dead, too. I made an excuse, told the office I had a family emergency and needed to take a leave of absence. Then I disappeared.”
“Turn left,” Orlando said to Nate.
“Are you sure?” Nate asked.
“Yes. Left.”
Nate whipped the car to the left, barely making the light.
“Gerry said there were other tapes, too,” Jenny went on. “He had them stored someplace safe. He said he was going to get them and bring them to me.”
“He should have just called the police,” Nate said.
“I said the same thing to him,” she told him. “But he said he couldn’t. That there were others, and they could be anywhere. After Steven told me about LP, I realized that’s what Gerry meant.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“Did Gerry tell you anything else? Anything at all that might be helpful?”
Her eyes grew distant for a moment. “Only that Ms. Goodman talked to her one more time after the call on the tape he gave me. He’d taped that one, too, but had left it someplace safe. He said he was going to bring it to me the next day. But he never did.”
“Wait,” Quinn said. “Did you say ‘talked to
“Since you couldn’t listen to the tape, you don’t know,” Jenny said, realizing what he was asking. “The killer Ms. Goodman hired is a woman.”
Suddenly, missing pieces began to fall into place in Quinn’s mind.
“What is it?” Orlando asked. She was staring at him, her brow knitted in concern.
“Tasha,” Quinn said.
“Who’s Tasha?” Jenny asked.
“Tasha Douglas?”
Jenny looked back at him, her face blank. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
Quinn had been played. Deceived from the very beginning. Tasha had been using him to find Jenny. It was only because of his own wariness that he hadn’t led her all the way to her target.
“Hold on. Does that mean—” Nate began.
“Yes.” Quinn cut him off.
“Who are you talking about?” Jenny asked.
“Not now,” Quinn said.
He was running everything through his mind, playing it back and forth, and analyzing and reanalyzing. Tasha would have stayed behind in Houston to see if he would show up again. She had played the innocent, the friend desperate to find out where Jenny was. All the while, she was trying to figure out Quinn’s involvement and, once she did, trying to get him to lead her to Markoff ’s girlfriend. It was no coincidence she’d been watching him when he had investigated Jenny’s apartment. She had never lost sight of him, he was sure of that now. She had wanted him to see her. It was just another step in building her alternate identity. And again, when he had found her waiting for him outside Guerrero’s office building, it had all been planned.
There had been no call from her brother about someone breaking into her home back in Texas. The trashed hotel room in D.C. had been faked. She could have easily had her men stage the room while Quinn was in talking with Blackmoore. And then, of course, there was Blackmoore himself. She would have also had her men play the old spy runner a visit to find out what he knew.
And finally, after they had left her in California, she had continued to call him. Somehow she must have worked out a way to trace his sig-nal—a signal that was supposed to be untraceable.
Quinn’s jaw tensed as he remembered answering her call right before he was to meet up with Jenny at the Far East Square. He had even told Tasha he was about to see her “friend.” Her men must have been shadowing him, and with a word from their boss, they had moved in.
“There it is,” Nate said.
Though Quinn had been looking out the front window, he had seen nothing. Now, with his eyes refocused, he spotted the Von Feldt Building half a block away on the left.
“Where do you want me to go?” Nate asked.
There were no obvious diplomatic vehicles parked in front of the building. “Pull over there,” Quinn said, pointing to an open spot just past the building. Once the car was parked at the curb, Quinn opened his door. “I’m
going to look around.” “I’ll go with you,” Orlando said, already opening her door. “What about us?” Jenny asked. “Wait here. We won’t be long.” Orlando and Quinn walked down the sidewalk toward the high-
rise. “There’s got to be VIP parking, some kind of garage or something around here,” Quinn said.
“Quinn,” Orlando said, “Tasha is obviously a professional. She’s as good at what she does as you or I are at what we do. You didn’t expect to run into someone like her.”
“I should have never let that happen,” he said. “But Tasha hasn’t gotten to Jenny. You’ve done okay.” “I should have left her in D.C.” “It worked out all right. We know about her now. We know what
she is.” He frowned. “It was a mistake.” Before she could say anything more, he stopped and pulled out his
