The Cleaner (6 page)

Quinn hit the remote button mounted under his dash and waited while the gate rolled aside. As soon as there was enough room, he drove in. He glanced in his rearview mirror to make sure Nate had walked in behind him, then hit the remote again to close the gate.

Quinn got out of his car, then pulled his suitcase out of the trunk. 'Here,' he said. 'Carry this.' He handed the suitcase to Nate, then walked past him and up the steps to the front door.

As he unlocked it and pushed it open, he asked Nate, 'Thirsty?'

'Sure,' Nate said.

'Did you eat?'

Nate shook his head. 'Just dropped my bag off at my place. Had an errand to run.'

'There might be a can of soup in the cupboard. If not, you're out of luck.'

Quinn stepped across the threshold and stopped at the security panel just inside the doorway. He pressed the pad of his left thumb against the touchscreen monitor, then punched in his release code. He and Nate were the only ones the system would recognize.

A moment later he was greeted with a double beep telling him the system was now on standby. Nate followed him into the house.

Quinn scrolled through a series of menus and reports, checking on the security status of his house. When he was satisfied that all was well, he switched the system to
House Occupied.
Number of people present:
Two.
This allowed the system to remain in an active mode while still accounting for his and Nate's presence.

'So, did you enjoy your Thai food?' Nate asked.

'Thought you said you had an errand?'

'I did.'

'You decided you'd try following me, didn't you?' Quinn asked.

'Just trying to get in a little practice,' Nate said, barely able to contain a smug smile. 'At first I thought you'd made me. You definitely didn't take the most direct route. But then you gave up, and I realized you hadn't seen me after all.'

There was triumph in Nate's voice. 'What's the one thing I've told you about following someone in a large city?' A bit of Nate's smile disappeared. 'That it's easy to do. Too many cars. Hard to be spotted.'

'Especially at night, right?'

'Right.'

'So how much skill would it have taken to follow me around?' Nate shrugged. 'Not a lot, I guess.' 'And how skillful would I have to be to have spotted you?'

'You'd have to be the best,' Nate conceded.

'Try following me at three in the morning if you want me to see how good you are.' Quinn paused. 'Besides, tonight you were always at least three cars behind me. A dark blue Nissan Altima.'

Nate stared at him.

'Arizona plates. I can give you the number if you'd like.' Now it was Quinn's turn to smile. 'How about a drink?'

Nate continued to gape. 'You knew I was there the whole time?' 'Try to keep up with the conversation, all right? What do you want to drink?'

'Eh . . . Scotch and soda?'

Quinn eyed him curiously. 'That's an old man drink. Since when do you have those?' Nate shook his head. 'Never had one before.' 'Then why would you want to start now?' 'Saw someone have one on TV,' Nate said.

'Thought I'd give it a try.' 'Why don't we save that for your sixtieth birthday. I'll make you a mai tai.' 'Haven't had one of those, either,' Nate said agreeably.

Quinn walked over to the built-in bar near a large stone fireplace on the left side of the living room and began making the drinks. 'What do you think your biggest mistake was?'

'When I was following you?'

'In Colorado. Where did you mess up the most?'

'Oh. I guess going to see the police on my own.'

'That was a close second, I'll give you that. Try something else.'

'That I didn't do as you told me?'

'We'll make that one-B,' Quinn said.

Nate was silent for a moment. 'I'm not sure what you're looking for.'

Quinn emerged from behind the bar carrying two drinks. He walked over to Nate and handed him one. 'What name did you use when you were out there?'

Nate glanced away for a second. 'Nathan Driscoll. And before you even ask, I know. Never use any part of your own name.'

'That's a pretty simple one.' 'I didn't want to get tripped up,' Nate said. 'Besides, I only used my first name.'

'It's enough,' Quinn said, then took a sip of his drink. 'Tripped up in Colorado this morning or killed ten years from now in someplace like St Petersburg because someone ID'd you from the name you used with the chief of police. It's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?' Quinn raised his glass in a mock toast. 'Here's hoping that one never comes back to bite you in the ass.'

