The Damaged Read online

  Quinn studied it for a moment. “What happens if he needs one of those books on that shelf?”

  “If he does, it’ll be the first time in months. Whoever does the dusting in this place hasn’t hit this area in a while.”

  Quinn found a spot for his camera on the window frame, half hidden by the blinds. After Orlando gave him the thumbs-up, they exited the office and put cameras in the conference room, other office, and lobby before leaving the suite.

  They headed back toward the stairwell and were about halfway down the hallway when they heard one of the elevators whir to life. They picked up their pace. The elevator turned out to be one of the three main ones, and it stopped before reaching the fifth floor.

  In the maintenance room, Quinn pried open the service elevator doors far enough for Orlando to lean into the shaft.

  “It’s on the ground floor,” she confirmed.

  They proceeded down the stairs and stopped on the second floor. Once more, Quinn forced open the elevator doors, this time all the way. Using the shaft’s support railings, Orlando climbed down onto the top of the elevator. While she did this, Quinn retrieved a rope from his duffel and tied one end to the bag’s handgrips. Once Orlando was settled on the elevator, he lowered the bag to her, and then swung into the shaft himself.

  Getting the doors closed again from the inside was tricky, but after a few moments he was able to get them shut. He climbed down and joined Orlando.

  The top of an elevator wasn’t the most comfortable place to spend a day, but at least there was enough room for one of them at a time to lie down and sleep.

  “You go first,” he whispered.

  “You look more tired than me. You should go.”

  “My gig, my call. You sleep first.”

  She shrugged. “All right. I’m not going to argue with you.”

  She lay down.

  “Try not to snore,” he said.

  “I never snore.”

  He laughed under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I never snore.”

  “Okay, sure. But if I give you a kick don’t take it personally. It just means be quiet.”

  “Ha. Ha,” she said. Then, after a beat, “Don’t kick too hard.”

  Chapter Ten

  The first time the service elevator moved was at 9:36 a.m.

  Quinn, still on guard duty, jerked in surprise. His sleep-deprived mind had been drifting and he hadn’t heard anyone enter the car below. Orlando, on the other hand, didn’t even budge.

  It moved twice more before Quinn’s turn to sleep, and according to Orlando, had taken an additional seven trips by the time he woke just after six p.m.

  At seven p.m., the car headed up again. While in transit, the person inside rapped against the side three times, then two, then three again.

  Timo Hokkanen, the mission’s assassin, had arrived.

  As soon as Hokkanen exited on the fifth floor and the doors closed, Orlando opened her computer, and brought up the feeds from the cameras she and Quinn had installed throughout Ruiz’s suite. She plugged in an audio splitter, which was attached to two sets of earbuds. She gave one set to Quinn and donned the other.

  Ruiz was the only one in his suite and was sitting behind his desk. His secretary, who also served as receptionist and often stayed late, had received a phone call from her son’s school around five p.m., informing her that her son had been caught sneaking into a classroom and she needed to pick him up right away. The call had not come from the school, of course, but from one of Peter’s operatives.

  A muffled knock caused Ruiz to look up from his laptop. He started to call out, but then seemed to remember he was alone. As he rose, he reached under his desk and pulled out the gun. After slipping it into his waistband at the small of his back, and draping his suit jacket over it, he proceeded through the offices to the front door and opened it to find the Finnish assassin outside.

  “Señor Bale?” Ruiz said.

  “Sí,” Hokkanen replied.

  The seven-p.m. meeting between Ruiz and a potential client named Robert Bale had also been set up by Peter’s people.

  Stepping out of the way, Ruiz said, “Come in.”

  At 195 centimeters tall, Hokkanen could barely pass through the doorway without ducking. As far as Quinn knew, the man was the tallest assassin in the business. And it was this height that made him particularly good at a very specific method of killing.

  After Hokkanen was inside and the door closed, Ruiz said, “This way,” and turned his back on the man who he thought was a new client, intending to lead him to the back office.

