, as he stepped out of the park and onto the street outside Embankment Station, he momentarily forgot about the police and the woman.

What had been a typical busy morning had turned into a madhouse. Instead of several dozen people, there were now several hundred. They were gathered in groups, some small and some large. The biggest of which was near the entrance to the station. At the other end of the street, two police cars and an ambulance were trying to make their way through the crowd, but traveling slowly to avoid hitting anyone. Policemen tried to direct a pathway for an ambulance to drive, pushing people out of its way.

Quinn headed toward the group at the station, tried to blend in. Without even looking, he knew the Russian had pulled in tight behind him.

The crowd had formed a large circle with an open area in the center. A couple of police officers on foot were running toward the gathering.

“Get back!” one of officers shouted, trying to clear a path.

“A little late, if you ask me,” a man near Quinn muttered.

“What happened?” Quinn asked.

“Someone got shot,” he said, nodding toward the clear area in the center of the crowd.

Quinn thanked the man, then worked his way to the front of the crowd.

There was a body on the ground, blood pooling around his torso. Quinn couldn’t see the man’s face, but he didn’t have to. He recognized the hair and the clothes.

It was the man who had been watching the station exit, the man who had been in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt in New York.

Wills’s man.

Quinn looked over his shoulder. The crowd had begun to separate him from the Russian woman. He stepped forward into the clear area and jumped over the dead man’s body.

“Hey!” an officer yelled as he emerged into the center of the circle. “You can’t do that.”

“Sorry,” Quinn said.

Behind him, he could hear the Russian woman fighting through the throng of gawkers. “Excuse me… Please let me pass.”

Quinn was only feet from the entrance to Embankment Station.

The woman, having guessed his intent, had given up trying to follow him directly, and was heading back out of the crowd. The second she took her eyes off him, Quinn crouched down next to a rubbish can, out of sight. Using the receptacle as cover, he angled himself so that he could see the entrance to the Underground station.

A few seconds later, he watched the Russian rush inside. The moment she disappeared, he stood up and started moving clockwise around the crowd. As he did, he spotted a man getting into a cab just under the train bridge.

It was Mercer. No mistake.

Wills had said Mercer was working for him. So was he Wills’s second watcher? Quinn wondered. Perhaps he had been on the outer perimeter, then had come back to check on his colleague and found him dead in front of the station. If Quinn were in Mercer’s shoes, he would have gotten the hell out of there, too. In fact, he did need to get the hell out of there, right now.

As soon as he cleared the crowd, he headed up the cobbled street back toward Charing Cross. At the end of the block, he tucked himself in between two souvenir kiosks and checked to see if the Russian had followed him. She hadn’t.

Instead of using the Underground, he walked toward Piccadilly Circus. No matter what the weather or the time of day, there was always a crowd there. He could blend in and take the tube to anywhere from there. A few blocks away, his phone vibrated. He checked the caller ID, then pressed Accept.

“I’m in London,” Orlando said. “You got my email, right?”

“I got it.”

She paused. “Is something wrong?”

“Where’s the flat you rented?”

“Quinn, what’s wrong?”

“I’d rather tell you in person.”

“You’re here?”

“Yeah.”

She rattled off an address on Charlotte Street in Soho. “You know where that is?”

“I know the area,” he said. He was only a ten-minute walk away.

“Okay, then I’ll see you soon.”

“Not soon enough.”

“Wills is dead?”Mikhail sounded like he almost expected it.

“Killed right in front of me,” Petra said into her phone. “I tried to stop the shooter, but she got him before I could.”

“Who was she?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. We need to concentrate on finding Quinn.” Petra had heard Wills speak the name into his phone. Then she had heard him rasp it again when the body snatcher, Quinn, had tried to comfort the dying man.

“Who is Quinn?”

“The body snatcher,” she said. “The one I saw in Los Angeles. He was there, too. When I spoke the Ghost’s name, I could tell he had heard it before. He knows, Mikhail. We just need to find him, and convince him to tell us.”

“But where would we look? If he wants to stay lost, he sounds like the kind of man who can do it. Today might have been our only chance.” He paused. “You had him, Petra.”

“I know,” she whispered.

Mikhail took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay. I should have done more.”

“No. You did what you could. I couldn’t have done any better. But the question is still, what do we do now?”

Neither of them said anything for several seconds.

“What about Stepka?” Mikhail said. “We have a name now. Maybe he can help.”

“I’ve already given him Quinn’s name and description,” she said. “I guess the only thing we can do is wait. Let’s meet back at the apartment.”

“Okay.” The defeat in Mikhail’s voice was palpable.

“We’re almost there,” she reassured him. “We know Quinn has information that will help. We’ll be able to see this through to the end.”

“Perhaps.” Mikhail didn’t sound as optimistic.

“We’re going to find the Ghost, Mikhail. We’re going make him pay for what he did.”

Petra kept scanning the crowds the entire way back to Bayswater. She knew she was hoping for the impossible, but if there was even the smallest of chances that she’d spot Quinn, she couldn’t afford to relax.

But he wasn’t on any of the trains, nor the platforms, nor the streets. The only thing she could hold on to was the fact that he was in the city.

Mikhail had not yet arrived when she got back to the apartment. So she checked in with Stepka.

“In the right circles, your new friend is something of a legend,” Stepka told her.