Brett Battles - Shadow of Betrayal

“We’re almost set here,” Quinn said, subconsciously turning his mouth toward the mic attached to the collar of his shirt.

There was no response.

“Orlando? Did you hear me?”

There was a second of nothing, then Orlando’s voice in his ear. “Yeah, just a minute.”

“What’s up?”

Earlier, while Nate and Quinn had lugged the ladder inside and set it up, Orlando had volunteered to begin the recon of the first couple floors.

“I think I found something,” she said.

“What? Where?”

Instead of a reply, Quinn heard footsteps coming from his left down an intersecting corridor. Turning toward the sound, he could see the beam of Orlando’s flashlight cut through the darkness, then angle in his direction.

“It might be nothing,” she said, her voice still coming through the receiver in his ear. “We can check it out later if we need to. I’ll be right there.”

While they waited for her to arrive, Nate checked the ladder and the ropes to make sure everything was secure.

“Who wants to go first?” Nate asked, the moment Orlando rejoined them.

“You do,” Quinn told him.

“Check this out,” Nate said.

Quinn and Orlando walked over as Nate worked a wooden riser loose from one of the piles of junk. Nails stuck out in a line along both short ends, and one corner had splintered off, but otherwise it was intact.

“See?” he said after he flipped the piece of wood over.

Quinn had to look closely to see what his apprentice meant. There was a circular patch in the center of the tread that was just a shade or two darker than the surrounding wood. Nate pressed against it, and it pushed in half an inch, then sprang back when he let go.

“Pressure trigger,” Orlando said. “Good catch.”

“Peter’s agent must have stepped on this,” Nate said. “That probably sent a signal to the explosives.”

Orlando smiled. “You’ve been studying.”

Nate shrugged. “Had a lot of time on my hands.” He glanced up at the doorway high on the wall above them. “Jesus … do you think he fell all this way?”

Quinn’s eyes were drawn to something several feet away. It flashed white as his light passed over it. He walked over, picked it up off the ground.

“I’d say there is a very good chance the agent fell the whole way,” Quinn said. He held up the item he’d found. “I also think there is a pretty good chance that he is a she.”

In his hand was a pair of decidedly feminine glasses, complete with camera attached to the side.

“She was apparently here for a reason,” Orlando said. “But has anyone found out what that might have been?”

Neither Quinn nor Nate had an answer for that. So they began looking in the only place they had yet to check, under the wrecked stairs. They moved things around so they could be sure there was nothing hidden underneath—trapdoors, hidden storage spaces. But there was nothing.

“Red herring,” Nate said.

“Looks that way,” Quinn said.

“Then we’re out of here?” Nate asked.

Quinn shook his head. “Not yet. I want you to photograph everything in here. Normal and infrared. Just in case.” Quinn looked over at Orlando. “While he’s doing that, why don’t you show me what you found earlier?”

Orlando led Quinn to a hallway that ran along the back of the building. About a third of the way down, she stopped in front of a door on the right-hand side. The other doors along the hallway were all wooden and rotting. And, for the most part, all were also open. This door was different. It was metal, though it had been painted to look older than it really was.

“Look familiar?” Orlando asked.

Quinn nodded. It looked nearly identical in both texture and color to the metal remains of the door that had been torn and twisted by the explosion.

“I haven’t seen any others like it,” Orlando said. “Peter’s instructions were to look for anything unusual. Thought this might qualify.”

“Definitely.”

Quinn touched the knob, then attempted to turn it. It moved a fraction of an inch before stopping.

“So?” she said. “Do we try to get in?”

Though Quinn thought it might be better to just walk away, that would be neglecting the assignment. And as much as he was annoyed to be here in the first place, that was just not something he would do.

“Not through here,” he said.

He took a few steps down the hall away from the door. As he did, he let his fingers brush against the wall, tapping the surface every few inches. After ten feet he stopped, returned to the door, then did the same thing along the other side.

“Think this is rigged like the staircase?” Orlando asked when he finished.

Quinn looked back at the door, then frowned. “What’s your gut?”

“I think we’d be stupid to think it wasn’t.”

Quinn smiled in agreement.

He took a few paces forward, then stopped at a spot four feet to the right of the door. He touched the wall again. Like elsewhere, it was plaster, probably supported by ancient wooden slats underneath. Only the wall had given in a little at this spot as he pressed against it.