  The lawyer had taken only one step, however, before Hokkanen reached over the man’s head and yanked a garrote around Ruiz’s neck. The assassin’s hands were large enough that he needed only one to twist both ends of the garrote so that it squeezed tight against the target’s skin. With his free hand, Hokkanen pulled Ruiz to his chest and manhandled him to the floor. There, the assassin wrapped a leg around Ruiz’s lower body, effectively cutting off all resistance as he continued to strangle the attorney.

  Ruiz shot his hands up to the garrote to pull it away, but when that proved impossible, he reached around for his gun. Unfortunately for him, Hokkanen had him pinned so that it was impossible for him to reach it. Terror grew on Ruiz’s face.

  What was missing from his expression, however, was surprise. Being in bed with a cartel came with some very sweet rewards, but also with risks few people would accept. Ruiz had been one of the few, and those risks were now a reality.

  It didn’t take much longer for the life to fade from his eyes. Hokkanen, however, maintained his deathly embrace for another full minute before releasing the lawyer’s husk. Being a professional in this business meant not leaving things to chance.

  That was Quinn’s cue. He slipped through the escape hatch on top of the car, made sure Hokkanen had turned the elevator off, and exited onto the fifth floor. When he reached the door to Ruiz’s suite, he rapped on it twice, then twice again.

  Hokkanen let him in and shut the door.

  “Nice work,” Quinn said.

  The assassin grinned. “You were watching, yes?”

  “I was.”

  “I prefer targets to have a little more fight in them,” Hokkanen said. “But I’ll take this. Easy money, am I right?”

  Quinn glanced at the man’s bare hands. To prevent tipping off Ruiz, Hokkanen had not worn gloves. “Touch anything?” Quinn asked.

  He had not seen the assassin do so, but there’d been a time gap between when Quinn left the elevator and when Hokkanen let him into the office.

  “Just the door handle,” the man said.

  “What about the garrote? Where is it?”

  Hokkanen tapped the pocket of his suit coat. “I have it.”

  Quinn pulled out a large Ziploc bag from his pocket and held it open. “Hand it over.”

  The cord would be covered in Ruiz’s DNA, making it a piece of evidence that needed to be destroyed.

  “It’s only been used the once. It still has a lot of life in it.”

  “You know that’s not the way this works,” Quinn said.

  Quinn was well aware Hokkanen—who had more time in the business—was testing him. It wasn’t the first time a veteran agent had pulled something similar.

  The standoff lasted another couple of seconds, before Hokkanen laughed and retrieved the garrote.

  After he dumped it in the bag, Quinn said, “You put the weapon in your pocket. I’m going to need the jacket, too.”

  With a frown, Hokkanen pulled off the coat and handed it to Quinn. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention the jacket to Peter. I’d like to report it as damaged and bill him.”

  “I don’t know anything about a jacket,” Quinn said.

  “Thank you.”

  It was a small favor, one that would increase Hokkanen’s trust in Quinn, and make easier any work they did together in the future.

&
nbsp; Quinn pulled a pair of disposable rubber gloves out of his bag. “Use these on your way out.”

  Hokkanen pulled them on. “Until next time.”

  The assassin opened the door and disappeared into the hallway. To avoid being seen by anyone below, he would take the stairs to the roof, and then hop two buildings over before descending to the street. Before the night was over, he’d be on a plane out of the country.

  Quinn pulled a rolled-up body bag out of the duffel and laid it on the floor next to Ruiz. As he moved the flaps to the side, two raps echoed off the door, and then one. He opened it and let Orlando in. Now that Hokkanen was gone, they wouldn’t have to worry about him seeing Orlando and potentially mentioning the fact to Peter.

  They lifted Ruiz into the bag but left it unzipped.

