The Enraged (A Jonathan Quinn Novel) (29 page)

Keeping an eye on Dima, he pulled out his phone and called the head of Darvot’s own five-man special ops team. With O & O in chaos, he’d had no choice but to bring them in.

“Status,” he asked.

“Everything’s ready,” Reynolds said. “Team’s in place.”

“Good. I’ll let you know when we’re on our way.”

As soon as he hung up, he checked the tracking app again. The blue dot was still in the restaurant, but it was moving through the building toward the exit. He shot a quick glance at Dima. Though Howard should be visible to him, the man from O & O seemed to still be searching the interior.

When the blue dot reached the front entrance, Griffin slipped his phone into his pocket and watched the door. A couple seconds later, it opened, and a man stepped out. A few feet away, Dima glanced over at him, but almost immediately returned his attention to the interior of Mama Jo’s. Griffin was starting to think Dima was a complete moron when their target stepped into the halo of the nearby streetlight.

The man wasn’t Howard.

Griffin snatched his phone back out and checked the screen. The dot was definitely traveling with the man. Had Howard dumped his phone on this guy? Perhaps planted it on him? Or had it not been Howard calling him at all?

He slipped into the back corner of the entrance. What should he do? He couldn’t just grab innocent people off the street. That could get very messy. He needed to be sure. He uncapped the syringe, and positioned it in his hand in a way that it wouldn’t be seen. As soon as the man walked by, he stepped out.

“Brian?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

The man stopped and looked back. “Sorry. Think you have the wrong guy.”

“Sorry about that.”

But Griffin knew he didn’t have the wrong guy. He’d recognized the voice immediately as belonging to caller
UNKNOWN
.

As the man turned away, Griffin stepped forward and jabbed the needle into the base of the guy’s neck.

The drug worked quickly. The man had barely gotten a surprised, “What…” out of his mouth before he stumbled against a parked car. Griffin grabbed him around the waist to keep him from dropping all the way to the ground, and drunk-walked him to Griffin’s sedan. With his free hand, he opened the back door and manhandled the guy inside.

He looked around and made sure there was no one else on the street before putting his fingers to his lips and whistling. Dima jerked around in surprise.

“Get over here!” Griffin yelled.

__________

T
HE HOUSE WAS
in a wooded suburb northeast of the city in Maryland, on a cul-de-sac with three other homes, all owned by Darvot Consulting.

Reynolds opened the garage door as Griffin drove up, and immediately closed it behind him. The other four members of his team were spread out around the outside of the house in case of trouble.

Griffin, Dima, and Reynolds lugged the prisoner into a special room in the basement designed for circumstances like this. There was a single piece of furniture in the room, a chair in the center. Though it couldn’t move, it wasn’t bolted in place. It was cemented into the floor.

The unadorned walls and the only door were soundproof. There were no windows. The only other thing of note was the drain in the floor directly under the chair.

Using pre-sized straps that hung on the wall outside the room, they secured the man to the chair and stepped back out. Reynolds was dismissed to join his men, while Griffin and Dima sat in front of the table that was outside the room to wait for the prisoner to wake up.

Nearly fifteen minutes passed in silence before Dima asked, “What are you going to do to him?”

“I told you before. I’m going to talk to him.”

Dima looked like he wanted to ask, “And then what?” but he kept his mouth shut.

Griffin flipped on the computer sitting on the table. From it, he could control the five cameras inside. If he wanted, he could record everything, or, as he was doing now, simply look in.

Mr. Unknown was still unconscious, his chin hanging against his chest.

“Keep an eye on him,” he said. “If he so much as twitches, come get me.”

__________

T
HE THREE SUBURBANS
sat empty two blocks away from the target house, the vehicles’ former occupants having moved silently down streets and through backyards until they were in position.

Nate, Daeng, and Witten were crouched near the open end of the cul-de-sac. In Witten’s hand was a mini tablet computer displaying a detailed map of the area, including property lines and house footprints. As it had been since they’d arrived in the peaceful neighborhood, the glowing white dot they’d followed from Mama Jo’s restaurant was contained within the diagram denoting the house in the middle of the curved end of the road.