He moved his light through the hallway. Like elsewhere in the building, random junk was scattered along the floor: an old shoe, dozens of empty food containers, newspapers, cardboard boxes, and several pieces of wood in varying shapes and conditions. He wished he’d brought along one of the crowbars Peter had gotten for them, but that would mean a trip back to the car. He almost decided he didn’t have much of a choice, when the beam of his light caught something that looked promising.

It was a two-by-four, about three feet long. Quinn picked it up with one hand, then tapped it against the ground, testing its strength. It was solid, no sign of rot.

Should work, he thought.

“Let me hold your flashlight,” Orlando said.

He handed it over, not even registering the fact that she’d figured out what he was going to do. That was just the way they operated, more often than not having the same ideas at the same time.

He found the soft spot on the wall again, then grabbed hold of the two-by-four with both hands and arced it back until it almost touched the other side of the corridor.

“What’s that?” Orlando asked, her voice hushed.

Quinn paused, his battering ram suspended in the air, ready to smash into the wall. It took him a second before he heard it. Something shuffling along the floor.

Footsteps. And heading in their direction. But not in their hallway, in one intersecting it.

“Nate,” Quinn whispered. “What’s your position?”

“I’m nearing the top of the ladder,” Nate said. There was a pause. “Please don’t tell me you want me to go back down.”

“No. Just hold your position when you reach the top.”

“Copy that.”

Orlando doused both of the lights, plunging the hallway into complete darkness. Careful not to make any unnecessary noise, Quinn lowered the two-by-four to the floor, then pulled out his SIG. Beside him, he could hear Orlando freeing her own weapon.

Once armed, they stood rock still as the steps grew closer. There was a muffled thud like someone bumping into a distant wall, then the steps were suddenly in the same hallway as they were.

Quinn raised his gun in the direction of the noise, then whispered, “Now.”

Orlando flipped on one of the flashlights.

“Shit! What the hell?”

Caught at the very far end of the flashlight beam’s reach was a man. He appeared to be about the same height as Quinn, but that was about all the detail they could make out. A moment after being lit up, he was gone, running down the corridor away from Quinn and Orlando.

“Hey!” Quinn yelled. “Stop!”

But the man’s pace only increased.

“Dammit,” Quinn said. Both he and Orlando started running at once. “Nate. There’s a hostile in the building. He’s heading your way.”

“Copy that.”

“Not sure if he’s armed, so be careful.”

“You want me to take him out?”

“No,” Quinn said. “Just… try to stop him, or at least scare him back in our direction.”

“Copy,” Nate said. “I hear him. Hold on.” Quinn could hear Nate breathing. “He’s just around the corner.”

“Be careful,” Quinn said.

“Stop right the—”

Nate’s command was interrupted by a loud smack, and the sound of something rubbing against the microphone.

“Dammit!” Nate yelled.

Quinn increased his speed, sprinting toward the intersection with the hallway Nate was in.

“What’s happening?” Quinn asked. “Are you all right?”

“The asshole just head-butted me in the cheek.”

“Where is he now?”

There was silence for a second.

“He’s … ah … on the ground.” Nate paused again. “I think I knocked him out.”

CHAPTER

8

THE UNCONSCIOUS MAN COULD HAVE BEEN ANYWHERE from twenty-five to his early forties. His face, weathered and wrinkled prematurely, had been beaten into a shape he hadn’t been born with. But though his clothes were old and thin in some spots, they were clean. And he obviously cared about his appearance enough to tuck his shirt in, comb his hair, and take a shower once in a while.

Not quite a street bum, not quite part of society, either. The guy probably existed somewhere in between.

His face also sported a new addition, a large red spot in the middle of his forehead, the remnant of his collision with Nate. Quinn knew it would turn into a bruise before long.

“Smells like he’s been drinking,” Nate said.

Quinn had noticed it, too, a faint hint of alcohol, not like the guy had been sucking anything down in the past hour, but within the last several. Sour, like beer.

“Here.” Quinn held his gun out to Nate.

He grabbed it and aimed it at the man on the ground.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Nate asked.

“Kind of hard to tell at the moment,” Quinn said. “But at least we know one thing.”

“What?” Nate asked.

“We know that hard head of yours is good for something,” Quinn said, a small smile on his face.

