The Discarded (26 page)

He picked up a piece of paper off his desk and held it up to the camera. It was heavily creased but they could still make out the message written on it.

Mr. Becker. Please call.

Below this was a phone number.

“I found this about twenty minutes ago. Someone had pushed it through my mail slot. I tried looking up the number but there was no listing for it. If you’re wondering if I called it, of course I did. There was a part of me that didn’t want to, but how could I not?

“A woman answered. Don’t ask me how old she sounded, because I don’t know. She had a slight accent, European of some kind, I think, but she spoke perfect English. The moment she picked up, she said something like ‘You should have never looked into her history. You were not supposed to do that. Why couldn’t you have been satisfied? Why did you continue to look?’ Before I could say I had no idea what she was talking about, she went on. ‘If you stay in your house, they will find you. I can distract them for a few hours at most, but that is it. Be gone by then.’ I asked her who she meant, but she’d already hung up. I called back probably a dozen times, but the line would just ring and ring and ring.

“Abraham, she told me I should have never looked into ‘her history.’ She’s got to be talking about Tessa. I mean, who else would it be? And the people she’s warning me about? What if they’re the ones who killed Carter and the rest of Overtake?

“I can’t ignore her warning so I’m leaving here right now.” Eli reached forward. “See you in Florida, buddy.”

 The video stopped.

Orlando and Abraham stared at the screen, speechless. After several seconds, she backtracked the footage to the best frame of the piece of paper Eli had held up. She captured a clean image of the number.

“We should call it,” he said.

She closed the computer. “Yes, but not here.”

They left cash on the table and returned to the Audi. Not wanting to chance someone overhearing them while they were parked in the lot, Orlando started the engine and headed out. At the first stoplight she opened her computer and handed it to Abraham. The image of the phone number was still on the screen.

“Go for it,” she said.

He pulled out his cell and dialed.

Five rings.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

“Abraham,” Orlando said softly.

Nine rings.

“Abraham.”

He finally looked over as the tenth ring began.

“They’re not going to answer.”

“Just a moment longer,” he said.

The twelfth ring cut out halfway through. Abraham leaned forward as if his wait had paid off, but the voice that came through the speaker was merely a recording. “Please try your call again later.”

His shoulders sagged as he dropped the phone into his lap. Orlando gently took the cell from him and disconnected the call.

After they were back in her room at the hotel, she said, “Why don’t you go and get some sleep? We can start fresh in the morning.”

“I’m not tired,” he said, though clearly he was.

She considered her next words very carefully, but even though she knew what his response would be, she had to say them. “Abraham, perhaps it’s time to drop this. The picture tells us that Tessa’s probably alive, so you know that much. But looking into this is what got Eli killed. It could happen to you, too. Maybe you should let it go and disappear like he suggested.”

His jaw tensed. “Don’t you get it? The people who killed Eli and took your friend Daeng are hunting for Tessa. What do you think they’re going to do to her when they find her? I guarantee you it won’t be good. So tell me, if you were in my shoes, would you just disappear?”

“No,” she said after a moment. “No, I would never do that.”

“So why on Earth would you think I would?”

CHAPTER
25

VIRGINIA

N
EARLY FIFTY MINUTES
passed before Gloria finally heard someone in the hall outside the observation room.

“King? Ms. Clark?” Nolan’s voice. “Are you down here?”

Gloria pulled the chair out from under the handle and opened the door.

Nolan and Andres were in the corridor. They had turned at the sound of the door and aimed their guns at the opening. Once they saw it was Gloria, they lowered their weapons.

“Thank God,” Nolan said. “Are you all right?”

“Where’s King?” Andres asked.

Ignoring the questions, she marched over to them and asked, “Where the fuck were you two?”

“You found them,” a third voice said. “Good.”

Gloria looked past her men toward the stairway. Standing near the entrance was Scott Foster, head of the McCrillis emergency response team. They had undoubtedly come in response to the call she’d made from the observation room.

She turned back to her men. “Answer my question!”

Nolan swallowed hard. “They knocked us out and tied us up.”

“They knocked you out and tied you up? Are you serious?”

Neither Nolan nor Andres said anything.

From the stairwell entrance, Foster said, “What’s the word on the prisoner?”

“Gone,” she told him.

Foster frowned.

“Hey, I’m not pleased about it, either,” she said. “But there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do when the people who were supposed to be watching my back weren’t doing their job.”

In a hesitant voice, Andres asked, “Is King all right?”

She glared at him for a second before nodding back at the observation room. “He’s in there.”

When Andres caught sight of the other man’s body, he asked, “Is he dead?”

“Out cold.”

“So they got him, too,” Nolan said.

“True, except he wasn’t supposed to be guarding the place.”

She pushed past them and headed for the stairwell.

When she neared Foster, he said, “Mr. Davis said for you to call in as soon as we found you.”

“Davis isn’t my boss,” she said.

“He is now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Davis will tell you.”

Cursing to herself, she pulled out her phone and headed up the stairs. A moment before she hit the top step, the line was answered by one of the night operators.

“McCrillis.”

“It’s Gloria Clark. I believe Mr. Davis is expecting my call.”

Hold music, low and unobtrusive.

It had barely played two measures when—

“Clark?”

“Mr. Davis, you wanted to talk to me?”

“What the hell happened over there?” he asked. Perry Davis was McCrillis’s vice president of general operations, a man who was reportedly a competent organizer. Gloria had no firsthand knowledge of this. Her work had never strayed into his arena before.

She grimaced. It wasn’t his place to ask that kind of question. “We had an incident, sir.”

“What kind of incident?”

Another pause. “An incursion.”

“Any casualties?”

“None, sir.”

“Any idea why they were there?”

