I’m not ready to go back, Quinn thought. In a few more months, maybe. Not now.
But he could no longer suppress the words whispering in the back of his mind. “I’ll make sure she stays safe,” his old friend Julien had said. “But if there comes a day that I can’t, then it will be up to you.”
A pact, one that Quinn couldn’t ignore.
He finally looked up, but didn’t take Nate’s hand. “It’s too late to leave now. We’ll get some sleep and head out in the morning.”
“You’re coming, too?”
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 7
SEVEN YEARS EARLIER LUCERNE, SWITZERLAND
“He’s in the room,” Henrik whispered over the comm in Quinn’s ear.
Quinn touched the bag sitting on the floor beside him. It contained the tools he had predetermined would be needed on the job ahead. His current location was a little-used storage room in the basement of the Chateau Gallant Hotel in Lucerne, where he could remain out of the way until his specialized services were needed.
After consultations with Henrik, the team leader, when he’d first arrived, Quinn had been pleased to find out that the method chosen for the elimination of the subject would be mess-free. A powerful, quick-acting anesthetic would be released from a metal canister hidden behind the headboard as soon as the subject lay down for the night. Once he was under, Henrik would enter the room and administer the fatal dose of Beta-Somnol. Henrik and his team would then have five minutes to locate the documents the subject was supposed to be carrying before Quinn took over. If things went according to his plan, and they usually did, the body would be out of the hotel and on its way to its final resting place no more than seven minutes after that.
He glanced over at Julien. The larger Frenchman looked somewhat ridiculous in his coveralls, but it was better than dressing him as a bellhop. At his size-several inches over six feet and broad in both shoulders and chest-he would have instantly stood out to the hotel staff. It was less likely, though, that anyone would know all the maintenance personnel who might service the facility.
“Won’t be long now,” Quinn said.
“Good. I’m starving. Maybe on the way out of town we can stop for something to eat, oui?”
“How about we get rid of the body first and eat later.”
Julien shrugged. “I do not think he will mind.”
Quinn rolled his eyes, but gave no other response.
Over the comm, Henrik was giving the play-by-play of what was happening in the room. Apparently the subject was trying to get some work done before going to sleep.
Julien pulled out a deck of cards. “Some more poker while we wait?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I was lucky earlier. Don’t you want a chance to win back what you lost?”
“I have a feeling you’ll still be lucky.”
“Luck, who knows where it lands? Sometimes good for me, sometimes good for you. You know this.” He smiled. “Okay. This time we play just for fun, huh?”
Quinn was saved from declining again by Henrik announcing that the subject had finally decided to crawl into bed.
“All right. Looks like his eyes are closed,” Henrik said. “I’m activating the gas.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “He should be breathing it in right about…now.” Another pause, this one for half a minute. “All right, we’re going in.”
There was the sound of movement over the radio, then the click of a door opening. That would be the room Henrik was using just down the hall from the subject. More movement, then another click.
“Okay, we’re inside,” Henrik whispered.
Quinn grabbed his bag and stood up. That was their cue.
“You’re sure about not stopping for food,” Julien said as they left the room.
“I’m sure,” Quinn replied.
Julien frowned for a second, then suddenly brightened. “Maybe the target ordered room service and didn’t finish. Can’t let that go to waste, huh?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“If no room service, he must have bought some Swiss chocolate, don’t you think?”
By the time they reached the door to the stairwell, Henrik had administered the Beta-Somnol, and the five- minute clock had begun. Based on their trial runs, it would take Quinn and Julien exactly four and a half minutes to get from their current position to the subject’s door, providing them with a thirty-second cushion in case anything slowed them down.
Nothing did.
Quinn tapped the door twice, paused, then once more. He expected to see Henrik and the three men working with him standing nearby, ready to leave, when the door opened. Instead, all but the one who opened the door were still searching the room.
“Twenty seconds,” Quinn said.
“We can’t find it,” Henrik explained.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re out by the deadline or you’re moving the body yourself.”
“I realize that,” Henrik said. He pointed at the desk next to the subject’s laptop. “They should have been right there.”
“Maybe it’s on the computer.”
“No. Hard copies only. I was told they were concerned about having any of it in digital form.”
“Did anyone lay eyes on it to be sure he had it?”
“Peter confirmed the handoff occurred, but he couldn’t tell us exactly what the information was contained in,” he said. The Office was the client on this job. “Both he and I assumed it would be in an envelope or file folder.”
Quinn looked at his watch. “Five seconds. Are you staying or am I?”
Henrik frowned, then scooped the laptop off the desk and looked over at his men. “Grab his suitcase and shoulder bag. We’ll search them again off-site.”
Quinn grimaced. The bags were part of his disposal responsibility. He didn’t like having pieces floating out there that could cause problems later. “You’ll need to burn them.”
“Don’t worry. We will.”
“You do it yourself.”
“I’ll see to it personally,” Henrik assured him.
Reluctantly, Quinn nodded.
Henrik headed for the door. “Let’s go. Let’s go.”
Before the team was even out of the room, Quinn and Julien began preparing the body for transport. Soon they were also leaving, carrying an aluminum-reinforced cardboard box that contained the subject. If asked, Quinn would simply say they were carrying a replacement duct for the heating system. But they made it through the hotel without any fuss.
They put the box into the dark green van parked downstairs, then leisurely drove off. As soon as they were out of sight of the hotel, Quinn moved into the back, opened the box, and began removing the clothes and all identifying items from the body. These, like the now-dead target, would be going up in flames. He had just pulled off the guy’s undershirt and was reaching for the waistband of the pajama pants when he noticed a flesh-colored bandage on the man’s torso, just below his ribs.
He pulled it off in case there was some sort of tattoo underneath that he hadn’t been told about. No tattoo, but that didn’t suppress his surprise. There was a bump under the skin, one-centimeter square. It was red with a fresh scab at one end that looked very much like it was covering an incision.
Quinn swore to himself, and for a second considered slapping the bandage back on. This wasn’t his