“Ha. Ha. Hilarious.” There was a red spot on his cheek that was a near match to the spot on the unconscious man’s forehead. Nate raised his hand and began rubbing it. “Hurts like hell.” His hand stopped in mid-motion. “Damn. I think one of my teeth is loose.”

Quinn knelt down and searched the man. The only things the guy had been armed with were an old black plastic comb and a set of ten keys. Definitely not a street person. They’d have no need for keys.

Quinn put his hand on the man’s cheek, then rocked the man’s head back and forth.

“Hey,” he said. “Wake up.”

Not even a twitch. Quinn raised his hand a few inches, then slapped it down on the man’s cheek, not too hard, just enough so that it would sting.

“Wake up,” he repeated. “Come on.”

A low groan started in the man’s chest, then escaped through his mouth. A moment of nothing, then another groan, and another. Finally, he started to move his head in a slow circle on his own.

Quinn kept his hand on the man’s cheek, his thumb wrapped around the bottom of the guy’s chin. All of a sudden, the man’s eyelids squeezed together as a grimace of pain shot across his face. One of his hands reached up and touched his injured forehead.

He grunted, then all of a sudden he froze. Reluctantly, as if it was the last thing he wanted to do, his eyelids parted.

“Oh, God. Please. I’m sorry,” he said, his voice clipped and nervous. “Just leave me alone. I ain’t got nothing.”

“What’s your name?” Quinn asked.

“No,” the man said. “You don’t need that. Just let me go, okay? Do whatever you want. I don’t give a shit.”

“What’s your name?” Quinn repeated.

The man looked at Quinn for a second, licked his lips, then said, “Al.”

“Al what?”

More hesitation. “Al Barker.”

“Okay, Al Barker. What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Al said as if it should have been obvious.

“No one lives here,” Quinn said.

Al’s gaze flicked beyond Quinn at Nate and Orlando. “Do you have to shine that thing in my eyes?”

The beam of Orlando’s flashlight moved off the man’s face and onto his chest.

“Better?” she said.

“Shit, man, you guys got guns!” Al had apparently just noticed the pistols in Orlando’s and Nate’s hands. “What the hell are you pointing guns at me for?”

Quinn squeezed Al’s chin and turned it to the right. “Over here, Al,” Quinn said. “What are you doing here?”

Al glanced back at Orlando and Nate, then refocused on Quinn. “I told you. I live here.”

“The building’s empty, Al.”

“You don’t have to keep saying my name.”

“I just want to make sure you know I’m talking to you.”

“I know you’re talking to me,” Al said. “And I do live here. The owner pays me to stay in one of the rooms upstairs. A couple hundred bucks a month, and I get the place for free.”

“So you’re the caretaker,” Quinn said.

“I guess. Yeah, sure. The caretaker.”

“So if you’re the caretaker, where have you been all day?”

“I was upstairs … listening to the radio … building’s got no electricity, so no TV.”

“You were upstairs all day?”

“Sure.”

Quinn stared at him for a moment. “Al, where were you today?”

“I was he—”

“Don’t lie to me,” Quinn cut him off.

Al licked his lips again. “I left, okay? Went for a walk.”

“All evening?”

“Yeah. Okay? All evening,” Al said.

“Why did you leave?”

“I can go out when I want,” he said defensively. “I don’t have to be here all the time. Mr. Monroe told me that when he let me live here.”

“Who’s Mr. Monroe?”

“He owns the building.”

“Why did you leave today, Al? Did you hear something you didn’t want to? Then decided it was better to find something else to do?”

The caretaker’s pause was all the confirmation Quinn needed.

“Tell me the truth, or I’ll have my friend here, the one you hit with your head, shoot you someplace that won’t kill you, not right away, but it’ll hurt like hell.”

Al took another look at Nate. The sight must have been enough to convince him.

“I heard her come in, okay?” he said.

“Her?” Quinn asked.

“A woman. It was around sunset.”

“How do you know it was a woman if you only heard her?”

“I, eh, snuck downstairs. Sometimes we get kids in here. You know, try to trash the place. If I surprise them, it scares the hell out of them, and they leave. So I come down to do the same thing, okay? Only when I come down to the basement and peek around the corner, it’s not kids. It’s a woman. And she looks like she ain’t here to trash the place. But she got that door open, you know? That door you’re not supposed to go through. I was going to warn her, but she was already stepping inside. Then … boom.”