Shadow of Betrayal

He retraced his steps to the road, where Nate waited in the other car, and soon they were heading back north.

“Kind of fitting, I guess,” Nate said after a while. “Dying in a church.”

“Dying in church is a common thing, is it?” Quinn asked.

“Not the dying so much,” Nate said. “But being dead in church. You know, funerals. Memorials.”

Quinn looked at Nate, all but rolling his eyes. He then pulled out his cell phone and located a number in his contact list. The line rang twice.

“Hello?”

“We’re on,” Quinn said.

“When should we expect you?” the voice asked.

“Before dawn.”

“We’ll be ready.”

* * *

Quinn and Nate separated again at the church, Nate staying in the sedan while Quinn got behind the wheel in the van. This time they headed north toward Dublin. They kept their speed steady, not too fast, not too slow, so as not to draw undue attention. But they needn’t have worried. There were few other vehicles on the road. When they reached the Irish capital, they skirted around the south edge, and made their way to Dun Laoghaire Harbour.

The boat was ready and waiting. It was a private yacht, a forty-six footer that could be run by one person if necessary. A Meridian 411 Sedan. Luxurious yet practical.

The name painted near the bow read The Princess Anne.

The crew of two was waiting just inside the access gate to the private dock where The Princess Anne was moored. The men, David Baulder and Steven Howard, were people Quinn had worked with in the past and had come to trust. He had hired them and rented the yacht as a safety precaution just in case the need arose. That was part of being a cleaner, always being ready for any contingency, but not always having to activate your plans.

Dawn would arrive in less than two hours, so at best they had thirty minutes before activity at the marina picked up. The dock they were using had been chosen with care. Security in this part of the marina was lax. No cameras, no guard station, and only two motion-activated lights in the vicinity — one at the gate and a second on the dock. Both had been disabled.

Not wasting a second, they moved the plastic-wrapped bodies out of the van and onto the boat. There was no blaring of sirens in the distance, no sudden arrival of the police.

Fifteen minutes later, they motored through the marina and out into the Irish Sea.

Quinn helped Nate and Howard remove the bodies from the plastic, while Baulder piloted the boat. Once free of the wrapping, each of the dead men’s torsos was bound with a steel cable attached to a set of metal weights. The pieces of plastic that had enclosed the corpses were then folded and piled in the corner. Once all the bodies had been removed, the pile of plastic was wrapped with its own cable and weights.

After they were finished, Quinn went inside the cabin and pulled out his phone.

“Hello?” a female voice said. It was Misty, Peter’s assistant.

“It’s Quinn for Peter.” Though it was the middle of the night in Washington, D.C., Quinn was pretty sure Peter would still be there.

“Quinn,” Misty said, her voice mellowing. “We were wondering when you’d call. Hold on, he’s expecting you.”

There was a short pause, then Peter came on the line.

“Well?” he asked.

“The church is taken care of,” Quinn said. “The bodies are about to disappear, too.”

“No blowback?”

“Not from my end,” Quinn said, annoyed. He was good at his job, and blowback from anything he was responsible for never happened.

“Good.”

“The shooter?” Quinn asked.

Peter hesitated. He was notorious for not wanting to share more information than he had to. But then he said, “He’s on a plane. Should be here in a few hours.” Another pause. “You did great. Catching him, I mean. That’s bonus worthy.”

“You’re right. It is.”

The ship’s engines suddenly died down to a low rumble. Quinn stepped out of the cabin and onto the rear deck. The sky was a mixture of dark blue and faded orange. In the east, over the sea and toward the U.K., the sun would soon peer above the horizon.

Baulder called down from the bridge. “I’ve got nothing on the radar for miles.”

“Hold on,” Quinn said into the phone. He looked west first, toward the lights of the distant Irish coast, then did a sweep of the horizon. There were no other boats within sight. “Works for me.”

Nate and Howard took that as their cue. They lifted the first body off the deck and heaved it over the stern and into the water.

As they reached down for the next one, Quinn brought the phone back up.

“Consider the job done,” Quinn said. “That’s one.”

“One what?”

“Our deal. You’ve got two more jobs, then we’re clean. Goodbye, Peter.”

“Wait,” Peter said.

“What?”

“Was there … anything on the bodies?” Peter asked.

Quinn hesitated. He could still throw the tiny package he’d found into the ocean with everything else, and claim there was nothing. “I found an envelope,” Quinn said. “I assume that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Yes,” Peter said, relief in his voice. “Yes, definitely. That’s got to be it.”

“I’ll mail it to you when I get back.”

“I can’t wait that long. I need it now.”

“Well, you can’t have it now.”

“Where are you headed after this?” Peter asked. “Back to Los Angeles?”

Quinn remained silent.

“Okay, don’t tell me,” Peter said. “But wherever you’re going, can you at least make a connection close to me?”

Though Quinn wasn’t opposed to making life difficult for Peter, the envelope was obviously important enough for people to get killed over. The sooner he got rid of it, the better. “Atlanta work for you?”

“When?”

“I’ll email you,” Quinn said, then paused for a moment. “If your contact in Atlanta doesn’t show up on time, I’m not waiting around.”

He hung up.

The wind was beginning to pick up. It was brisk, bone chilling. As Quinn watched Nate and Howard toss the last of the bodies into the sea, he slipped his hands into his jacket pockets. The fingers of his right hand brushed up against the all-important manila envelope.

Whatever was inside had resulted in the deaths of four men. Quinn would be happy when it was no longer in his possession. But there was something that tickled at the back of his mind, that little internal warning signal he’d had since birth. This time it was telling him that getting rid of the package might not be the end of things.

He hated that feeling.

CHAPTER 5

ONE WEEK LATER

Room 531 of the Geist hotel in Washington, D.C. The only light was the blue-white glow emanating from ten