Shadow of Betrayal

Though the photo was black-and-white, he thought one of the cars parked next to the motel building looked very much like the car he had followed in Montreal. Beside it were three people. The two closest had their backs to the camera and were opening the doors on the passenger side of the vehicle. One was the woman. She was short and thin, but other than that she was unidentifiable. On the other side, facing the camera, was the second man. But his head was lowered in preparation to climb into the car, leaving only the top visible. He could have been anywhere from eighteen to sixty.

Tucker brought the second image forward. Same angle only a few seconds later, he guessed. The woman who had been climbing into the back seat was just a shape through the rear window now. The driver had also disappeared.

But the man who’d been getting into the front passenger seat was still there. It looked like he was just about to slide in, but in doing so he had turned and given the camera his profile.

Tucker leaned in toward the computer screen. There was something about the man. Something familiar.

He knew if he just concentrated for a minute, it would come to him. He switched back to the first shot, looking at the man’s back. Nothing special there. Lean, but not thin. A little under six feet tall. He looked strong — not rippling-muscle strong, but useful strong. Like he was the kind of guy who could do a lot of things.

Tucker clicked on the second picture. It confirmed what he’d seen in the first. A man of action. He flipped between the photos, letting the images dance on the screen in front of him.

Back.

Profile.

Back.

Profile.

Back.

Profile.

Stop.

All of a sudden he was remembering snow. Not the snow that capped the peaks just outside the entrance to Yellowhammer. German snow. Berlin snow.

Jonathan Quinn.

That’s who he was looking at. Jonathan-fucking-Quinn. Tucker had last seen him on a sidewalk in Tiergarten in the middle of Berlin almost a year and a half earlier. They’d made a deal. Tucker had given up his boss’s whereabouts, and Quinn had let him walk away alive.

Jonathan Quinn. Goddammit.

He looked back at the first picture, this time concentrating on the woman getting into the back seat. Like before, he could only see her back, but now that he knew what to look for, her hair and her height gave her away.

Dark, probably black, and a little longer than it had been in Berlin. As for her height, she didn’t even look like she cleared the top of the Jetta.

Orlando. She’d been on that sidewalk with Quinn and Tucker. There had been murder in her eyes. His murder if she had had her way. Couldn’t really blame her. He’d been involved in the abduction of her son, after all. But a deal was a deal, and Quinn had made her keep it.

If Tucker’s and Quinn’s roles had been reversed, he wasn’t so sure he would have been as honorable as the cleaner had been. Honor, he knew, was mostly bullshit anyway.

The other man had to be Quinn’s assistant. What the fuck was his name? Tucker realized he wasn’t sure he had ever heard it. Didn’t matter anyway. Quinn was the important one.

But in reality, their presence didn’t change anything. Tucker seriously doubted Quinn and his team even knew about Yellowhammer. How could they? Even if they had been able to get to Marion and talk to her, they would have learned nothing, because she knew nothing. Tucker was sure of that now. He believed her story about the African girl. Playing the part of the good Samaritan, she had unintentionally gotten in the way. That had been all there was to it.

They’d been hunting her not so much to get the child back, but because they were worried she’d known more than she did. She’d been a potential leak that needed to be stopped. Tucker’s fault, really. He knew that. The army colonel he’d hired in Cote d’Ivoire had been too heavy-handed. Tucker had told him a less direct approach was best. Fewer questions that way. And much more cooperation. But the man had gone in with a whole squad, acting all tough and demanding. Stupid.

Tucker closed his laptop and leaned back in the chair. The only thing that stopped him from giving the order to get rid of the Dupuis bitch at that moment was the what if floating in the back of his mind. What if Quinn had actually made it this far? What if it was one of the cleaner’s team poking around outside the fence? Or better yet, what if it was Quinn himself who had tripped the motion sensor?

Tucker liked to believe he was always thinking ahead and preparing for all the different possibilities. Covering his own ass just in case. If Quinn somehow got the upper hand — which Tucker thought very unlikely — Marion Dupuis could then become a bargaining chip. Tucker could play to Quinn’s honor again, giving him the woman and walking away clean. Or better yet, he could use Dupuis to trap the cleaner, then threaten to kill the woman if Quinn didn’t tell him everything he knew. It would be an interesting experiment to see how far Quinn’s honor went.

Tucker couldn’t help but smile at the possibility.

* * *

Marion was getting worried. She’d been locked in her dark cell for hours without another visit from the Australian or the old man with the creepy eyes. From the little experience she’d had, that was unusual. Until now, they hadn’t let her go for more than two hours without another round of questioning.

She kept time by pacing the cell and brushing the fingers of her hand along the wall, letting them guide her so that she wouldn’t run into anything. She slowed her pace so that it took a full thirty seconds to make one circuit, then began counting laps, one minute for every two, an hour for every 120.

A couple of times she lost count and had to estimate, but she didn’t stop until she reached 800. By her estimate over six and a half hours. But it wasn’t her legs that stopped her. It was her fear.

Six and a half hours and no visitors?

No one had even come to see if she needed to use a toilet. She didn’t. She hadn’t drunk enough liquids in the last twenty-four hours to warrant that.

Something must be wrong, she thought. Could they have decided they didn’t need her anymore, and were just going to let her die?

Maybe everyone was gone. Maybe there was no one left here but her.

She started breathing faster as her fear took a sharp turn toward panic.

Without even realizing it, she began circling the room again, hoping to reassure herself that she’d get out of here. Somehow. But it didn’t work. She knew her life, the life she wasn’t ready to give up yet, was almost over.

No. Not just her life, she reminded herself.

“God, please,” she said out loud. “Please watch over Iris. Don’t let them hurt her. Please. Don’t let them.”

CHAPTER 27

“Dammit,” Nate said.

Quinn looked up. They had been trying to move into a position with a better view of the guardhouse. Nate had been on point, fifteen feet in front of him. He was still there, but instead of standing, he was on the ground. Quinn raced forward, his eyes darting around as he knelt down next to his apprentice.

“Are you hurt?” Quinn asked.

There was a pause. “I tripped on something,” Nate said. “A bush, I think.”

Quinn tried to give Nate a hand up, but Nate said, “I’m fine.” Then pushed himself to his feet unaided.

Nate was about to start up again, but Quinn stopped him. “Wait. Did you hear that?”