The Deceived Page 2

  Quinn returned the scanner to its case, then walked around to the rear of the container. A part of him wanted to make sure Albina hadn’t pulled a bait-and-switch and put something else in the box, but the real reason for the check was that Quinn needed to confirm for himself that the dead man inside was indeed who Jorge had said he was.

  He did a quick scan to make sure no one was near, then opened the door.

  Again the stench. Bad, but not as bad as it had been in the confines of the warehouse. He climbed inside and pulled the door closed behind him.

  He pinched his nose closed with one hand, forcing himself to breathe through his mouth. With the other hand, he pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket and turned it on.

  The corpse was in pretty much the same place it had been when he’d seen it last—still against the wall, halfway back on the right side. He walked over and gently used his foot to roll the body onto its back.

  For a couple of seconds, he all but forgot where he was. He stared down at the bloated face. Even with the disfigurement and the low light, there was no mistaking the features. It was Markoff.

  “Everything all right?” Nate asked over the radio.

  Quinn blinked. No, he thought. Everything isn’t all right.

  “Time to go,” Quinn said.

  Quinn drove the rig east through San Bernardino and over the Cajon Pass toward Las Vegas. He exited a few miles later at Highway 395 and headed north into the Mojave Desert. Nate followed a half-mile behind in the BMW, watching for tails.

  The desert had once been hundreds of square miles of nothing but sagebrush and dirt. Both were still there, but over the years the occasional town had popped up, creating pockets of forced green in the endless brown landscape. It was by no means a full-scale human invasion. There were parts where you could drive for nearly fifty miles without seeing anything more man-made than the distant high-power lines or some out-of-date billboards or the occasional abandoned car rusted to a deep brown and half buried in the sand by a flash flood.

  There were roads, though. Dirt ones, branching off from the highway and winding miles into the nothingness. Some were well worn by traffic, perhaps indicating a home in the distance. Others looked as though they’d been abandoned for dozens of years.

  It was easy to lose things out here, things that wouldn’t be found for a long time. And if you did the job right, things that would never be found.

  Because he rarely took work so close to home, Quinn seldom had a need to come out this way. Of course, that didn’t mean he was unfamiliar with the terrain. One always had to be prepared.

  About twenty miles before Randsburg, there was a little-used dirt road that led off to the southeast. Quinn made sure the only other car in sight was his own BMW, then turned the rig down the road, slowing to navigate the uneven terrain.

  It took thirty minutes to reach a suitable spot. The road first went past several hills before dipping into the deep ravine. Not far beyond where Quinn stopped, the road seemed to disappear, as though its destination had been washed away by one of the spring storms, giving it no reason to continue.

  By the time he got out of the cab, Nate had caught up to him in the BMW. Quinn motioned for his apprentice to park behind the truck. He then walked around to the container’s doors.

  In the distance, the sun was approaching the horizon. Night was less than an hour away.

  Quinn reached up, hesitated for only a second, then flung both doors open all the way. He almost didn’t notice the smell this time.

  Behind him, he heard the door to the BMW open and shut, then footsteps approaching the truck.

  “Coveralls, gloves, and plastic sheeting,” Quinn called out without looking around.

  “What about the gasoline?”

  “Not yet.”

  As Nate returned to the car, Quinn climbed inside and walked over to the body. He couldn’t imagine what had led to Markoff being entombed in a shipping container. Sure, Markoff had once been CIA, but he’d taken an early retirement the previous winter, bored stiff by the desk job at Langley he’d taken only months before.

  So what happened? Quinn silently asked his dead friend.

  The only answer was the sound of Nate’s footsteps outside the back door.

  “Here,” his apprentice called out.

  Quinn turned toward the back. Nate was standing on the ground, only the upper third of his body showing above the lip of the container. In one hand he held up a pair of coveralls and gloves.

  Quinn looked down at Markoff one more time, then headed toward the opening to get changed.

