down and couldn’t remember where it was. “There’s no food in the kitchen. You’ll have to go out and get some. But only you. Liz isn’t to leave.”
“Got it.”
“I’ll check in later.”
“Okay.”
Quinn took a few steps toward the front door, then stopped and looked back in the direction of the bathroom. Liz still hadn’t come out.
He started to open his mouth, then paused, and turned back to the front door. “Call me if there’s a problem.”
He pulled the door open and left.
Chapter 40
“Where are you?” Orlando asked.
“I just got off the subway,” Quinn said into his phone. “I should be back to you in five.”
“All right. I’ll prop the door open. But knock once before you walk in.”
Quinn was instantly alert. “What’s going on?”
“You’ll see when you get here.”
He hesitated, then said, “Orlando. How are things?” It was their code phrase. If she didn’t answer correctly, he’d know she was not in control of her situation.
“Things are things,” she said.
The I’m-okay response. He relaxed.
“But …” She stopped. “Just hurry up.”
Quinn made it to the Silvain Hotel in two minutes and all but ran up the stairs to his room. The door was propped open by the deadbolt.
He knocked once.
“Come on in,” Orlando said.
The first thing he saw as he pushed the door open was Orlando standing in front of the television. She’d been armed only with a hairbrush when he’d left her, but now she was holding a gun in each hand, and was facing the bed.
“Welcome to the party,” she said.
Quinn engaged the deadbolt on the door, then walked the rest of the way into the room.
There were two other people present. A middle-aged man with dark hair was sitting on the bed, leaning against the headboard. And in the chair squeezed between the left side of the bed and the far wall sat a woman. But not just any woman.
Neither was tied up, but with Orlando covering each of them with a gun, they weren’t going anywhere.
“Okay,” Quinn said. “This is interesting.”
“You think?” Orlando handed him one of the guns. “They showed up not long after I got here with Annabel.”
“Where is she?”
“In the bathroom.”
Quinn glanced at the closed bathroom door.
“She’s not using it,” Orlando said. “She’s tied up.”
Quinn looked back at the bed. “So they knew you were here.”
“They were watching the room. I caught a glimpse of the guy when we arrived. He made me a little suspicious, so I slipped my hose camera under the door for a look. I saw him peeking out of the stairwell every so often. He was definitely interested in us, so I decided to see if he wanted to come for a visit. The woman was a bonus.”
“What have they told you?”
“Not much. And once I got their guns …”
“Remind me to ask you how you did that later.”
“… they pretty much stopped talking.”
“I would have thought the opposite.”
“Me too,” she said. “The guy’s Mikhail. And the woman’s—”
“Petra,” Quinn said.
The Russian woman’s mouth all but dropped open in surprise.
“What did she say before she shut up?” he asked.
“Pretty much the same thing she told you at the park. That she’s been looking for you. That she wants to talk to you. Blah, blah, blah. That was it, though.”
“Okay, Petra,” Quinn said, taking a step toward the woman. “Why is it we keep running into each other?”
“How do you know who I am?” she asked.
“We know because we’re good at what we do,” he said, then stared at her for a moment. “My patience level is a bit low, so I’d advise you to answer my question.”
She hesitated, then said, “We don’t want to hurt you.”
Quinn glanced at the gun in his hand, then looked back at her. “Good to know.”
“I mean, you don’t need to point those at us,” she explained.
“Thanks for the suggestion, but why don’t you convince us first.”
“Okay. I understand. I would do the same.”
“You would, would you?”
“If I felt it was necessary.”
Quinn smiled, as if amused. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“We only thought that you had been here. We waited on the chance you’d come back.”
“Why would you think it was me?”
“We … we had a picture of you we could show around,” she said. “A drawing.” She started to reach into her pocket.
“No, no, no,” Orlando said, raising her gun a few inches and reminding the Russian she was still in the line of fire. Petra put her hands back into her lap.
Orlando moved around the bed and reached into the woman’s pocket. She pulled out a piece of paper, then unfolded it.
“This was never my favorite picture of you,” she said, holding it up so Quinn could see.
It was the police sketch that had run in all the New York papers earlier that summer. First reports had said that the man in the drawing was a suspected killer, something that was later retracted and forgotten.
“You lied to me before, didn’t you? You do work for Palavin,” he said.
He’d wanted to provoke a response, perhaps a little tic, or a look in her eye that would either confirm or deny what they had learned from Stepka. What he got instead was a volcano.
Petra’s face scrunched up in a snarl as her cheeks and forehead turned red. Her fingers seemed to dig into the arms of the chair, and she leaned forward like she was going to jump up. Mikhail, too, had become tense and angry. He said something to Petra in Russian that dripped with disgust.
“I told you, we do
“You are connected to him somehow.”
Mikhail again said something in Russian.
“That’s not working for us,” Orlando said. “English only.”
“Or what?” Mikhail asked.
