Brett Battles - Shadow of Betrayal

“Copy that.”

Orlando doused both of the lights, plunging the hallway into complete darkness. Careful not to make any unnecessary noise, Quinn lowered the two-by-four to the floor, then pulled out his SIG. Beside him, he could hear Orlando freeing her own weapon.

Once armed, they stood rock still as the steps grew closer. There was a muffled thud like someone bumping into a distant wall, then the steps were suddenly in the same hallway as they were.

Quinn raised his gun in the direction of the noise, then whispered, “Now.”

Orlando flipped on one of the flashlights.

“Shit! What the hell?”

Caught at the very far end of the flashlight beam’s reach was a man. He appeared to be about the same height as Quinn, but that was about all the detail they could make out. A moment after being lit up, he was gone, running down the corridor away from Quinn and Orlando.

“Hey!” Quinn yelled. “Stop!”

But the man’s pace only increased.

“Dammit,” Quinn said. Both he and Orlando started running at once. “Nate. There’s a hostile in the building. He’s heading your way.”

“Copy that.”

“Not sure if he’s armed, so be careful.”

“You want me to take him out?”

“No,” Quinn said. “Just… try to stop him, or at least scare him back in our direction.”

“Copy,” Nate said. “I hear him. Hold on.” Quinn could hear Nate breathing. “He’s just around the corner.”

“Be careful,” Quinn said.

“Stop right the—”

Nate’s command was interrupted by a loud smack, and the sound of something rubbing against the microphone.

“Dammit!” Nate yelled.

Quinn increased his speed, sprinting toward the intersection with the hallway Nate was in.

“What’s happening?” Quinn asked. “Are you all right?”

“The asshole just head-butted me in the cheek.”

“Where is he now?”

There was silence for a second.

“He’s … ah … on the ground.” Nate paused again. “I think I knocked him out.”

CHAPTER

8

THE UNCONSCIOUS MAN COULD HAVE BEEN ANYWHEREfrom twenty-five to his early forties. His face, weathered and wrinkled prematurely, had been beaten into a shape he hadn’t been born with. But though his clothes were old and thin in some spots, they were clean. And he obviously cared about his appearance enough to tuck his shirt in, comb his hair, and take a shower once in a while.

Not quite a street bum, not quite part of society, either. The guy probably existed somewhere in between.

His face also sported a new addition, a large red spot in the middle of his forehead, the remnant of his collision with Nate. Quinn knew it would turn into a bruise before long.

“Smells like he’s been drinking,” Nate said.

Quinn had noticed it, too, a faint hint of alcohol, not like the guy had been sucking anything down in the past hour, but within the last several. Sour, like beer.

“Here.” Quinn held his gun out to Nate.

He grabbed it and aimed it at the man on the ground.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Nate asked.

“Kind of hard to tell at the moment,” Quinn said. “But at least we know one thing.”

“What?” Nate asked.

“We know that hard head of yours is good for something,” Quinn said, a small smile on his face.

“Ha. Ha. Hilarious.” There was a red spot on his cheek that was a near match to the spot on the unconscious man’s forehead. Nate raised his hand and began rubbing it. “Hurts like hell.” His hand stopped in mid-motion. “Damn. I think one of my teeth is loose.”

Quinn knelt down and searched the man. The only things the guy had been armed with were an old black plastic comb and a set of ten keys. Definitely not a street person. They’d have no need for keys.

Quinn put his hand on the man’s cheek, then rocked the man’s head back and forth.

“Hey,” he said. “Wake up.”

Not even a twitch. Quinn raised his hand a few inches, then slapped it down on the man’s cheek, not too hard, just enough so that it would sting.

“Wake up,” he repeated. “Come on.”

A low groan started in the man’s chest, then escaped through his mouth. A moment of nothing, then another groan, and another. Finally, he started to move his head in a slow circle on his own.

Quinn kept his hand on the man’s cheek, his thumb wrapped around the bottom of the guy’s chin. All of a sudden, the man’s eyelids squeezed together as a grimace of pain shot across his face. One of his hands reached up and touched his injured forehead.

He grunted, then all of a sudden he froze. Reluctantly, as if it was the last thing he wanted to do, his eyelids parted.

“Oh, God. Please. I’m sorry,” he said, his voice clipped and nervous. “Just leave me alone. I ain’t got nothing.”

“What’s your name?” Quinn asked.

“No,” the man said. “You don’t need that. Just let me go, okay? Do whatever you want. I don’t give a shit.”

“What’s your name?” Quinn repeated.

The man looked at Quinn for a second, licked his lips, then said, “Al.”

“Al what?”

More hesitation. “Al Barker.”

“Okay, Al Barker. What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Al said as if it should have been obvious.

“No one lives here,” Quinn said.

Al’s gaze flicked beyond Quinn at Nate and Orlando. “Do you have to shine that thing in my eyes?”

The beam of Orlando’s flashlight moved off the man’s face and onto his chest.

“Better?” she said.

