The Collected

tying his feet, one against each of the chair’s front legs.

Finished, she stepped back and joined Quinn, while Daeng remained behind the cop.

“You all are in very deep trouble,” Moreno said. “You will never get away with this.”

Quinn, looking unimpressed, said, “Three days ago you were involved in a manhunt, correct?”

A flicker in the man’s eyes. “You will let me go now.”

“That’s not going to happen. Answer the question.”

“I’m not answering any questions.”

“All right, that’s a choice. Now let me give you another. Answer the question. If you don’t, I’m going to blow out your joints one by one, starting with your right ankle.” He pointed the captain’s GLOCK at the man’s foot. “So, were you or were you not part of the manhunt?”

His eyes smoldering with anger, the cop said, “Sure, yes. I was. Many people were.”

“You’re the one who organized and ran it, though.”

“Someone had to. It was just my turn.”

“Kind of out of your range, wasn’t it? You’re based down here, not Reynosa.”

“I go where the investigation leads. Now let me go.”

“Tell me, Captain Moreno. Do your Federal bosses know about your account in the Caymans? The one you just made a substantial deposit to?” He glanced at Orlando. “How much was it?”

“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, US,” she said, not missing a beat.

Moreno stared at them for a second, then forced out a laugh. “Is that what this is about? Money? You want my money?”

“Oh, we’ve already taken your money. The one hundred fifty thousand, plus the other one point seven million.”

Now the captain was starting to look nervous. “You’re lying.”

Quinn shrugged. “Could be. I’m sure you’ll check later. I mean, if there is a later. But you’re wrong. This has nothing to do with your money.”

“So you didn’t take it?”

“Oh, we took it. We’re just not going to keep it. That’s dirty money. Bad karma. None of us wanted any part of that. We’ve already spread it around to a half dozen charities that will make your old cash feel better about itself. Your money’s gone, and it’s not coming back.”

Moreno’s jaw tensed. Through clenched teeth, he said, “If this isn’t about money, then what is it about?”

“Are you dense? The manhunt. What happened to the man you apprehended in Reynosa?”

“We didn’t catch anyone. The manhunt failed.”

Quinn shook his head. “Try again.”

“I’m telling you, we didn’t catch anyone.”

Quinn pulled the GLOCK’s trigger. The cop screamed in pain as the bullet tore into his ankle.

“Go ahead. Yell as loud as you want,” Quinn said. “No one can hear you.”

“?Puta madre, hijo de la chingada!”

“Now, about that man you captured,” Quinn said, his voice calm.

Moreno grimaced with pain. “I…I don’t know who he was.”

“But there was a man?”

A hesitation. “Yes.”

Quinn pulled out his phone and showed the man a picture of Nate. “Is this him?”

Moreno squinted at the image, then nodded. “Yes.”

Not that Quinn expected any other answer, but actually hearing it made him pause for a second. “Where did you fly him to?”

“Outside…outside Tampico. Please, you have to get me to the hospital.”

“Where outside Tampico?”

“Please!”

Quinn pointed the gun at the man’s other ankle.

“Okay, okay,” Moreno said. “There’s…a facility there, north of the city…maybe twenty miles.” A pause as a wave of pain rushed across the cop’s face.

“That’s where you took him?”

“Yes.”

“Why there?”

“It has a private…runway.”

That wasn’t good news. “What happened when you got there?”

“We took the prisoner into one of the buildings and locked him in a room. Then…then…oh, God.” His eyes shut again and his face pulled taut. There was a hiss as he sucked in air through his teeth, and his head began to wobble.

Quinn, careful to avoid the growing puddle of blood on the floor, stepped closer and slapped Moreno’s cheek. “Stay with us.”

He glanced at Orlando and motioned down at the man’s wounded foot.

Orlando nodded, cut off a piece of the cord, and tied it around Moreno’s leg a few inches above the shattered ankle, stemming the flow of blood.

Quinn grabbed the cop’s chin and gave it a little shake. “Hey, what happened after you put him in the room?”

A few seconds passed before Moreno’s eyelids parted. “We…waited.”

“For what?”

“A plane.”

Exactly the possibility Quinn had been concerned about.

“And then?”

“The man who…hired me was on it. He had us help his people load the prisoner…on board.”

Again, Quinn held his phone up in front of the cop again, this time showing him the picture of the bald man.

“Yes, that’s…that’s Mr. Cameron.”

“Then they left?”

“Yes.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know. My job…was done.”

“Which direction did the plane go when it flew off?”

Moreno looked at Quinn as if he didn’t understand.

“Which direction did it go?”

“East. After it took off, it turned and…flew east.”

The only thing east of Tampico was the Gulf of Mexico.

Moreno’s head started to loll forward. Quinn put a palm on the cop’s forehead and pushed back. “Tell me about the plane. Everything you remember.”

For the next few minutes, he extracted as much information out of Moreno as he could. The aircraft was a prop-driven cargo plane, not too large. When pressed, Moreno was able to recall part of the number on the tailfin, and the color scheme: white with two stripes-one blue, one black. There was also some kind of logo near the door. A black bird sitting on a blue branch. That was all Quinn could get before Moreno passed out.

They field-dressed the man’s ankle, then pulled off his shirt and wrote with a black marker across his chest CORRUPTO-corrupt-and below that, the number of Moreno’s Cayman account with the name of the bank. While they had removed a good portion of Moreno’s money, they’d left enough in it so that there would be no mistaking that the cop had been on the take.

Fifteen minutes later, as they neared the airport to catch the first available flight to Tampico, Orlando called the personal cell phone number of a Federal she had previously identified as on the up and up.

“Who is this?” the man asked as he answered.

“Unimportant,” she said. She gave him Moreno’s name and the address of the building they’d left him in. “You