  They worked quickly and efficiently. Nate, more times than not, seemed to anticipate Quinn’s next request, helping to keep conversation to a minimum.

  Dealing with Markoff was first. They wrapped his body in the sheeting, then placed him across the hood of the BMW, securing him in place with several lengths of rope. Next, Nate donned a breathing mask, and used a portable paint sprayer to douse the interior of the container with gasoline.

  “Quinn?” Nate called out. He’d finished half of the inside, but had stopped and was staring at the wall. “Did you see this?”

  Quinn pulled on his mask and joined his apprentice. After his eyes began to adjust to the dimness inside the box, small marks began to

  appear on the wall.

  “Grab some paper and a pen,” Quinn said.

  While Nate was gone, Quinn knelt down to get a better look. He adjusted his face mask, but the stink of gasoline and death still seeped in around the edges. He forced himself to ignore it, focusing his concentration on the marks on the wall.

  They were crude, like something a child would have written. Or maybe by someone writing in the dark, he thought. Someone already weak, about to die.

  As Nate climbed back in, Quinn pulled out his flashlight and turned it on. The beam exposed walls dripping with gasoline. He pointed the light at the marks on the wall.

  Numbers. Letters. Seventeen of them. Repeated twice.

  45KL0908NTY63779V

  “Looks like a VIN number,” Nate said, meaning a vehicle identifica

  tion number.

  “It’s not.”

  Though the sequence had been written twice, there was something different about the second time around. At the very end, separated by a small space, were an additional two characters.

  lP

  They were only there the one time. Perhaps they were part of the long sequence and they had just been forgotten the first time through, or perhaps they were something else entirely.

  Quinn handed the flashlight to Nate, then took the pen and paper and wrote down the sequence. He included the last two characters, though kept them apart from the others, just like they had been on the wall. The one thing he wasn’t sure about was whether it was the letter L or the numeral 1. Either way, none of it meant anything to him.

  “Is that blood?” Nate asked.

  Quinn nodded. Markoff must have used the only ink he had available.

  “Okay,” he said, rising back to his feet. “Finish up. We don’t have much time.”

  As soon as Quinn was out of the container, Nate sprayed the rest of the inside with the fuel, giving the message a double douse. Before he started on the outside, they unhooked the semi from the trailer, and Quinn drove it back to the point where the road climbed out of the ravine, parking it.

  By the time Nate finished the exterior, there were about three quarts left of the five gallons of gas they’d brought. He unhooked the paint reservoir that contained the remaining fuel and placed it on the ground, then tossed the rest of the paint sprayer and the empty gas cans into the back of the shipping container.

  “Done,” Nate said.

  Quinn nodded, then climbed behind the wheel of the BMW. He eased the vehicle back down the wash, putting a good one hundred and fifty feet between the car and the container.

  “All right,” he said.

  Nate acknowledged the go-ahead by lighting a couple of pieces of dried sagebrush
on fire. Through the receiver in his ear, Quinn could hear a whoosh as his apprentice flung one of the branches deep inside the container.

  A torrent of flames began swirling through Markoff ’s former tomb, and once Nate lit the outside, the entire box became engulfed in a roiling inferno.

  Their timing was good. Any later and their makeshift bonfire might have been seen for miles in the desert night. But the sun was just touching the western skyline, so even though day was passing, the darkness had yet to descend in full force. In fact, the fading daylight did double duty, hiding the temporary illumination while masking the smoke against the dimming sky.

  The scent of the remaining gasoline in the container he carried preceded Nate as he rejoined Quinn. Without being told, he hopped up on the trunk.

  “I’ll ride here,” he said.

  Quinn slowly drove the BMW farther into the wilderness, away from the road. A couple miles later, they found another dry riverbed. At some point, the two empty waterways probably met, but it wouldn’t be an issue. Not here, where it might not rain significantly for years.

  As soon as they’d stopped, Nate retrieved two shovels from the trunk.