When Quinn bought his house, it had been a twelve-hundred-square-foot fixer-upper. By the time he'd finished his renovations, it was more than twice its original size, and little trace of the old structure remained.

The main floor was located at street level. It was a large, open space that stretched nearly the entire length of the house. Through a series of half-walls, bookcases, and furniture, it was divided up into a dining room, living room, study, and kitchen. Only the bathroom was truly private. The three bedrooms and office were all downstairs, below street level, following the slope of the hill.

The house had a warm feel to it, due in part to a large amount of exposed wood. Nate said it reminded him of a rustic farmhouse stuck on the side of a hill. That image cut a little too close to Quinn's farm-boy roots. He preferred equating it to a comfortable mountain cabin.

Quinn carried his drink across the room, then opened the curtains that were drawn across the entire back wall of the house.

'I never get over your view,' Nate said.

The rear of the house was mostly glass. And Nate was right, Quinn's view of the city was spectacular. Lights spread across the L.A. basin as far as the eye could see. Closest to them was the Sunset Strip. Beyond that, Century City, and a little more to the right in the distance was the dark void of the Pacific Ocean.

'This was a good trip for you,' Quinn said. 'If you're smart, you learned a lot.' Nate was about to take a drink, but stopped instead and lowered his glass. 'I'm smart.'

'Tell me how smart?'

'Never use your real name, first or last,' Nate said. 'Never talk if I've been told not to. Never visit the scene of an operation unless supervised.' He paused for a moment, then added, 'And never show any initiative unless you tell me I should.'

'You're right. You are smart. Someday you can show all the initiative you want. Someday, your life will depend on it. But now?'

'Both our lives depend on what you decided,' Nate said, repeating a maxim Quinn had been drilling into him since Nate's first day on the job.

Before Quinn could say anything further, his cell

phone rang. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight. Quinn walked over to the end table and picked the phone up from where he'd left it.

'Hello?' he said.

'I need you in D. C It was Peter.

'You're working late.'

'Look, we've got a big operation gearing up and it looks like we could use your help. This is top priority.'

'Something to do with our friend in Colorado?'

'At this point, the details are not your concern. You'll be briefed when you arrive. I have you booked on a plane leaving at seven in the morning. I've e-mailed you the details.'

'I think we've missed a step here. I don't actually work for you. You need to ask me first. We call this the job offer.'

'Technically, you're still on the payroll.'

Quinn's eyes narrowed. Peter was referring to his two-week minimum on the Taggert job, of which Quinn had only really used two days. But there was an unwritten rule that the minimum applied only to the specific job he was hired for. Peter was stretching things.

Apparently taking Quinn's silence for acceptance, Peter said, 'I'll see you in the afternoon.' The line went dead.

'What's up?' Nate asked as Quinn put the phone back down.

Quinn told him the basics, the whole time thinking he definitely had to reconsider the workingfor-one-client thing.

'You're going, then?' Nate asked.

'Yeah.' Quinn drained his drink. 'I'm going.' He glanced over at Nate, who was smiling at Quinn's annoyance. 'And you're driving me to the airport.'

'Come on,' Nate said, his smile gone. 'I just want to go home and go to bed.' 'Sleep on the couch,' Quinn told him. 'We leave at five a.m.'

Quinn was deep in a world of nothingness when he felt a distant shaking. It was accompanied by a voice. 'Quinn. Wake up.'

Quinn pushed himself up, immediately awake. Nate was leaning down beside him, next to the bed. 'What?' Quinn asked.

'Your security alarm just went off,' Nate said, his voice an urgent whisper. 'I think someone's outside.'

Security alarm?
Quinn should have heard it. He had an auxiliary panel right in his room.

Getting out of bed, he went to the panel on the wall. A red light was blinking. It was then he realized the throbbing he felt in his head wasn't throbbing at all. It was the low-level pulsing tone of the alarm. He hadn't slept well in Colorado, and the day of investigating and traveling had been a long one. Now that he was home, he'd fallen asleep so deeply the alarm hadn't even registered on him.
Sloppy, Quinn,
he thought.
Really, really slop
py.

