“Have a nice swim?” she asked.
“I should have known you were watching,” he said.
“As best I could. Didn’t see if you got away, though. I take it you’re out of danger or are you calling me from jail?”
“Well, I did swallow some water but they didn’t catch me.”
“Eww. Might have been better if you’d let them catch you. Where are you?”
He gave her his location, then asked, “I need to catch up with Quinn and Nate. Do you know where they are?”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “They’re in Yonkers. By the time you get there, they’ll be done. Just hold tight and I’ll have them pick you up. Maybe get some breakfast.”
“An excellent idea.”
“And perhaps a side of antibiotics.”
The crematorium at Eternal Grace contained two state-of-the-art cremation chambers. The machines stood side by side along one wall, giant rectangular boxes, with smaller rectangular openings in the front where the dead were slid in.
Quinn chose the one on the right, and selected a setting that would reduce the body to ash within an hour. This, of course, would not be the end of the process. They would have to wait another hour and a half, at least, for the ashes to cool enough to be run through the pulverizer until everything was a fine powder. All in all, they should be out of there an hour or two after the sun came up.
While they waited for the chamber to reach optimum temperature, Nate laid the courier on the floor and searched her clothes to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. Quinn hunted around for one of Barry’s cardboard temporary urns so they’d have something to put the remains in. He was just opening a cabinet near the door when he heard something in the hallway.
It was faint, only a creak, but out of place. He clicked his tongue softly against the roof of his mouth to get Nate’s attention. After pointing at the door, he pulled his gun out of his shoulder holster, removed the sound suppressor from his pocket, and screwed it on.
Across the room, his partner did the same.
Morgan glared at Fischer and raised a finger to his lips. Fischer looked at him like he couldn’t understand what was wrong, which made Morgan even angrier. The asshole had touched the door. Yes, just barely, moving it a quarter inch at most, but that was enough to create a low, short whine.
No one entered the hall to check, though, so Morgan figured he and his partner hadn’t been compromised. They began moving down the hall again.
The others would most likely be in the crematorium, but there were no signs on any of the doors so Morgan had no idea where the room was. At the first few doors he passed, he stopped and listened. But as he moved deeper into the hallway, he began to hear a low rumble farther down that sounded like an air conditioner or…fire.
He followed the noise to the last door on the right. Pressing his ear against it, he hoped to hear the men moving around, but the machine was too loud and he could hear no other sounds.
Worried that the body might have already been put into the chamber, Morgan motioned to Fischer what he wanted to do, and then grabbed the door handle.
Moments after Quinn heard the creak, he picked up the sound of steps.
Though it could have been Barry coming down to see what was going on, the mortician would have been knocking into walls and making enough noise to wake the dead. So that left three possibilities. One, a silent alarm had somehow been triggered, alerting the police, who were now here to have a look around; two, a friend of Barry’s had come to check on him and noticed the door was open; or three, the steps belonged to the messenger’s killers.
Quinn felt the second option was most plausible, but he wasn’t about to assume anything.
He turned back to the room and raced to the nearest of the two windows high on the back wall, just above ground level. After a check to make sure Nate was with him, he popped it open and climbed through the opening. Nate came out right on his heels, and then carefully lowered the window back into place.
“Is it them?” Nate whispered.
“Don’t know.”
Quinn lay on the ground a few feet from the window and looked inside. He had a good view of the door when it swung open and two armed men moved cautiously into the room.
Not police. Not Barry’s friends. They were the men in the pictures Orlando had sent. Morgan and Fischer.
Quinn pulled back. “The termination team,” he whispered.
“They’re not going to leave until they get the chip,” Nate said.
Quinn fell silent for a moment before saying, “I have an idea.”
Staying to either side of the now open crematorium door, Morgan and Fischer aimed their guns inside and inched forward until they were all the way in the room.
“Where the hell are they?” Fischer asked.
The cleaners weren’t there, but the courier was. Her body lay on the floor, still in one piece.
Fischer started for the door, then looked back when Morgan didn’t join him. “Come on. Let’s find them.”
“We didn’t come for them.” Morgan walked toward the messenger, wincing a bit at the heat radiating from the nearby chamber. “Watch the door in case they come back.
Fischer looked disappointed that he couldn’t shoot anyone, but he positioned himself just inside the open door and stared out into the hall.
Morgan knelt next to the girl and began a search of her clothes. Her pants were clean — nothing in the pockets, nothing hidden in the seams. Her belt had an extra bulge under the leather next to the buckle, but when he cut it open, he found it was just some reinforcing material. She was wearing a jacket over a T-shirt. He removed the outer garment and then patted down the shirt. Nothing there.
The jacket, though, had plenty of places to hide things — under the lining, along one of the many seams, in the collar, in the hem at the bottom. He cut a hole in the lining and ripped the whole thing out, but the only thing between it and the leather was a thin layer of synthetic insulation.
He checked the collar and then began working his way along all the seams. When his fingers discovered a hole under the cuff of one of the sleeves, he brought it up for a closer look. A small pocket, he realized, purposely sewn into the jacket with a flap at the front meant to hold in something.
The pocket was empty, but Morgan had no doubt what it had recently contained.
That could mean only one thing.
He glanced over at Fischer. “Looks like we’ll have to do a little hunting after all.”
Quinn watched the basement entrance while his former apprentice sneaked down the ramp to the sedan.
Working quick and quiet, Nate opened the back passenger door and removed the desired duffel bag from the rear seat. He closed the door again but did not reengage the lock, and headed back up the ramp.
They stopped on the pathway in front of the house. Quinn zipped open the bag and found the box he was looking for.
Handing it to Nate, he said, “Off you go.”
As Nate headed across the parking lot and out onto the street, Quinn took his preplanned route to the mortuary’s main door.
Morgan let Fischer lead the way out of the basement.
As the assassin started to go around the sedan and up the ramp, Morgan tapped him on the back and whispered, “We need to check the car first.”
For about the millionth time, Fischer looked annoyed.
“I’ll do it,” Morgan said. “Go up the ramp and see if you can spot anything.”