The Buried Read online

  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

  DANI 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.”

  __________

  “SHE 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 i
nto 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

  UNENDING 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

  AT THE SAME moment a ding rang out from the computer’s speaker, a dialogue box appeared on the screen.

  COMMUNICATION ALERT

  Sat. 6 G2

  Below this were two buttons: VIEW and IGNORE. The attendant clicked the first and then read the details of the alert. After determining it wasn’t an anomaly, he consulted the instructions for this particular hunt.

  Adhering to the stated procedures, he created a map of the location and e-mailed the message, the file that had accompanied it, and his map to the listed contact. In addition, he sent a text to the contact’s phone alerting the man of the incoming information.

  Then, much like the illegal software had done, he returned to his previous task.

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  MATTHEW MORSE SET down his fork and leveled his gaze at the man across from him. “I don’t care what they’re saying in Hong Kong,” he said, his words straining to escape his damaged vocal cords. “We know the threat exists, and we know it starts there.”

  Ketterman, one of Morse’s assistant directors, smiled uncomfortably. “I understand that, sir. I’ve seen the data myself. But our team in country has been unable to locate Tsu anywhere. There’s no indication that he’s in the territory.”

  “You just said you read the data yourself. Then you know there is every indication.”

  “Gold team is one of our best, sir. If they can’t find him, then—”

  “Then they’re not looking hard enough. I suggest you encourage them to do so.”

  Morse picked up his fork again, signaling that the meeting was over.

  “Of course, sir. Right away.” Ketterman left quickly.

  Morse finished off his salmon, dabbed the corner of his mouth with his napkin, and touched the intercom button.

  “Mr. Carter, I’m finished.”

  A moment later, his assistant came in, collected the used dishes, and exited without a word.

  Morse was getting ready to head to his 2:30 meeting when the special cell phone in his left pocket buzzed. He removed it and read the text.

  HIT RECEIVED. INFO SENT.

  He checked his e-mail and clicked on the message from the NSA.

  He ran the recording of the call through his agency’s decoding software. Though the encryption was impossible to fully break, a few words leaked through—Seattle, Cho, photo, and a garbled word that sounded to him like Danielle—leaving no doubt that the scrambled satellite call was related to the woman.

  He consulted a map. From where the call was made, the originator could go in only two directions—either east or west along the interstate. If, as Morse suspected, the caller was one of those involved in extracting the girl from Edmondson’s house, he would have come from the west and logically would continue east. This presented an excellent intercept opportunity.

  He grabbed the main phone.

  “Stevens,” the leader of the field team in Seattle answered.

  “It’s Morse. How quickly can you get to your helicopter?”

  CHAPTER 15

  COLUMBIA CITY, WASHINGTON

  “HIS NAME IS Jonathan Quinn,” Donnie said over the phone.

  “Why does that sound familiar?” Orbits asked.

  He was sitting in his car, two blocks away from the Columbia City home where the missing girls had been found, close enough to see the frenzy of police and media and looky-loos, but far enough away not to draw any attention.

  “He’s a cleaner,” Donnie said. “Pretty highly regarded from what I understand. I haven’t been able to confirm it, but one source heard he was on a job at the Edmondson house last night.”

  So he hadn’t just been some random guy walking down the street.

  “He was there, all right,” Orbits said. And if Quinn had been at Edmondson’s, then he either had the girl or knew where she was. “Quinn…didn’t he used to work for the Office?”

  “He did,” Donnie said. “Right up until they folded.”

  Orbits nodded to himself. He knew exactly who the guy was. Orbits had never directly crossed paths with him but had snooped around a few jobs Quinn did.

  Excellent work each time. Quinn clearly knew how to handle the dead.

  “Where is he now?” Orbits asked.

  “Been trying to figure that out but got nothing so far. Except…” Donnie hesitated.

  “Except what?”

  “I heard Edmondson was a termination. Which makes sense if Quinn was there. The thing is, the doer was supposedly Ananke.”

  “Oh, really?” Orbits hadn’t expected that.

  “Again, not confirmed.

  Ananke was an old…acquaintance. Orbits hadn’t actually talked to her since she’d walked in on him having a little fun at Mardi Gras with a couple of forgettable college girls. But come on, how long could she stay mad at him? It was Mardi Gras, for God’s sakes. You’re supposed to have fun there.

  “I’ll touch base with her,” he said. “What about the group from California? Are they still in the area?”

  “They were a few hours ago.”

  “Check again and call me back.”

  After Orbits hung up, he scrolled through his contact list until he
reached Ananke’s newest number.

  As he pressed SEND, his heart began to race. Maybe he wasn’t quite as over her as he’d thought. He was saved from making a fool of himself, though, when his call went straight to voice mail.

  “Hey, kitten, it’s Ricky. Long time. Give me a shout back when you get this, okay? Later.”

  He hung up, sure she’d be excited to hear from him again.

  BOULDER, COLORADO

  ANANKE CAUGHT AN early morning flight out of Seattle to Denver, picked up her car from long-term parking, and drove home to Boulder.

  Her house was along a dead-end road on the western edge of the city. Under most circumstances, the lack of alternate exit routes would have ruled the place out, but the views were spectacular—hills and trees and mountains on one side, and on the other a sky that seemed to move eastward forever.

  She solved the escape-route problem by also purchasing the house on the next street over and creating a private drive between them. In all likelihood, she would never have to use it, but it was good to know it was there.

  After a light snack, she stretched out on her king-sized bed and fell asleep. A call woke her, but by the time she was able to grab her cell, the call had gone to voice mail. The phone number looked vaguely familiar but she couldn’t place it. She played back the message.

  The second she heard, “Hey, kitten,” she froze.

  Ricky Orbits. That son of a bitch.

  How did he get her number? She’d changed it multiple times since she left him specifically because she hadn’t wanted to talk to the asshole again. And now he wanted her to call him back?

  An image flashed in her mind, not just of Ricky on the phone but Ricky on the phone standing outside her driveway gate. He’d somehow gotten ahold of her number. Why not her address, too?

  Before she realized it, she was hyperventilating. She raced to the sitting area that had the window overlooking her garage, and sighed in relief when she saw that the street beyond the gate was empty.