“S1, this is S3,” a voice said over the comm.

Nate turned on his mic. “Go for S1.”

“Five guards. Two in back, three in front.”

“Your status?” Nate asked.

“S2 and S3 ready and willing.”

“Take them down,” Nate said. “Nice and quiet.”

CHAPTER
35

“K
EEP AN EYE
on him,” Griffin said. “If he so much as twitches, come get me.”

Dima nodded his understanding, but it was a wasted gesture. Griffin had already turned away.

Dima remained where he was until the door at the top of the stairs closed. Sure now that Griffin was gone, he entered the interrogation room.

“He went upstairs,” Dima said. “Not sure how long he’ll be gone.”

__________

Q
UINN LIFTED HIS
head. He didn’t know the name of the man in front of him, only that he’d been O & O’s leak. When he’d been told what was going to happen to him unless he agreed to help, he had jumped at the chance, knowing it would give him at least a few years of freedom before he died.

So far Dima had performed exactly as instructed. He had provided Griffin with the syringe loaded only with saline, and had not tipped off the other man that something was up.

“Radio?” Quinn said.

Dima walked over and attached the sticky side of a small microphone under Quinn’s collar. In Quinn’s ear, he stuck the equally small receiver.

“Nate?” he said.

“I’m here,” Nate said.

“There’s at least one other person here.”

“We count five additional, total.”

“As soon as you hear Griffin back in here with me, you are free to take them out. Then I’ll give you the word when to begin phase two.”

“Copy that.”

Quinn looked at the O & O man. “Straps.”

__________

G
RIFFIN TOOK THE
stairs to the ground floor, and locked himself in the den to avoid any chance that Dima might overhear him. He pulled out his phone and called Morten.

“I have him,” he told his boss.

“That’s a step in the right direction. What has he told you?”

“Nothing yet. We had to drug him, but he should wake up soon.”

“We must wrap this up. We’re wasting far too much time dealing with ancient history. We have paying jobs that I need you to focus on, not this crap. Get him to tell you the names of everyone who knows, then you need to root them out and dispose of them tonight.”

Griffin knew it would take more than the night, but he understood his boss’s sense of frustration. “I’ll call you as soon as I finish interrogating him,” he said.

“I’ll be waiting.”

When Griffin exited the den, he found Dima standing at the base of the stairs to the second floor.

“What are you doing up here?” he asked.

“I was looking for you. The…prisoner, I think he’s waking up.”

Griffin headed down the stairs, Dima following a few steps behind. Instead of heading straight into the interrogation room, Griffin checked camera feed first. The prisoner’s head was now up, his eyes half opened.

“Has he talked?” Griffin asked.

“Not when I was down here.”

That’s about to change
, Griffin thought, before he strode into the room. He walked right up to the prisoner, grabbed his chin, and slapped him hard.

“Wake up, asshole,” he said.

The man groaned as he winced from the blow.

Griffin jerked the man’s head up. “Look at me.” The prisoner’s eyes remained half closed. “Look at me!”

The man’s lid opened only a fraction of an inch more, but his eyes focused on Griffin’s face. “What?” he said.

“Who the hell are you?”

A grin spread across the man’s face. “I’ll tell you one thing. I’m not Steve Howard.”

Another slap. “I’m not afraid of hurting you. So if you want to mess around, go ahead. But if you’d rather pass on the pain, tell me who you are.”

“I’ll make a deal with you.”

“Sorry. No deals. Answer my question.”

“Can you take your hand off my chin? That’s not part of the deal, but it’s kind of weird talking with you hanging on to me like this.”

Griffin slapped him again, but then let go of the guy’s chin.

“Thanks.” The prisoner worked his jaw for a moment. “So here’s what I was thinking.”

“I said, no deals. Here’s what I—”

“Just hear me out, okay? What could it hurt?”

Griffin stared at him, not saying a word.

