The Buried (11 page)

One of the responses, however, reported that an elite team from a California-based security agency had arrived in the area early that morning and gone to a house in Bellevue—a house that was at the top of the list of possible hiding locations Orbits had been given.

His client had informed him that other interested parties would likely also be looking for the girl, so it was a good bet the California team was one of his competitors. He was sure they hadn’t located the girl yet, though. If they had, he would have already received a text thanking him for his time and releasing him.

He thought for a moment. It wouldn’t hurt to have a look around the Bellevue house. If the Californians had gone in hard and heavy, they might have missed some clues that could put Orbits on the right path.

He plugged the address into his GPS and hit the road. Thanks to a bit of traffic, the eighteen-mile drive took over thirty minutes.

The house was located in a nice neighborhood where most of the homes were set back from the road, with lawns of deep green grass running right up to the sidewalk.

“Your destination is one hundred feet ahead, on the right,” the female GPS voice informed him.

Right before he reached the property, he noticed a man walking along the sidewalk in front of the house. The guy hadn’t been there a moment before. Either some of the bushes near the end of the driveway had blocked him from view, or he’d been up at the house.

Another hunter?

Orbits grabbed his phone and switched on the camera. Draping his arm across the other seat and holding the device next to the headrest, he snapped off several pics as he passed the man.

Maybe the guy was no one, but it wouldn’t hurt to have him checked out.

Fifteen minutes later, he had finished his examination of the house and was sitting in his car again. He had seen signs that others had recently been there, but a look inside revealed no one had used the place for some time.

He smiled. The Californians had definitely not found the target here.

He sympathized with the others, he really did. Catching that first scent of a prey was always the hardest part of the job, but for him, it was also the most enjoyable. He was damn good at it. He was Ricky Orbits, after all. The number one hunter in the world.

The brief had mentioned that the woman had been helped in her escape by unknown individuals. Find them and he’d find her.

He pulled out his phone.

“It’s me,” Orbits said.

“What’s up, boss?” Donnie said.

“Got a few things I need you to look into.”

CHAPTER
13

LOCATION UNKNOWN

T
HE DOOR OPENED
again, and heavy footsteps crossed to where Helen sat. As her new visitor stopped in front of her, Helen caught the distinct odor of cigarettes.

A deep breath was followed by a loud expulsion of air. A second later a stream of smoke hit the cloth bag. The material filtered out much of the cloud, but plenty still got through. Helen tried not to cough but failed.

Her visitor took a step closer. Helen held her breath but there was no second cloud. Instead, the person circled her slowly to the point directly behind the chair.

“We can kill you whenever we want.” A male voice, rough from his cigarette habit. “Is your life really worth protecting someone you’ve never met before?” The steps completed the circle and came to rest back in front of Helen. “You are a foolish woman, Ms. Cho. You have an opportunity to help yourself and yet you act the hero. There is no such thing as heroes.”

Suddenly hands grabbed both sides of her head and tilted her face up. Though she couldn’t see him through the bag, she could taste his sour breath as he squeezed her skull like he was going to cave it in.

He laughed as he finally let go. “This could have been so easy for you. Know that what comes next was chosen by you alone.”

When he walked out of the room, three new pairs of steps entered, accompanied by the sound of rattling wheels. The procession came to a halt a few feet to Helen’s left. There was the clinking and jangling of items being placed on a metal surface. Then silence.

She was about to make a smartass remark when someone grabbed her arm. Though she was already strapped to the chair, the trio wrapped two new restraints around her chest and shoulder, further limiting her ability to move.

After this was done, they left.

The silence lasted less than a minute before Helen heard the familiar clicking of heels.

The woman.

She approached in the same casual manner as she had on her first visit, stopping at the same place the man had.

“My associate pointed out to me that I forgot to introduce myself. I am Nanou Deschamps.”

Helen knew she had heard the name before, but her mind was still muddled and she couldn’t place it. “Good for you.”

A hum whirred to life, followed by the sizzle and pop of an electric arc.

“People in my home country call me Le Loup.”

Oh, God,
Helen thought, making the connection.
It couldn’t be.

“In English it means—”

“I know what it means,” Helen said.

The Wolf.

CHAPTER
14

WASHINGTON STATE

D
ANI WOKE AGAIN
, the clouds that had jammed her mind all but gone.

She opened her eyes and saw she was lying in the backseat of a vehicle, her head to the driver’s side of the car. Quinn was sitting in the front passenger seat, so she assumed the one called Nate was behind the wheel.

She tried to gauge the time from the sunlight, but the best she could do was rule out dawn or dusk. She could see an expanse of trees out the window so they probably weren’t in a city.

Glancing down, she saw her wrists and ankles were restrained, but at least they’d left her arms in front. She tried to lift her hands so she could rub her eyes, but could only move them a few inches before they tugged to a stop due to two additional zip ties connecting those around her wrists with belt loops on her jeans.

“You’re up. Welcome back.”

Quinn was looking at her.

 “I bet you’re hungry,” he said.

“Sure. Let’s pull into the next restaurant. We can go in, have a nice sit-down meal.”

“No need.” He reached down by his feet and pulled up a bag that said Arby’s on the side.

“Awesome,” she said coolly.

A silent message passed between the two men. Within moments, the vehicle slowed as it descended a short hill, then turned a couple times before traveling several minutes down a bumpy road.

When they finally stopped, Nate climbed out, opened the door behind Dani’s head, and helped her into a sitting position. She could now see they were on a narrow dirt road, with trees close in on both sides, removing any chance she could flag someone down for help.

They were obviously in a forest, but which one she had no idea. Somewhere in North America, though in light of all the sedatives she’d been given, she could be wrong.

