The Buried (2 page)

She looked at him with pity. “My client was very specific about what I was to collect. And I never disappoint my clients.”

“Collect? Collect what?” He scanned the room for a few seconds, then froze. “You found it, didn’t you? You went down there. Oh, God.”

“Mr. Edmondson, please. Use your head. You
know
what I’ve taken.” Denial always played a big part in these events, but she was tiring of his refusal to connect the dots. There was a schedule to keep, after all, and more to be done this night.

She could see the exact second he finally let the truth in. “No. No, you’re lying. I’m a valuable asset.”

“My orders would seem to contradict that.”

“I’ve got money,” he blurted out. “A lot! T-ten million. It’s all yours if you let me go. You can say I wasn’t here, or, or…or tell them you killed me and tossed my body in the ocean. I’ll disappear. No one will ever know.”

She said nothing.

“Fifteen million,” he said. “It’s all I have. We can transfer it right now.”

She arched her eyebrow again but remained silent.

Nervously licking his lips, he said, “Okay, thirty million. That’s everything. Just let me go. I swear you’ll be the only one who knows.”

She rose from the chair and glided to his bed. “You misunderstand the situation,” she said, patting his unmoving arm with her gloved hand. “You’re already dead.”

“What?”

“Two shots while you were sleeping. The first paralyzed you, and the second has been working its away into your brain for the last ten minutes. Soon…” She looked at her watch. “Wow, time really
does
fly, doesn’t it?” She smiled. “In less than five minutes, your brain will stop sending the signals that instructs your diaphragm to expand and contract and your heart to beat.”

“Please, no! Y-y-you must have an antidote, right? Give it to me and the money’s yours! Don’t you understand? Thirty million dollars!”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “Even if an antidote does exist, do you really think my client would have allowed me to bring it along? My apologies you weren’t given more of a warning, but who really gets that anyway?” She turned toward the door. “I’m sure you’d rather spend your last couple minutes alone.”

As she walked out, he called, “No! Please! Don’t leave me! There’s got to be something you can do! There’s got to be—”

She shut the door.

She hadn’t been exactly straight with Edmondson. Yes, he was going to die, and though it could be in the next five minutes, it could also take ten, or, if he was a particularly rare case, he might even last another fifteen. So she had a bit of time to kill before she could verify his termination.

She set the timer on her phone for a quarter hour and headed down to the kitchen to see if there was something to eat. As she descended the stairs, she couldn’t help but recall his words as he was trying to figure out what she’d taken. “You found it, didn’t you? You went down there.”

That sure sounded like Edmonson was hiding something. His money, perhaps? Now
that
might be interesting. While ethically she couldn’t allow him to bribe her, if she happened to stumble upon some cash lying around, that was a different story.

A quick tour of the place won’t hurt
.

She took a stroll through the first floor, assuming that’s what he meant when he said “down there.” Kitchen, living room, family room, pantry, laundry, and bathroom, but nothing in any of them shouted “hidden treasure.” Then again, he probably wouldn’t leave the key to his stolen fortune lying around for all to see. She checked closets and cabinets, looking for signs of false panels and concealed doorways, but came up empty. The only place left to look was the attached garage off the kitchen.

She checked her watch. She still had over five minutes. More than enough time for a quick peek.

As she opened the door, a hint of warm air drifted into the kitchen, the remnants of the earlier hot day. The space was dark, so she felt around until she found the light switch and flicked it on.

Edmondson’s Volvo S80 sedan was parked on the side closest to the door. On the other side of it, she could see part of a motorcycle.

When she circled the Volvo, her eyes lit up. Not just any motorcycle, but a vintage BMW with attached sidecar. Her estimation of Edmondson’s character ticked up a notch. She owned several bikes herself, two of which were at least as old as this one. None with sidecars, though. She preferred the freedom of racing down the road on her own but she could appreciate the beauty of Edmondson’s combo.

As she moved in closer, the small amount of regard she’d begun to feel for Edmondson faded. If he’d really cared about the bike, it wouldn’t be covered in a layer of dust. She knelt beside it for a closer look. While the bike appeared mechanically sound, it definitely needed maintenance. Yep, Edmondson was an asshole, all right. Hopefully, its next owner would treat the bike with respect.

She stood up, thinking maybe she should take possession of it herself. That’s when she noticed the handlebar grips. There was dust on the ends, but the parts where hands would go were clean. The seat, however, was as dusty as the rest of the bike.

So Edmondson had…what? Just put his hands on the bike recently for kicks?

She looked down at the tires and noted they were sitting on a large sheet of cardboard. Crushed into the sheet and leading off from the tires was a pair of well-worn tracks. The bike and sidecar had apparently been rolled off and on several times. Given the size of the garage, Edmondson could have done so without opening the larger door to the outside.

Curious, Ananke wrapped her hands around the clean spots on the handles and rolled the bike back. Once it was clear, she lifted the cardboard off the floor and propped it against the Volvo.

Huh
, she thought. The cardboard had been clean but the concrete underneath it was covered with dark oil stains. Stains that seemed a little too perfect.

Getting on her knees, she carefully scanned the floor.

There
, she thought a few seconds later.

A crack, one too straight to have been caused naturally.

She followed the line until it met another. That one led to a third that connected with a fourth that ran all the way back to number one. All together, they created a nice and tidy rectangle.

“Sorry, Mr. Edmondson,” she whispered. “But I think I just found your ‘down there.’”

The handle for the rectangle was hidden in the blackest patch of oil, under an oval chip of concrete that popped out when she pushed it. She slipped her fingers inside, found a lever, and flipped it.

The door was heavy enough to take both hands to pull it open. Once it was out of the way, she retrieved her pocket flashlight and shined it into the hole beneath the door. The beam revealed a steep staircase going down about fifteen feet.

Before she could decide what she would do next, the alarm on her phone went off. She cursed under her breath. As much as she wanted to see what was below, she had a job to do.

She thought for a moment. Perhaps there was still a way to get a peek.

Leaving the trapdoor open, she headed back upstairs to the master bedroom, where she found Edmondson staring dead-eyed at the ceiling. She checked his pulse, then pulled out her phone and made the call.

When the line was answered, she said, “All yours.”

CHAPTER
3

J
ONATHAN QUINN ENTERED
the house through the back door, his partner Nate following a few steps behind. The quiet Seattle suburb was not exactly Quinn’s favorite type of job site. Places like this were too friendly, neighbors knowing neighbors, neighbors watching neighbors, neighbors sticking their noses in neighbors’ business—all raising the risk of him and his team being noticed.

The late hour—about thirty minutes before midnight—helped, but didn’t guarantee anything. Every street had its night owls, many of whom would sit in darkened rooms and stare out their windows at the street.

Quinn and Nate headed up the stairs, the tools of their trade packed in the duffel bags each carried. They were cleaners of the highest order, the people you called when you had a body that needed to disappear.

On rare occasions, however, a client would request that things be arranged so that the body would be found and the death attributed to something other than what had actually happened. Such was the case with the Edmondson assignment.

Per the pre-mission brief, Ananke—the assassin—was to have performed the deed in the target’s bedroom, located on the second floor. She had assured Quinn it would be a bloodless takedown. Having worked with her a few times in the past, he trusted she would deliver as promised, making the body removal and the cleanup of the termination scene the easy part of his and Nate’s night. The part Quinn wasn’t looking forward to would come after that. It too was a special request.

The target, Samuel Edmondson, posed as a small-time financial services broker in his civilian job, but made his real money as an information broker for less than reputable individuals and organizations. Among his clients were several terrorist cells and other groups that were considered enemies of the United States, hence the reason Helen Cho’s group was involved. She was the client who had hired Quinn, Nate, and Ananke.