“The deal is this. I don’t want to say what I have to say twice. Know what I mean? Yeah, you have your fancy video system.” As the prisoner said this, he glanced past Griffin at one of the cameras mounted in the room. “So you could record it and show that, but we both know your boss is going to want to hear it from me.”

Griffin remained silent.

“This is the part where you say you don’t have a boss,” the man said. “And then I say, ‘Actually, you do. I mean, unless Kyle Morten fired you.’”

Griffin locked eyes with the man. “You think you’re a smart guy, don’t you? You think you can trip me up with your little name-dropping?”

The prisoner shrugged. “I was trying to do you a favor.”

“I don’t need your favor.” Griffin leaned in close. “So let me tell you the deal I have for you. Which, by the way, is nonnegotiable. You will talk. You will tell me who you are. You will tell me everything you know. You will tell me who else knows. And you will start right now.”

“You mean how you and your boss murdered Miranda Keyes and her colleagues for one of your clients? A bullet to the head of the driver. Very subtle. Or do you mean how you guys handed over a list of names to Javier Romero in an attempt to keep the truth from coming out, thinking he’d take care of your problem for you?”

Griffin took a step back. “Who are you?”

“Remember, I gave you a chance.”

“How many others know?”

The prisoner stared past Griffin, stone-faced.

“Answer me! How many?”

No response.

“Your silence won’t save anyone. I’ll find them like I found you.”

The man grinned again as he looked at Griffin. “What makes you think
you
found
me
?”

Stop it! You’re letting him get under your skin
, Griffin told himself. This was his interrogation, not the prisoner’s. He glared derisively at the man, his lips parting as he was about to start in on the questioning again.

“Now,” the man whispered.

__________

N
ATE NODDED AT
the O & O man standing by the power box, and a second later all electricity to the building was severed.

“Perimeter team neutralized. Power out,” Nate said into the radio.

__________

E
VERYTHING WENT BLACK.

As Quinn whipped his arms out of the restraints Dima had loosened for him, and leaned down so he could pull the straps away from his legs, he heard Nate’s report. He could hear the door open and shut across the room.

“Dima, dammit, get the lights back on!” Griffin yelled.

No response.

“Dima, where are you?”

While Quinn freed his left leg, he heard the movement of cloth, like someone rubbing their hands across their clothes. The moment the strap dropped from around his right leg, a bluish, rectangular light flicked on. Griffin’s cell phone.

Quinn couldn’t see the man behind the phone, but he heard Griffin curse as he realized Quinn was free. Immediately, the light moved with the man rushing at Quinn.

Quinn dove to the side, rolling on the floor before popping back up on his feet.

Behind him, he heard Griffin skid to a stop. As Quinn turned, he saw a flash of metal, and knew the man was holding a knife.

When Griffin came at him again, it wasn’t in a run but a deliberate stalk.

“You’re not getting out of here,” Griffin said.

“Who said I wanted to?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Me? I’m the man who’s going to take you and your partner down.”

“Oh, really? I don’t see that happening.”

“Of course you don’t.”

Quinn feigned to his right, then left, heading around Griffin toward the door. Griffin was only partially fooled, and lunged, his knife leading the way. Quinn saw it coming, twisted out of its path, and lashed out with his own hand, knocking the phone out of Griffin’s grip.

The moment the cell hit the floor, the light went out.

Quinn made it all the way to the door, but knew he couldn’t get it open before Griffin would get there, so he crouched low against the wall and waited.

An unsettled silence fell over the room.

“It’s only a matter of time,” Griffin said. “I’m going to find you, and I’m going to cut you up. And then I’m going to find your friends and no one will ever know what happened to any of you.”

The man was about eight feet away, straight out from the door.

“You think you scared me with what you found out?” Griffin said. “You think you’re the first problem I’ve ever had to deal with?” A quiet step closer to the door. “Don’t kid yourself. I’ve dealt with far worse problems than you, and I’m still here. Just like I’m going to still be here after we’re through.”

Another step. Griffin was five feet away now.