She’d thought she’d waited long enough. Marianne had said not to come back for at least five years. She’d waited ten. Still, she had somehow been recognized. Her passport picture when she came through Immigration in Los Angeles? Maybe. Her alias? Maybe that, too. She should have never kept her real first name, but it had been
so
long, and she’d been afraid if she were called by a different name, she’d forget to respond and instantly expose the lie.

They had seized her in a rundown motel just off the strip in Las Vegas. She mistakenly thought she could hide among the mobs of tourists while she worked up the courage to go to her final destination. Since then, she’d always either been blindfolded, kept in spaces without windows, or drugged. In a way, Mr. Black’s prison cell had been a relief after what had seemed like days on the road. What she hadn’t realized until these new creeps came onto the scene was that the cells had been in the basement of a house.

Quinn handed the bag of food to his buddy and got out.

“We weren’t sure what you’d like,” Nate said. “So we got you a roast beef sandwich and a chicken sandwich. Fries, too. The curly kind.” He touched the side of the bag and smiled. “Still a little warm.”

“Are you going to feed me, too?”

He gave her another one of his winning smiles before pulling out a pocketknife and cutting the ties holding her wrists to her belt. He did not, however, remove the bindings holding her wrists together.

After putting a sandwich between her fingers, he said, “You should be able to manage from here.”

“Did you get me anything to drink?”

“Wow, you are demanding, aren’t you?”

He pulled out a bottle of water from the bag.

Once she started eating, she couldn’t stop. As she finished off the sandwich, Nate asked, “You want the other one?”

Instead of answering, she picked up the water bottle and held it toward him. “I can’t open it.”

He took care of it and handed it back. “Sit tight. We’ll be leaving soon.”

He climbed out and shut the door.

Dani twisted around and watched the two men walk down the road behind the SUV for about twenty feet before stopping to talk.

Thinking this might be her only chance, she leaned between the front seats and looked for anything that could help her get away.

The vehicle employed a button to start the engine, so there were no keys dangling from the ignition. She did, however, spot a black bag in the passenger footwell and reached for it.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.

She looked around for the source, but before she could find it, the passenger door opened and Nate leaned in.

“Sorry about that.” He touched a black square affixed to the armrest and the noise stopped. “Motion detector. Why don’t you settle back in your seat while I reset this.”

__________

“S
HE THINKS WE’RE
just like Edmondson,” Nate said as he joined Quinn behind the SUV.

“Well, wouldn’t you?” Quinn said.

Nate sighed. “Probably. What are we going to do if Helen doesn’t turn up? We can’t drive around with Danielle forever.”

Quinn looked out at the woods. “I don’t know. It’s something we’ll have to—”

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.

They turned toward the SUV. Quinn had mounted the motion detector before he climbed out, on the off chance the woman tried anything. Well, more an on chance than off, apparently.

“I got it,” Nate said, already moving toward the vehicle.

Quinn looked back out at the woods. They needed a plan, or at least a partial one that included more than getting out of Seattle.

One option would be to find someplace around here to hide out in and think things through. There had to be dozens of isolated cabins in the area, and at least a few should be unoccupied. But while that idea had a certain appeal, Quinn felt they were still way too close to the city to stop.

If they continued the way they were going, they would cross into Idaho. They could get lost in the backcountry up in the panhandle. He liked that idea a lot better.

As much as he wanted to avoid using Orlando, she could probably arrange things a lot faster than he could. He pulled out his phone, saw the cell signal was down to one bar, and switched it to satellite mode.

“How far have you gotten?” he asked Orlando.

“Almost to Portland. We’ll cut east from there.”

After Quinn and Nate had left Bellevue, Quinn realized she’d left him a voice mail. When he called her back, she’d sprung her idea of shadowing them. He wasn’t keen on it, but he couldn’t fault the logic that it would be smarter for her and Daeng to be nearby.

“I was thinking Idaho,” he told her. “Maybe someplace isolated up north. If you have time, you think you could look into it for us?”

“It’s not like anyone needs me here. Daeng’s driving and Mr. Vo’s telling him what he’s doing wrong. Garrett’s on the bunk playing video games, and Mrs. Vo is pretending to watch one of her
telenovelas
but is really just napping. Time, I’ve got.”

“Thanks. Any progress on Danielle?”

She’d filled him in on what she’d been doing to find out more about the girl, but ultimately the answer was no.

WEST TEXAS

U
NENDING STRINGS OF
data streamed skyward and earthbound, as they had since the satellite had come online.

At various points in the orbiter’s history, the monitoring equipment housed in a western Texas facility had experienced undetected augmentations to its operating software. Some of these new modules had built-in self-destruct codes that activated after a specified period of time had passed. Others continued to run long after their initial purpose had been fulfilled. The instigators of these intruders were varied, but they all came from the same family tree—United States intelligence.

The latest module had been integrated into the software at 5:17 a.m. Central time, and immediately began its task of scouring incoming information. The process continued throughout the morning and into the early afternoon without kicking back a single result.

That changed at 2:21 p.m.

The coordinates of the call’s originator pinpointed a spot along an unused access road 1.6 miles off the I-90, on the eastern side of the Cascades Mountain Range. The recipient’s location was not so easily identified. For some reason, the satellite received multiple coordinates for it throughout North America and Europe.

The call would have been flagged for this alone, but another, more telling marker had also been ticked. The conversation had been entirely encrypted.

The module was not designed to decode anything, but it did contain a subroutine that snagged a recorded copy of the conversation, which was then sent along with the notification.

NSA MONITORING STATION

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA