Becoming Quinn (18 page)

As he opened the door of the mobile home, his phone began to ring again, and once more he let the call go to voice mail. He knew Peter had to be more than just concerned at this point. First, Oliver had missed his flight to Houston, and second, the man he’d hired to clean up after Oliver was MIA.

Peter was a smart man, though. At some point in the last few hours, he had undoubtedly dispatched a team to Phoenix to find out what was going on. Eventually, that team would check out the mobile home.

He checked the computer security log, and could see that he was the only one to come within a mile of the trailer all day. He removed a small hard drive from his kit bag and connected it to the computer, then ran a program that would erase all records from twelve hours before to twelve hours after that point, effectively erasing his and Oliver’s presence.

While that processed, he went over to the detention cell. He flipped the switch that would turn on the interior light, then opened the eye-level panel. He suddenly jerked back. Standing just on the other side, his eyes only inches way, was Oliver.

“Let me out!” Oliver demanded, his voice coming over the intercom speaker on the wall next to the door.

“Please step back,” Durrie said.

“Why? So you can come in here and kill me?”

“Step back, and sit on the bed.”

“Go to hell.”

Durrie frowned at him. “I’d rather not resort to anything extreme, so it would be better if you sat.”

“Look, I don’t care about what happened on Goodman Ranch Road. Nobody would listen to me even if I did. Just let me go, and I’ll keep quiet.”

“Mr. Oliver.
Move
to the bed.”

“I only told my supervisors about the other two. I never told them about you. I never showed them your picture.”

“Sit!” he ordered.

“Please. Just let me go.”

Durrie reached over and slid the eye slot shut. He didn’t have time to deal with this.

The light switch wasn’t the only control next to the door. There was a panel with dials and buttons that accessed a menu displayed on a small digital screen.

The choices ran the gamut from mild to lethal. He made his selection then slid the eye slot open again.

At first, Oliver looked as defiant as before, but soon he began to lose his sense of balance. It was only another moment before he collapsed on the floor.

•    •    •

Durrie made the call two hours later from the parking lot of a truck stop near the New Mexico border. He wasn’t worried about his location being traced. The call was being automatically routed through several relays designed to confuse any such attempt.

On the second ring, a woman picked up.

“Yes?”

“I need to speak to Peter,” Durrie said, forgoing normal procedures.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have anyone—”

“Tell him it’s Durrie.”

She paused. “One moment.”

The delay lasted only ten seconds.

“What the hell is going on?” Peter asked as he came on the line. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day! Oliver never showed for his plane. You were following him, right? What happened?”

“He’s with me.”

The pause was long. “What do you mean, he’s with you?”

“He’s with me.”

“Are you telling me you’re taking care of the problem?”

“I’m telling you the problem was never Oliver. It was Larson. Killing Oliver would have been a mistake. He can be useful.”

“Useful? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I believe he could be an asset, Peter.”

“An
asset
?”

“I’ll know in a few weeks. I’ll contact you then.”

“What? Hold on! I agree that this was an…unfortunate termination, but, if you’ll remember correctly, Oliver was deemed a potential risk.”

“And I’m telling you he’s
potentially
the opposite. I’ll
know
in a few weeks. If it turns out I’m wrong, the original order will be carried out. But if I’m right, then you and I can talk about what happens then.”

“Are you deliberately trying to throw your career away?” Peter asked.

“I’m not throwing anything away. I’m cultivating an asset.” Durrie paused. “A free pass for three weeks, that’s what I’m asking. No one comes after us. No one bothers us. I’ve done nothing but good work for you, Peter. I’m not trying to screw you
or
my career.”

“Jesus, Durrie. You can’t be serious. What can you possibly see in this cop—this
ex
-cop—that’s worth the risk?”

“The same things you saw that made you decide to get rid of him. I don’t like seeing potential wasted.”

“You’re
way
off the mark this time, my friend.”

“Free pass or not? Either way, I’m not changing my mind.”

Peter said nothing for several seconds. “Three weeks. If I don’t hear from you by then, consider both of your lives sacrificed.”

Durrie hung up, not bothering to say goodbye.

25

The cabin was fifty miles from the closest town, tucked into the woods in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. It was another safe house, though this one belonged to an organization Durrie had done work for several years earlier that had no ties to the Office. In the recent months, the organization had scaled back its Stateside operations, so Durrie had been confident the building would be unused.

He was right.

By the look of things, no one had been there in more than a year.

The cabin wasn’t as well-equipped as the mobile home south of Phoenix, but it did have a well-made holding cell in the basement, and that was all that really mattered at the moment.

On three separate occasions during the drive there, Durrie had given Oliver BetaSomnol boosters to keep him asleep. It was more drug than he’d really wanted to administer, but he’d had little choice.

Now that he had Oliver in the cell, the drug was no longer necessary. He could do nothing, however, but provide aspirin for the headache Oliver experienced from the withdrawal. A full thirty-six hours passed before the former police officer’s symptoms had lessened enough so that Durrie could move forward.

Using the threat of his stun gun, he had Oliver chain himself to the chair in his room before he carried his own in and sat down.

•    •    •

“You’re one very lucky son of a bitch,” the man said as he took a seat.

Jake almost laughed. “You might have to explain that to me.”

“What do you think I mean?” the man asked.

“I have no idea.”

The man considered him for a moment. “You can do better than that.”

“Why don’t you just tell me, if you think I should know,” Jake said. “Or not. I don’t really care.” Though his headache was gone, he’d never felt so drained in his life, and a verbal game was the last thing he cared about.

The man was silent for a moment, then said, “You don’t see it now, but if it wasn’t for me, your funeral would already be over.”

“Easy to say, hard to prove, but what the hell? Thanks.”