  Even baked by the desert sun, the sand in the wash was soft and easy to dig up. The darkness of the desert night had finally descended, so they worked by the headlights of the BMW. In less than fifteen minutes, they dug a body-length hole three feet deep. Perhaps in a year or two, the spring rains might root up what was left of Markoff, but by then there would only be bones. Still, the thought bothered Quinn. He contemplated digging the hole deeper, but he pushed the idea out of his mind and kept to his script.

  They slipped Markoff into the hole, unrolling him from the plastic as they did.

  “You want me to check his pockets?” Nate asked.

  Quinn stared down at the body. “No. I’ll do it.”

  He leaned down and searched each pocket with his gloved hands. No wallet. No money. No receipts or papers that might have given a clue to where Markoff had been. Just a photo. It was folded and worn, and had been hidden in the collar of the dead man’s shirt. Quinn almost missed it because the paper had gone soft. But the image on it was still clear. A woman.

  There was a red smear along the bottom. More blood. Markoff had evidently pulled it out at one point to try and look at it. But in the darkness, it was doubtful he would have seen her image.

  “Shit,” Quinn said to himself.

  He looked at it a moment longer, then unzipped the front of his coveralls and slipped the photo into his shirt pocket.

  Nate doused the body with most of the remaining fuel. When he was done, he removed a small box of wooden matches. As he was about to strike one, Quinn reached out and stopped him.

  “Let me.”

  Nate glanced at his boss, surprised, then nodded and handed over the box.

  Quinn removed one of the sticks, but didn’t strike it. Instead, he looked down at his old friend’s body lying in the hole. He felt like he should say something, anything. But he didn’t know what. Then, as he swiped the match against the side of the box, he said, without thinking, “I’m sorry.”

  After they burned and buried the body, they removed their coveralls and gloves, adding them to the pile of plastic sheeting in a smaller hole thirty feet away. They used the rest of the fuel to set the pile on fire. Once that was complete, the only thing left to do was to drop the truck someplace where Albina’s people could get it.

  “Who’s the woman?” Nate said as he drove them back toward the semi.

  “What?” Quinn asked. He’d been lost in thought.

  “The picture. Do you know the woman?”

  Nate pointed toward Quinn’s hand. Held tightly between his thumb and his forefinger was the picture that had been in Markoff ’s collar. It surprised Quinn because he didn’t remember pulling it back out.

  The woman in the picture was smiling into the camera, her light brown hair flowing to the side, caught in the wind. A hand was on her shoulder close to her neck, a spot only someone very close would touch. Markoff ’s hand. Though not in the picture, the Del Coronado Hotel in San Diego would have been just off to the right.

  It had been a Saturday, just after lunch. Nearly a year earlier.

  The woman’s name was Jenny Fuentes.

  The person who’d taken the picture was Quinn.

  CHAPTER

  QUINN STOOD IN THE SHOWER, ARMS OUTSTRETCHED,

  palms pressed against the wall holding him in place. For thirty minutes, he didn’t move. Instead, he let the water spray against his shoulders, splashing onto his head and running down his torso toward the tiled floor of the stall. He had hoped it would make him feel normal again, snap him out of the temporary spiral he felt himself sliding into.

  He gave up near 1 a.m., knowing the anger and questions weren’t going to go away. He took his time toweling off, like someone whose every muscle ached from a day of intensive labor. But there was nothing wrong with his muscles. The work he and Nate had done hadn’t been overly strenuous. He’d handled more physical assignments with no problem. In his business, he had to keep himself lean and in good shape, like a distance runner ready to run a marathon at a moment’s notice.

  It wasn’t even the image of Markoff ’s deformed corpse burning in a shallow grave that slowed Quinn down. Rather, it was the memory of Markoff himself, always with a quick smile and a disarming laugh. An insider who’d actually become a friend outside the realm of their secret world. A good friend.

  “You’ve got to relax,” Markoff had kidded Quinn. “Enjoy things a little.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Quinn had said. They were in the Bahamas that time, sprawled out on two lounge chairs by the pool at their hotel.

