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.
The 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.”
The 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
“Keep 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.”
Quinn 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.”
Griffin 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.