“You think you’re funny sometimes, don’t you? You don’t have to answer. I can tell. You should also know that doesn’t cut it with me. Feel free to tell your jokes, but don’t expect me to laugh.”

“I’ll remember that,” Jake said.

The man stared at him for nearly a minute, then said, “You
are
going to thank me someday, but not just for saving your life. For changing it completely.”

“Whatever you say.”

“We’ll talk about your choices later.”

The man stood up and carried his chair out of the room. For a second, Jake thought he was going to leave him shackled to the chair, but then the guy returned and grabbed Jake’s left wrist firmly in one hand. With his other, he unlocked the cuff, then tossed the key on Jake’s lap.

With surprising agility, he released Jake’s wrist and stepped back out of range.

“After you finish unlocking yourself, slide the key under the door,” he said.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you never see me again.”

The man started to close the door.

“Wait,” Jake said.

The man looked back, silent.

“Do you have a name?”

A moment’s pause, then, “Call me Durrie.” With that, the man shut the door.

Jake unfastened his other wrist and his ankles, then did as the man—as
Durrie
—instructed, scooting the key through the small space under the door. He wasn’t sure if Durrie would follow through with the threat, but Jake felt now was not the time to test him.

He lay back on the bed, replaying the conversation in his mind. When he boiled it down, Durrie had basically told him three things besides his name: 1) that Jake would have been dead if Durrie hadn’t kidnapped him, 2) that he had little sense of humor, and 3) that Jake was going to be given some kind of choice.

Of the three things, the only one Jake was sure of was the lack of humor. Beyond that he had to assume it was all just talk. But talk was better than no talk at all, and the longer Jake could keep it going, the better the chance the man would make a mistake. Jake just had to bide his time, and not make a lot of waves.

Easier said than done.

•    •    •

“How?” Durrie asked.

Jake had no idea what time it was. There were no windows in his room. The only thing he knew was that this was their third conversation since his headache had passed, and that he’d slept several hours since the last one.

“What do you mean, ‘how’?” Jake said.

“You found the matchbook at the site. Fine. You followed it back to the hotel. That makes sense. You then convinced the hotel manager and the head of security to allow you to view camera footage from the night in question. But how did you pick us out?”

There was no easy answer to that since Jake himself wasn’t sure how he’d done it. “Just…a feeling, I guess.”

“A feeling.” Durrie stared at him. “You’re telling me you did it based on a random feeling?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Jake was trying to be cooperative. Ultimately what they talked about was unimportant. If it helped increase Durrie’s trust in him, that’s all that mattered. But he could tell his captor wasn’t satisfied. “Well…um, the two other men—they kind of stood out.”

“How do you mean?” Durrie asked quickly.

Jake thought back. How did he mean it? “They were…trying…too hard to blend in, I think. I just got the sense that they didn’t really belong.”

“You could tell they were trying?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Jake blurted out, then regretted it immediately.
Cooperation. Remember!
“Sorry, it’s just I’m…”

“Being held against your will?”

The words surprised Jake. “Yeah. I guess that would be it, wouldn’t it?”

“I know you still won’t believe this, but this was the only way to keep you alive.”

It wasn’t the first time Durrie had said this, and as much as Jake wanted to push for more, he knew it would be better to wait.

When neither of them said anything for a moment, Durrie asked, “Is that how you spotted me?”

“No. You, I wouldn’t have picked out on my own. It was the other guy, the light-haired one who gave you away.”

“How?”

“He was in the elevator coming down from his floor. It stopped on number three, and you got on. The other man gave you a look that made me think he knew you. But you didn’t respond. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were involved or not until the parking lot.”

Durrie looked away, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Then, without another word, he got up and left the room.

•    •    •

Terminate him. Now
, Durrie thought.

That was survival mode kicking in. Any identified threat needed to be dealt with immediately and permanently. It took everything he had to keep from running upstairs, grabbing his gun, and returning to put a bullet in Jake Oliver’s head.

Calm down
.
He
was
a threat. But not now
. Or, at least, not at the moment.

What Oliver had proven once more was that he was gifted. Granted, he lacked training, but his raw skills were impressive. Given the right guidance, who knew what the kid might achieve?

That, of course, was dependent on a couple of factors. Would the kid be open to it?
Really
open to it? And even if he were, would Durrie have the patience to see it through?

The survival part of him was pushing for the kid to be turned over to Peter if Durrie wasn’t going to finish the job himself. While the rest was saying, “Isn’t this why you brought him here in the first place?”

So, what’s it going to be?

•    •    •

Jake was visited twice more by Durrie before he fell asleep again, but never to talk, only to bring in meals. It wasn’t that Jake didn’t try to engage him, but no matter what he said, Durrie never replied.

When he awoke the next morning—or what he assumed was the next morning—Durrie was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, staring at the bed. Behind him, the door was open.

Jake sat up quickly, startled.

“Tell me about the marks in the sand,” Durrie said.

“What?”

“The marks in the sand, outside the barn. Describe them.”

Jake took a second to realize what he was talking about, then thought back to the night of the fire. “Which ones? By the tank, or in between the tank and the building?”

“Start with the tank.”

“Okay. The dirt was disturbed.”

“All the dirt was loose in that area. How could you tell it was disturbed?”

“The patterns. There was a portion of the dirt that looked like it was moving in the same direction, but askew to the pattern of the dirt around it. I guess it looked like it had been pushed there.”

Durrie nodded for a moment. “I was in a hurry. If I’d taken more time, you would have never seen it.”

Jake stared at him. This was the first direct confirmation that his theory of the men being involved with the Goodman Ranch Road murder was correct. “You
were
there.”

“Don’t get all excited,” Durrie said. “I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.”