  Quinn reentered the public hallway and walked its entire length. While only one other suite on the fifth floor was currently leased, he still paused at each entrance and listened. Every one of them was dead quiet. He continued to the public elevators and confirmed the cars were sitting at the ground floor. Finally, he checked the back room where the service elevator and rear stairs were located. No one there, nor were there any sounds of steps in the stairwell.

  He reentered Ruiz’s office and found Orlando vacuuming the carpet with their handheld vac, around where Hokkanen had taken down Ruiz.

  “We’re clear,” he said. He grabbed the special ammo box out of the duffel, pulled the Colt from behind Ruiz’s back, and headed through the suite to Ruiz’s personal office.

  Sitting on the desk was Ruiz’s laptop computer and a pad of paper with notes written on the top sheet. Quinn set the ammo box on the desk. Turned out the dummies were unnecessary, but in Quinn’s world that was a sign of a job well done.

  He removed the faux ammo, returned the original bullets to the weapon, and snapped the pistol back into the brackets under the desk. He pushed Ruiz’s chair under the desk like how it had been when they did their walk-through, and turned off the desk lamp. After closing the computer, he picked it up along with the pad of paper, then exited the room, flipping off the overhead light on his way out.

  Now it would look like Ruiz had left for the evening. And when someone eventually started looking for him, all indications would be that whatever had happened to the attorney, it hadn’t occurred here.

  As Quinn reentered the suite’s lobby, Orlando was placing the vacuum’s dust bag in the body bag with Ruiz.

  “Doorknob?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  He placed the items from Ruiz’s office in the duffel bag before pulling out a small bottle of bleach spray and a rag. These he used to thoroughly wipe down the doorknob and the area around it.

  After a spray of odor neutralizer to eliminate the heavy bleach scent, he turned back to the room and looked around. “Everything looks good. You see anything?”

  Orlando scanned the space and shook her head. “I think that’s it.”

  “Zip him up.”

  The most difficult item on their agenda was lifting Ruiz through the elevator access hatch and onto the roof of the car. Quinn pulled from up top while Orlando pushed from below, both straining with the awkward load. But centimeter by centimeter the body bag cleared the opening, until it finally rested on the surface beside Quinn.

  Orlando turned the elevator back on and pushed the button for the first floor. As the car descended, Quinn pulled Orlando up through the roof opening. Before they’d even reached the fourth floor, the hatch was closed again.

  When the elevator stopped on the ground floor, the doors opened automatically, stayed that way for twenty seconds, and closed again.

  It wasn’t long before Quinn and Orlando heard the muffled clicks of shoes on tiled floor. As expected, the after-hours movement of the elevator had drawn the attention of the guard.

  A few moments later, the elevator doors opened again.

  A step inside, and a step back out, followed by the doors shutting.

  The clicking of shoes again, this time moving toward the back of the building. Though the noise was faint, Quinn was sure he heard the rear entrance door opening.

  For several moments all was silent, then the clicks made a third appearance, this time moving from the back of the building, past the elevator, and toward the front lobby, where they soon faded to nothing.

  Quinn and Orlando waited thirty minutes, in case the guard decided to take a second look around. When he failed to show up, Orlando pulled out her computer and performed her magic trick with the cameras covering the back of the building. Quinn then slipped into the elevator car, pried the doors apart just wide enough for him to pass through, and entered the hallway.

  From there it was a short trip out the rear door and back to the parking garage. A different guy was working the entrance as Quinn pulled out. A flash of the prepaid ticket resulted in the gate swinging open, with barely a glance from the attendant.

  Quinn drove the long way around and entered the alley from the opposite end, to avoid anyone near the parking garage noticing his actions. After parking behind Ruiz’s building, he unlocked the bed cover, raised it a good meter, and reentered the structure.

  Back in the elevator, he tapped twice on the wall to let Orlando know it was him. She opened the hatch, handed down the duffel and her backpack, and then they switched places.