After Quinn and his partner finished prepping the body for travel, they were supposed to do a quick but thorough check of the house for anything that might provide information on Edmondson’s clients before heading out to set up the target’s alternate death scenario. Quinn could count on one hand the number of times he’d been asked to do the same kind of search. Though he didn’t like it, he knew it wouldn’t be a big deal. Grab whatever computers and files the guy had and move on.

While the upper hallway was dark, light leaked out the partially opened door at the far end. From the blueprints, Quinn knew it led to the master bedroom where the body should be. He pushed the door open but only took a single step inside before stopping.

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

Ananke was sitting on a chair near the bed. Her part of the assignment complete, she should have left as soon as she’d notified Quinn.

“I had a little free time. Thought I’d watch you guys work. It’s been a while.” She smiled. “You don’t mind, do you?”

He moved over to the bed. The target was lying on his back, under the covers. Quinn scanned the rest of the space. Nothing seemed out of order.

When he looked back at Ananke, he said, “You’re in the way.”

With an ease few people could match, she rose out of her chair and slinked by them. A stray finger traced the muscles on Nate’s arm as she passed.

“You’ve been working out,” she said.

He grinned. “A little.”

“Nate,” Quinn snapped.

Looking the innocent, Quinn’s former apprentice said, “What?”

Though Ananke was a highly respected assassin, she could also be a distraction. She was as tall as Quinn, nearly six feet, with smooth dark brown skin and matching eyes that could be piercing or alluring or both at the same time. Her hair, black as the stocking cap it was currently tucked under, fell several inches below her shoulders when she wore it down. She was, Quinn knew, a lethal combination of danger and intelligence.

He had hoped she would leave, but instead she stopped in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. Doing his best to ignore her, he examined the bedcover to make sure she hadn’t left any stray hairs behind. When he was sure it was clean, he folded the comforter onto the unused half of the bed and then went through the same routine with the sheets.

Edmondson was dressed in a pair of maroon silk pajamas, his monogram stitched on the breast in yellow. If not for the fact that his chest wasn’t moving, he looked as if he were asleep. Quinn turned the body on its side, checking for any injuries that might have bloodied the bed, but, as promised, there was none.

“Ready,” he said to Nate.

His partner unfurled a pre-cut roll of plastic sheeting onto the floor between the bed and the wall, and then they laid the body on it. Quinn grabbed a set of clothes out of the closet to dress Edmondson in later, and tossed it on top of the body. They then wrapped everything up and secured the bundle with duct tape.

Quinn examined the empty bed and found a single dark hair. He plucked it up and held it in the air toward Ananke. “Sloppy.”

“Wrong color,” she said.

She was right. Now that he was holding it in the light, he could see it had an auburn hint to it.

“No one else was here tonight?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Only me and Sammy.”

The hair might have been there for days. Quinn used a small piece of duct tape to secure it to the bundle, thinking he might as well get rid of it.

While Nate remade the bed to make it look as if Edmondson hadn’t used it, Quinn began looking through drawers for the evidence their client was seeking.

“You’re not going to find anything up here,” Ananke said.

Quinn searched the closet before moving to the nightstand on the far side of the bed.

“I’m telling you, you’re wasting time,” she said.

“Hey, instead of the running critique, why don’t you make yourself useful and help me carry Mr. Edmondson downstairs,” Nate suggested.

“Sorry,” she said. “My union frowns on crossing lines.”

“Of course it does,” Nate said.

Since Edmondson wasn’t a large man, Nate was able to hoist him over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold and carry him out of the room on his own.

“That assistant of yours is coming along nicely,” Ananke told Quinn.

“I heard that,” Nate said from the hallway. “I’m not his assistant anymore. We’re partners.”

“Oh, right. I’d forgotten,” she called to him, then whispered to Quinn, “You’re just stringing him along, aren’t you? He’s far too young to be on his own.”

Quinn finished checking under the bed and rose back to his feet. “He’s older than he looks.”

Ananke glanced back at the hallway with new appreciation. “Is that right? Is he attached?”