“Sir, I should really be speaking to—”

“Please answer my question, Ms. Clark.”

“Yes, sir. They came to get the man we were questioning.”

“And did they?”

“Unfortunately.”

Davis said nothing for a moment. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I’ve barely had time to take a breath, let alone go through Boyer’s files.”

“Sir, where is Mr. Boyer? I’m sure he’s expecting me to update—”

“He’s dead.”

She had been walking across the ground-floor room toward the exit, but his words stopped her in her tracks. “Dead? How?”

“He was in his house when it burned down.”

“Jesus. Was it an accident?”

“Unlikely. His security team was found unconscious in the backyard. They’d apparently been drugged.”

Drugged? She’d been unable to revive King while they waited for the response team, which had led her to believe he was drugged.

Quinn
, she thought. If he’d played a role in her boss’s death, it would certainly explain how he’d found out where she was.

“Ms. Clark, are you there?”

She blinked. “Uh, sorry, sir. I’m here.”

“I need to know exactly what you’re working on.”

“It’s a KV job, sir.” KV was McCrillis’s highest secrecy designation, meaning phone conversations about it were strongly discouraged.

“Of course it is, goddammit. Fine. Get your ass in here as quickly as you can and give me a full report. I’ll be in my office.”

WASHINGTON, DC

G
LORIA STOOD ON
the other side of Davis’s desk as she filled him in on her assignment. The offer to sit had not been extended, nor would she have accepted it if it had. Though one of Foster’s men had patched her up before she left Virginia, she’d refused any pain medication, so it felt like she had a hot poker constantly pressed against her side and sitting made it worse.

“So the job is to find out if the girl is alive or not?” Davis interrupted, apparently having a hard time comprehending the mission.

“Part one, yes,” she said, working hard to maintain her patience.

“And what is part two?”

Her training made her not want to answer the question, but with Boyer out of the picture she had no choice. “If she’s still alive, eliminate her.”

“A child.”

“Yes, sir.”

She would have understood if he looked disgusted, but instead he appeared merely annoyed as he said, “And do we know why?”

“That’s not part of the job, sir,” she told him, though she actually did know the answer.

“Unbelievable. Who approved this?”

“The client has worked with McCrillis for many years, sir, and I do believe a premium is being paid for this project.”

“As well it should be.” He reached for his phone. “Please step into my waiting area. I’ll call you back in when I’m ready.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and headed for the exit.

As she entered the waiting area, she heard Davis say, “Don? This is Perry. We have a situation here that I need a little…”

After the door closed behind her, she could hear him no longer, but she had no doubt who he was talking to.

Donald McCrillis. President and CEO of McCrillis International.

The corner of her mouth ticked up.

Exactly seven minutes after she stepped out of Davis’s office, the door opened.

“Please come back in,” Davis said, his tone contrite.

As she entered, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the text on the screen.

Davis. Keep it natural.

There was no sender’s name, only a number she was sure belonged to a burner phone. It didn’t matter. She knew it was from Don McCrillis.

In a few hours, when the sun came up, instead of being down one vice president, McCrillis International would be down two.

“Ms. Clark, please have a seat.”

She smiled and lowered herself into the chair.

CHAPTER
26

TAMPA, FLORIDA

O
RLANDO’S ALARM WENT
off at 6:30 a.m., barely four hours after she’d fallen asleep.

Forcing herself up, she shuffled into the shower, shocking her body first with cold water and then gradually adding some heat. By the time she was toweling off, she felt like she probably wouldn’t spontaneously fall asleep in the next fifteen minutes. Anything beyond that, all bets were off.

Coffee. She needed coffee. Now.

Forgoing even the small amount of makeup she usually wore, she ran her fingers through her hair, pulled on some clothes, and headed downstairs to the coffee shop in the lobby. She knew there would be a line—there were always lines at hotel coffee shops, no matter the time of day—but what she didn’t expect to see was Abraham sitting at one of the small tables out front, sipping from a cup and eating a muffin.

Orlando purchased her coffee, waited for it to be prepared, and then joined her former mentor.

“You did get some sleep, didn’t you?” she asked.

“More than enough,” he replied. “The older you get, the less you need.”

“Then I need to get older fast.”

A small grin, but no snide comment. That wasn’t like him.

She stirred her coffee and gave it a taste. A little too hot still, but she was willing to risk a scorched mouth for the brew’s revitalizing effects.

“I…I tried again,” he said.

“Tried what?”

He touched the phone sitting next to his half-eaten muffin. “The number. I tried again.”

“And?”

“Same as before,” he said, disappointed.

“Whoever it belonged to probably tossed their phone.”

He nodded in reluctant agreement. “It’s just…whoever Eli called was trying to help him. So that has to mean they know something about Tessa, doesn’t it? I thought…I mean…” He took a breath and picked up his coffee. “I don’t know where we go from here.”

“I might,” she said.

He looked at her, hope creeping into his eyes. “Did you find something?”

She held up a hand. “Can I finish my coffee first?”

__________

D
ESPITE ABRAHAM’S PERSISTENT
questioning, she refused to go into further detail until they were back in her room.

Once she woke up her laptop, she brought up the files Eli put on the memory card for the members of Operation Overtake. “According to Eli, three are dead,” she said. “I double-checked and he was right. These other two, though, were only listed as missing. Akira Hayashi and Desirae Rosette. I checked to see if either of them had taken any jobs after Overtake but found none. Granted, I didn’t have a ton of time so it wasn’t a thorough search, but it was enough of a sample to form my opinion. Before I went to sleep, I set up a few search bots. First, to see if any unidentified bodies had been recovered in the months following the job that matched either of them, and second, to hunt down any personal information such as friends and family who they might get in contact with.”

“What did they find?”