“Shit, man, you guys got guns!” Al had apparently just noticed the pistols in Orlando’s and Nate’s hands. “What the hell are you pointing guns at me for?”

Quinn squeezed Al’s chin and turned it to the right. “Over here, Al,” Quinn said. “What are you doing here?”

Al glanced back at Orlando and Nate, then refocused on Quinn. “I told you. I live here.”

“The building’s empty, Al.”

“You don’t have to keep saying my name.”

“I just want to make sure you know I’m talking to you.”

“I know you’re talking to me,” Al said. “And I do live here. The owner pays me to stay in one of the rooms upstairs. A couple hundred bucks a month, and I get the place for free.”

“So you’re the caretaker,” Quinn said.

“I guess. Yeah, sure. The caretaker.”

“So if you’re the caretaker, where have you been all day?”

“I was upstairs … listening to the radio … building’s got no electricity, so no TV.”

“You were upstairs all day?”

“Sure.”

Quinn stared at him for a moment. “Al, where were you today?”

“I was he—”

“Don’t lie to me,” Quinn cut him off.

Al licked his lips again. “I left, okay? Went for a walk.”

“All evening?”

“Yeah. Okay? All evening,” Al said.

“Why did you leave?”

“I can go out when I want,” he said defensively. “I don’t have to be here all the time. Mr. Monroe told me that when he let me live here.”

“Who’s Mr. Monroe?”

“He owns the building.”

“Why did you leave today, Al? Did you hear something you didn’t want to? Then decided it was better to find something else to do?”

The caretaker’s pause was all the confirmation Quinn needed.

“Tell me the truth, or I’ll have my friend here, the one you hit with your head, shoot you someplace that won’t kill you, not right away, but it’ll hurt like hell.”

Al took another look at Nate. The sight must have been enough to convince him.

“I heard her come in, okay?” he said.

“Her?” Quinn asked.

“A woman. It was around sunset.”

“How do you know it was a woman if you only heard her?”

“I, eh, snuck downstairs. Sometimes we get kids in here. You know, try to trash the place. If I surprise them, it scares the hell out of them, and they leave. So I come down to do the same thing, okay? Only when I come down to the basement and peek around the corner, it’s not kids. It’s a woman. And she looks like she ain’t here to trash the place. But she got that door open, you know? That door you’re not supposed to go through. I was going to warn her, but she was already stepping inside. Then … boom.”

“How did you know you weren’t supposed to go through that door?”

“Shit. I don’t know … I just know it, okay?”

“Not okay, Al. How did you know?”

Al closed his eyes. “Goddammit,” he said under his breath.

“Al.” The sharp tone of Quinn’s voice brought the man back into the here and now.

“He told me, all right? He told me about the room.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Monroe,” Al said. “Who else?”

“What exactly did Mr. Monroe tell you about the room?” Quinn asked.

“That it was dangerous. You’d die if you went in there.”

“So you never tried to see for yourself?”

“Hell no,” the man said. “He made it very clear if you went in there, you wouldn’t come out. He was right, too. Jesus, what a mess.”

“And you didn’t stay around to see if she might need any help?” Quinn asked.

“A fall like that, I figured she was dead. Didn’t want to be here when the cops came and found her.”

“So you left.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you go?” Quinn asked.

Al hesitated.

“You went to a bar, didn’t you?”

Al moved his gaze away from Quinn, then nodded. “I needed a drink, you know?”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Mr. Monroe is not going to be happy about this,” Al said. “I was going to get the hell out of here, then I passed the bar, and decided getting drunk would be a first good step.”

“You don’t seem drunk.”

Al licked his lips like he wished there was a bottle nearby. “I stopped after three.”

“Why?”

“Got to thinking about that woman.”

“You felt guilty and decided to come back and check on her?”

“Something like that.”

“Or did you decide you wanted to see if she had anything valuable on her you could hock?”

Al pushed himself up on his elbows, his head shaking side to side. “No. That wasn’t it. Like you said before. I wanted to make sure she was all right. I may be kind of on a downswing, you know, but I ain’t a thief. Never been a thief.”

“So what happened when you came back?” Quinn asked.

“You hear me? I’m not a thief.”

“I heard you. Tell me what you found when you returned.”

Al bit his lower lip, then took a deep breath. “I… I could tell someone else had been here. There were lots of footprints in the hallway. They weren’t there before. When I looked down into the room, I didn’t see the woman anywhere. Figured someone had come and gotten her.”

“So you decided then it was okay to stay? Your boss is still going to find out about the mess.”

“I know that! I went back upstairs to pack my things. I was sitting around wondering if I could stay the night or should just leave. That’s when I heard you all down here.”

Quinn stood. “You can get up, but I wouldn’t move around much.”

Quinn nodded toward Orlando and Nate, then made the shape of a gun with his fingers, and moved his thumb back and forth a couple of times like he was shooting. The look in Al’s eyes told him the caretaker was going to be very cooperative.

Quinn moved down the hallway so that he was out of Al’s earshot, then pulled out his phone and called Peter.

“Find anything?” Peter said.

“Your agent was a woman,” Quinn said.