'Did you check the monitor upstairs?' Quinn asked. Nate nodded. 'It says, "Rear Fence Breach." I

pulled up the backyard camera, but I didn't see anything. You think it might be a cat or something?'

'Doubtful,' Quinn said. The system had been adjusted to ignore anything so small. 'What time is it?'

'Almost three.'

Quinn needed to go upstairs and check the security monitor himself. He'd been meaning to install an additional screen in his bedroom, but hadn't got around to it yet.

'Are you armed?' Quinn asked.

Nate raised his right hand. In it was a Walther P99 9mm pistol. Quinn's own SIG 9mm was sitting in his safe upstairs in the living room.

Quinn pulled on the pair of black sweatpants he always kept sitting on top of his dresser, then headed for the stairs. When he reached the top, he stopped to listen.

Silence.

The only light in the house came from the muted, flickering television in the living room and from the gibbous moon filtering through the back windows. Otherwise, the entire upper floor was dark.

Quinn padded over to the security panel near the front door and touched the upper right corner of the screen with his left thumb, bringing the monitor to life. The first thing he did was turn the alarm off. Then, in quick succession, he worked through the feeds from the cameras that kept watch over his property. There was no one in the backyard – not by the back fence nor against the house. If someone had hopped the fence, it would be recorded on the system's hard drive. Quinn could go back and review it later if he needed to.

Nate was watching from over his shoulder. 'Maybe it
was
just a cat,' he suggested.

'Maybe.'

Quinn switched to a view of the front, then tapped the monitor again, zooming the camera in for a tight shot of his house. He began a pan from left to right, moving the camera slowly so that he wouldn't miss anything. About two thirds of the way across he stopped and studied the monitor.

'Not a cat,' Quinn said.

An intruder was crouched on the porch below the bathroom window. Nate started to say something, but Quinn held up a finger for quiet. The bathroom was just around the corner from where they were standing. There was a chance, though slight, that they might be overheard. Quinn quickly dialed through the remaining cameras to make sure the intruder was alone. When he was satisfied there was no one else, he returned to the original image. The intruder hadn't moved.

Quinn motioned for Nate to hand over his gun. No need to break out his own pistol, the Walther would do. Nate handed him the weapon.

'Suppressor?' Quinn whispered.

Nate nodded, then hurried over to the couch where his leather jacket was draped over the arm. From a pocket, he extracted a long cylinder. He brought it back to Quinn, who attached it to the barrel of the gun.

Quinn leaned toward Nate. 'Stay here,' he whispered. 'When you hear a single knock on the front door, open it.'

'What if he gets you first?' Quinn scowled. 'When you hear a single knock on the front door,' he repeated, 'open it.' Nate nodded. 'Okay.'

Chapter 7

From outside, it appeared that the only exits to Quinn's house were through the front door or the attached three-car garage. But there was another way, hidden on the west side of the building. Quinn thought of it as his 'escape hatch.' It was a small door that blended in almost perfectly with the surrounding wall. Quinn had built it himself, but this was the first time he had needed to use it.

The door swung inward silently on oiled hinges. Quinn paused for a moment, listening. All was quiet. He eased through the opening and into the night.

He crept along the side of the house, stopping just before reaching the front corner. Carefully, he peered around the edge.

The intruder was still on the porch but was no longer kneeling below the bathroom window. He'd moved to the other side of the front door, just below the window to the entrance hall. Since the interior wooden shutters were closed, the intruder couldn't see in.

Quinn was about to step around the corner of the house when his unwanted visitor pulled what looked like a small black box out of a cloth bag at his side. Quinn stopped to watch. The intruder pressed the device gently against the window, where it stuck easily. He then pulled a set of earphones out of his pocket, plugging it into the box. He put one of the earpieces into his left ear.

This guy's not some random burglar,
Quinn thought.
He's a pro.

Quinn had seen the black box before. In fact, he owned one himself. It was an echo box, a listening device that amplified sounds from inside a building when placed against a window. It was held in position against the glass by a quick-release suction device. For the moment, the intruder would be able to hear almost anything that was said inside.