  Quinn lowered the body bag through the hole feet first and leaned down with it until it touched the floor. Though Orlando was only about three quarters the size of the dead lawyer, she was in prime shape. When Quinn was sure she had control of the body, he let go and lowered himself beside her.

  Together they set the body on the floor.

  Orlando rolled her neck to the side, stretching it.

  “You okay?” Quinn whispered.

  “Yeah, just—”

  Click. Click. Click.

  Without another word, they moved to the front of the elevator, taking position at either side of the door.

  As the guard—or whoever it was—neared the front of the car, Quinn tensed. But the steps continued for another couple of meters. A door opened. From where the sound came from, it could only be the door to the stairwell. This was confirmed when the click of the shoes traveled into the well and began moving upward.

  “Must be on his rounds,” Orlando whispered.

  Quinn concentrated on the steps. When it sounded like they had reached the second-floor landing, he said, “Come on.”

  He draped the duffel’s straps over his shoulders and pried the doors open again. They picked up the body bag, exited the elevator, and headed down the hallway and out the rear exit.

  With a single swing to gain momentum, they hefted Ruiz into the back of the truck and tossed the duffel bag in beside him. Quinn shut the cover and twisted the latch into place but didn’t waste time locking it.

  He raced around and jumped into the driver’s seat. Orlando was already buckled in on the passenger’s side, her computer out and opened. He pulled away, his gaze flicking back and forth between the alley and his rearview mirror. By the time Ruiz’s building disappeared from sight, the door at the back had not moved.

  “Loops are off,” Orlando said. She typed again, this time pecking the keyboard for over fifteen seconds. “Emergency distraction disabled.”

  This meant she had sent a message to the phone in the power box, triggering it to self-destruct. By the time someone thought to pry the box open, the phone and the wires attaching it to the clamps would be a hardened glop of plastic at the bottom.

  Quinn was starting to relax when a thought hit him. He slammed on the brakes. “The hatch.”

  “What do you—” She closed her eyes, also remembering. “Oh, crap.”

  In their desire to avoid the guard, they had left the hatch in the service elevator open. If Quinn had done that in his apprentice days, Durrie would have laid into him for weeks. A similar reprimand now would be no less deserved.

  Every obsessive-compulsive fiber in his body was telling
him to turn around and fix the problem, but the survival side of his brain countered with It’s not worth the risk.

  He heard the passenger door open and looked over as Orlando hopped to the ground.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, and disappeared before he could reply.

  He pulled to the side of the road and almost jumped out of the car to race after her. But while seeing a woman running down the road might be odd, seeing a man apparently chasing her would be downright memorable.

  There was nothing he could do but wait.

  He kept his eyes focused on the rearview mirror as the minutes ticked off. Four, five, then six. At the start of the seventh minute, a small silhouette appeared in the distance, not running, walking. Though it looked like Orlando, it wasn’t until the shadowy form was a few car lengths away that he knew for sure.

  When she opened the door and climbed in, he said, “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking we needed to be thorough.”

  “I’m the one in charge, remember? I make these decisions.” He looked out the front window and took a moment to calm down. “Did you get it shut?”

  “Of course.”

  “How?”

  She was much too short to reach the hatch on her own.

  “Mop handle.”

  He looked at her again, his eyes wide.

  She shrugged. “Improvise, right?”

  He held his stare for a moment longer and then laughed. After a second, Orlando joined in.

  When Quinn finally caught his breath, he said, “Next time, can we at least talk about it for a second before you run off?”

  “That’ll depend on the situation, won’t it?”

  He snorted and shook his head, then started the engine and pulled away.

  They unzipped the body bag and upended it, so that Ruiz and the trash from the scene tumbled into the hole they had dug the night before. After the body was stretched out, Quinn poured two gallons of a chemical cocktail over the body, mixed from ingredients he and Orlando had picked up on their tour of hardware stores. It wasn’t the best solution he had ever used, but it was pretty good given what was available to them.