  “You’re doing what you always do,” Markoff said. “Which is what exactly?” “It ain’t relaxing, that’s for sure.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m relaxed twenty-four/

  seven. So screw yourself.” Quinn took a drink from his rum and Coke, then leaned back in the lounge chair.

  His friend laughed. “What you do has nothing to do with being relaxed. You’re talking about patience. That, you’ve got more of than anyone I know.”

  “They’re the same thing,” Quinn said. “Not even close. Being relaxed means you don’t care. Being patient

  means you’re waiting.” “Right,” Quinn said. “Whatever you want to believe.” They were silent for a few moments. “Let me ask you something,” Markoff said. “Okay.” “There’re two girls off to my right. What are they wearing?” Quinn started to turn his head. “Don’t look,” Markoff said. “Fine. Bikinis, both of them. The blonde’s got a baby-blue one on,

  while her friend went with black. So what?” “All right, and the guy at the bar behind us?” “The older one or the teenager?” “Just proved my point, I think,” Markoff said. “What?” “You’re always on, always waiting, always observing. That’s not re

  laxed. That’s waiting for something to happen.”

  Though Quinn didn’t want to admit it, Markoff had been dead-on. A person could never be relaxed if he was always waiting. And for Quinn, waiting was a constant state.

  The annoying part was that Quinn knew Markoff had done his own share of waiting, too. As a field op, there could have been no escaping it. But somehow Markoff always knew how to turn it off. How to go from waiting to relaxing without any notice. It was a trait Quinn

  wished he possessed.

  Of course, now Markoff would never have to wait again.

  The thought took Quinn back to the body in the desert. It wasn’t the way it should have been. At the very least, he should have given his friend a proper burial. Maybe even taken him back home. Not D.C., he lived there because that’s where he worked. Michigan or Wisconsin, Quinn seemed to remember. Somewhere in the upper Midwest.

  But that wasn’t an option. Not just because of the condition of the body. It was Quinn’s role in dealing with it. He’d been hired to dispose of a corpse, and in
his business that meant getting rid of it so it wouldn’t be found. There could be no personal considerations.

  Quinn stared at himself in the mirror, wondering what the hell could have happened, but no answer came.

  After a while, he gave up. From his walk-in closet, he grabbed a pair of boxer briefs and a black T-shirt, pulled them on, then went into the bedroom.

  There was only one light on in the room, a reading lamp on the nightstand next to his bed. It illuminated a space that was large but underfurnished. It was just the way Quinn wanted it; it gave him a sense of freedom.

  The few pieces of bedroom furniture he owned were all dark, made of teak and built to last. A king-size bed rested against the far wall. Next to it a single nightstand with the lamp, a clock, and his current read—The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland—on top. The only other piece of furniture was a low, wide dresser that did double duty as a stand for the seldom-used television. Reading was Quinn’s vice. The evidence was several stacks of books piled against the wall where the second nightstand should have been—a to-be-read pile nearly a hundred volumes strong.

  A bead of sweat formed just above his brow. Unconsciously he reached up and wiped it away. It was September, and in Los Angeles that meant hot during the day and warm at night. Even up in the Hollywood Hills where Quinn lived, there was no escape from the late summer heat.

  At the far end of the room was a sliding glass door that led out onto a balcony overlooking the back of his property, and beyond it the city. He walked over, unlatched the special lock that held the door in place, then slid it open.

  A gentle breeze drifted into the room, lowering the temperature several degrees. He was tempted to grab a beer and stand outside on the deck, watching the lights on the Sunset Strip for a while, but in the end he opted for stretching out on the bed.

  It was late, and he knew he should get some sleep. But after he shut his eyes, it wasn’t long before he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  Markoff ’s death had been like a vicious punch to the gut. And while Quinn couldn’t let it go, it wasn’t the main thing keeping him awake. That honor fell to his other problem. The one he’d been avoiding all day.