Jake shrugged, then repeated the numbers.
“And you’ll remember it?” Durrie asked.
“Do I need to?”
“That’s up to you.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
“When you start to get bored and want to do something interesting with your life, call that number.”
“Yours?”
Durrie dipped his head in assent.
“So you’re still trying to recruit me.”
“I’m offering you the chance to learn about a whole different world.”
“Your world? I don’t know,” Jake said. He reached for the door. “I think I might have to pass.”
“That’s up to you.”
Jake climbed out of the car without saying anything else, then watched Durrie drive away.
But as he flew west, it wasn’t his new life that he thought about. It was the telephone number.
EPILOGUE
Jake was exhausted. Durrie had kept him going fifteen, sixteen, and sometimes even eighteen hours a day — training and learning and practicing. In the four months since he’d become an apprentice cleaner, he’d worked harder than he ever had.
And he’d never been more satisfied.
“Well?” Durrie asked.
They were in an abandoned building in Chicago. In an old office, Durrie had set up a sample job scene, complete with blood, bullet holes and a body he’d obtained somewhere. Jake had been given one minute to survey the scene, then come out and describe everything he saw.
He took a second to recall the room, then recited the details to Durrie.
“That it?” Durrie asked.
“Yes.”
“Not bad, Johnny,” Durrie said.
He had started calling Jake Johnny from nearly day one.
“You’re going to have to create a new identity,” Durrie had explained at the time. “I don’t care what it is, but I don’t want to get used to calling you by your real name, so you’re Johnny for now.”
In the time since then, Durrie had been pushing him to come up with a new name, something they could use to create a legend around. The veteran cleaner kept reminding him that he couldn’t go out on any actual fieldwork until he did.
But Jake had been stuck. Whatever name he chose he would have to live with for a long time, so he wanted it to be right. The problem was he couldn’t come up with anything he liked.
Until today.
A month earlier, Durrie had given him a small metal lockbox.
“I shouldn’t have this at all,” Durrie had said. “Not even sure I know why I still do. I guess because, well, because I knew you would want it.”
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“It was your friend’s,” Durrie said. “Berit’s.”
Jake had been unable to bring himself to look in the box that day, or all the days after until that very morning. At first, it had felt like he was doing something he shouldn’t, but by the time he finished he no longer felt that.
Durrie went back into the staged room, added and changed a few things, then had Jake run through the exercise again. Finally, they cleaned up the room like they would for a real job. When everything was to Durrie’s satisfaction, he nodded and said, “Let’s go, Johnny.”
“It’s not Johnny,” Jake corrected, deciding it was time. “It’s Jonathan.”
Durrie arched an eyebrow. “Oh, really? Is there a last name, Jonathan? Or is that it?”
“There is,” Jake said.
“I’m all ears.”
Jake ignored the sarcastic tone in his mentor’s voice. Instead he thought about Berit, and the box, and her parents’ will that had been inside.
Jonathan Quinn opened his mouth, and for the first time, he spoke his new name aloud.
Acknowledgements
Some quick thank yous to Team Quinn members old and new. Bill Cameron and Robert Browne for support and troubleshooting, glad you guys are always there for me. Thanks to Jim and Jody Hardwick for their continued incredible support, and to my longtime friend Noretta Barker for her law enforcement insights, and years of rolled eyes back in high school. Thank you to Pat Chavez for answering all my stupid question, and to Jonathan Hayes for my medicinal needs (not what you’re thinking.) And finally to Elyse Dinh-McCrillis for her eagle eye and all around help to keep me from looking like I don’t know what I’m doing. Any mistakes in this manuscript are mine, not hers. And to all of you for your continued support and enjoyment of my work, thank you so much!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brett Battles lives and writes full time in Los Angeles. He is the author of seven novels, including THE DECEIVED, winner of the Barry Award for Best Thriller 2009. More info available at www.brettbattles.com
