“I...I’m working directly for the DDNI,” she said. The Deputy Director of National Intelligence. “No one else in the chain. Just him, then me.”
“What about the Director?”
She shook her head.
“Does the Deputy Director suspect the Director’s part of the LP?”
“There’s no way to know,” she said. “It’s safer not to involve him at this point. Like I said, no one else knows what I’m doing.”
“What about the men you’re working with? The men working protection for the congressman? That family in Jenny’s house in Houston?”
“I was given the okay to tap a few CIA resources, but only ones I trusted completely. It limited what I could do.”
“Why destroy Jenny’s homes?”
“We searched them thoroughly, thinking there might be something we could use to lead us to her LP contacts. Something that would help us crack into the organization. But there was nothing. My boss wanted to send them a signal. Let them know they were being hunted.” She paused. “When you showed up, I thought you were one of them. That’s why I waited. I knew you’d come back.”
“But you destroyed the house.”
“The incendiary device was on a timer. But there was a backup trigger on the window.”
“In case I returned,” Quinn said.
“Yes.”
“So you were just going to let your explosives take care of me, is that it?”
“That was the plan,” she said matter-of-factly. “But then I wondered if maybe we could use you. Maybe you knew something more that might get us closer to her.”
Quinn’s mind went back to that moment in Houston, right before the house was destroyed. “You moved. Right as I was starting to open the window.” He shot a quick glance at her. “You tried to distract me. Get me to move away from the house.”
“And it worked.”
When they got to Esplanade Park, Quinn spotted Ne Win and his men standing on the curb.
“We’re switching cars here,” Quinn told Tasha.
“Who are these guys?” she asked, once they were parked behind Ne Win’s car.
“Friends.”
“I could have brought my men.”
“Well, I brought mine,” Quinn said. “Come on.”
Tasha wasn’t the only one who didn’t seem pleased with the arrangement. Quinn could tell as soon as Ne Win saw her he wasn’t happy either. But unlike Tasha, he kept his thoughts to himself.
They squeezed into Ne Win’s sedan. Then got onto the East Coast Parkway heading toward the airport.
“Did you find the body?” Quinn asked.
Ne Win swiveled around to look back from his seat up front. He eyed Tasha for a moment, then shook his head. “No. But,” he said, then paused, “we did find where the body was supposed to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Gun there. Spent cartridge. A few other items. Everything looking perfect. Only no body. No blood.”
Of course. Jenny had abandoned her original plan. She’d prepared the site, but the need to kill the faux assassin had gone away as she’d adapted to her new plan.
They drove for another five minutes, leaving the main part of the city behind them.
“We’re getting close,” Tasha said, looking at the device in her hand. Then, a mile later, “There.” She looked toward the right side of the road, then back at the signal tracker. “I think we just passed it.”
There was a turnoff ahead. “Take that exit,” Quinn said.
While they were pulling off the parkway, the driver said something to Ne Win in Mandarin.
Ne Win said something back, then looked at Quinn.
“What?” Quinn asked.
The look on Ne Win’s face was somber. “I know where they go.”
“Where?”
But Ne Win just shook his head and turned back toward the front.
Once they were on the side road, there was a strong scent of ocean in the air. The sea was close now, a strip of land separating it from the road they were on. Quinn noticed several large compounds on the strip, most filled with dozens and dozens of shipping containers, stacked and protected by fences topped with razor wire.
Quinn could feel the skin at the base of his neck tingle. He realized he, too, had a pretty good idea where Jenny had taken her hostages.
